June 7, 1902,] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
448 
so that the rider's foot is sometimes hanging over a deep 
precipice. Mules, winch are also let for this work, are 
still more obstinate than jinnies in refusing to he guided 
away from the edge. Both animals are. however, accus- 
tomed to the mountains, so there is no danger unless the 
ground on which they are walking happens to hreak 
down. I knew a case in which this occurred when a 
lady was riding into another hill station. She was only 
saved from dropping to the bottom of the precipice by 
falling against a bush which happened to be growing on 
its side several feet below the road. The pony, I be- 
lieve, was killed. 
Coolies can be hired at the foot of every lull road 
who will carry up ladies in a kind of seat made of car- 
pet slung between two poles. Tt is always better for them 
to travel in this way rather than ride on a pony. 
Horses accustomed only to the plains require riding 
with great care when first taken into the mountains. One 
of my own (during a visit to another station some years 
afterward) slid with his hind legs over the edge, of the 
road when turning a sharp corner. I threw myself out 
of the saddle and hauled hard at the bridle reins, which 
helped the horse to struggle on to the level ground. For- 
tunately, the side of the mountain below the road was 
not perpendicular, although very steep. 
The air at Mussourie was filled with a fine mist which 
presented a view of the scenery at any great distance, 
but the mountain slopes were beautiful with masses of 
oaks, and with rhododendron trees twenty or thirty feet 
high, having stems about a foot in diameter. These must 
have presented a splendid appearance a few weeks be- 
fore my arrival, being covered with masses of crimson 
blossoms, which had begun to fade when I saw them. 
I stayed at a hotel and met a friend, S *, a 
commissioner in the Government service, a first-rate 
sportsman and one of the best performers with both rifle 
and shotgun that I have ever met. When staying at his 
house in the plains I have left my own gun behind and 
walked bv his side enjoving the sight of his extraordinary 
skill. 
Mussourie is well provided with good roads, cut for 
miles around the mountains, among which many pleasant 
walks and. rides can be made. It also had a club and a 
good library. There were many ladies who had come 
from the plains to escape the hot season, and who joined 
in such games as lawn tennis, croquet, etc. — but after a 
few days S and. myself began to feel restless, so 
we agreed to march into the interior as far as the snow 
line. In very clear weather this is visible from the high- 
est part of "Landour — and is considered to be about eighty 
miles distant as the crow flies — but is much farther by 
the mountain paths. 
We at once began by searching the bazars, where the 
native shopkeepers live, until we found two second-hand 
ridgepole tents about 5 feet high, one for ourselves and 
the other for the two Musselman cooks who had accom- 
panied us from our homes in the plains. As wooden 
lent-pegs soon break in the rocky ground, we procured 
some made of iron. These are provided with rings by 
which they are tied together while marching. They 
should be counted every morning to prevent the coolies 
stealing. and selling them to the villagers, iron being 
scarce in the interior of the hills. 
We next bought a couple of small camp bedsteds. This 
may seem luxurious to those accustomed only to camp- 
ing in America, but in India I always used one, from 
dread of snakes. Although, I believe, there are none of 
a poisonous kind above the foothills of the Himalayas, 
there are plenty of scorpions in the warm valleys of the 
interior. At one halting place the coolies killed four of 
them, while engaged in arranging the camp. 
Our provisions consisted of a large quantity of rice 
and flour (the latter with the finest part of the bran left 
in it for making the unfermented cakes called "chupat- 
ties"). We also took curry powder, a few tins of pre- 
served meat and bottles of Liebig's extract, Worces- 
tershire sauce (not Worcester sauce, which is very in- 
ferior), coffee, sugar, and tea. the last at the rate of 1% 
pounds for each of its per month, as our Musselman 
cooks drank it. We bought enamelled iron cups and 
plates, a tin for boiling rice, and a zinc pail for. holding 
water. This last is necessary, as the drinking water has 
sometimes to be brought from the bottom of a hill hun- 
dreds of feet below the camping ground. The cooking 
vessels were copper bowls with lids, fitting one within the 
other. These are in general use throughout India, and 
the native servants dislike cooking with any other. I took 
a quantity of medicines, including quinine, chlorodyne, 
nitrate of silver, aperient pills, sulphate of zinc, two bot- 
tles of brandy and tincture of opium. Most of this was 
for the treatment of the villagers — whose most common 
diseases are malarial fever, dysentery and subacute oph- 
thalmia. 
