Valley of Hinnom

“ By degrees our way left the more travelled highroad, and took by a mountain tract through a wild, romantic line of country beside the Shannon. No villages now presented themselves, and indeed but little trace of any habitation whatever; large misshapen mountains, whose granite sides were scarce concealed by the dark fern, the only vegetation that clothed them, rose around and about us. In the valleys some strips of bog might be seen, with little hillocks of newly-cut turf, the only semblance of man's work the eye could rest on. ”

“ When we are really old and our grasshoppers become a burden, we may go back to town where the insects are an entirely different species; but for this exceedingly busy present, between our fading dawn of visions and our coming dusk of dreams, a hill in Hingham, though a compromise, is an almost strategic position, Hingham being more or less of an escape from Boston, and the hill, though not in the Forest of Arden, something of an escape from Hingham, a quaint old village of elm-cooled streets and gentle neighbors. ”

“ Could it be that during these trying and troublesome years at the close of the seventeenth century, some of these heart-sick and war-weary Indians decided that life back on the high forested mesa tops or in deep canyons to the south where their ancestors had lived, just a century before, would be better than this? Could they tear themselves away from their brethren at night and sneak south, back into the hills and down into deep canyons protected by high vertical cliffs, even into Hidden Valley? ”

“ Hinokiyama, a village of samurai, on a beautiful slope, was an exception, with its fine detached houses, pretty gardens, deep-roofed gateways, grass and stone-faced terraces, and look of refined, quiet comfort. Everywhere there was a quantity of indigo, as is necessary, for nearly all the clothing of the lower classes is blue. Near a large village we were riding on a causeway through the rice-fields, Ito on the pack-horse in front, when we met a number of children returning from school, who, on getting near us, turned, ran away, and even jumped into the ditches, screaming as they ran. ”

“ The valley through which it flowed was open and level, and its slope imperceptible. On the left lay a low range of hills, an irregular mass increasing much in width, as well as in height, as we proceeded northwards, the Hanle extremity being the termination where it slopes into the plain. On the right, a very lofty range, some of the peaks of which were certainly not less than 21,000 feet in elevation, ran parallel to our course, separating the open valley of the Hanle river from the Indus. ”

“ It need hardly be said that this will very greatly improve the efficiency of the division, for the Hindoo, if he has less strength than the Arab, Egyptian, or Persian, is yet amenable to discipline, and will, to the best of his power, carry out the orders he receives; whereas the other men were utterly reckless and disobedient, and could not be trusted out of reach of the eye of their officers. The camp of the Scinde Horse is still farther down the valley, beyond the transport lines. Sir Robert Napier arrived yesterday afternoon. ”

“ The opal claims are on the desert in what is called the Shinbone Country. It is very difficult to get to them, and the soft, deep sand makes automobiles a failure. One must use horses and pack burros, and at best the water supply is dangerously short. However, the undiscovered valley is something like thirty miles beyond the desert, in the mountains, at an elevation of perhaps eight thousand feet. ”

“ A little before the obscuration commenced, he ascended to the roof of his house, which, standing on the margin of the Jumna, commanded a full view of the stream, and of the surrounding plain. Both sides of the river for nearly a league were covered with Hindoos of both sexes, standing up to the waist in the water, anxiously awaiting for the commencement of the phenomenon, in order to plunge into the river and bathe their bodies at the auspicious moment. ”

“ Hinman and his wife were scions of that hardy stock which had, even before the Revolutionary War, set out from Connecticut, and, cutting their way through the forest, had crossed the Alleghany Mountains and river, and pitched their camp in the rich valley of the Muskingum, near the site of the present city of Marietta. ”

“ Rows of willow-trees rise from the sides of every irrigation channel, and orchards innumerable are scattered on all sides. The walled enclosures, with their small towers, are dotted here and there, breaking the even monotony of the view, and whichever way one may turn, the steep hills which run out from the Pughman Range shut in this fertile valley. We followed the path from the gorge to the village of Indikee, and halted on the plain immediately in rear of the heights which the 72nd Highlanders and 5th Ghoorkas stormed on October 6th. ”

“ In a deep sequestered nook, formed by two spurs of this mountain, there lived a venerable Hindoo, whom the people of the village called the Holy Hermit. The favourable accounts I received of his character, as well as his odd course of life, made me very desirous of becoming acquainted with him; and, as he was often visited by the villagers, I found no difficulty in getting a conductor to his cell. ”

“ Although very few Hindoo castes bury their dead, in many instances the ashes are collected, and preserved in buildings prepared for their reception; while the burning of widows is esteemed so honourable, that it seldom fails of being properly commemorated. The valley of Sassoor is a sort of oasis in the desert, the adjacent country being singularly rocky and barren ”

“ A Hindoo village is as inflammable as touchwood. The houses are generally built of grass walls, connected with thin battens of bamboo. The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire. ”

“ So throughout the Shinbone Country the undiscovered valley is well known to be in existence, but that’s the end of it. The country is thinly populated, of course, and the people who live there mind their own business pretty well and are completely out of touch with the outside world. And thus it transpires that the unexplored valley is not generally known to be in existence. ”

“ From the Himalayan austerity, the solitude of tropic forests, the unmastered floods of great rivers—from such tremendous natural phenomena came the Hindoo religion, a nature worship tinged with the melancholy of future oblivion. In Hindoo mythology the lofty mountains are invested with great sanctity and thousands of pilgrims journey year after year to the holy sources of the Ganges. From the cruel desert came the idea of Mohammedanism, of eternal bliss, an unending dream of sensuous delight attained by the faithful after the privations of a desert life. ”

