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Title Pages
Empire in the Hills: Simla, Darjeeling,

Ootacamund, and Mount Abu, 1820-1920
Queeny Pradhan
Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
Title Pages
Queeny Pradhan
(p.i) Empire in the Hills (p.ii)
(p.iii) Empire in the Hills
(p.iv)
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© Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2017
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Page 2 of 2
Dedication

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
Dedication
Queeny Pradhan
(p.v) For my parents

Gyaneshwar and Asha
with love and regards
Page 1 of 1
Epigraph

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
Epigraph
Queeny Pradhan
(p.vi) Here are the hills, the rivers and the school,
The grange, the stores, three churches, Down a way,
You’ll find the drowsing station
Where the rule
Is two trains up, and two trains down each day....
Yet look again, lest you conclude the world
Spins past these homes. No leafy
Street but one—
St. Andrew’s churchyard, rests an ancient guild
Of Howlands, Wathleys, Winegars and Lains
Who, by their way of living, helped to build,
The mood of peace the village still retains.
Bright window has a little flag unfurled
With every star of blue an absent son
Loving its own, but loving freedom more,
This tiny village, too, has gone to war.
—Bracker (1942: 3).
In days long gone by, other than Mr. Sullivan prophesied the most
extravagant things regarding Ootacamund, which was to be the centre of a
European Land of Goshen, and an England in the tropics, without any of
the climatic disadvantages of the old country; a land where Europeans
would increase and multiply, raise all manner of farm, dairy and garden
produce, and make much money therefrom—in fact and Indian Utopia.
These vaticinations have not been in the remotest degree fulfilled and are
never likely to be.
—Price (1908: 241).
Page 1 of 2
Epigraph
Page 2 of 2
Table and Figures

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
(p.ix) Table and Figures

Queeny Pradhan
Table
5.1 The table of fares for the transport service between the Abu Road and
Mount Abu 147
Figures
1.1 Captain Gerard, among the early travellers to Simla, carefully
constructed the route, familiarizing the Europeans to the distant places in
the colony 5
1.2 A countrified and agrarian landscape appealed to the picturesque
sensibilities in the pencil sketches of Newall 10
1.3 A photograph of the Ooty landscape, 1870 15
1.4 Darjeeling, marked as ‘X’ in the figure, was mapped out for its
economic potential as it is strategically located with regard to the frontier
trade 20
2.1 The bee-hive-shaped Toda hut 46
2.2 A Toda couple as Adam and Eve 48
3.1 Simla first mentioned in Murray’s Handbook 65
3.2 The map of Abu showing the area leased to the British by the Sirohi
ruler, 1917 (as demarcated by the 54 pillars) 87
(p.x) 4.1 The long snowline of Kanchenjunga (the Himalaya on the
eastern side) in the background of an English countryside house
characterizes the setting in Darjeeling in the late nineteenth century 104
4.2 Map showing Captain Alexander Gerard’s travels to Simla and the
interior in the 1820s 106
4.3 The first map of Darjeeling digitized from Hooker’s journal 114
5.1 The Combermere Bridge, 1840 140
Page 1 of 2
Table and Figures
5.2 The Indian labour at work in the construction of road to Darjeeling

142
5.3 Tea gardens in Darjeeling 150
5.4 Indian entrepreneurs adapting to Western goods and modes of
commodification 154
5.5 Map of the town of Darjeeling 162
6.1 The expansion of Simla by 1913 176
6.2 St. Andrew’s Church, Darjeeling, 1843 188
6.3 St. Paul’s School, Darjeeling, 1840s 191
6.4 A traditional thatched hut in Darjeeling in the 1920s 197
6.5 Batasiya loop picture postcard in the 1920s 205
7.1 The station of Ootacamund in early twentieth century 243
8.1 The picnic at Annandale, 1830 262
8.2 Colonel Baden-Powell in The Geisha 283
9.1 A sketch of the war memorial to be set up at the Bishop Cotton
School, Simla 316
9.2 The Christ Church at Simla is strategically placed at a prominent
location in the Mall 328
Page 2 of 2
Acknowledgements

