THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
A SPORTSWOMAN IN INDIA
A SPORTSWOMAN
IN INDIA - - -
"PERSONAL ADVENTURES
AND EXPERIENCES OF
TRAVEL IN KNOWN AND
UNKNOWN INDIA j
By ISABEL SAVORY
WITH FORTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS AND A
PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR
London: HUTCHINSON &? CO
Paternoster Row j* j* 1900
Philadelphia: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
Co
ETHEL MARION HICHENS
I OFFER THIS BOOK ;
WHEREIN ARE TO BE FOUND
"THE INCURABLE ILLOGICALITIES OF LIFE, THE FATHOMS OF
SLACK, AND THE MILES OF TEDIUM."
S33
CO NTE NTS
CHAPTER I
PIG-STICKING
PAGE
The Taj A Total Eclipse Mian Mir Visit to Kapurthalah
Pig-sticking The First Spear An Ugly Customer Back
to Lahore . i
CHAPTER II
PESHAWUR AND THE KHYBER PASS
A Day with the Peshawur Vale Hunt The Native City Through
the Khyber Pass Lunch in Camp on Active Service
General Hart's Brigade AH Musjid Khyber in Old Days . 37
CHAPTER III
FROM DALHOUSIE INTO CHAMBA
Up to the Hills Dalhousie Leopards The Rains Expedition
into Chamba Monkeys Kudjiar Rajah of Chamba
Arrangements (bundobust} for our Shoot . . . -75
CHAPTER IV
CHAMBA INTO KASHMIR
Unexplored Mountains Our First Red Bear A Narrow Escape
Tahr Difficult Climbing Our Bag A Sad Accident . .in
vii
viii Contents
CHAPTER V
KASHMIR
PAGE
From Dalhousie to Kashmir Our Start from Gulmerg Baggage,
Caravan, and Retainers Magnificent Scenery The Zoji La
Pass Mountaineering in Kashmir Ascent of the Silver
Throne Glaciers A Near Shave 145
CHAPTER VI
FOURTEEN THOUSAND FEET HIGH
Yem Sar Pass Marmots In a House-boat Srinagar Suffering
Moses Shalimar Bagh Woman as a Traveller In Camp
Again Native Servants Black Bears No Luck Pine-
martens 179
CHAPTER VII
BLACK BEARS
Two Bears in one Beat A Coolie Mauled After Bard Singh
Road to Gilgit Tragbal Pass Gurais Gaggai Nullah
Snowed up Quit the Passes Nanga Parbat Snow-line Left
Behind 217
CHAPTER VIII
TIGER-SHOOTING
Down to the Deccan A Tiger Shoot The March Khubr Into
Position A Tree-climbing Tiger A Merciful Escape A
Splendid " Great Cat "Heat and Famine We walk a Tiger
up for the First and Last Time Death of Beater Return to
Civilisation 251
CHAPTER IX
SNAKES. DELHI
Experiences with Snakes Cobras An Inevitable Death Delhi
The Ridge Mutiny Days John Nicholson Palace of Great
Moguls A Native Pageant Kutab Minar A Deserted City . 285
Contents ix
CHAPTER x
OOTACAMUND AND ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE
PAGE
From Delhi to Ootacamund The Nilgiri Hills Tropical Vegeta-
tion The Todas Anglo-Indian Life Reasons why Natives
so Impoverished though India Itself Wealthy Country . . 323
CHAPTER XI
FROM AN ELEPHANT KHEDDER TO A CROCODILE TANK
In Camp Again An Elephant Khedder A Memorable Night
The Elephants Pass the Rubicon Guests of the Rajah of
Mysore Seringapatam Tippoo's Summer-house The
Cholera Bungalow Guindy Crocodiles A Horrible Expe-
rienceThe Priest and the Crocodile Crocodile Tank at
Kurachie Native Letters . 353
CHAPTER XII
IMPRESSIONS OF TRAVEL
Home Reminiscences The Imperishable Legacy The East no
More Advantages and Disadvantages of Travel Honour to
those who Stay at Home 393
CHAPTER I
PIG-STICKING
The Taj A Total Eclipse Mian Mir Visit to
Kapurthalah Pig-sticking The First Spear
An Ugly Customer Back to Lahore,
CHAPTER I
PIG-STICKING
Not see ? because of night, perhaps ? why, day
Came back again for that ! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft :
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,
" Now stab and end the creature to the heft ! "
ROBERT BROWNING.
