CHAPTER XIX
NEPAL, 1913–1914
Nepal is unique in this respect, that it remains a solitary instance in the world of a country which is from political reasons alone inaccessible to Europeans. For though during nearly a century our relations with its rulers have been perfectly friendly, and latterly even cordial, and though its present ruler is a man of European culture, speaking perfect English and understanding English customs, politics and civilisation in a way that few Oriental rulers do, he has rigidly adhered to the policy instituted by the all-powerful minister, Jung Bahadur, and has maintained a system of government which may best be described as a paternal despotism founded on the religion and customs of his people.
Though our relations with the Nepalese Government were not at first so uniformly friendly as they have been ever since the Indian Mutiny, when Jung Bahadur came to our assistance with his army, yet we have learnt that it is possible to do what has never been done by any other European Government, to live as neighbours on a frontier of over five hundred miles without any friction or trouble with an Oriental nation distinguished for the bravery and patriotism of its people.
I will refer those who wish to know more of the country to the Life of Bryan Hodgson (1896), who resided in Nepal as British Resident for many years, and who was the first to make known to science a great number of its animals and birds, or to the Imperial Gazetteer of India, voh xix. (1908).
We arrived at Goruckpur in the United Provinces on February 6th, and met Colonel Manners Smith, the British Resident, who had kindly invited us to join him in camp at Bikhna Thori on the Nepal frontier, to see a Kheddah which had been arranged to take place near the place where King George had such grand tiger-shooting when he was in India for the Coronation. We arrived by rail and rode up to a camp in the low outer range of hills which enclose a great flat and in places marshy valley, a little higher than the Terai.
The usual Nepalese system of catching elephants differs from that adopted in other parts of India, and is much more dangerous both to the pursuers and to the pursued. It consists of driving the wild elephants into a valley where they can be surrounded, and then, after separating those which it is intended to catch from the herd, overpowering them by special fighting elephants and tying them up separately. In these fights many of the elephants are injured and fatal accidents to the men employed are not uncommon.
The next day we rode on to the large camp which had been formed for the men employed in the elephant-catching operations on the banks of a river, and found that a considerable number of wild elephants had already been surrounded in a forest about four miles in circumference, bounded on the south by the outer range of hills, on the west by a river
whose bed was now partly dry and open and partly covered by grass
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