June in, 1902.^ 
FOftEST ANt) _ STREAM; 
483 
To the Snow Line of the Himalayas 
(Continued from page 468.) 
Many of the mountaineers have features as finely shaped 
as those of ancient Greek statues, and their faces would, I 
think, be quite as fair as those of modern Greeks if their 
skins were not covered- with dirt. The outside dress of 
the men consisted of a coat made with homespun wool 
undyed, a pair of trousers of the same material fitting 
close below the knees, and a small cap. The front edges 
of the coat overlapped and were kept in place with a piece 
of cotton cloth twisted and worn like a sash. The women 
had coats and skirts of woolen cloth, but wore broad 
turbans instead of caps. 
The houses were built of pieces of rock of all shapes. 
i»nd had sloping roofs formed of thin irregular slabs of 
rock, arranged like slates. Many had an upper story, in 
which the owners lived, the lower part forming a shelter 
lor cattle. There were no chimneys, so the smoke escaped 
by the door or small holes under the roof slabs. I suspect 
that the presence of the smoke in the winter season is 
the chief cause of the ophthalmia to which the Paharries 
are subject. The villages often looked picturesque from 
a distance, but the ground between the houses and all 
around them is saturated with filth, which probably ac- 
counts for the outbreaks of plague that occasionally occur. 
This disease, called "maha murree," appears to be in- 
variably fatal to all who are attacked. 
The surgeons sent to treat them by the British Gov- 
ernment have utterly failed to find a remedy, and the only 
instance of recovery of which I have read was a case that 
was treated hydropathically by an English sportsman 
named Dunlop. When several people in a village are 
attacked the rest of the inhabitants desert the place for a 
time, and after their return there may perhaps be no 
Fresh outbreak for five or six years. I never beard of the 
plague being in the plains of India until it appeared in 
Bombay two years ago, and there it seems to be less 
violent than in the mountains. 
The Paharries have apricot trees round their villages 
and dry the fruit for winter use. That which I have 
tasted when ripe, but undried, was inferior in flavor to the 
apricots grown in English gardens. 
Colonel Markham. in his book on shooting in the 
Himalayas, states that rhubarb, spinach and asparagus 
grow wild there. We were not fortunate enough to see 
any of these, but our men frequently brought the young 
shoots of a kind of fern, like bracken, which made a fair 
substitute for spinach. Wild raspberries and strawberries 
were plentiful in some places, and in deep valleys of the 
higher ranges we found a delicious fruit the size and shape 
of a blackberry, but of a rich golden color. It grew on a 
large bush with leaves somewhat resembling those of a 
raspberry. We did not meet with black or red currants, 
although both kinds exist in the hills. A large proportion 
of the cultivated land is formed into level terraces on 
the slopes of the mountains, each terrace being supported 
by a wall from three to eight feet high, built of rock. On 
these are grown wheat, millet and other grains. In 
the valleys where water is plentiful rice is cultivated. 
The parts of the mountains covered with grass were 
marked all over with narrow lines crossing each, other at 
oblique angles, so as to form diamond-shaped patches. 
This was owing to the cattle while grazing walking slowly 
up hill, and so in course of time making actual footpaths. 
The flour mills are small wooden structures in places 
excavated by the sides of ravines, so as to apply the water 
power in a manner which I have never heard of in other 
parts of the world. Fig. 4 shows one of which I made a 
rough drawing in my notebook. The lower end of the 
spindle and the hollow in which it rested on the block 
of woood were covered with iron. The upper end passed 
through a hole in the floor of the mill and through the 
center of the under millstone. It was fixed with iron 
clamps to the top stone, which it whirled round at a great 
pace. Each stone was about two feet in diameter and six 
inches thick. One of these mills was owned by a native 
Christian, the only individual of that sect whom we met 
in the hills. He paid us a visit and had a long talk. 
I must confess that during nearly twelve years' service 
in India, I never found any reason to believe that native 
Christians are in the slightest degree better men or 
women, morally, than are the Hindoos or Mussulmans. 
