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Updated: May 4, 2025
The Q.M.G., we found, had collected our staff of servants together, and was otherwise pushing on our preparations as fast as the dignity and importance of the undertaking would admit. The staff consisted of khidmutgar, bawurchie, bhistie, dhobie, and mihtar; or, in plain English, butler, cook, water-carrier, washerman, and sweeper.
Outside that circle again, was a rude square, traced out in bits of red brick alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a little bank of dust. The bhistie from the well-curb put in a plea for the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did not much disfigure my garden.
On at length reaching the opposite side, we found a disconsolate coolie bemoaning himself and reckoning his bones, having also fallen down the snow, while a little further on we came upon the bhistie lamenting over a similar disaster.
In the evening, the comptroller of the household made his appearance upon the cook's pony, having from want of tobacco, and other causes, become done up on the road. The bhistie alone holds out, and seems, as far as servants go, the only hope of the expedition.
Our hearts being expanded by this administration of justice, we proceeded to a further act of charity, and emancipated our twelve ducks from their basket, into a temporary pond constructed for them by the bhistie, where they dabbled about to their hearts' content, and soon forgot the sorrows of the road in a repast of meal and rice.
While descending a very steep part of the road, my saddle suddenly slipped over the pony's round little carcase on to his neck, and, NOLENS VOLENS, I came to the ground, the pony remaining in a position very nearly perpendicular, with his tail towards the heavens and his head between my legs, in which predicament he luckily remained perfectly quiet, until the bhistie, coming up behind, set us both on our proper extremities once more.
Having made a division of our property, and sent the Q.M.G. with an advanced guard two stages on to Heerpore, F. and I started at daybreak for a five-days' shooting expedition in the mountains. We took with us a khidmutgar and bhistie both capital servants, but unfortunately not accustomed to cold, much less to snow.
Near this the bhistie and khitmutgar, journeying together, lost the path, and found themselves well on the road to Iscardo before discovering their mistake. The road to-day, like all our return journeys, appeared twice the length it did on first acquaintance. The hills, too, were very severe on the coolies, and it was fortunate we halted for breakfast on the road.
At the time F. and I left the "cave-hotel," the whole of the coolies, Rajoo, the three goats, and the two sheep, had all gone on ahead, as also the "Invincible One," the sepoy. The bhistie and the missing cook had therefore only remained behind.
The khidmutgar and bhistie, we found, had retailed the history of their many sorrows to the other servants, and, having expatiated most fully on the horrors they had endured among the snows and thunderstorms of the mountains, were promising themselves a speedy end to all their woes among the peace and plenty of the promised land of Cashmere.
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