A Twist Of Fate Heir To The Worlds Wealthiest Man free download pdf

An ideal form of travel for the elderly-A claim to roam at will in print-An invitation to a big-game shoot-Details of journey to Cooch Behar-The commercial magnate and the station-master-An outbreak of cholera-Arrival at Cooch Behar Palace-Our Australian Jehu-The Shooting Camp-Its gigantic scale-The daily routine-"Chota Begum," my confidential elephant-Her well-meant attentions-My first tiger-Another lucky shot-The leopard and the orchestra-The Maharanee of Cooch Behar-An evening in the jungle-The buns and the bear-Jungle pictures-A charging rhinoceros-Another rhinoceros incident-The amateur m

ahouts-Circumstances preventing a second visit to Cooch Behar.

The drawbacks of advancing years are so painfully obvious to those who have to shoulder the burden of a long tale of summers, that there is no need to enlarge upon them.

The elderly have one compensation, however; they have well-filled store-houses of reminiscences, chests of memories which are the resting-place of so many recollections that their owner can at will re-travel in one second as much of the surface of this globe as it has been his good fortune to visit, and this, too, under the most comfortable conditions imaginable.

Not for him the rattle of the wheels of the train as they grind the interminable miles away; not for him the insistent thump of the engines as they relentlessly drive the great liner through angry Atlantic surges to her far-off destination in smiling Southern seas. The muffled echoes of London traffic, filtering through the drawn curtains, are undisturbed by such grossly material reminders of modern engineering triumphs, for the elderly traveller journeys in a comfortable easy-chair before a glowing fire, a cigar in his mouth, and a long tumbler conveniently accessible to his hand.

The street outside is shrouded in November fog; under the steady drizzle, the dripping pavements reflect with clammy insistence the flickering gas-lamps, and everything, as Mr. Mantalini would have put it, "is demnition moist and unpleasant," whilst a few feet away, a grey-haired traveller is basking in the hot sunshine of a white coral strand, with the cocoa-nut palms overhead whispering their endless secrets to each other as they toss their emerald-green fronds in the strong Trade winds, the little blue wavelets of the Caribbean Sea lap-lapping as they pretend to break on the gleaming milk-white beach.

It is really an ideal form of travel! No discomforts, no hurryings to catch connections, no passports required, no passage money, and no hotel bills! What more could any one ask? The journeys can be varied indefinitely, provided that the owner of the storehouse has been careful to keep its shelves tidily arranged. India? The second shelf on the left. South Africa? The one immediately below it. Canada? South America? The West Indies? There they all are, each one in its proper place!

This private Thomas Cook & Son's office has the further advantage of being eminently portable. Wherever its owner goes, it goes, too. For the elderly this seems the most practical form of Travel Bureau, and it is incontestably the most economical one in these days when prices soar sky-high.

There is so much to see in this world of ours, and just one short lifetime in which to see it! I am fully conscious of the difficulty of conveying to others impressions which remain intensely vivid to myself, and am also acutely alive to the fact that matters which appear most interesting to one person, drive others to martyrdoms of boredom.

In attempting to reproduce various personal experiences on paper, I shall claim the roaming freedom of the fireside muser, for he can in one second skip from Continent to Continent and vault over gaps of thirty years and more, just as the spirit moves him; indeed, to change the metaphor, before one record has played itself out, he can turn on a totally different one without rising from his chair, adjusting a new needle, or troubling to re-wind the machine, for this convenient mental apparatus reproduces automatically from its repertory whatever air is required.

Having claimed the privilege of roaming at will far from my subject, I may say that ever since my boyhood I had longed to take part in a big-game shoot, so when the late Maharajah of Cooch Behar invited me in 1891 to one of his famous shooting-parties, I accepted with alacrity, for the Cooch Behar shoots were justly famed throughout India. The rhinoceros was found there, tigers, as Mrs. O'Dowd of Vanity Fair would have remarked, "were as plentiful as cabbages"; there were bears, too, leopards and water buffaloes, everything, in short, that the heart of man could desire. It was no invitation to travel five hundred miles for two days' shooting only, there were to be five solid weeks of it in camp, and few people entertained on so princely a scale as the Maharajah. It was distinctly an invitation to be treasured-and gratefully accepted.

The five-hundred-mile journey between Calcutta and Cooch Behar was unquestionably a varied one. There were four hours' train on the broad-gauge railway, an hour's steamer to cross the Ganges, ten hours' train on a narrow-gauge railway, three hours' propelling by poles in a native house-boat down a branch of the Brahmaputra, six miles of swamp to traverse on elephants, thirty miles to travel on the Maharajah's private two-and-a-half-feet-gauge toy railway, and, to conclude with, a twenty-five-mile drive.

Cooch Behar is now, I believe, directly linked up with Calcutta by rail.

