Murree

“ It rained steadily, and a cold wind swept down the river valley as we began to make our slow way up the long, long hill.
I never knew milestones so extraordinarily far apart as those which mark the distance between Kohala and Murree. There are twenty-five of them, distributed along a weary winding road which extends without an apparent variation of gradient from Kohala to the Murree cemetery. The rise from the river level to Murree is 5000 feet, and this, in a heavy landau over a road often deep in red mud, is a heavy strain on equine endurance and human patience. ”

“ There they waited patiently, returning in due time to the scene of their gum throwing. They were laden with wood, for they expected to find their enemies dead, and the flesh of Bubburrs was good. Great was the joy of Murree when he saw the gum had stuck their jaws fast, and that the Bubburrs were all dead. His hand was swift to raise his comeboo, and sever their heads from their bodies. Swift, too, were the Daens in lighting fires for cooking the Bubburrs. ”

“ Rawul Pindee is one of the most favourite quarters, being so close to the hill station of Murree. Four hours carries one from the breathless heat of the plain to the top of a mountain, with an elevation of seven thousand four hundred and fifty-seven feet.
My wife and I were eager to make an expedition during the leave season into Cashmere. The mountains guarding the Happy Valley had stood out, a grand rampart, clear on the horizon, a great part of our march. Our plans were all arranged. Light tents were bought, and leave was obtained, when cholera made its appearance in the regiment. ”

“ Murree has a merry ghost, and now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for some sorrowful ones; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawar possesses houses that none will willingly rent ”

“ But when Murmur asked for more work, he told him to travel to his troll’s castle, where no one dared go, and to remain there until he had built a bridge across the sound, so that people could cross. If he could do that, he would reward him well, yes, he would even give him his daughter, said the king. He would attend to it, said Murmur.
Yet no human being had ever returned thence alive; all who had gotten so far, lay on the ground dead, and crushed to a jelly, and the king thought, when sending him there, that he would never see him again. ”

“ Yet, no matter how he played, Murmur always won; for he made a cross on the cards. And after he had won all the devil had with him, the latter had to give him some of the gold and silver that was in the castle.
In the midst of their game the fire went out, so that they could no longer tell the cards apart.
“Now we must split wood,” said Murmur. He hewed into the block of pine-wood with his ax, and drove in the wedge, but the tree-stump was tough, and would not split at once, though Murmur gave himself all manner of pains.
“You are supposed to be strong,” he said to the devil. ”

“ John Muir, or Mure, of Auchindrane, was a gentleman of an ancient family and good estate, in the west of Scotland, bold, ambitious, treacherous to the last degree, and utterly unconscientious,—a Richard the Third in private life, inaccessible alike to pity and remorse. ”

“ On the morrow I was to die some sort of nameless death for the diversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrors for me than the present, and I submit to any fair-minded man if it is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and foot in the Stygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown dangers in a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of the greatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment, some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it laired in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily upon me. ”

“ When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax to hew out a farm—the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support—he was young, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart. ”

“ In imagination I could see him so plainly—John Muir, wet but happy, feeding his fire with spruce sticks, studying and enjoying the storm! But I explained to my natives, who ever afterwards eyed Muir askance, as a mysterious being whose ways and motives were beyond all conjecture.
"Why does this strange man go into the wet woods and up the mountains on stormy nights?" they asked. "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never takes a gun with him or a pick. ”

“ But the troll was not out in the open, and the mountain was closed, so Murmur could not get it. So he joined a party of stone-breakers, who were working at a mountainside, and worked along with them. They had never had such a helper, for Murmur hewed away at the rocks till they burst, and stone bowlders as large as houses came rolling down. But when he was about to rest and eat up the first cart-load of his provisions, it had already been eaten up. “I have a good appetite myself,” said Murmur, “but whoever got hold of it has an even better one, for he has eaten up the bones as well!” ”

“ Very dark, very fast, it grew; Murphy rode pitilessly ahead, and I crept patiently along, keeping my eye on the ghostly winding white of his horse among the trees. Suddenly I saw a light to the left, and Murphy wheeling towards it. I hurried up. Never shall I forget the picture I saw. A smouldering fire, two evil-looking men crouching over it; their mules tied to a tree; and a third still more villainous-looking man leading up a third mule. ”

“ And Murty dear,'—his voice rose in tremulous entreaty as he went on,—'tell me, Murty,—I'm of an age to be your father's father, and I've no eyesight to shame you,—is she—is your holy wife coming to see her duty differently? Have you hope that—that—?'
Murtogh turned abruptly on his heel, swinging his companion round with him. They walked a dozen paces towards the sea-gate of the castles, before he spoke. 'You have never seen her, Owny!' he said, gravely. 'You do not know at all how beautiful she is. It is not in the power of your mind to imagine it. There is no one like her in all the world. ”

“ Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!
There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth fixed in her throat! ”

“ Such has been the look that I myself have witnessed in many a poor disfigured corpse. The death-struggle of the conscious victim in the strong and cruel grasp of the remorseless sea was depicted in harsh and vivid lines on the brow of the dead.
But one day my strange old man, Peter Burrow, came to me in triumphant haste with the loud greeting, “Sir, we have got a noble corpse down on your beach! We have just laid him down above high-water mark, and he is as comely a body as a man shall see!” ”

