The beauty of nature

The Sikkim Himalaya is a region first brought prominently into notice by the writings of Sir Joseph Hooker, the great naturalist, who visited it in 1848. It lies immediately to the east of Nepal, and can now be reached by a railway which ascends the outer range to Darjiling. It is drained by the Teesta River, up the main valley of which a railway runs for a short distance. The region is therefore easily accessible. For the purposes of this book it may be taken to include the flat open forest and grass-covered tract known as the Terai, immediately at the base of the mountain.

This is only a few hundreds of feet above sea-level, so that from there to the summit of the Himalaya there is a rise of nearly 28,000 feet in about seventy miles. The lower part is in the 26th degree of latitude, so that the heat is tropical. And as the region comes within the sweep of the monsoon from the Bay of Bengal, there is not only great heat in the plains and lower valleys, but great moisture as well. The mountain-sides are in consequence clothed with a luxuriant vegetation.

To enter this wonderful region the traveller has first to cross the Ganges-the sacred river of the Hindus. Great rivers have about them a fascination all their own. They produce in us a sense of everlastingness and irresistibility. The Ganges, more than a mile wide, comes sweeping along in deep majestic flood from the far distance to the far distance, on and on unendingly, from all time to all time, and in such depth and volume that nothing human can withstand it. In the dry season, when it is low and the sun is shining, it is placid and benign with a bright and smiling countenance. Stately temples, set amidst sacred groves and graceful palms, lighten the banks. On the broad steps of the bathing ghats are assembled crowds of pious worshippers in clothes of every brilliant hue. The river has an aspect of kindliness and geniality and life-givingness. Its waters and rich silt have brought plenty to many a barren acre, and the dwellers on its banks know well that it issues from the holy Himalaya.

But the Ganges is not always in this gracious mood, and does not always wear this kindly aspect. In the rainy season it is a thing of terror. Overhead black, thundery clouds sweep on for days and weeks together towards the mountains. There is not a glimpse of sun. The rain descends as a deluge. The river is still further swollen by the melting of the snow on the Himalaya, and now comes swirling along in dark and angry mood, rising higher and higher in its banks, eating into them, and threatening to overtop them and carry death and destruction far and wide. Men no longer go down to meet it. They shrink back from it. They uneasily watch it till the fulness of its strength is spent and it has returned to its normal beneficent aspect.

No wonder such a river is regarded as sacred. To the more primitive people it is literally a living person-and a person who may be propitiated, a person who may do them harm if they annoy him, and do them good if they make themselves agreeable to him and furnish him with what he wants. To the cultured Hindus it is an object of the deepest reverence. If they can bathe in its waters their sins are washed away. If after death their ashes can be cast on its broad bosom, they will be secure of everlasting bliss. From perhaps the earliest days of our race, for some hundreds of thousands of years, men may have lived upon its banks. For it was in the forests beside great rivers, in a warm and even climate, that primitive men must have lived. They would have launched their canoes upon its waters, and used it as their only pathway of communication with one another. And always they would have looked upon it with mingled awe and affection. Besides the sun it would have been the one great natural object which would attract their attention. Insensibly the sight of that ever-rolling flood must have deeply affected them. They must have come to love it as they beheld it through the greater part of the year. The sight of its destructive power may have made them recoil for a time in fear and awe. But this would be forgotten as the flood subsided, and the river was again smooth and smiling and passing peacefully along before them.

So men do not run away from it. They gather to it. They build great cities on its banks, and come from great distances to see it. They perform pilgrimages every year in thousands to the spot where it issues from the Himalaya. And they penetrate even to its source far back and high up in the mountains.

To the most enlightened, also, the Ganges should be an object of reverence for its antiquity, for its future, and for its power. From the surface of the Bay of Bengal the sun's rays have drawn particles of water into the atmosphere. Currents in the air have carried them for hundreds of miles over the sea and over the plains of Bengal, till the chill of the Himalaya Mountains has caused them to condense and fall in snow and rain. But some have been carried farther. They have been transported right over the Himalaya at a height of at least 20,000 feet, till they have finally fallen in Tibet. It is a striking fact that some of the water in the Ganges is from rivers in Tibet which have cut their way clean through the mighty range of the Himalaya. The Arun River, for example, rises in Tibet and cuts through the Himalaya by a deep gorge in the region between Mount Everest and Kinchinjunga. These rivers are, indeed, much older than the mountains. They were running their course before the Himalaya were upheaved, and they kept wearing out a channel for themselves as the mountains rose and slowly over-towered them.

Reverence, therefore, is due to the Ganges on account of its vast antiquity. Reverence also is due because it will flow on like now for hundreds of thousands and perhaps for millions of years to come. Round and round in never-ceasing cycle the water is drawn up from the ocean, is carried along in the clouds, descends upon the mountains, and gathers in the Ganges to flow once more into the sea. The Ganges may gradually change its course as it eats into first one bank and then the other. But it will flow on and on and on for as far into the future as the human eye can ken.

And its power, so terrifying to primitive man-even to us at times-will become more and more a power for good. Already great canals have been taken from its main stream and its tributaries, and millions of acres have been irrigated by its water, thus helping to bring to birth great crops of wheat and rice, cotton, sugar-cane, and oil-seeds. Schemes for utilising the water-power in its fall through the mountains by converting it into electric power are in contemplation, so that railways may be run by it and power for great industries be furnished. Once more, too, the course of the river may become a line of communication as sea-planes are used to fly from town to town and alight upon its surface.

So as we come to know the river in its deepest significance, our impression of its everlastingness and its irresistible power remains. But our sense of fear diminishes. We feel that the river is ready to co-operate with us. That it is capable of being taken in hand and led. That its power is not essentially destructive but beneficent. That there is in it almost inexhaustible capacity for helping plant and beast and man. And that it is a friend and anxious to help us.

The Hindus have been right all along in worshipping it. Their worship, with tropical luxuriance, may have developed to extravagant lengths. But the instinct which promoted this worship was perfectly sound. The river bears within its breast great life-giving properties, and in worshipping the river the Hindus were half-consciously expressing their sense of dependence on these life-giving properties, and of affection and gratitude to the river for the benefits it conferred. Mere fear of its destructive character-fear alone-would not produce the desire for worship. They did and do fear the river, but behind the fear is a feeling that it can be propitiated, that it can be induced to help man and does not want to thwart him. And here they were perfectly right. We are at last learning the way by which this may be done, and now see clearly what the Hindus only vaguely felt, that the heart of the river is right enough-that once it is tamed and trained it can bring untold good to man.

This the Artist will readily discern. He will enter into the spirit of the river. He will read its true character. Refusing to be terrorised by its more tremendous moods, he will exult in its might, and see in it a potent agency for good. In these ways the river will make its appeal to him; and responding to the appeal, the Artist will see great Beauty in the river and describe that Beauty to us.