xt day.

CHAPTER IV

TO GNATONG

I marched to Gnatong as a passenger--that is to say, though I
accompanied troops, I yet did no duty with them. The camping grounds _en
route_ were small clearings in the jungle, so small that not more than
two or three hundred men and two or three hundred animals could be
encamped at any one spot on a given day. Hence the reinforcements were
marching up in very small columns. It was one of these which I
accompanied as far as Gnatong.

About two or three days' marching takes you out of India into Sikkim,
but you are in the heart of the jungle almost as soon as you leave
Siliguri. For about seven days you hardly rise at all, merely following
the course upstream of the Teesta river, and later on of one of its
tributaries.

That belt of 'terai' jungle which fringes the skirt of the whole
Himalayan range has its own special charms. It is a fine sporting
country for those who are on pleasure bent and are mounted on elephants,
on which alone is it possible to penetrate the thick breast-high
undergrowth. Even for troops marching along a road running through its
midst, it has a certain fascination. The incessant call of the
jungle-fowl on either side of you, the constant shade, so unusual in
India, the bright orchids in the tree-tops, the heavy luxuriance of
vegetation that loads the air with scents that are generally sweet, the
gorgeous butterflies, the steamy hothouse atmosphere--all combine to
form a kind of sedative, suggestive of the lotus-flower, of pleasant
physical enervation, and perpetual afternoon. One could enjoy this
feeling as one sat idly on one's pony, till it was dispelled by the
rain. It rained very heavily all those days. Even when it did not rain
the air was so laden with moisture that the very clothes you wore were
always wet on the outside. The rain too was of the sort that did not
cool or stir the air; the thermometer stood perpetually at a high
figure, and existence on the inside of a mackintosh during one of those
showers was a protracted torture of prickly heat.

We reached Rangpo--the town that lies on the border of independent as
opposed to British Sikkim--after four days' marching. I call it a town,
for it certainly possessed one street and a bazaar, and swarmed with
natives other than those belonging to the force. The ordinary native of
Sikkim seems to be a half-breed, looking partly Aryan, partly Mongolian,
and less Aryan and more Mongolian as one pe