It Was As If We Had Agreed To Be
Silent At These Moments.
We felt as though wrapped in the heavy
veil of dark-ness, and no sound was heard but the short, irregular
breathing of the porters, and the cadence of their quick, nervous
footsteps upon the stony soil of the path.
One felt sick at heart
and ashamed of belonging to that human race, one part of which
makes of the other mere beasts of burden. These poor wretches
are paid for their work four annas a day all the year round. Four
annas for going eight miles upwards and eight miles downwards not
less than twice a day; altogether thirty-two miles up and down a
mountain 1,500 feet high, carrying a burden of two hundredweight!
However, India is a country where everything is adjusted to never
changing customs, and four annas a day is the pay for unskilled
labor of any kind.
Gradually open spaces and glades became more frequent and the light
grew as intense as by day. Millions of grasshoppers were shrilling
in the forest, filling the air with a metallic throbbing, and flocks
of frightened parrots rushed from tree to tree. Sometimes the
thundering, prolonged roars of tigers rose from the bottom of the
precipices thickly covered with all kinds of vegetation. Shikaris
assure us that, on a quiet night, the roaring of these beasts can
be heard for many miles around. The panorama, lit up, as if by
Bengal fires, changed at every turn. Rivers, fields, forests,
and rocks, spread out at our feet over an enormous distance, moved
and trembled, iridescent, in the silvery moonlight, like the tides
of a mirage. The fantastic character of the pictures made us hold
our breath. Our heads grew giddy if, by chance, we glanced down
into the depths by the flickering moonlight. We felt that the
precipice, 2,000 feet deep, was fascinating us. One of our American
fellow travelers, who had begun the voyage on horseback, had to
dismount, afraid of being unable to resist the temptation to dive
head foremost into the abyss.
Several times we met with lonely pedestrians, men and young women,
coming down Mataran on their way home after a day's work. It often
happens that some of them never reach home. The police unconcernedly
report that the missing man has been carried off by a tiger, or
killed by a snake. All is said, and he is soon entirely forgotten.
One person, more or less, out of the two hundred and forty millions
who inhabit India does not matter much! But there exists a very
strange superstition in the Deccan about this mysterious, and only
partially explored, mountain. The natives assert that, in spite
of the considerable number of victims, there has never been found
a single skeleton. The corpse, whether intact or mangled by tigers,
is immediately carried away by the monkeys, who, in the latter case,
gather the scattered bones, and bury them skillfully in deep holes,
that no traces ever remain.
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