“ Periodically it, overflows, causing wide inundations. The principal tributaries of the Murray are those from New South Wales, including the Edward River, the united streams of the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan, and the Darling or Callewatta. In 1829 Captain Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River till it debouched into the Murray, which he followed down to Lake Alexandrina, but he was compelled, after great hardships, to return without discovering its mouth. ”

“ But the fog hung about him like a cloak, and when the moon cast aside the vapors, it was in a distant silver sheen illumining the far reaches of the valley. Only when its light summoned forth a brilliant and glancing reflection on a lower level, as if a thousand sabers were unsheathed at a word, he recognized the proximity of the river and came to a sudden halt.
"Whar is this fool goin'?" he demanded angrily of space. "To the graveyard, I declar', ez ef I war a harnt fur true, an' buried sure enough. An' I wish I war. I wish I war." ”

“ Murdstone, neat in a folded white neckcloth, and clothes as black as his whiskers. Miss Murdstone was with him, every bead of her alight with gratified malice. The children found that they knew, without being told, the name of each foe now advancing on them. Paralyzed with terror, they watched the slow and terrible advance. ”

“ No, the curse threads back a dozen lives behind poor Murty Oge. The strange currents weave and twine, and the greasy foam spreads and gathers, gathers and spreads, in the path of another, whose birthright it was that they should baptise him. The true tale [Pg 86] is of Murty the Proud, or if you will have his style from the Book of Schull,—Murtogh Mordha O'Mahony, chief in Dunlogher. And his time is not so distant, in one way, as men take account of years. ”

“ For it is strange that such ill men should have some to love them, or at least so it was with John Mure the elder. And so there were in the city Mures by the score, fighting, black-avised MacKerrows, cankered Craufords, with all the disbanded Bargany discontents from the south of Carrick, Drummurchie's broken band from the hill-lands of Barr, together with many others. So that we kept our swords, as at our first visit to the town in the days of Gilbert Kennedy, free in their scabbards while we ruffled it along the pavement. ”

“ Murrell added.
They went forward in silence, Yancy brooding and suspicious. For the last mile or so their way had led through an unbroken forest, but a sudden turn in the road brought them to the edge of an extensive clearing. Close to the road were several buildings, but not a tree had been spared to shelter them and they stood forth starkly, the completing touch to a civilization that was still in its youth, unkempt, rather savage, and ruthlessly utilitarian. A sign, the work of inexpert hands, announced the somewhat dingy structure of hewn logs that stood nearest the roadside a tavern. ”

“ Muir's arm.
"Why here?" she asked, pointing to the open grave. "Why not by father?"
"Your grandmother sold the other half of the lot," said Mr. Muir hastily.
Mrs. Deans watched the little scene with much inward satisfaction. Myron made no further sign, uttered no other word. The coffin was lowered into the grave.
Mr. Prew put up a prayer, in which petitions for the "child of sin" and the "sinful mother" were about equally balanced. The throng departed each to his own place. Old Humphries filled up the grave, and Myron was left alone. ”

“ Murty was a huge, swart animal, as cruel and primitive as his boon companions, the savages. Clay was from New Hampshire and would always be an alien to the wild environment of the Arkansas. He dared all his partner dared without possessing the latter's brutal disregard for danger. Murty found Indian life and manners peculiarly satisfying to his crude tastes. He had no visions of returning East and sloughing off his wild ways. Clay, frail of physique, was upheld by a fixed desire to gain wealth for what it would purchase in the land of wooden houses. ”

“ She watched him come; her great eyes were like the eyes of a deer, as shy, as innocent.
"Good morrow, sir," said she, with another curtsy, and then corrected herself quickly, "good morrow, my lord." For, if he came from the Castle, he was surely a lord.
"Good morrow, madam," returned he pleasantly. His glance appraised her with open admiration.
What a glorious creature! What proportions; what amber and red on those smooth cheeks; what ruddy radiance in that sun-illumined hair! What a column of a throat, and how white the skin where the coarse kerchief parted above the laced bodice! ”

“ Murray continued in the army so long as his health would permit, but being violently seized by an indisposition, which terminated in a bilious fever that precipitated him to the gates of the grave, he was, by the Physician of the Brigade, conducted to Gloucester; and no sooner was his health re-established, than his strongest feelings were powerfully excited, by the sufferings of the sons and daughters of want in that town. War of any description, is particularly oppressive to its inhabitants, seated upon the margin of the ocean, their subsistence is principally derived from the deep. ”

“ The coffin taken out of the hearse was lowered into the grave. One man withdrew the ropes and then with one of his mates took a shovel and began to cast in the earth. The grave was soon filled up. A little wooden cross was planted over it.
In the midst of his sobs the doctor heard Jacques utter this cry of egoism—
"Oh my youth! It is you they are burying." ”

“ The Murray, thus combining within its basin nearly the entire drainage of the province of Victoria, with a large portion of that of New South Wales, and much of the eastern part of South Australia, appears to have been unknown to British Colonists before 1830, when Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th Regiment—one of the most ardent and intrepid explorers the world has ever seen—whilst tracing the source, or rather course, of the Murrumbidgee, by order of the Sydney Government, came upon this noble river ”