The so-called converts are almost invariably from the 
poorest members of the community, and if they were 
found to be more honest and truthful than men of other 
religions, the Europeans in India would gladly employ 
them in domestic service ; but, as a fact, very few of those 
who have lived long in the country would knowingly 
make an engagement with a native Christian. I speak 
•only of the Bengal Presidency, having never lived in either 
Bombay or Madras. Before going to India I believed in 
missions. After having lived there a few years I came to 
the conclusion that our sending missionaries to the natives 
i< a decided piece of impudence. From the Himalayas 
in the north to Ceylon in the south there can nowhere 
be found masses of people in the same state of degrada- 
tion, physically and morally, as those who swarm in the 
back slums of large cities in Christian Britain. Christian 
Europe and (if I am correctly informed) Christian Amer- 
ica. The religions of the Hindoos, Mussulmans and 
Buddhists keep their votaries straight, so why should we 
worry them to accept our own instead? We have societies 
for conversion of the Jews, Bible societies, and societies 
for the propagation of the Gospel, etc. I have felt for 
many years that the society of which we are most urgently 
in need is one for propagating the principle of not inter- 
fering with the religions of other people. 
At some of the camping places where there appeared a 
prospect of game within easy reach, we waited a day and 
went separately about the surrounding hills. At one 
place S. returned to the tent with a gooral, killed at 150 
yards. It was in such an awkward position that, in order 
10 aim. he had been obliged to lie down with his head and 
shoulders beyond the edge of a precipice, while two 
coulies held his legs to prevent him. from sliding over. 
We had a portion for dinner the same evening, and 
voted the flesh to be finer in flavor than that of the bark- 
ing deer. 
While engaged in shooting Raleej pheasants-. I lost one 
in a singular manner. When I fired he dropped, apparent- 
ly dead, on a mass of dead leaves underneath a bush. I 
walked to the. spot and Jahtroo was in the act of picking 
him up. when he suddenly wriggled and disappeared like 
a spirit bird. He did not fly, and we did not see him 
rise on his feet, but although we searched in the dead 
leaves and on the ground all around, we never saw 
him again. A good retrieving dog would be useful in 
this kind of shooting if he were not almost certain to be- 
come the prey of a leopard. These brutes are both nu- 
merous and daring. They seem to prefer dogs to any 
other food, and are so cunning that a hunter can very 
rarely get a chance of shooting one. They conceal them- 
selves in bushes close above mountain paths, and if a dog 
pass by, even if his owner be within a few yards, they 
spring upon him. and with a second bound disappear 
among the bushes below the road, where it is useless to 
follow them. I knew a dark bungalow in the hills where 
an Englishman had been dining late in the evening. He 
afterward sat in front of the veranda, when his dog, hap- 
pening to stray a little beyond the circle of light afforded 
by the lamp, was pounced upon and carried off by a 
leopard. 
On one march, while we were walking in single file 
through a forest. I saw a barking deer standing on the 
mountain side seventy yards above the path. His head, 
neck and front of the shoulder were behind a thick tree 
trunk, so that it was necessary to let the bullet almost 
graze the bark in order to hit a vital part of the chest ; 
but I had perfect confidence in the delicate accuracy of the 
Purdey rifle. The bullet hit the exact spot aimed at. the 
deer dropped dead in his tracks and rolled down the slope- 
to within a few yards of my feet. J. J. Mevrt< k. 
[to be continued.] 
A Walk Down South— XXXIV. 
In the bottom of the boat I had a box six feet six inches 
long, twenty inches w r ide and four inches deep to sleep 
on — to keep me off the wet in the bottom of the craft, 
li was a hard bed. which I might have softened with a 
couple of bags full of leaves had I thought, but the mere 
hardness did not interfere with my sleeping well. I was 
awakened by the cold once, but it was only to become 
conscious of an exuberant joy. I peeped out at the 
river and found that my boat, which I had drawn up on 
land, was afloat once more, and gently rolling with the 
swell from the pouring river. Dressed in all the clothes 
I had with me, I soon slept again, to awaken at the first 
appearance of dawn. A faint mist was on the water, and 
this was being torn to shreds by piles of drift that were 
floating silently down with the tide. 
Such a morning 1 had never seen before. The surface 
cf the river was smooth, the dimmed reflections lay upon 
it with scarcely a quaver or a wrinkle, till along came an 
acre of drift — piles of corn stalks, fence rails, trees from 
roots and twigs to saw logs. bard, dry and bony arms 
leaching high into the air with a streamer of mist at the 
tip. and Avater-logged stumps rolling under and the long- 
undulations — all going so fast and still that it made me 
faint to watch it — and then the reflections disappeared, 
but to reappear again in a moment. 
I built a fire and cooked some coffee, ate a hearty 
breakfast, unlocked the boat, and watching my chance, 
sent the craft into the current when there was no drift 
very near to crush it against the trees before I could get 
headway. 
