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The language was a great difficulty, as the dialect of Kumaon differs widely from the Hindee of the plains; but by dint of repetition, and putting what I had to say in different forms in the simplest fashion, I was often happy to find myself getting into the understanding of my hearers.
For miles around there are ruins of mosques, mausoleums, palaces, and splendid mansions. For a description of Delhi, as for the description of Agra, I must refer my readers to Bishop Heber's Journal. During this journey to and from Kumaon we carried on, so far as circumstances permitted, the missionary work I have already mentioned.
Including the hill country of Gurhwal, and the belt of forest and swamp lying immediately under it, of which only a small part has been reclaimed, Kumaon is about half the size of Scotland. The province presents a remarkable contrast to the great level country beneath. Over it you travel in some directions hundreds of miles, and scarcely any elevation or depression in the land can be discerned.
The Viceroy's tour being abandoned, Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner for the Kumaon district, invited me to accompany him on his own official tour. It was through very difficult country where no wheeled traffic could pass, so we were to ride, with all our belongings carried by coolies. I bought two hill-ponies the size of Newfoundland dogs for myself and my "bearer," and we started.
It is attended by many Tibetans, who succeed in bringing their ponies through the tremendous defiles which separate their country from Kumaon. These ponies bring high prices. They also bring sheep laden with salt and borax. These Mongolians are great stalwart men, with broad faces, clad in homespun woollen cloth of many folds, which is seldom taken off till it is worn off.
In justice, however, we must own that we would make far greater blunders in trying to write a menu in Urdu. The Kumaon district is beautiful, not unlike an enlarged Scotland, with deep ravines scooped out by clear, rushing rivers, their precipitous sides clothed with dense growths of deodaras. In the early morning the view of the long range of the snowy pinnacles of the Himalayas was splendid.
It was commanded by Brigadier Jones. The third column was composed of Her Majesty's 52nd Foot, the Kumaon battalion, and the 1st Punjaub Infantry. This was to blow open and enter by the Cashmere gate.
Not a soul was to be seen; all was still as death, save now and then the sound of a musket-shot in the far-off quarters of the town. My duty accomplished, I started in the afternoon with two of our officers to view a portion of the city. Here a guard of the 60th Rifles kept watch and ward with some of the jovial little Goorkhas of the Kumaon battalion.
No. 3, under Colonel Campbell, consisting of the 52nd Regiment, the Kumaon battalion of Goorkhas, and 1st Punjab Infantry in all 950 men to assault the Kashmir Gate after it should be blown in by the Engineers. The whole of the above-named columns were under the immediate command of General Nicholson, on whom devolved all arrangements for carrying out the assault on Delhi.
Kumaon and the adjoining hill-country of Gurhwal were placed under the jurisdiction of a British Commissioner, and the arrangement made in 1816 has been maintained to the present time. The country has made immense progress since the English took possession. The people are now under a government which aims at protecting life and property, and at treating all, high and low, with equal justice.
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