Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/194

180 . The rhinoceros exists in the Terai, though not beyond the Ganges; but in the part we now are — that between the Ganges and the Jumna — there are wild elephants, and abundance of tiger, leopard, panther, bear, antelope, and deer of various kinds. My Bombay servant had heard so many stories at Hardwar about the inhabitants of this jungle, that he entered into it with fear and trembling. If the word hatti (elephant) was uttered once by our coolies, it was uttered a hundred times in the course of the morning. Before we had gone very far, my dooly was suddenly placed on the ground, and my servant informed me that there were some wild elephants close by. Now, the idea of being in a canvas dooly when an elephant comes up to trample on it is by no means a pleasant one; so I gathered myself out slowly and deliberately, but with an alacrity which I could hardly have believed possible. Surely enough the heads and backs of a couple of large elephants were visible in the bush; and as they had no howdahs or cloths upon them, the inference was fair that they were wild animals. But a little observation served to show that there were men beside them. They turned out to be tame elephants belonging to a Mr. Wilson, a well-known Himáliyan character, who was hunting in the Terai, and who seems to have been met by every traveller to Masúri for the last twenty years. I did not see him at this time, but afterwards made his acquaintance in the hotel at Masúri, and again in Bombay. It will give some idea of the abundance of game in this part of the Terai to mention, that on this shooting excursion, which lasted only for a very few days, he bagged two tigers, besides wounding another which was lost in the jungle, three panthers, and about thirty deer. Mr. Wilson has been called the "Ranger of the Himáliya," and his history is a curious one. About thirty years ago he wandered up to these mountains on foot from Calcutta with his gun, being a sort of superior "European loafer." There his skill as a hunter enabled him to earn more than a livelihood, by preserving and sending to Calcutta the skins of the golden pheasant and other valuable birds. This traffic soon developed to such proportions that he employed many paharries to procure for him the skins of birds and animals, so that his returns were not solely dependent on the skill of his own hand. He married a native mountain lady, who possessed some land, a few days' marches from Masúri and finally, by a fortunate contract for supplying Indian railways with sleepers from the woods of the Himáliya, he had made so much money that it was currently believed at Masúri when I was there that he was worth more than £150,000. I was interested in his account of the passes leading towards Yarkund and Kashmir, with some of which he had made personal acquaintance. I may mention, also, that he spoke in very high terms of the capacities, as an explorer, of the late Mr. Hayward, the agent of the Geographical Society of London, who was cruelly murdered on the border of Yassin, on his way to the Pamir Steppe, the famous "Roof of the World." It has been rumoured that Mr. Hayward was in the habit of ill-treating the people of the countries through which he passed; but Mr. Wilson, who travelled with him for some time, and is himself a great favourite with the mountaineers, repelled this supposition, and said he had met with no one so well fitted as this unfortunate agent of the Geographical Society for making his way in difficult countries. I do not think that the least importance should be attached to accusations of the kind which have been brought against Mr. Hayward, or rather against his memory. The truth is, it is so absolutely necessary at times in High Asia to carry matters with a high hand — so necessary for the preservation, not only of the traveller's own life, but also of the lives of his attendants — that there is hardly a European traveller in that region against whom, if his mouth were only closed with the dust of the grave, and there was any reason for getting up a. case against him, it could not be proved, in a sort of way, that it was his ill-treatment of the natives which had led to his being murdered. I am sure such a case could have been made out against myself on more than one occasion; and an officer on the staff of the commander-in-chief in India told me that the people of Spiti had complained to him that a Sahib, who knew neither Hindústhani nor English, much less their own Tibetan dialect, had been beating them because they could not understand him. Now this Sahib is one of the mildest and most gentlemanly of the members of the present Yarkund Mission, and the cause of his energy in Spiti was that, shortly before, in Lahoul, several of his coolies had perished from cold, owing to disobedience of his orders, and, being 