Following the Equator, Complete

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Following the Equator, Complete


Kinchinjunga's peak was but fitfully visible, but in the between times it
was vividly clear against the sky--away up there in the blue dome more
than 28,000 feet above sea level--the loftiest land I had ever seen, by
12,000 feet or more. It was 45 miles away. Mount Everest is a thousand
feet higher, but it was not a part of that sea of mountains piled up
there before me, so I did not see it; but I did not care, because I think
that mountains that are as high as that are disagreeable.

I changed from the back to the front of the house and spent the rest of
the morning there, watching the swarthy strange tribes flock by from
their far homes in the Himalayas. All ages and both sexes were
represented, and the breeds were quite new to me, though the costumes of
the Thibetans made them look a good deal like Chinamen. The prayer-wheel
was a frequent feature. It brought me near to these people, and made
them seem kinfolk of mine. Through our preacher we do much of our
praying by proxy. We do not whirl him around a stick, as they do, but
that is merely a detail. The swarm swung briskly by, hour after hour, a
strange and striking pageant. It was wasted there, and it seemed a pity.
It should have been sent streaming through the cities of Europe or
America, to refresh eyes weary of the pale monotonies of the
circus-pageant. These people were bound for the bazar, with things to
sell. We went down there, later, and saw that novel congress of the wild
peoples, and plowed here and there through it, and concluded that it
would be worth coming from Calcutta to see, even if there were no
Kinchinjunga and Everest.




CHAPTER LVI.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he
can't afford it, and when he can.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

On Monday and Tuesday at sunrise we again had fair-to-middling views of
the stupendous mountains; then, being well cooled off and refreshed, we
were ready to chance the weather of the lower world once more.

We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then
changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It
was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed
to rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and
needed none to help it fly down those steep inclines. It only needed a
strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story
of a disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by
the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car jumped the track and
threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story
had value for me, for it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person
up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and
doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a
pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a
sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could discover it,
could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the
lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof that I would have the same
luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from the
airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far,
to be flung from a handcar.

But after all, there was but small danger-for me. What there was, was
for Mr. Pugh, inspector of a division of the Indian police, in whose
company and protection we had come from Calcutta. He had seen long
service as an artillery officer, was less nervous than I was, and so he
was to go ahead of us in a pilot hand-car, with a Ghurka and another
native; and the plan was that when we should see his car jump over a
precipice we must put on our break [sp.] and send for another pilot.
It was a good arrangement. Also Mr. Barnard, chief engineer of the
mountain-division of the road, was to take personal charge of our car,
and he had been down the mountain in it many a time.

Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail
left: the regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and
it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.

The road fell sharply down in front of us and went corkscrewing in and
out around the crags and precipices, down, down, forever down, suggesting
nothing so exactly or so uncomfortably as a croaked toboggan slide with
no end to it. Mr. Pugh waved his flag and started, like an arrow from a
bow, and before I could get out of the car we were gone too. I had
previously had but one sensation like the shock of that departure, and
that was the gaspy shock that took my breath away the first time that I
was discharged from the summit of a toboggan slide. But in both
instances the sensation was pleasurable--intensely so; it was a sudden
and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable
joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human
delight.

The pilot car's flight down the mountain suggested the swoop of a swallow
that is skimming the ground, so swiftly and smoothly and gracefully it
swept down the long straight reaches and soared in and out of the bends
and around the corners. We raced after it, and seemed to flash by the
capes and crags with the speed of light; and now and then we almost
overtook it--and had hopes; but it was only playing with us; when we got
near, it released its brake, make a spring around a corner, and the next
time it spun into view, a few seconds later, it looked as small as a
wheelbarrow, it was so far away. We played with the train in the same
way. We often got out to gather flowers or sit on a precipice and look
at the scenery, then presently we would hear a dull and growing roar, and
the long coils of the train would come into sight behind and above us;
but we did not need to start till the locomotive was close down upon us
--then we soon left it far behind. It had to stop at every station,
therefore it was not an embarrassment to us. Our brake was a good piece
of machinery; it could bring the car to a standstill on a slope as steep
as a house-roof.

The scenery was grand and varied and beautiful, and there was no hurry;
we could always stop and examine it. There was abundance of time. We
did not need to hamper the train; if it wanted the road, we could switch
off and let it go by, then overtake it and pass it later. We stopped at
one place to see the Gladstone Cliff, a great crag which the ages and the
weather have sculptured into a recognizable portrait of the venerable
statesman. Mr. Gladstone is a stockholder in the road, and Nature began
this portrait ten thousand years ago, with the idea of having the
compliment ready in time for the event.