All these things were carried by coolies in what are 
called kiltas — large conical shaped "baskets in general use 
throughout the mountains. See Figure 1. This pattern is 
convenient for leaning against sloping rocks by the moun- 
tain paths, and so taking all strain off a man's shoulders 
when he sits down to rest. 
Two of the kiltas, in which were packed the medicines, 
ammunition, tea, coffee, and sugar, were covered with 
tanned sheepskin and fitted with lids secured by padlocks. 
This is necessary to prevent such articles from being 
stolen. The best locks for the purpose are those which 
require no keys — being opened by bringing several letters 
in a straight line. 
As each coolie carries, at the utmost, fifty pounds — we 
hired ten for our baggage — beside two to help carry the 
guns, and a man named Iahtroo, who professed to be a 
"shikaree" — or hunter, but who proved of little use ex- 
cept for skinning birds. 
Native hunters, when alone, kill a great quantity of 
game by their extreme patience in waiting for animals at 
places where they come to drink, and by firing only at 
short ranges. Many of them are highh' praised by sports- 
men, who have not hunted out of India. But the best 
1 ever found, were inferior to a good Micmac Indian in 
New Brunswick — and I never met with one who could 
walk silently on hard ground without taking off his 
shoes, or who could follow the tracks of a wounded ani- 
mal when I was unable to do so myself. 
Many will think the amount of our outfit excessive. 
In tropical countries roughing it does not pay. The 
more a man takes care of himself, the more healthy he 
will keep, and it is not worth while to deprive one's self 
of a real comfort when a coolie can be hired to carry 
it for less than three dollars a month. 
We had waterproof covers for our guns, and wc 
bought four alpenstocks of solid bamboo shod with iron 
spikes, two for ourselves and two for our cooks. I had 
a small binocular glass which had always proved very 
useful for finding wounded ducks hidden in reeds, or 
large game in thick jungle ; I would advise anyone hunt- 
ing in the hills, to take also, a good telescope magnifying 
quite twenty times and with an object glass nearly, or 
quite two inches in diameter. This would be of great 
assistance when searching the side of a mountain for 
large game. It should be provided with a leather case 
and strap, by which it could be slung over a coolie's 
shoulder. 
We wore woolen underclothes and Norfolk frocks and 
pantaloons of cotton drill dyed the grayish-slate color 
called kahkee in India. We had Elwood's felt helmets 
as a protection for the head. Although the air in the 
mountains may be cool, the sun's rays in summer are 
often very scorching and in the deep valleys the heat is 
great. There is a curious fact of which I have never 
heard a rational explanation. Europeans in Canada and 
Australia, while wearing only straw hats, take hard ex- 
ercise with impunity, when the thermometer is at a 
Figure 1. 
height which would make them liable to sunstroke if they 
did the same in India. S had a double-barrel 12- 
bore breech-loading rifle weighing eleven pounds. The 
barrels were 26 inches long, and the cartridges held 4V2 
drams of powder — with a thick felt wad and round balls 
— eleven to the pound. It had been built by Dougall. then 
a celebrated gunmaker of London and Glasgow, and the 
original cqst was i8o. It was very accurate and had been 
used for some years by an officer in an infantry regi- 
ment for all kinds of large game. On one occasion he 
killed two tigers with right and left barrels. The first 
dropped in his tracks and the second after running thirty 
yards. The owner, when returning to England, offered 
it to S for less than half the cost price — and gave 
him twelve cartridges to try it with. S hired a 
number of villagers to drive a tract of jungle known to 
contain large game. He waited at the end and fired ten 
of the cartridges. With two he missed, and with the 
other eight he bagged six deer and one hyena. This 
Figure 2. 
was not bad work for shots at running game with a 
rifle which he had never used before. 