IT would be absurd to describe the journey out to
India ; as well might one launch forth into
impressions of Piccadilly from a hansom, since half
society has already been bored by the voyage to the
East, and the remaining half still more bored by reading
accounts of the same. Suffice it to say, that we shook
the dust of the P. & O. Egypt off our feet on
January I4th, and landed in Bombay, in India, with
its two hundred and eighty millions of inhabitants,
and its area of one and a half million of square miles.
" The Land of Regrets is a country to visit, but
not to live in ; parts of it, from a shooting point of
view, are of course Paradise it is all of it more or less
interesting to see, the hills are full of fine scenery,
and if a tour there includes Kashmir, the traveller's
cup will not be an empty one. But India in the hot
3
4 A Sportswoman in India
weather is a very different place to the white-faced
Europeans whom the want of the rupee keeps in their
stations. Along the dusty, split, and parched plains,
the thermometer at one hundred and two degrees
The cattle reel beneath the yoke they bear,
The earth is iron, and the skies are brass.
Of this side, as a rule, the traveller sees nothing.
At present the Punjab claimed us, and the only
place at which we stopped on the way north was Agra.
Leaving Bombay on Sunday evening, we arrived there
on Tuesday afternoon ; and as it was of course com-
paratively cool, drove off at once to see the building
of which Lord Roberts writes : " Go to India. The
Taj alone is worth the journey."
Built by the great Mogul Shah Jehan in 1630 to
the memory of his wife Nur Mahal, the " light of the
palace," the Taj Mahal, " the tomb of Mahal/' is
not one of the " sights " of India, but one of the
wonders of the world. It was twenty-two years in
building, though twenty thousand workmen were
employed every day ; and it is said to have cost
considerably over forty millions of rupees, even in
days when labour was all forced. But such a sum
is easily accounted for by the marble and jewels alone,
which came <c by toiling men and straining cattle,
over a thousand wastes, a thousand hills." Out of
the sun and glare, from the dazzling blue sky and
giddy saffron haze, we walked down the two rows of
cypress-trees the Semitic emblem of death, entrance
, Pig-Sticking 5
to darkness and oblivion long and stepped through
the heavy, fretted and carved, marble doors, into the
cool, solemn vastness of the great tomb. Through
the dim, green light the marble screen, pierced and
modelled like the finest lace, gleamed round the two
sarcophagi of the wife and her husband. Nur Mahal
lies in the centre beneath the dome, Shah Jehan on one
side. The voice of a Mohammedan worshipper formed
an indescribable and never-to-be-forgotten echo,
rolling up to the vaulted roof of the great dome :
"Allah ho Akbar La ilaha Illallah."
The secret of the fascination of the Taj lies in its
extraordinary simplicity and dignity. Complexity is
the curse of this age, and nothing is so hard in art or
in life as to be simple and yet not insipid. The solemn
Taj embodies repose its size almost seems to vary
with one's own imagination ; something of movement
is imparted to the structure a huge phantom about
to pass away, not of this earth earthly. The sight
of it translates one into indefinite regions . . . ; it is
seen with the heart, before the eyes have time to take
it in ; and with all its faults its appealing beauty
casts a spell like an imperfect human being, whose
presence scatters every prejudice in its overwhelming
fascination.
In those days voluntary contributions to public
buildings were non-existent. Great men built their
own memorials. " Who," said an intelligent Hindu,
pointing us out an unfinished mausoleum near Agra
" who would have built this monument to his memory
6 A Sportswoman in India
if not himself? He died before it was finished, and
so of course it never was completed."
Agra is a great place for pig-sticking ; and as we
drove over to Fatehpur Sikri, we saw for the first
time what sort of country provides one of the finest
sports in the world a sport with which we became
well " acquaint " hereafter.
One of Akbar's great imperial roads took us to
the ruined city. Fatehpur Sikri was intended to be
the capital of the Mogul Empire ; but the superior
position of Agra on the great waterway of the Jumna
made Akbar eventually select that city. His mosque
at Fatehpur Sikri, an accurate copy of one at Mecca,
is Mohammedan in style, while the six adjoining halls
are Hindu. The Hindus, like the ancient Greeks,
never made use of the true structural arch ; to this
day they will not use it, for, as they say, "An arch
never sleeps," meaning that by its thrust and pressure
it is always tending to tear a building to pieces. On
the walls of the mosque are written in Arabic : " The
world is a bridge ; pass over it, but build no house
there. He who hopeth for an hour may hope for
eternity. The world is but an hour spend it in
devotion ; the rest is unseen."
It would be hard to take no interest in India's
history, with associations of the great Mogul Emperor
Akbar on every side. Born in 1542, the real founder
of that empire, he subjugated the whole of the Punjab
from the heart of Afghanistan ; he conquered Kashmir,
recovered Kandahar, annexed Sind, and won Bengal,
Pig'Sticking 7
bequeathing to his successors a united empire, and
a land revenue of twenty and three-quarter millions
sterling.
