Enterprise and Adventure/Victor Jacquemont, the Naturalist Traveller
VICTOR JACQUEMONT AND THE ROBBERS IN THE HIMALAYAS.
VICTOR JACQUEMONT, THE NATURALIST TRAVELLER.
The story of the life of Victor Jacquemont, the Indian traveller, differs from that of the martyrs of geographical discovery. He penetrated with surprising energy and perseverance into lands rarely visited by Europeans; but his object was not to trace the course of a river, or to determine the position of some place as yet unknown upon the maps: the principle which sustained him was a devotion to natural science which no amount of peril or hardship could extinguish. To examine the botany, the geology, and the animal life of unexplored regions was the passion of his life. Some anecdotes of this remarkable man will sufficiently indicate these features in his character.
Having already acquired a reputation from his scientific travels in South America, Jacquemont, still a young man, was appointed, in 1828, travelling naturalist to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and was soon afterwards charged with a mission to India, the purpose of which was to collect for that celebrated institution objects of natural history, and to form geological and botanical collections. At that period the possessions of the East India Company were bounded on the north by the Chinese Empire, into which no foreigner was permitted to enter, and on the north-west by the Punjab, then an independent state. It was towards these comparatively unknown regions that Jacquemont directed his views. The difficulties of an expedition of this nature had discouraged some of the most enterprising travellers; but he felt himself strong in perseverance and courage. The natural history of India was but little known, and the northern portions of the country wholly unknown to men of science. A few travellers had indeed penetrated in different directions towards the north of the English possessions, but these expeditions had been without any scientific results, from the want of the proper qualifications in the travellers, and particularly from the brief and rapid manner in which they had traversed those regions. The mountains of the Himalaya, which divide Thibet and Tartary from India, and which extend to the Punjab, were inhabited by barbarous hordes in a state of perpetual warfare with their neighbours. Here every enterprising individual who was able to collect around him a hundred bandits acknowledged no master, and became a terror to the country around. It was the geological structure and the natural productions of these mountains, hitherto considered inaccessible, that Jacquemont undertook to examine.
Arrived in Calcutta, he remained in that city until he had made himself master of the Persian and Hindostanee languages, without which it would have been impossible to hope for any useful result from the expedition; and he also acquired there all the information necessary as to the manners and customs of the country he was about to visit. He then set out for Delhi, from whence he directed his course towards the Upper Himalaya and Thibet. Friendly advisers had assured him that it was easy to travel with heavy baggage in any part of Asia by simply joining a caravan of the merchants; but Jacquemont had too good a knowledge of the character of the petty princes of northern India to trust to this advice. "These princes," he says, "rob the merchants, but they rob with considerable discretion. They look upon them as the geese that lay golden eggs; yet they do not kill them, but only insist on their dropping some of their precious burden. But the mere traveller who passes never to return is stripped of his last rag." It was necessary to travel with something like a retinue, a necessity all the greater from the gradually accumulating burden of the specimens which he collected. Runjeet Sing, then ruler of the Sikhs, received Jacquemont with great cordiality. He treated him with the greatest distinction; made him several rich presents, and furnished him with all the means necessary to travel through his dominions, with as much safety as was possible in a country swarming with robbers, and petty chiefs who disputed and constantly set at defiance the authority of the nominal sovereign. On one occasion an officer from one of those chiefs, attended by two hundred armed mountaineers, suddenly appeared at a slight distance as Jacquemont was quietly chipping specimens of rocks in a mountain pass. Knowing that orientals are chiefly impressed by display, Jacquemont put on a good countenance, and having resumed his European clothes, seated himself majestically upon his chair, under a kind of canopy, got up hastily for the occasion. Blankets were then spread out upon the floor, and near him was put down a privileged carpet. All Jacquemont's company then stood up in two lines, many of them, he says, "more ragged than any of the poorest people you see in the streets of Paris," and when he was satisfied with the arrangement of this court-ceremony the Mussulman officers belonging to his escort ushered in the Thibetian, who in look and costume resembled a melodramatic brigand. This man brought him presents from his master, with a view to induce Jacquemont to ascend the mountains to his stronghold, but this the naturalist refused. Finally, the chief himself visited the encampment and explained his business. He told the stranger that his wife and daughters were kept prisoners by Runjeet Sing in Cashmere, and Jacquemont promised him to endeavour to obtain their release. This appeared to soothe him; but knowing that the surest means he could adopt to obtain them would be to detain him as a hostage, Jacquemont thought it prudent to take advantage of his temporary departure to continue his march beyond his new friend's dominion.