It was the race of the flotsam, but rather ethereal in ap- 
pearance than substantial, till some of it struck trees along 
the edge of the current: then its rippling crash sent shud- 
ders along my back. It was an exhibition of the river's 
cat-like nature at such times. 
In a few minutes I passed Fort Deposit, where Jack- 
son stayed all Avintcr with his army when he was on his 
way to fight the British at New Orleans at the close of the 
war of 1812. It was a gap in a ledge of rock that marked 
the place. I intended to land there, but didn't start for 
shore in time. Anyhow. I was more interested in the 
dance of some of the logs and stumps afloat — sawyers — 
than in past or future concerns that morning. To see a 
gaunt limb, or root, ten or fifteen feet long, swishing 
through the air. rocked apparently by a submerged river 
witch, was a greater spectacle in my eyes than anything 
I could have seen "a league inland." 
One does not know what stillness is till he has been a 
part of it on the water. To feel it to the utmost, the water 
should be gliding rapidly ahead, but noiselessly. Then 
the eyes bulge, the ears ring and the hands go a-quiver. 
while the muscles weaken and ache. When, suddenly, 
the rip of a log in the brush breaks on the silence, it 
fairly lifts one from his seat, tearing up the thoughtless 
reverie into which one falls in a way comparable only to 
being dragged in two with a jerk. It was a most pain- 
ful sensation, and yet one that one delighted to have again 
and again. 
High overhead were buzzards going through an aerial 
dance, cutting the figure 8, rather forming that figure 
perpendicularly in the air, as they sailed to and fro. eleven 
birds in one loop ring and five in the other. 
The drift made a long black line on the water, only a 
tenth as wide as the river itself, which was hundreds of 
yards in breadth. The line of drift was sinuous, sweeping 
first to one shore, then to the other, as the surface cur- 
rent was thrust and shunted from side to side by the 
squirmings of the shore line. Picture Rocks, famous 
alike in history and myth, came into view, the wide, yel- 
low river broadening as it ran at the base, but turning 
to the left when it had banked up against its massiye wall. 
It is said that the Indians used "to see who could send 
their arrows furthest up the sheer height and come near- 
est to a star-shaped mark there. But the mark did not 
strike my eye. Still, when a hawk screamed as it left a 
ledge perch at sight of me. I could fancy that it had been 
a favorite spectacle for the beauty-loving Indians. 
It was a harvest day for the crows. They rode the piles 
of drift all day long, and were so intent on gleaning from 
the debris, that they often failed to notice me till I was 
only a few yards from them — but the Southern crow is 
noticeably less shy than the ones seen in the North. They 
rode logs, and matted heaps and the muskrat-house-like 
domes of flotsam impartially, waddling around like ducks 
on land. Even their reflections on the water were odd 
and interesting.- 
All that sunshiny day I floated down the stream, not- 
ing that knots and knotholes are more conspicuous on 
Southern trees than in the North; that there were "dead- 
lings," or clumps of girdled trees at intervals, as though 
the hasty and hungry pioneer had just begun to clear his 
land; and also I saw gray squirels hi numbers. Ruil- 
ning ashore once to shoot one, but spied my first 'possum 
instead, stiffened against the side of a sapling: I used to 
tli ink 'possuming a sort of myth, but when" I saw that 
stiffening of the muscles, as though it had beeil tbtoWri 
against the side of the tree and stuck there by the flaccid - 
ncss of its own decay — and saw the flex of the beast's 
eyeball, as it filmed over — I was a doubter no longer. It 
seemed to me that it looked less dead after I shot it 
through the head than it did when on the tree. 
There was a long sed line of "clearing fire" at one 
place, mounds, too, and everywhere the overflow. It was 
on a "tide" — a flood that was spreading out over the 
bottoms, till the river was miles wide, and when I took 
the notion, 1 paddled into the woods. But it was neces- 
sary to choose the place where I went to the "bank, for 
there were streams running out — mere overflow — as large 
as the Mohawk River at intervals, and to get carried out 
over the bottom might have meant a stay there till the 
flood began to ebb, for at the river side the land was usu- 
ally higher than inland. 
Altogetber, it was a day of medley which left a vivid 
memory, but no detail of which is distinct, save the 
black crows, and the limbs that clawed the air. The note 
book says, "Now enjoying the luxury of river travel; 
no wind, a sun that warms through the clothes." Again, 
"A great untamable bit of nature — never was I closer to 
the real nature than at this moment." But all that I 
wrote on that day seems tame and insipid, compared to 
the ecstacy in which I was ; it was a relief, however, 
from some of the sensations that had been experienced 
during the five months of travel which drew to a close 
that day. 