The grooves of this rifle were shaped like a series of 
waves, as shown in Fig. 2, which allowed any number 
of shots to be fired without fouling. S <s other 
weapon was a muzzle-loading shotgun of 11 bore, with 
32-inch barrels and very heavy — about 8^ pounds. He 
took a quantity of No. 6 shot (270 in an ounce), that 
being the size which he used for all kinds of game, from 
quail to duck; the only change he made being an in- 
crease in the powder charge for the latter. 
I had the single 16-bore Purdey rifle and the 16 shot- 
gun by S. Smith, described in our article to Forest and 
Stream on nylghao shooting. 
Having lost one or two wounded animals from want 
of a second barrel and being unable to afford the cost 
of a double breechloader, I had, shortly before starting 
for the hills, bought a double-barrel muzzle-loading rifle 
with two grooves and a round ball of thirteen to the 
pound, with a belt on it which fitted the grooves. The 
two barrels threw the balls, with the same sighting, well 
inside a 6-inch bullseye at 100 yards, when loaded with 
ninety grains of Curtis & Harvey's No. 6 powder, and as 
the rifle weighed gYz pounds, it had no unpleasant re- 
coil with that charge. 
As there are several kinds of large pheasants in the 
mountains — beside the chickore, a bird exactly like the 
French partridge, but double the size, I thought No. 6 
shot hardly large enough — so took a bag of No. 5 (218 in 
an ounce) — and it proved very satisfactory for general 
purposes. I also took a small quantity of No. 10 for 
killing small birds whose skins we might wish to pre- 
serve, and a few paper cylinders, each containing an 
ounce of BB shot. 
The natives of the hills are called Paharries, from the 
word Pahar, meaning a mountain. They dislike strangers 
and very often refuse to sell them food at any price. This 
is partly the fault of some of the British, who, when 
traveling, allow their native servants from the plains to 
pay the villagers for the firewood, milk, etc., that have 
been purchased. He is certain to cheat them out of a 
considerable portion of the money unless his employer 
sees it put. into their hands. It is the usual custom for 
the British magistrate to Furnish a servant from the law 
court, called a Chuprassce, who wears a belt, proving 
him to be an official. The villagers are then afraid to 
refuse to sell supplies at ordinary market rates or a lit- 
tle more. Unfortunately, the Chuprassee nearly always 
extorts food and probably part of the money from them. 
so S and myself decided not to employ one, but 
to trust in judicious management and my knowledge of 
medicine for securing the good will of the people; and 
we were not disappointed. During the whole journey to 
the snow-line and back, we never had the least difficulty 
in buying all the firewood, milk and butter required. 
The language of the Paharries is a kind of patois, of 
which we only understood a word occasionally, but in 
every village some of them know more or less of Hin- 
dustani, and that is a lingua franca, which enables any- 
one to travel with comfort all over India, from the Bom- 
bay Presidency northward to the Himalayas. Even 
children are acquainted with it in districts wdiere the dia- 
lect is Bengali — and the Afghans, who bring merchandise 
into India every cool season, speak it fluently. In the 
British parts of Beloochistan I have invariably found 
one or more in every group of men who could converse 
in Hindustani. The native name for the language is 
Oordoo — meaning camp, because it was formed by a mix- 
ture of Hindoo with the Persian, Arabic, and other lan- 
guages of the Mahometan armies which lived in camps 
when they first invaded India. J. J. Meyrick. 
[to be continued.] 
A Walk Down South —XXXII. 
When Mate McKee turned on me his face was not 
beautiful, but it didn't turn me to stone, though there was 
an indication of ice along my back. He opened his mouth 
to say something. Then opened it again. Then he left 
me standing there, and I didn't get the plate to eat from. 
One of the passengers was an object of considerable 
interest to me. He was well built, and regarded the boat 
ride as a lark, which he celebrated to such an extent 
that once when he went ashore at a landing, the mate 
yelled, "Keep watch of that man there; he's going crazy." 