We saw a banyan tree which sent down supporting stems from branches which
were sixty feet above the ground. That is, I suppose it was a banyan;
its bark resembled that of the great banyan in the botanical gardens at
Calcutta, that spider-legged thing with its wilderness of vegetable
columns. And there were frequent glimpses of a totally leafless tree
upon whose innumerable twigs and branches a cloud of crimson butterflies
had lighted--apparently. In fact these brilliant red butterflies were
flowers, but the illusion was good. Afterward in South Africa, I saw
another splendid effect made by red flowers. This flower was probably
called the torch-plant--should have been so named, anyway. It had a
slender stem several feet high, and from its top stood up a single tongue
of flame, an intensely red flower of the size and shape of a small
corn-cob. The stems stood three or four feet apart all over a great
hill-slope that was a mile long, and make one think of what the Place
de la Concorde would be if its myriad lights were red instead of white
and yellow.

A few miles down the mountain we stopped half an hour to see a Thibetan
dramatic performance. It was in the open air on the hillside. The
audience was composed of Thibetans, Ghurkas, and other unusual people.
The costumes of the actors were in the last degree outlandish, and the
performance was in keeping with the clothes. To an accompaniment of
barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to
spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the
while, and soon the whole troupe would be spinning and chanting and
raising the dust. They were performing an ancient and celebrated
historical play, and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as
it went along. The play was obscure enough without the explanation; with
the explanation added, it was (opake). As a drama this ancient
historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and
barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism.
Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable
loop-engineering--a spiral where the road curves upon itself with such
abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we
stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in
a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on
it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that
end of the train. It was like a snake swallowing itself.

Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr. Barnard's
house for refreshments, and while we were sitting on the veranda looking
at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came
very near seeing a leopard kill a calf.--[It killed it the day before.]
--It is a wild place and lovely. From the woods all about came the songs
of birds,--among them the contributions of a couple of birds which I was
not then acquainted with: the brain-fever bird and the coppersmith. The
song of the brain-fever demon starts on a low but steadily rising key,
and is a spiral twist which augments in intensity and severity with each
added spiral, growing sharper and sharper, and more and more painful,
more and more agonizing, more and more maddening, intolerable,
unendurable, as it bores deeper and deeper and deeper into the listener's
brain, until at last the brain fever comes as a relief and the man dies.
I am bringing some of these birds home to America. They will be a great
curiosity there, and it is believed that in our climate they will
multiply like rabbits.

The coppersmith bird's note at a certain distance away has the ring of a
sledge on granite; at a certain other distance the hammering has a more
metallic ring, and you might think that the bird was mending a copper
kettle; at another distance it has a more woodeny thump, but it is a
thump that is full of energy, and sounds just like starting a bung. So
he is a hard bird to name with a single name; he is a stone-breaker,
coppersmith, and bung-starter, and even then he is not completely named,
for when he is close by you find that there is a soft, deep, melodious
quality in his thump, and for that no satisfying name occurs to you. You
will not mind his other notes, but when he camps near enough for you to
hear that one, you presently find that his measured and monotonous
repetition of it is beginning to disturb you; next it will weary you,
soon it will distress you, and before long each thump will hurt your
head; if this goes on, you will lose your mind with the pain and misery
of it, and go crazy. I am bringing some of these birds home to America.
There is nothing like them there. They will be a great surprise, and it
is said that in a climate like ours they will surpass expectation for
fecundity.

I am bringing some nightingales, too, and some cue-owls. I got them in
Italy. The song of the nightingale is the deadliest known to
ornithology. That demoniacal shriek can kill at thirty yards. The note
of the cue-owl is infinitely soft and sweet--soft and sweet as the
whisper of a flute. But penetrating--oh, beyond belief; it can bore
through boiler-iron. It is a lingering note, and comes in triplets, on
the one unchanging key: hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o, hoo-o-o; then a silence of
fifteen seconds, then the triplet again; and so on, all night. At first
it is divine; then less so; then trying; then distressing; then
excruciating; then agonizing, and at the end of two hours the listener is
a maniac.

And so, presently we took to the hand-car and went flying down the
mountain again; flying and stopping, flying and stopping, till at last we
were in the plain once more and stowed for Calcutta in the regular train.
That was the most enjoyable day I have spent in the earth. For rousing,
tingling, rapturous pleasure there is no holiday trip that approaches the
bird-flight down the Himalayas in a hand-car. It has no fault, no
blemish, no lack, except that there are only thirty-five miles of it
instead of five hundred.




CHAPTER LVII.