“ The journey was one of considerable danger on account of the hostility of the Rogue River Indians. Mr. Hinman, in order to avoid trouble, traveled during the night and camped during the day. Several times the Indians were seen at a distance, but were successfully avoided. The conditions in early days in California are well remembered by Mr. Hinman, and had it not been for sickness, which caused his return on both occasions, he would have remained longer.
The life of a merchant in the early times is well illustrated by the experiences of Mr. Hinman. ”

“ On leaving the fortress of Heibuk we passed through a very extensive cultivated district, the principal produce being the grain which in Hindoostan is called jowār. The remaining portion of our journey to Hazree Sooltān, which was a distance of eighteen miles, was nothing but a barren waste with occasional patches of low jungle. We were now evidently on the farthest spur of the Hindoo Khoosh; the hills were low and detached, gradually uniting into the endless plain which bounded the horizon to the north and west. ”

“ Hurdwar signifies the Gate of Hari, or Vishnoo, the Saviour of the Hindoo mythology, and has, from the earliest times, been one of the most considerable places of Hindoo pilgrimage and purification. Amongst the hordes who flock to immerse themselves in the holy stream, in the month of April, at the point where it first emancipates itself from the gigantic mountains which give it birth, are many victims of disease, or in the last stage of life, who have literally crawled hundreds of miles, apprehensive lest they should expire from exhaustion before they reach the sacred goal ”

“ Almost anybody can have a hill in Hingham who is content without elevation, a surveyor's term as applied to hills, and a purely accidental property which is not at all essential to real hillness, or the sense of height. We have a stump on Mullein Hill for height. A hill in Hingham is not only possible, but even practical as compared with a Forest in Arden, Arden being altogether too far from town; besides
". . . there's no clock in the forest" ”

“ I do sit down, and I thrust my idle hands hard into my pockets to keep them from the Devil who would have them out at the moths instantly—an evil job, killing moths, worse than picking stones!
Nothing is more difficult to find anywhere than time to sit down with yourself, except the ability to enjoy the time after finding it,—even here on a hill in Hingham, if the hill is in woods. There are foes to face in the city and floods to stem out here, but let no one try to fight several acres of caterpillars. When you see them coming, climb your stump and wait on the Lord. He is slow ”

“ The horses slid and stumbled down through the ravine, but the wily savages were still ahead, dodging about among obstructions to the view which none but Indians could have found. Presently the ravine widened out into a valley in which no sign of life was to be seen. The whole body of cavalry was going on into [Pg 174] the valley when suddenly the Indians rose as if from the ground, a little way to one side of the course the soldiers were taking, and fired at the Captain and the Sergeant, behind whom Al was closely following. ”

“ Hindoos soon release them, from the religious dread that they may die in confinement. The old ones sometimes live, and are considered valuable. They are said to be finer in form than the tame cattle of the country; and from July to March, when grass abounds, and the country around is covered successively with autumn and spring crops, more fat and sleek.
The soil is good and strong, and the jungle which covers it very thick. It is preserved by a family of Kumpureea Rajpoots, whose whole possessions, in 1814, consisted of nine villages. ”

“ We do not wonder any longer at the emaciated pictures of the famine-stricken East Indians, for here, in a land of plenty, where food, almost ready cooked, is only waiting to drop, the Hindoo is the sparest, leanest creature imaginable. His ever-bare legs are not like flesh and blood, but small-boned and thin to emaciation, and almost devoid of calves below the knee; they have the hard statuesque look of bronze stilts. And the arms, too, are thin, and terminate in slender little hands that seem incapable of heavy and prolonged labour. ”

“ They were used by the emperors of Hindostan; but the enquiring Baber does not mention them in his commentaries.
Banks of the Hydaspes.
We marched up the right bank of the Jelum to Julalpoor for about thirty miles by a tract of rich land and great fertility. The husbandmen were mowing down the green wheat for the use of their cattle. The salt range runs parallel with the river, and presents a perfect contrast of desolation to its fertile valley; for it has no vegetation. Villages. Many villages, however, are perched upon the outer hills, which rise over one another in a picturesque manner. ”

“ The poor, ignorant Hindoo on the burning plains of his native land, seated on a stone pillar, with arm extended until it has become fixed and rigid, while the ever-growing finger nails have pierced through his clenched hand, is one of the sad company. ”

“ The Hindoo, as a general fact, cares not who rules the land if only he is allowed to cultivate his fields and eat his rice in peace. If left to himself, the last thing he would have thought of would have been rebellion ”

“ We leave them in Hingham and journey on alone into a region where neither thief nor anyone infests the roadsides; where there are no roads in fact, but only driftways and footpaths through the sparsely settled hills. ”

“ Our readers are aware that the Hindoos are not the aboriginal inhabitants of India. Arriving from the north-west, they first occupied that moiety of the peninsula to the north of the Nerbudda called emphatically Hindostan, and subsequently crossed that river into the Deccan, or ‘south’ portion of the country, where they dispossessed the natives as before. ”

“ College students also are a part of that world which can be too much with us, cabbages, too, if we are growing cabbages. We don't do over-much, but we are over-busy. We want too much. Buy a little hill in Hingham, and even out here, unless you pray and go apart often to your stump, your desire will be toward every hill in sight and the valleys between. ”

“ It is in spite of himself, under the enticement of a great reward, that the superstitious Hindoo decides to accompany the traveller into the mountains, which he dreads less for the unknown dangers of the ascent than for the sacrilege he believes he is committing in approaching the holy asylum, the inviolable sanctuary of the gods he reveres; his trouble becomes extreme when he sees in the peak to be climbed not the mountain, but the god whose name it bears. ”