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Updated: May 24, 2025
The last few days at Amritsar seemed as if they would never pass, the call of the Himalayas was so strong upon me. The terraced hill sides, as we went up in a jhampan, were all aflame with the beauty of the flowering spring crops. Every morning we would make a start after our bread and milk, and before sunset take shelter for the night in the next staging bungalow.
The personal appeal with which the Duke of Connaught accompanied the delivery of the Royal message went far to dispel "the shadow of Amritsar," which had, in his own apt phrase, "lengthened over the face of India" and threatened even to darken their own path. For on no subject had Indian feeling been more unanimous during the elections all over the country than in regard to the Punjab tragedy.
We were to see Nassik, one of the few towns mentioned by Greek historians, its caves, and the tower of Rama; to visit Allahabad, the ancient Prayaga, the metropolis of the moon dynasty, built at the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna; Benares, the town of five thousand temples and as many monkeys; Cawnpur, notorious for the bloody revenge of Nana Sahib; the remains of the city of the sun, destroyed, according to the computations of Colebrooke, six thousand years ago; Agra and Delhi; and then, having explored Rajistan with its thousand Takur castles, fortresses, ruins, and legends, we were to go to Lahore, the metropolis of the Punjab, and, lastly, to stay for a while in Amritsar.
While the city continued furiously to rage, reports of fresh trouble flowed in from all sides: further terrible details from Amritsar; rumours that the Army and the police were being tampered with and expected to join the mob; serious trouble at Ahmedabad and Lyallpur, where seventy British women and children were herded, in one bungalow, till they could safely be removed.
Each morning she prepared me a tray with bread, butter, milk and coffee. When we had to leave that village that old lady wept on my shoulder. It is strange that I had never seen her weep for her dead son, but she wept for me. What a woman! "If there be any doubt of the quality or the colour of the carpet, ask for an audience of the Doctor Linley Sahib if he be still in Amritsar. He knows carpets.
It was his firm conviction that the flight to Amritsar, which the Colonel had advised in case of a defeat, was, under the present circumstances, quite impracticable. As a matter of fact, there was scarcely anything else possible but to remain in the hotel and patiently await the development of events.
There aren't many women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes open. It isn't as if she didn't know what these things mean. She was through the Jaloo cholera last year. The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies' compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, a cloth riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.
The government of the Khalsa passed into the hands of a body of fanatics, called Akâlis, but the decision of grave matters rested with a council of the whole community which occasionally met at Amritsar. Every Sikh claimed to have joined the confederacy as an independent soldier, bound to fight under his military leaders but otherwise exempt from control, and entitled to a share of land.
There were the usual blue-and-white striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual glass studded Amritsar phulkaris draped to nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects; and the usual streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall.
The weavers of Amritsar to-day are making carpets and shawls upon the same looms that were used by their great-grand fathers yes, their progenitors ten and twenty generations back and are weaving the same patterns, and it is to be regretted that modern chemical dyes made in Paris, the United States and Germany are taking the place of the primitive native methods which produced richer and permanent colors.
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