On the Indian Hills

ONCE more in harness and at the hard grind which usually falls to the lot of the coffee planter in new districts, I was now entering on all the discomforts of my second wet monsoon.

The coffee had just finished flowering on the older estates, and it was a fine sight while it lasted. I have said that the trees are about three or four feet high, and densely covered with broad, glossy, dark-green leaves, very much like those of the orange. From the junction of each of these leaves with the twig bursts forth a great cluster of ten or twelve blossoms, also closely resembling the orange flower in color and form; yet not, alas! in odor. The former is delightful, but the latter is faint and sickly; the coolies declare the scent gives them fever, and those that had to carry my messages through the flowering estates begged double pay, as though it were a service of danger. The scent is undoubtedly unpleasant, though the sight of a wide extent of clearing covered with a carpet of green leaves and a wealth of snow-white blossoms is very pleasing, and reminds one of the country at home when the hawthorn hedges are in full bloom.

The malaria at that time was wonderfully bad, worse than anything I had known before. Every time the sun came up, and when he went down again, the heavy fever mist was drawn out of its lurking-places amongst the decayed vegetation, and rolled over the ground in bluish-grey sheets. All day long it lay in the deep glens and river hollows, and became so dense as to be perfectly nauseous to breathe. Once, while crossing the jungle, I came to the steep banks of a reedy nullah, and descended to wade across; but no sooner was I down into the fog than my head swam, my breathing grew painful, and my throat rough and dry, so that I was glad to scramble back before my senses left me, as they were rapidly doing. In this same nullah, hanging from the trees overhead, was a wonderful creeper, which is rare in these jungles. Its leaves, as usual, were so high up as to be an undistinguishable green mass, but the stem, as thick as a man's arm, was covered with big grey knobs, all rough and thorny. These creepers are very useful to the monkeys, who employ them as though they were ropes, and climb up them in a most extraordinary manner.

Of course this weather affected the coolies even more than the Englishmen, and my sick list every evening was a heavy one, while, as D--- was very unwell himself on Bungalow Hill, and R--- away collecting coolies in Madura, though we had five hundred already, I rapidly acquired some fresh practical medical skill in the diseases most common on the estate. Then the "lines" were in a vile condition, and we were so hard at work road-making and planting, that we could spare no time to construct fresh ones. The natural result was that smallpox and cholera soon appeared. Very few of the coolies were vaccinated, and we had no means of performing the operation for them, so we jogged along as well as we could.

One morning, while sitting at breakfast, I heard a tinkle of bangles in the porch, and, getting up, found a coolie girl -- a very comely girl as coolies go -- of about seventeen or eighteen, kneeling on the ground. When she saw me, she threw herself down full length and cried out something in Tamil so unintelligible that, calling my "boy," I asked what she wanted whereon she lifted her head a few inches from the ground, and again spoke in her own language. "Sahib," said the boy, translating with his usual total disregard of genders, "this girl here he say he has had smallpox very bad. He's too sick, too thin to do any more work, and has got no food. He say no one will help him but the sahib, and if he doesn't get food, he is going to sit on the sahib's doorstep and die." And truly the girl was thin and haggard, and the few glass bangles on her arms slipped up and down them as though they were sticks. She, however, was more in need of food than medicine; so, by way of commencement, I gave her a substantial breakfast, subsequently placing her in my private relief camp, in which were included all ages and both sexes; she rapidly picked up strength, and was at work again two weeks afterwards.