In some similar adventures he was less fortunate. The firmans of the king, pompously directing his dependents to give aid and succour to the explorers, proved of little value. At a place called Sukshainpore, the chief refused to obey the orders of Runjeet Sing for furnishing the travellers' camp with necessary provisions. He shut himself up in a little fort with some miserable soldiers, whose arms were matchlocks, and threatened to fire on the escort if he insisted any further on his obedience. The next day, Jacquemont entered the Himalaya with his escort, and encamped at a spot where a number of mules were to have been placed at his disposal, to take the place of the camels unable to travel further through the mountains. In place of mules, however, he found a hundred barbarous soldiers armed with matchlocks, who being protected by a mud fort, cared little for the orders of the Rajah. At length he obtained a score of Cashmerian attendants, only half of the necessary number; but being annoyed at delay and the heat being intense, he loaded them with the more necessary portion of his baggage and pushed forward with a part of his attendants. It was dark when his rear-guard joined him; and soon afterwards a fierce storm arose which lasted all night. The terrible lightning, happily, did no mischief to the party, but the torrents of rain, says Jacquemont, in one of those numerous letters which he found means to write from these mountainous regions, "melted my mules, my horses, my soldiers, my porters, as if they had been made of sugar." At sunrise, he found only his horsemen, among whom there was some kind of discipline. All the rest had disappeared. Their road was now one of extreme difficulty. It was necessary to dismount every moment, and in spite of every care two of his troop of horses fell over a precipice. "For my own part," adds the light-hearted, indefatigable naturalist, "I was always on foot, my geologist's hammer in my hand, constantly quitting the path, which was only a low and narrow opening through a close jumble of thorny shrubs, to gain some neighbouring height, in order to gain with my compass the direction of the strata, and prudence required that I should be accompanied in all these deviations by armed attendants."
On one of these occasions Jacquemont was actually taken prisoner by one of his old annoyers, the native chiefs. Passing at sunrise over the mountain ridge on foot, beside his lamed mule, he found himself with his rear-guard at the foot of a lofty mountain, with sides almost vertical, and on a flat summit on the verge of the party beheld a fortress. A number of men of sinister aspect were soon seen approaching, armed with matchlocks, sabres, and bucklers. They summoned him as usual to attend their master, the chief of the castle, and receive a present, with which request Jacquemont found it prudent to comply. The men crowded round the mule on which he now mounted, and their chief, who was in fact the head of a number of banditti, quickly appeared in the midst of a crowd of soldiers, who, ragged as they were, were hardly worse clad than himself. This man, whose name was Neal Sing, affected great respect for the firman of the king, and even closed his hands before him in token of submission. But he then entered into a long exposition of the wrongs he had suffered from the king and his minister, and in a hypocritical tone declared that having by the possession of his visitor's person the means of forcing the king to redress his grievances, he would keep him prisoner until he obtained justice, and that his person his escort, and his baggage, would serve for hostages and security. Jacquemont perceived the effect of the governor's eloquence as he warmed in the recital of his wrongs. A general clamour from the hungry multitude frequently drowned his voice, and the menacing conclusion of his speech was not the part least applauded. Each of the men as he listened examined his lighted match and shook off the ashes; but the calmness of Jacquemont's language, and the haughty air which he found it convenient to assume, were evidently felt to be imposing. Demanding to speak to Neal Sing apart, he warned him of the important consequences which might result from such a step. He then explained to him under what auspices he had come into the country and the terrible vengeance which the king would exact for any injury he might receive in his states, in order to convince the dreaded English government that it had not been done by his instigation. This reasoning had so much effect that Neal Sing proposed to set him free, modestly asking to retain only his baggage. But this was exactly what the ardent naturalist least desired to part with. To travel without his tents, his books, his instruments, his magnificent collections—loss of liberty would have been far preferable to this. "When I deemed the moment favourable," adds Jacquemont, in his letter, "I offered him a present, and the support of my recommendation to the king. He at once asked me for two thousand rupees. Some of his soldiers who had gathered round, exclaimed, 'No, no; ten thousand rupees!' My only reply to this, was a contemptuous expression of impatience, which none of them dared resent, and which lowered the mutineers so much in the eyes of their companions that no one afterwards dared to interrupt my conference with the chief. 'Neither ten thousand, nor two, nor one thousand, for the best of all reasons, because I have them not; but, in consideration of your wretched state, I will give you five hundred rupees!' Five hundred rupees!' he exclaimed, 'when four hundred of us here have been perishing with hunger these three years. Two thousand rupees, or remain a prisoner.' Without paying the least regard to the alternative, I shrugged my shoulders at the absurdity of his demand, and offered to permit my treasurer to prove its impossibility. He eagerly accepted the offer of seeing my stock counted; but I reproved his eagerness with affected severity and contempt, as if what I had said should be received as an undoubted truth. 'The Asiatics,' said I, 'readily perjure themselves for a crown; but have you never heard tell of the value of the word of a Christian gentleman? He excused himself with joined hands, protested that he believed me, but added, 'that five hundred rupees would not satisfy his people.' However, after some further manoeuvres, I so completely triumphed, that I might have saved my rupees had I not dreaded the in subordination of Neal Sing's followers."
Unhappily, the fatigues of travel in many parts of the world, and the unhealthiness of the Indian climate, began to have their effects upon the health of the traveller. He was unfortunately attacked by a liver disease of an alarming character. Having with difficulty made his way back to Bombay, he was received with great kindness by the government, who provided him with medical aid; but all efforts were unavailing. To a friend who saw him at this time, Jacquemont spoke feelingly of the attentive care of his physician, and of the kindness of the governor; but he added, that he had not more than three or four days to live; that the aid of art was useless; and that having completed all his manuscripts except a short account of Thibet, which he intended to supply, he should die with the consolation of having contributed all in his power to the progress of science, still so far from being complete. His words proved prophetic. On the fourth day after this interview he expired with great calmness at the early age of thirty-one. The Indian government, desirous of doing honour to the memory of a man so distinguished by his talents and private virtues, ordered a magnificent funeral, at which all the civil and military authorities attended; and the body of Jacquemont was interred with military honours.