We left Calcutta a party of four. My nephew, General Sir Henry Streatfeild, and his wife, another of the Viceroy's aides-de-camp, myself, and a certain genial Calcutta business magnate, most popular of Anglo-Indians. As we had a connection to catch at a junction on the narrow-gauge railway, an interminable wait at a big station in the early morning was disconcerting, for the connection would probably be missed. The jovial, burly Englishman occupied the second sleeping-berth in my compartment. As the delay lengthened, he, having some official connection with the East Bengal State Railway, jumped out of bed and went on to the platform in Anglo-Indian fashion, clad merely in pyjamas and slippers. Approaching the immensely pompous native station-master he upbraided him in no measured terms for the long halt. Through the window I could hear every word of their dialogue. "This delay is perfectly scandalous, station-master. I shall certainly report it in Calcutta." "Would you care, sir, to enter offeecial complaint in book kept for that purpose?" "By George! I will!" answered the man of jute and indigo, hot with indignation. He was conducted through long passages to the station-master's office at the back of the building, where a strongly worded complaint was entered in the book. "And now, may I ask," questioned the irate business man, "when you mean to start this infernal train?" "Oh, the terain, sir, has already deeparted these five minutes," answered the bland native. Fortunately there was a goods train immediately following the mail, and some four hours afterwards our big friend alighted from a goods brake-van in a furious temper. He had had nothing whatever to eat, and was still in pyjamas, bare feet and slippers at ten in the morning. We had delayed the branch train as no one seemed in any particular hurry, so all was well.

During a subsequent journey over the same line, we had an awful experience. Through the Alipore suburb of Calcutta there runs a little affluent of the Hooghly known as Tolly Gunge. For some reason this insignificant stream is regarded as peculiarly sacred by Hindoos, and every five years vast numbers of pilgrims come to bathe in and drink Tolly Gunge. The stream is nothing now but an open sewer, but no warnings of the doctors, and no Government edicts can prevent natives from regarding this as a place of pilgrimage, rank poison though the waters of Tolly Gunge must be.

A party of us left Calcutta on a shooting expedition during one of these quinquennial pilgrimages. We found the huge Sealdah station packed with dense crowds of home-going pilgrims. The station-master was at his wits' end to provide accommodation, for every third-class carriage was already full to overflowing, and still endless hordes of devotees kept arriving. He finally had a number of covered trucks coupled on to the train, into which the pilgrims were wedged as tightly as possible, a second engine was attached, and we started. Next morning I was awakened by a nephew of mine, who cried with an awestruck face, "My God! It is perfectly awful! Look out of the window!" It was a fearful sight. The waters of Tolly Gunge had done their work, and cholera had broken out during the night amongst the densely packed pilgrims. Men were carrying out dead bodies from the train; there were already at least fifty corpses laid on the platform, and the tale of dead increased every minute. Others, stricken with the fell disease, were lying on the platform, still alive, but in a state of collapse, or in the agonising cramps of this swift-slaying scourge. There happened to be two white doctors in the train, who did all that was possible for the sufferers, but, beyond the administration of opium, medical science is powerless in cholera cases. The horrors of that railway platform fixed themselves indelibly on my memory. I can never forget it.

The late Maharajah of Cooch Behar had had a long minority, the soil of his principality was very fertile and well-cultivated, and so efficiently was the little State administered by the British Resident that the Maharajah found himself at his majority the fortunate possessor of vast sums of ready money. The Government of India had erected him out of his surplus revenues a gigantic palace of red-brick, a singularly infelicitous building material for that burning climate. Nor can it be said that the English architect had been very successful in his elevation. He had apparently anticipated the design of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and had managed to produce a building even less satisfactory to the eye than the vast pile at the corner of Cromwell Road. He had also crowned his edifice with a great dome. The one practical feature of the building was that it was only one room thick, and that every room was protected by a broad double verandah on both sides. The direct rays of the sun were, therefore, powerless to penetrate to the interior, and with the double verandahs the faintest breath of air sent a draught through every room in the house.

We reached Cooch Behar after dark, and it was somewhat of a surprise to find the Maharajah and his entire family roller-skating in the great central domed hall of the palace, to the strains of a really excellent string band. The Maharajah having a great liking for European music, had a private orchestra of thirty-five natives who, under the skilled tuition of a Viennese conductor, had learnt to play with all the fire and vim of one of those unapproachable Austrian bands, which were formerly (I emphasise the were) the delight of every foreigner in Vienna. These native players had acquired in playing dance music the real Austrian "broken time," and could make their violins wail out the characteristic "thirds" and "sixths" in the harmonies of little airy, light "Wiener Couplets" nearly as effectively as Johann Strauss' famous orchestra in the "Volks-Garten" in Vienna.

The whole scene was rather unexpected in the home of a native prince in the wilds of East Bengal.

The Maharajah had fixed on a great tract of jungle in Assam, over the frontier of India proper, as the field of operations for his big-game shoot of 1891, on account of the rhinoceros and buffaloes that frequented the swamps there. As he did not do things by halves, he had had a rough road made connecting Cooch Behar with his great camp, and had caused temporary bridges to be built over all the streams on the way. Owing to the convenient bamboo, this is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply of this adaptable building material.