One of Akbar's wives was a Christian ; and he
promulgated a new State religion, broader in its views
than the Musalman faith : he himself worshipped the
sun every morning as a representative of the Divine
Soul which animates the Universe. At any rate, he
has been a force in the Indian world which lives even
to-day as strongly as ever. Under his grandson Shah
Jehan, the Mogul Empire attained its highest union
of strength with magnificence. He enriched his
grandfather's capital with the exquisite Moti Masjid
(Pearl Mosque) ; he built the Taj, the Jama
Masjid (Great Mosque) at Delhi, and the Palace,
which covers a vast parallelogram of 1,600 feet by
3,200 feet, and includes the most sumptuous buildings
in marble most beautiful of all, the Diwan-i-Khas,
or Court of Private Audience, upon the inlaid walls of
which is inscribed, " If there is an Elysium on earth,
it is this, it is this." Shah Jehan's Peacock Throne,
its tail blazing in the shifting colours of rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds, was valued at six
and a half millions sterling.
In spite of their magnificence, the reigns of the
Mogul emperors tell a tale of tragic drama, darkened
by mutiny, jealousy, and intrigue. Akbar had rendered
a great empire possible in India by conciliating the
native Hindu races ; but his great-grandson Aurangzeb
gave up this policy, and after his death the decline
8 A Sportswoman in India
and fall of the Moguls followed. His Indian provinces
had covered nearly as large an area as the British
Empire at the present day, his land revenue demand
alone amounted to thirty-eight millions sterling ; his
reign is a dream of vast wealth, a lavish luxury,
a riot of magnificence, impossible to realise. And
it fell. . . . Down upon it swooped the destroying
hosts of the Persians in 1739 fr m ^ ar Central Asia,
massacring and pillaging, and returning through the
Khyber Pass with a booty of thirty-eight millions
sterling. No less than six times the Afghans burst
through the passes, plundering and slaughtering all
before them ; districts were entirely depopulated, as
the ruins testify to this day. The Sikhs and the
Hindus rose at the same time. The Sikh sect was
mercilessly crushed ; and by reason of the barbarous
cruelties inflicted on them, the Sikh, who never forgets,
stood staunch to England in the Mutiny more than
a hundred years later, saved the Punjab, and saw
the downfall of the last of the Moguls. The Hindus,
however, succeeded in their rebellion, and the empire
was further shaken by contests between the sons of
Aurangzeb. Lastly upon the scene appeared the
French and English.
The Dutch had raised the price of pepper from
three to six shillings a pound, therefore the merchants
of London decided to trade direct with India, instead
of with Amsterdam ; and so on December 22nd, 1599,
in Queen Elizabeth's reign, with the Lord Mayor
in the chair, at Founders 1 Hall, the " East India
Pig-Sticking 9
Company of Merchants in London " was formed,
with one hundred and twenty-five shareholders and
a capital of 70,000.
Picture those early voyages, our fights with the
Dutch, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French.
Recollect Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Lord Wellesley,
and see at last the French completely defeated, the
Mogul Empire broken up, and the Hindu Confederacy
dissolved. We won India from the Hindus. Helping
the several princes against one another, they were
allowed to retain their titles only by acknowledging
our supremacy. Puppet emperors reigned at Delhi
until the Mutiny, when the last of the great Moguls
was, after his rebellion and defeat, removed as a State
prisoner to Rangoon, where he died. And thus,
through hundreds of years of struggle, a long chain
of events had led up to Englishmen wandering about
Akbar's Mosque, the Taj Mahal, and other memorials
of past glory, until three people from Warwickshire
were to be found sitting on the black marble slab
which had formed Akbar's seat in the Hall of Audience.
This far-famed throne is cracked across, and the
Musalman theory is that the Mogul stone, frozen with
horror, cracked at the thought of a Hindu sitting on
Akbar's throne.
From Agra we journeyed to Buxar on purpose to see
a total eclipse of the sun, for which object astronomers
had come out from England with us ; indeed, half
India was there or thereabouts ; the Viceroy and
thousands of Europeans went ; Buxar station was
io A Sportswoman in India
crammed with u specials." We stationed ourselves on
a small mound, under some shady trees ; the eclipse
began about midday, when the moon could just be seen
overlapping the edge of the sun. Through smoked
glasses, telescopes, and glasses of every kind, the great
concourse of people gazed at it, and the excitement
grew intense as the moon drew farther and farther
across the sun. It became perceptibly cooler. The
thousands of spectators, watches in hand, were almost
breathless as i .43 p.m. approached the time of totality.