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what
you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a
parrot.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man
or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun
visits on his round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing over
looked. Always, when you think you have come to the end of her
tremendous specialties and have finished banging tags upon her as the
Land of the Thug, the Land of the Plague, the Land of Famine, the Land of
Giant Illusions, the Land of Stupendous Mountains, and so forth, another
specialty crops up and another tag is required. I have been overlooking
the fact that India is by an unapproachable supremacy--the Land of
Murderous Wild Creatures. Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the
tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of
Wonders.

For many years the British Indian Government has been trying to destroy
the murderous wild creatures, and has spent a great deal of money in the
effort. The annual official returns show that the undertaking is a
difficult one.

These returns exhibit a curious annual uniformity in results; the sort of
uniformity which you find in the annual output of suicides in the world's
capitals, and the proportions of deaths by this, that, and the other
disease. You can always come close to foretelling how many suicides will
occur in Paris, London, and New York, next year, and also how many deaths
will result from cancer, consumption, dog-bite, falling out of the
window, getting run over by cabs, etc., if you know the statistics of
those matters for the present year. In the same way, with one year's
Indian statistics before you, you can guess closely at how many people
were killed in that Empire by tigers during the previous year, and the
year before that, and the year before that, and at how many were killed
in each of those years by bears, how many by wolves, and how many by
snakes; and you can also guess closely at how many people are going to be
killed each year for the coming five years by each of those agencies.
You can also guess closely at how many of each agency the government is
going to kill each year for the next five years.

I have before me statistics covering a period of six consecutive years.
By these, I know that in India the tiger kills something over 800 persons
every year, and that the government responds by killing about double as
many tigers every year. In four of the six years referred to, the tiger
got 800 odd; in one of the remaining two years he got only 700, but in
the other remaining year he made his average good by scoring 917. He is
always sure of his average. Anyone who bets that the tiger will kill
2,400 people in India in any three consecutive years has invested his
money in a certainty; anyone who bets that he will kill 2,600 in any
three consecutive years, is absolutely sure to lose.

As strikingly uniform as are the statistics of suicide, they are not any
more so than are those of the tiger's annual output of slaughtered human
beings in India. The government's work is quite uniform, too; it about
doubles the tiger's average. In six years the tiger killed 5,000
persons, minus 50; in the same six years 10,000 tigers were killed, minus
400.

The wolf kills nearly as many people as the tiger--700 a year to the
tiger's 800 odd--but while he is doing it, more than 5,000 of his tribe
fall.

The leopard kills an average of 230 people per year, but loses 3,300 of
his own mess while he is doing it.

The bear kills 100 people per year at a cost of 1,250 of his own tribe.

The tiger, as the figures show, makes a very handsome fight against man.
But it is nothing to the elephant's fight. The king of beasts, the lord
of the jungle, loses four of his mess per year, but he kills forty--five
persons to make up for it.

But when it comes to killing cattle, the lord of the jungle is not
interested. He kills but 100 in six years--horses of hunters, no doubt
--but in the same six the tiger kills more than 84,000, the leopard
100,000, the bear 4,000, the wolf 70,000, the hyena more than 13,000,
other wild beasts 27,000, and the snakes 19,000, a grand total of more
than 300,000; an average of 50,000 head per year.

In response, the government kills, in the six years, a total of 3,201,232
wild beasts and snakes. Ten for one.

It will be perceived that the snakes are not much interested in cattle;
they kill only 3,000 odd per year. The snakes are much more interested
in man. India swarms with deadly snakes. At the head of the list is the
cobra, the deadliest known to the world, a snake whose bite kills where
the rattlesnake's bite merely entertains.

In India, the annual man-killings by snakes are as uniform, as regular,
and as forecastable as are the tiger-average and the suicide-average.
Anyone who bets that in India, in any three consecutive years the snakes
will kill 49,500 persons, will win his bet; and anyone who bets that in
India in any three consecutive years, the snakes will kill 53,500
persons, will lose his bet. In India the snakes kill 17,000 people a
year; they hardly ever fall short of it; they as seldom exceed it. An
insurance actuary could take the Indian census tables and the
government's snake tables and tell you within sixpence how much it would
be worth to insure a man against death by snake-bite there. If I had a
dollar for every person killed per year in India, I would rather have it
than any other property, as it is the only property in the world not
subject to shrinkage.

