Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/187

ing themes of interest, if not many matters of absolute novelty. I have had the privilege of discoursing in "Maga," from and on many mountains — mountains in Switzerland and Beloochistan, China and Japan — and would now speak

Of vales more wild and mountains more sublime.

Often, of late years, when thinking of again writing in The Magazine, and describing new scenes, the lines have recurred to me with painful force which the dying Magician of the North wrote in pencil by Tweedside: —

How shall the warped and broken board
Endure to bear the painter's dye?
The harp with strained and tuneless chord,
How to the minstrel's skill reply?

But the grandest mountains of the world, which have restored something of former strength, may perhaps suggest thoughts of interest, despite the past death-in-life of an invalid in the tropics. There is a lily (F. cordata) which rarely blossoms in India, unless watered with ice-water, which restores its vigour and makes it flower. So the Englishman, whose frame withers and strength departs in the golden sunlight, but oppressive air, of India, finds new vigour and fresh thought and feeling among the snows and glaciers of the Himáliya. If the reader will come with me there, and rest under the lofty deodar tree, I promise him he will find no enemy but winter and rough weather, and perhaps we may discourse not altother unprofitably under the shadow of those lofty snowy peaks, which still continue

By the flight
Of sad mortality's earth-sullying wing,
Unswept, unstained.

The change in modern travel has brought the most interesting, and even he wildest, parts of India within easy reach for our countrymen. Bishop Heber mentions in his Journal that he knew of only two Englishmen — Lord Valencia and Mr. Hyde — who had visited India from motives of science or curiosity since the country came into our possession. Even thirty years ago such visits were unknown; and the present Lord Derby was about the first young Englishman who made our Indian empire a part of the grand tour. Nowadays old ladies of seventy, who had scarcely ever left Britain before, are to be met with on the spurs of he Himáliya; and we are conveyed rapidly and easily over vast stretches of burning land, which, a few years ago, presented formidable obstacles to even the most eager traveller. On the great routes over the vast plains of Hindústhan there is no necessity now for riding twenty miles a day from bungalow to bungalow, or rolling tediously in a "palki gharri" over the interminable Grand Trunk Road. Even in a well-cushioned comfortable railway-apartment it is somewhat trying to shoot through the blinding sunlight and golden dust of an Indian plain; and knowing ones are to be seen in such circumstances expending their ice and soda-water upon the towels which they have wrapped round their heads. But we are compelled to have recourse to such measures only in the trying transition periods between the hot and the cold seasons; because, when the heat is at its greatest, artificially-cooled carriages are provided for first-class passengers. Three days from Bombay and twenty pounds conveyance expenses will land the traveller at Masúri (Mussooree),^[1] on the outer range of the Himáliya; and yet, if he chooses to halt at various places by the way, a single step almost will take him into some of the wildest jungle and mountain scenery of India, among the most primitive tribes, and to the haunts of wild animals of the most unamiable kind. Had the bishop-poet lived now he might have sung, with much more truth than he did fifty years ago,

Thy towers, they say, gleam fair, Bombay,
Across the dark-blue sea;

for the schemes of Sir Bartle Frere, energetically carried out by his successor, Sir Seymour Fitzgerald, have given that city the most imposing public buildings to be found in the East — if we except some of the Mohammedan mosques, with

1. The spelling of Indian names is at present in a transition state, though so much has been done to reduce it to one common standard that it is expedient to follow that standard now, which is the official system of spelling adopted by the Indian government and usually followed by Dr. Keith Johnston in his valuable maps. That system partakes of the nature of a compromise, for accents are only used when specially necessary; and in the lists drawn up by Dr. W. W. Hunter they are used very sparingly, and are omitted in some cases where they might have been added with advantage. I have followed these official lists in almost every instance, except in using the word "Himáliya;" and the simple rules to be borne in mind in order to render their system of spelling intelligible are that, —
   1. The long d sounds broadly, as in almond.
   2. The short a without an accent, has usually somewhat of a u sound, as the a in rural.
   3. The i with an accent, is like ee, or the i in ravine.
   4. The ú with an accent is like oo, or the u in bull.
   5. The e has a broad sound, as the a in dare.
   6. The o sounds openly as in note.
   7. The ai sounds as in aisle, or the i in high:
   8. The au sounds like ou in cloud.