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Updated: June 6, 2025
We were ushered into a long narrow room, similar in shape to the reception-room in all other Nepaulese palaces, and adorned in like manner with a profusion of pictures, occidental as well as oriental, while in the midst, upon a round table, and displayed as drawing-room ornaments, was an incongruous collection of articles, amongst which I remarked three leaden spoons, an old cruet-stand, a Bohemian glass scent-bottle, an old hair-brush and tooth- brush on some hot-water plates, a pair of brass candlesticks, and other wares usually found in kitchens, pantries, and bedrooms.
This seemed to me a curious proceeding, and one which the remaining portion of the legislators must have thought particularly unsatisfactory: however they looked as if they did not care, or could not help it; and while the coterie above were solemnly perusing Her Majesty's epistle, and the guns were booming in honour of it, we below were chatting upon indifferent matters, until the Royal party returned, when, in addition to the pawn usually given on such occasions, we were presented by their Majesties with some Nepaulese weapons, and amidst more firing of cannon left the palace in the Minister's phaeton to witness a grand review.
The Nepaulese look with the greatest awe upon their wealthy and highly- civilized neighbours; but the Minister, having now lived amongst people more warlike and accomplished than even the Chinese, regards them with great contempt; and I should not be surprised if, before long, accounts reach us of the invasion, by the Nepaulese, of the northern provinces of China, when the Minister would bring to bear his recently acquired knowledge, and would doubtless prove more than a match for the rudely- equipped forces of his Celestial Majesty.
He was a well-dressed young man, like a superior native servant; his face was broad and flat, but kindly and good-humoured. He salaamed many times, but still said nothing. "Ask him what he wants," I cried, turning to our fair-weather friend, the cook. The deferential Nepaulese did not wait to be asked. "Salaam, sahib," he said, bowing again very low till his forehead almost touched the ground.
He then gave me a lesson in cutting down trees with a kukri, a sort of bill-hook, in the use of which the Nepaulese are peculiarly expert. The Minister Sahib at one stroke cut through a saul-tree which was 13 inches in circumference, while sundry unsuccessful attempts which I made on very small branches created great amusement among the bystanders skilled in the use of the weapon.
The distance was thirty miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese.
Towards the close of the year 1850 a considerable sensation was created in the usually quiet town of Colombo by the arrival in Ceylon of His Excellency General Jung Bahadoor, the Nepaulese Ambassador, on his return to Nepaul, bearing the letter of the Queen of England to the Rajah of that country.
"Hubert," Hilda said to me, when we were alone once more; "we mustn't keep her here. She will be a hindrance, not a help. One way or another we must manage to get rid of her." "How can we?" I asked. "We can't turn her loose upon the mountain roads with a Nepaulese escort. She isn't fit for it. She would be frantic with terror." "I've thought of that, and I see only one thing possible.
The Nepaulese can produce no heat sufficient to cast balls, and are, consequently, obliged to beat them into the required shape, an almost endless operation. By this tedious process the making of each two-pound ball occupies two men a whole day, and costs, including other incidental charges, about a rupee, so that the expenses of a siege would come rather heavy upon the Government.
It was in this place that some of the severest fighting took place in 1816 during the Nepaulese war. Commanded by the surrounding heights and crowned by the temporary stockades of the Ghorkas, it was a dangerous and formidable obstacle to the progress of our army; but the able tactics of Sir David Ochterlony successfully overcame it.
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