Our Calcutta party were driven out to the camp by the Maharajah's Australian trainer in a brake-and-four. I had heard before of the recklessness and skill of Australian stage-coach drivers, but had had no previous personal experience of it. Frankly, it is not an experience I should care to repeat indefinitely. I have my own suspicions that that big Australian was trying, if I may be pardoned a vulgarism, "to put the wind up us." Bang! against a tree-trunk on the off-side. Crash! against another on the near-side; down a steep hill at full gallop, and over a creaking, swaying, loudly protesting bamboo bridge that seemed bound to collapse under the impact; up the corresponding ascent as hard as the four Walers could lay leg to the ground; off the track, tearing through the scrub on two wheels, righting again to shave a big tree by a mere hair's-breadth; it certainly was a fine exhibition of nerve and of recklessness redeemed by skill, but I do not think that elderly ladies would have preferred it to their customary jog-trot behind two fat and confidential old slugs. One wondered how the harness held together under our Australian Jehu's vagaries.

The Maharajah had chosen the site of his camp well. On a bare maidan overhanging a turbulent river a veritable city of white tents gleamed in the sunshine, all neatly ranged in streets and lanes. The river was not, as most Indian rivers in the dry season, a mere trickle of muddy water meandering through a broad expanse of stones and sand-spits, but a clear, rushing stream, tumbling and laughing on its way as gaily as any Scotch salmon river, and forming deep pools where great mahseer lurked under the waving fringes of water-weeds, fat fish who could be entrapped with a spoon in the early morning.

Each guest had a great Indian double tent, bigger than most London drawing-rooms. The one tent was pitched inside the other after the fashion of the country, with an air-space of about one foot between to keep out the fierce sun. Indeed, triple-tent would be a more fitting expression, for the inner tent had a lining dependent from it of that Indian cotton fabric printed in reds and blues which we use for bed quilts. Every tent was carpeted with cotton dhurees, and completely furnished with dressing-tables and chests of drawers, as well as writing-table, sofa and arm-chairs; whilst there was a little covered canvas porch outside, fitted with chairs in which to take the air, and a small attendant satellite of a tent served as a bath-room, with big tin tub and a little trench dug to carry the water away. Nothing could be more complete, but I found my watchful old "bearer" already at work raising all my trunks, gun-cases, and other possessions on little stilts of bamboo, for his quick eye had detected signs of white ants. By the end of our stay in camp I had reason to congratulate myself on my faithful "bearer's" foresight, for none of my own things were touched, whilst every one else was bemoaning the havoc the white ants had played with their belongings. The guest-tents formed three sides of a square facing the river, and in the centre of the open space stood a large shamyanah, or flat-roofed tent with open sides, which served as dining-room and general living-room. There are certainly distinct advantages in a climate so settled that periods of daily sunshine or of daily rain really form part of the calendar, and can be predicted with mathematical certainty.

It so happened that the Census of 1891 was taken whilst we were in camp, so I can give the exact number of retainers whom the Maharajah brought with him. It totalled 473, including mahouts and elephant-tenders, grooms, armourers, taxidermists, tailors, shoemakers, a native doctor and a dispenser, and boatmen, not to mention the Viennese conductor and the thirty-five members of the orchestra, cooks, bakers, and table-waiters. The Maharajah certainly did things on a grand scale. One of the English guests gave, with perfect truth, his place of birth as required in the Indian Census Return as "a first-class carriage on the London and North-Western Railway, somewhere between Bletchley and Euston; the precise spot being unnoticed either by myself or the other person principally concerned."

The daily routine of life in the camp was something like this: We men all rose at daybreak, some going for a ride, others endeavouring with a spoon to lure the cunning mahseer in the swift-running river, or going for a three-mile walk through the jungle tracks. Then a bath, and breakfast followed at nine, when the various shikaries came in with their reports. Should a tiger have made a "kill," he would be found, with any luck, during the heat of the day close to the body of his victim. The "howdah" elephants would all be sent on to the appointed rendezvous, the entire party going out to meet them on "pad" elephants. I do not believe that more uncomfortable means of progression could possibly be devised. A pad elephant has a large mattress strapped on to its back, over which runs a network of stout cords. Four or five people half-sit, half-recline on this mattress, hanging on for dear life to the cord network. The European, being unused to this attitude, will soon feel violent cramps shooting through his limbs, added to which there is a disconcerting feeling of instability in spite of the tightly grasped cords. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more comfortable than a well-appointed howdah, where one is quite alone except for the mahout perched on the elephant's neck. The Maharajah's howdahs were all of cane-work, with a softly padded seat and a leather-strap back, which yielded to the motion of the great beast. In front was a gun-rack holding five guns and rifles, and large pockets at the side thoughtfully contained bottles of lemonade (the openers of which were never forgotten) and emergency packets of biscuits.

The Maharajah owned about sixty elephants, in which he took the greatest pride, and he was most careful in providing his guests with proved "tiger-staunch" animals. These were oddly enough invariably lady-elephants, the males being apt to lose their heads in the excitement of meeting their hereditary enemies, and consequently apt to run amok.