Toward dark I ran into the left bank, behind some 
tree trunks, tied up to a tree, and without leaving the. 
boat, put up the top, drew the ends shut, lighted the Ian- 
Urn and read for an hour, lying on my back, swayed by 
the river's swing. The reading in a measure broke the 
day. so to speak. 1 would like to make that plain; all 
day long I had been subject to sensation, utterly in the 
present, without a forced thought, no attempt to do other 
than whim suggested, careless in regard to what I saw, 
and paying nothing but a most cuijs-ory attention to all 
that was to be seen. Probably there vyjes no more trampish 
a river tramp on the river than I was then. For the first 
time since T started, I looked forward to what I be- 
lieved would be a couple of months more on the rivers 
without regret and with pleasure. 
The place where I stopped for the night was a mile 
below Bluff City, and less than fifteen miles above 
Decatur. Ala., where 1 expected to get mail, and less 
than three hundred miles from the mouth of the Tennes- 
see. I went to sleep, lulled by the chorus of frog music. 
The noise the frogs made was stunning in its volume, and 
seemed to carry the air in waves. 
I was up at the first break of day, and found the sky 
covered with clouds, which threatened rain. I was tired, 
tor I had not slept well, probably because of a reaction 
from the mental state of the past two days. I started as 
scon as I could see. and watched the day come in a 
flood of yellow glow to the east. At 5 :35 o'clock an oriole 
began to call "Wake up; wake up — too quick — get up!" 
Out on the overflow the ducks quacked constantly, as they 
had been doing for days. At 7:30 I went on shore hunt- 
ing for gray squirrels. I saw several, but though I shot, 
failed to score. The great trees, the level woods, and the 
absence of brush were a novel Sort of forest to one from 
the land of the witch hopples. 
I started on again, passing a village of house-boats in 
the mouth of Limestone Creek, where they were shel- 
tered from the drift and the waves which reach an aston- 
ishing height when the wind is right on the river. I 
reached Decatur a little before noon, and at the post office 
learned that all my mail had been forwarded to Chatta- 
nooga. I had left word when I was down on the Forrest 
that the mail should be forwarded for five days, and then 
held. The disappointment was severe, but I merely had 
to remain over for a couple of nights. And I would have 
had to do that anyhow on account of the weather. I tied 
up at the house-boat of H. W. Ford, and remained with 
him all the while I was in that town. Toward night of 
the day 1 reached there, it grew cold, and at dark snow 
began to fall, driven by a snorting gale, which blew drift 
against the hull and compelled the men folks to get out 
and shove the logs from the eddy into the main current 
lest they cave in the boat. To do this Was no easy task 
from a rocking craft. 
AH night the wind blew, increasing its power and 
growing in weight — at intervals from out on the river 
came the sound of. quacking wild ducks, while once or 
twice there was a flicker in tke air that seemed to be 
made by the flight of the birds through the light rays 
from the windows. In the morning the river was 
raging, because the wind was trying to change the flow 
of the current from down to up. I learned that the 
house-boat had a secret cable in addition to those that 
were in sight, mooring us to the bank. Sometimes the 
house-boat man is cut loose by enemies, and awakens 
to find his craft whirling down the river, miles from 
where he went to sleep. 
In spite of the wind, father and son of the Fords were 
out after drift logs that would make good fire wood, and 
there were many others along the river front engaged in 
the same economy. A long, light rope with a pair of 
light grabs to drive into the log was the means of tow- 
ing the stuff into the shore, an ax being used to ham- 
mer the iron into the wood. A wrecked house-boat 
came along among other things, and it, too. was cap- 
tured, and held for salvage. 
With scarcely an intermission, the gale swept up the 
river till long after dark, but in the night it died away. 
In the morning my mail came back from Chattanooga, . 
and at 10.30 o'clock I started on clown stream, with the 
head of Muscle Shoals only eighteen miles away. I had 
heard that these were bad wafers, but that boats of all 
descriptions ran them. With misgivings I watched the 
shore go by, mile after mile. At 2 o'clock I saw the 
toss of white water ahead, and the roll over a dam. T 
was near the head of the shoals. I hugged the lef* 
bank for a mile or so, then ran across a corn field in the 
boat to the land proper, and landed to find some one 
who could tell me about the water. .1 found a young 
