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Updated: June 29, 2025
There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banyan tree behind a look-out, as it were, above some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he neared it. The ground was good clean dust no new herbage that, living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds the seeds of all life.
But Ranjoor Singh did not seem to care any more, and did not trouble to answer him. Outside the door was a bullock-cart, of the kind in which women make long journeys, with a painted, covered super-structure. The German followed Ranjoor Singh into it, and without any need for orders the Sikh driver began to twist the bullocks' tails and send them along at the pace all India loves.
After a cheerful ride of several hours, having the hills on our left hand, we crossed a few small plains; and understanding from our guide, Tom H , that we were now at our destination, we began to look about us for our bullock-cart, whose track we had noticed from time to time as we came along.
Monck turned to meet him. "I can't think what has happened to him." "Can't you though? I can!" Tommy seized him impetuously by the shouders; he was rocking with laughter. "Oh, Everard, old boy, this beats everything! That brother of yours is coming along the road now. And he's travelled all the way from Khanmulla in a in a bullock-cart!" "What?" Monck stared in amazement.
Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly towards it from the town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an unplaned coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists.
At five o'clock in the morning we had already arrived at the limit, not only of driveable, but, even, of rideable roads. Our bullock-cart could go no further. The last half mile was nothing but a rough sea of stones. We had either to give up our enterprise, or to climb on all-fours up an almost perpendicular slope two hundred feet high.
The bells on the bullocks which are employed in road traffic have a practical use, because, when travelling by night, the proximity of a bullock-cart is often first indicated in the dark by the tinkling of the bells. These are often two or three inches in diameter, and in the comparative stillness of night can be heard at some distance.
They could only have started on the day that we did; they have as long a road to go, and most likely they have got a bullock-cart, which won't travel more than fifteen miles a day at the outside. They have got Peter in a cart covered up with something, we may be sure. I don't think they will be here for another day or so at the earliest.
Similar speeches delivered by other old araguato chiefs, have been compared to the creaking of an ungreased bullock-cart, mingled with the rumbling of the wheels! Our party thought the comparison a just one. The old chief finished at length. Up to this point not one of the others had said a word.
Every native ruler in India to-day, however poor, has a hoard to which he is always adding; and though, once in a long while, some enlightened prince may send off forty or fifty bullock-cart loads of silver to be exchanged for Government securities, the bulk of them keep their treasure and the knowledge of it very closely to themselves.
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