I should like to have a royalty on the government-end of the snake
business, too, and am in London now trying to get it; but when I get it
it is not going to be as regular an income as the other will be if I get
that; I have applied for it. The snakes transact their end of the
business in a more orderly and systematic way than the government
transacts its end of it, because the snakes have had a long experience
and know all about the traffic. You can make sure that the government
will never kill fewer than 110,000 snakes in a year, and that it will
newer quite reach 300,000 too much room for oscillation; good speculative
stock, to bear or bull, and buy and sell long and short, and all that
kind of thing, but not eligible for investment like the other. The man
that speculates in the government's snake crop wants to go carefully. I
would not advise a man to buy a single crop at all--I mean a crop of
futures for the possible wobble is something quite extraordinary. If he
can buy six future crops in a bunch, seller to deliver 1,500,000
altogether, that is another matter. I do not know what snakes are worth
now, but I know what they would be worth then, for the statistics show
that the seller could not come within 427,000 of carrying out his
contract. However, I think that a person who speculates in snakes is a
fool, anyway. He always regrets it afterwards.

To finish the statistics. In six years the wild beasts kill 20,000
persons, and the snakes kill 103,000. In the same six the government
kills 1,073,546 snakes. Plenty left.

There are narrow escapes in India. In the very jungle where I killed
sixteen tigers and all those elephants, a cobra bit me but it got well;
everyone was surprised. This could not happen twice in ten years,
perhaps. Usually death would result in fifteen minutes.

We struck out westward or northwestward from Calcutta on an itinerary of
a zig-zag sort, which would in the course of time carry us across India
to its northwestern corner and the border of Afghanistan. The first part
of the trip carried us through a great region which was an endless
garden--miles and miles of the beautiful flower from whose juices comes
the opium, and at Muzaffurpore we were in the midst of the indigo
culture; thence by a branch road to the Ganges at a point near Dinapore,
and by a train which would have missed the connection by a week but for
the thoughtfulness of some British officers who were along, and who knew
the ways of trains that are run by natives without white supervision.
This train stopped at every village; for no purpose connected with
business, apparently. We put out nothing, we took nothing aboard. The
train bands stepped ashore and gossiped with friends a quarter of an
hour, then pulled out and repeated this at the succeeding villages. We
had thirty-five miles to go and six hours to do it in, but it was plain
that we were not going to make it. It was then that the English officers
said it was now necessary to turn this gravel train into an express. So
they gave the engine-driver a rupee and told him to fly. It was a simple
remedy. After that we made ninety miles an hour. We crossed the Ganges
just at dawn, made our connection, and went to Benares, where we stayed
twenty-four hours and inspected that strange and fascinating piety-hive
again; then left for Lucknow, a city which is perhaps the most
conspicuous of the many monuments of British fortitude and valor that are
scattered about the earth.

The heat was pitiless, the flat plains were destitute of grass, and baked
dry by the sun they were the color of pale dust, which was flying in
clouds. But it was much hotter than this when the relieving forces
marched to Lucknow in the time of the Mutiny. Those were the days of 138
deg. in the shade.




CHAPTER, LVIII.

Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do.
This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty
without pain.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It seems to be settled, now, that among the many causes from which the
Great Mutiny sprang, the main one was the annexation of the kingdom of
Oudh by the East India Company--characterized by Sir Henry Lawrence as
"the most unrighteous act that was ever committed." In the spring of
1857, a mutinous spirit was observable in many of the native garrisons,
and it grew day by day and spread wider and wider. The younger military
men saw something very serious in it, and would have liked to take hold
of it vigorously and stamp it out promptly; but they were not in
authority. Old-men were in the high places of the army--men who should
have been retired long before, because of their great age--and they
regarded the matter as a thing of no consequence. They loved their
native soldiers, and would not believe that anything could move them to
revolt. Everywhere these obstinate veterans listened serenely to the
rumbling of the volcanoes under them, and said it was nothing.

And so the propagators of mutiny had everything their own way. They
moved from camp to camp undisturbed, and painted to the native soldier
the wrongs his people were suffering at the hands of the English, and
made his heart burn for revenge. They were able to point to two facts of
formidable value as backers of their persuasions: In Clive's day, native
armies were incoherent mobs, and without effective arms; therefore, they
were weak against Clive's organized handful of well-armed men, but the
thing was the other way, now. The British forces were native; they had
been trained by the British, organized by the British, armed by the
British, all the power was in their hands--they were a club made by
British hands to beat out British brains with. There was nothing to
oppose their mass, nothing but a few weak battalions of British soldiers
scattered about India, a force not worth speaking of. This argument,
taken alone, might not have succeeded, for the bravest and best Indian
troops had a wholesome dread of the white soldier, whether he was weak or
strong; but the agitators backed it with their second and best point
prophecy--a prophecy a hundred years old. The Indian is open to prophecy
at all times; argument may fail to convince him, but not prophecy. There
was a prophecy that a hundred years from the year of that battle of
Clive's which founded the British Indian Empire, the British power would
be overthrown and swept away by the natives.