It was D. T.'s. 
Sometimes I got a plate. I find this item in my note- 
book: "I don't know which is the hardest to eat with 
my fingers, apple sauce or mashed potatoes." Some of 
the apple sauce is on the notebook yet. But I made a 
wooden spoon, and that seemed luxurious. 
As we got further down the river, within fifty or sixty 
miles of Decatur, Ala., the crew was largely increased by 
darkies who were earning their way, beside regular pas- 
sengers. One of these was a boy of sixteen years, whose 
right leg was shorter than the left, and stiff. He walked 
with a cane, a slow, painful (seemingly) limp was his 
gait. Yet he worked his passage. He carried with the 
rest, cotton hulls, 132-pound sacks of cotton seed, bags of 
corn. Though I watched him carefully, I could not see 
that his. gait varied a hair's breadth, laden or unladen ; 
he limped as much, but no more ; he walked as slow, but 
no slower; even the tilt of his head was the same under 
a load. ' There was, when laden, in his eyes the slightest 
possible draw to the lids. Some of the white passengers 
saw something to laugh at in the spectacle the cripple 
made, but the negroes showed no sign in regard to him 
one way or the other. 
One of the passenger negroes was a type of the sort 
that has brought forth an excuse for treading on the 
whole negro race. I own that I had an ardent wish to 
knock him down. A "smart Alec" is what they call that 
sort. He wore a very large, broad, black hat, a black 
suit, and a black overcoat that reached below his knees. 
The hat was aslant, and he kept both hands in his 
trousers' pockets. His necktie was bright red, his .white 
collar as high as his ears. Pie strutted, talked loud, and 
had opinions, not ideas, on all things. 
"See these yere clo's?" he said to me. "They cum frum 
yo' country, Buffalo. I was theh; ho, yes. Buf-lo, Noo 
Yark. and all oveh. Back heah to spend theh wintah." 
In his eyes was that look of mean, shifty, arrogant and 
hateful vanity, which in a white man is despised, and 
rather harmless, but which in a negro brings down on 
his whole race an odium so great that one of the first 
questions of national import a Northerner is asked now 
in the South is : "What do you think of Roosevelt's eat- 
ing dinner with a nigger?" How many times I answered 
that question in regard to Booker T. Washington I don't 
know. 
At last we reached Decatur, Ala. Some house-boats 
were along the river bank, and at the top of the muddy 
slope some shanties. On the level, out of sight, were 
many other, houses, as I soon saw. A wide street, still, 
muddy and lonesome, was enough like the South of my 
dreams to be satisfactory. I got my mail first, and then a 
tin-basin and a spoon. I couldn't buy a knife and fork,, as 
that would "break the set." I went back to the boat 
merrily enough, for now I had something to eat out of. 
There was not much to load on board at Decatur for 
the up trip — some cotton hulls, which were taken on from 
"drays" in a pouring rain. W r e started at i -.40 P. M., 
Feb. 15, on the trip back to Chattanooga. 
Many of the negroes were gone. They had deserted, or 
merely left. Others had taken their places. I missed the 
great-mouthed circus clog dancer, the one from whom the 
burden of slavery seemed not to have been missing, and 
Shine — Shine being the one of all the crew who laughed 
constantly from his heart to his teeth, whose face really 
shone and caused Mate McKee to nickname him. As I 
noted their absence, I discovered that I had begun to be 
able to distinguish between the individuals — the truth of 
the song, "all 'coons look alike to me," was then appre- 
ciated. 
Bound northward to Chattanooga again, it seemed 
like going home to all hands, to me as much as any one. 
After supper the first night the darkies began to sing, and 
for an hour I heard what one reads about in Southern 
tales — the melody, abandon and fervor of a negro chorus. 
The weather was cold. The wind cut through one's 
clothes and chilled the flesh like a sea wind. Snow fell, 
bitterly damp and uncomfortable. Freezing weather in 
Alabama is worse than ten below zero in the North. A 
