CHAPTER IX
THE KHASIA HILLS, 1886
I had a rather trying journey from Darjeeling to Gowhatty in Assam, partly by steamer, partly by rail, and partly on horseback. On arriving there I found that I could go by tonga to Shillong sixty miles off, and by starting at daybreak do the journey in the day. The tonga appeared with a pair of weak half-starved ponies and my baggage went in a bullock cart. Though these ponies were changed at very short stages, and I think there were as many as ten relays in the sixty miles, they were quite incapable of going out of a walk. When the ascent was at all steep, they could only be kept going at all by continual thrashing. A Bengali is generally a brute to animals which are not his own property, but these wretches were themselves suffering from malaria and treated their miserable beasts so badly that one died on the road. I had to walk at least a quarter of the way, and only reached Shillong after a most tiring day of fourteen hours through a very hot, malarious and unpleasant country. Shortly afterwards, when I was dining with the Commissioner of Assam, his wife asked me what I thought of the tonga service, which had only recently been started. I said that I thought it was the worst I had ever seen in any country and that the state of the ponies was disgraceful. This did not please my host at all, but it appeared that during the rainy season the road was so unhealthy that only very low-class natives would do the work and the difficulty of getting fodder for the horses was very great.
I soon found Shillong to be very unlike any place I had previously seen in India. The bungalows were scattered about a tract of open undulating country at the foot of a range of hills which rise to about 6,400 feet on the north side of the station. There is nothing whatever in the vegetation or scenery to remind one of the tropics. Scattered pine-trees and grass or brushwood-covered slopes reminded one far more of some parts of the upper Engadine near St. Moritz, whilst the aspect of the little marshy spots among the hills, and the vegetation which clothes the sides of the little streams, recall the Highlands of Scotland. But this resem¬ blance is only superficial, for when one examines the plants one sees that, though a number of genera and species which are characteristic of much higher elevation in the Himalayas occur, yet there is a variety and a wealth of vegetation which one would not expect from a hasty glance over the country. The station of Shillong did not exist when Sir Joseph Hooker visited these hills in 1850. Cherrapunji was then the only European station in the hills, but was deserted about twenty years ago in consequence of the excessively heavy rainfall. At Shillong, which is only twenty-five miles distant, the rainfall is comparatively light, only about ninety inches, and the climate seemed to me to be drier, cooler and less muggy at this season than at Darjeeling. Though rain or mist occurred on most days during the fortnight I remained in the neighbourhood, yet
there was also a good deal of sunshine, and ground leeches are unknown
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