The sky began to turn blue-green like twilight, the
stretches of burnt yellow plain around us assumed
a brown hue, which spread over the horizon and the
sky immediately above it. Every man's face turned
a horrid, sickly yellow in the weird light. Dimmer
and yet more dim a hush was over the murmuring
crowd; 1.43, and the moon glided entirely across the
sun, showing us nothing but a large black body
hanging in the sky. Venus glimmered through the
green and yellow haze, and another star or two shone,
the grass looked more purple than before, and the
colour of the whole dark world was unique. . . . Two
minutes passed, and then suddenly a bright light flashed
from the edge of the moon. The Sun ! The Sun !
The tension was over, a wild cheer broke simultaneously
from the whole throng as the brilliant edge of the
lord of creation slid from behind its temporary screen,
and once more lit the earth. A fresh breeze sprang
up ; the ghostly light faded gradually away ; but all
the rest of the day the marked coolness of the air
Pig'Sticking 1 1
showed the result of banishing sunlight for a couple
and a half hours, only totally banishing it for two
minutes.
Buxar did not tempt us to linger, for having so
lately left England, we felt even that January heat.
The Punjab would be much cooler. Thirty-two hours
training saw us arrived at Lahore station, thence driving
out to Mian Mir, the military station, where we stayed
with General Sir George Wolseley, then officiating in
the Punjab command vice Sir William Lockhart.
The pig-sticking season was by this time in full
swing ; and our whole party from Mian Mir was in-
vited to stay in one of the few remaining native states
by H.H. Maharajah Sir Jagatjit Sing Bahadur, K. C.S.I.
It was a short journey from Lahore, and at
the station, which was five miles' drive from
Kapurthalah, we were met by landaus, and bullock
carts for our luggage. The Maharajah put us up
at his Guest House, a luxurious bungalow built in
charming gardens, next the Palace. It was very
French in its decorations, and a trifle over-gilded
perhaps ; but after the somewhat rough-and-ready
Punjab arrangements, that was a pardonable sin.
The shady portico over the hall door was full of
ferns and flowers, and the gardens afforded officious
mails (gardeners) ample opportunities of pressing
gorgeous buttonholes on us whenever we came
out. A French chef fed us, and our own personal
servants waited on us.
Soon after we arrived, a State call was paid upon
12 A Sportswoman in India
us by the Maharajah and his orderly officer. His
Royal Highness was twenty-five years old, though
I should have put him down as at least ten years
older ; but those who have been born to absolute
power, who have never known a thwarted desire,
and who have been reared under the fiercest sun
in the world, age even more quickly than the ordinary
sons of the East, who are self-possessed men when
they should be bashful babies. Kapurthalah spoke
French as well as English, and was dressed like
a sahib, except that he wore a vast turban and a
diamond brooch. We sat down and talked for a
short time, until we suggested that we must not
detain our visitors any longer, without which intimation
an Oriental does not take his leave. Ten minutes later
three of our party drove over to the Palace, and
having returned the call, we had tiffin by ourselves in
our ornate octagonal dining-room. Later on an orderly
officer called and invited us to the Palace for tennis
a strange " At Home " of turbans and black faces.
The Ranee (Princess) Canari was our hostess ; formerly
a hill girl, she is the Maharajah's " newest " wife,
and in coming out of Purdah has of course lost all
caste and all respect in the eyes of the unenlightened
native. She had had a little] education, spoke French,
and wore Parisian gowns. The other wives were
strictly Purdah women ; the Maharanee herself
had been married to the Maharajah at eleven years
old, when he was thirteen. Mohammedans are, of
course, polygamists, and they look upon marriages
Pig'Sticking 13
as so many contracts. English women who espouse
them in England as civilised men should not ignore
the fact that it is the rarest exception to meet with
a single unmarried Mohammedan in India, and that
complications have before now arisen when a native
ruler has returned with a European wife to the land
of his birth. That Kapurthalah should treat the
Ranee Canari as his companion is a welcome fact ;
and he told us that he should not allow his eldest
son and heir, Ticker, to marry till he was twenty
years old, and then to have but one wife. It is the
thin edge of civilisation.
We were taken to call upon the Maharanee,
Ticker's mother, later on a little gipsy, childlike
individual of refined appearance, weighed down by
gold-embroidered garments, chains, necklets, bracelets,
rings, necklaces, forehead star, anklets, and nose-ring.
Compared with this daughter of the bluest blood
and of a thousand kings, Queen Victoria's own family
tree would be but as a thing of yesterday.
