reached the hotel but two hours after my own arrival. It was a
wonderful exhibition of strength and endurance. The distance was thirty
miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The
hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to
such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to
Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of
the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese. They were
splendid-looking men, shorty but thick-set and very muscular, with
olive-brown skins, piercing black eyes, long glossy hair and regular and
handsome features. One of this class of men (Hindoo hill-tribes) will
carry thirty _seers_ (sixty pounds) upon his back, or twenty-five seers
upon his head, up the hills for fifty miles, without rest or food, in
twenty-four hours; his charge for which is but one rupee--a special
instance of the astonishingly cheap labor of all India.

The road ran the whole distance on the face of almost perpendicular
hills, and for the greater part of the way was guarded by a low wall on
the dangerous side. The scenery was most grand, and I already felt well
repaid for the arduous journey from Calcutta. Some views were, however,
rather frightful. Imagine a ride on the very brink of a precipice
thirty-five hundred feet in depth, with the hills rising abruptly on the
other hand twenty-five hundred feet in height above you. The tops of the
distant and lofty mountains were all hidden in the clouds, but the
scenery of the valleys beneath one's feet was very beautiful. The
immense fields of tea planted in rectangular rows, the dark-green and
dense foliage of the forests, with here a planter's dwelling or a
factory glistening in the morning's sun, and there perhaps a little
silvery waterfall or a bubbling brook, and great black shadows cast by
the clouds, made a truly impressive picture. And yet, though already on
hills more than a mile in height, I had only gained this altitude in
order to obtain glimpses of much higher and grander mountains, nearly a
hundred miles distant.

Just before reaching Darjeeling there is a military cantonment, where
some troops are stationed for the active duty of protecting Her
Majesty's northern Indian boundaries. The officers' residences and the
barracks are situated on the top and upon the precipitous sides of a
small hill, and bridle-paths wind between, and flower-gardens and
ornamental trees are to be seen gro