Is it life which the Maharanee leads which all
Purdah women all over India lead ? In the white-
walled homes of kings, or in the reed-roofed hut,
lives woman after woman, thousands upon thousands
of them, surrounded by fields they may not roam
in, above the tumult of the packed bazaar, through
nameless horrors of the stifling night, old in grief,
and wise in tears,
A life which ebbs with none to staunch the failing,
Love's sad harvest garnered in the spring.
14 A Sportswoman in India
A narrow, intolerant religion is at the root of this
crying evil, and the only weapon to be employed
against it is knowledge. Knowledge will breed
scepticism, scepticism will breed tolerance, and toler-
ance will, with the advance of civilisation, open
the door. But knowledge, education, must come
first.
Before we dined that night, we went to the great
Durbar Hall with the Maharajah and his retinue,
and were all shod with rinking skates. The floor
was " taken " with considerable grace and agility,
considering how little we knew about it. It was,
to a certain degree, a childish amusement for a ruler
of the land ; and still more so were the varieties
of clockwork toys and expensive French knick-knacks
which filled the rooms in the Palace, and were dis-
played to us that evening when we dined with his
Royal Highness. Ranee Canari was excluded from the
battery of native eyes round the table. We had
a very French meal, of which a pilau gratified the
Maharajah, and took, he explained, a whole day to
make ; music brought the evening to a close, Kapur-
thalah himself singing " Polly winked his eye," out of
'The Geisha.
We were all looking forward to the next day and
to our expedition after pig ; and conversation that
evening turned, as it always does turn, upon the
threadbare comparisons between fox-hunting and
pig-sticking.
" Fox-hunting ! what is it," said F., " but a mob of
I
WILD BOAR.
\_Page 14.
Pig'Sticking 15
fine dogs bow-wowing musically after a poor little
animal who does his level best to escape from them ?
What is the excitement, except watching the ' dogs '
and riding jumping falling ? If you are after a
good pig, to begin with, he gives you a couple of
miles as hard as you can gallop, and unless you
have a tiptop horse under you, you won't live with
him. Then he will probably stop quite unexpectedly,
rush round, and charge you like lightning : you may
stop his rush, but you won't kill him you only
wound him ; and when you have done that you will
have learnt what a fiend a wounded boar can be."
Firm hand and eagle eye
Must he acquire, who would aspire
To see the wild boar die.
If a woman's opinion is worth having, I should say
that the two sports cannot be compared : I love
fox-hunting for a thousand reasons, apart from the
enjoyment of the mere country at Home ; but " the
runs of a lifetime' 1 are few and far between.
Pig-sticking is always wildly exciting : no one
realises who is near, or what may be in front ; it is
a case of riding as never before one has ridden ; and
the excitement of a breakneck gallop only gives place
at the finish to a battle royal, fraught with danger.
Of more than one gallop after and tussle with a
gallant pig it might be written,
How mad and bad and sad it was !
And yet, alas! how sweet!
1 6 A Sportswoman in India
The next morning early, while it was yet fresh
and cool, we all met together outside the city. The
country appeared to be a nice one, not particu-
larly stiff, and there seemed to be some fine patches
of cover well separated from each other. The
Maharajah mounted us, and provided M. and myself
with Champion and Wilton's side-saddles belonging
to Ranee Canari. Spearing on the near side of a
horse is most dangerous, and is not allowed ; but there
is no reason why a woman on a side-saddle should
not quite easily carry a spear. It need never be
awkward. It should be carried, when riding, diagonally
across the body, and held about the centre of the shaft,
the knuckles downwards, the shaft lying underneath
the fore-arm, so that it is ready to hand, less dangerous
to one's friends when riding, and to oneself when
falling. M. used a long, underhand spear made of
male bamboo, the spear-head narrow and leaf-shaped,
with a sharpened rib up each side, the edges and point
kept sharpened from day to day. She was an " old
hand " at the game.
An ideal horse for riding pig should be quick and
handy, must be fast, not too big, and bold and
staunch to pig. A small-sized waler or an Arab
is more to be depended upon than a country-bred,
which will not always face pig.
Duly mounted, we walked off to the first cover,
spreading over the country as we went a motley throng,
including fourteen elephants, fifty native beaters, and
several of the Maharajah's staff. I could not help
Pig-Sticking 17
thinking how much it reminded one of drawing for
an outlying fox at home.
One of the native officers* horses bucked a little
soon after we had started, and his rider, whose saddle
was apparently slippery, and whose seat was obviously
insecure, took a heavy fall. His turban flew off,
and his long black Sikh hair came tumbling down ;
however, the smart aide-de-camp hastily coiled it up
again, wound his turban once more round his head,