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
Queeny Pradhan
My first and foremost gratitude is to my guide, professor Neeladri Bhattacharya,

who initiated me into this research area and gave it a clear direction. I am
indebted to his meticulous and grilling training—a benchmark difficult to attain,
and I constantly slip and falter. By drawing attention to numerous errors and
omissions, he improved the quality of my work until the very end. Whatever
limitations and weaknesses that remain are my own oversights. I appreciate the
unstinting support given to my work by Professor Ramachandra Guha, for
enriching the work and fine-tuning references with his pointed observations.
I would also like to acknowledge the interest and encouragement that Professor
Satish Saberwal and Professor Majid Siddiqui showed in the early days of my
study on the topic. Professor Chetan Singh introduced me to Mian Govardhan
Singhji. Professor Harjit Singh and Mr Varghese of the Centre for the Study of
Regional Development, New Delhi, gave digital assistance by scanning maps and
photographs. Professor Indrani Chatterjee’s pointed comments on a few
chapters in my presentation at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) along with
Professor Siva Ramakrishnan’s feedback further motivated me to complete my
book.
During the course of my research, I undertook a number of field trips to the hill
stations and received help from a large number of people. These contributions
have been significant and I would like to express my thanks to them. Captain
A.K. Saxena and his wife’s hospitality made my first field experience in
Darjeeling comfortable. Captain Saxena’s numerous contacts in and around
Darjeeling facilitated the collection of material of interest to me. In Simla, Mian
Govardhan Singhji merits my unreserved thanks for sharing his unrivalled
knowledge. He was kind to place his personal (p.xii) library at my disposal. In
Page 1 of 4
Acknowledgements
Mount Abu, I received help from the then subdivisional magistrate, Mr Tanmay
Kumar. He made the collection of research material easier by fixing
appointments and ensuring full cooperation from various local government
offices. Dr Sprigg, formerly with the School of Oriental and African Studies,
London, and now at Dr Graham’s Homes at Kalimpong, provided a searching and
insightful critique of my initial draft which was helpful. My thanks to Mr Dugay
Lepcha, president of the Darjeeling Committee of All India Lepcha Association,
and his associates for introducing me to some old Lepchas of the place, and
providing valuable information about the background, customs, rituals, etc., of
the Lepchas. In Ootacamund or Ooty, my special thanks to Professor Darius
Krishnaraj and the staff at the Nilgiri Library. I am grateful to the collectorate
for the meticulous maintenance of records and help in taking out the files I
requisitioned.
In addition, a number of individuals in Darjeeling, Simla, Ootacamund, and

Mount Abu helped me in collecting information: at Darjeeling, Mr Durga Das,
proprietor of Das Studio, gave me access to his personal library and provided me
with rare photographs; Udai Mani Pradhan, a prominent printer and publisher;
Boney Edwards, owner of Glenry’s Restaurant (famous as Vado-Pliva’s during
British times); Mr Teddy Young, the last British tea planter and manager of the
Tamsang tea garden; Colonel Gurung, who spent his childhood in Darjeeling and
later served the British army; Larry Paljor, a member of the former royal family
of Sikkim and among the oldest residents of the place; Mr K.B. Kharaga,
grandson of Rai Bahadur Kharaga Bahadur, a civil contractor responsible for
constructing all the important buildings in Darjeeling during the British period;
Major Sobti (retd), manager at the Darjeeling Planters Club; and Mr Dinesh
Verma of Chandmari, a family friend. Those who helped me at Simla include Mr
Raja Bhasin, Dr Sucheta Mahajan, Mr Prem Pandit, and Mr Gagan Khanna. In
Mount Abu, I owe a great deal to Mr Devi Singh Malasor of Jodhpur House for
recounting stories of the British period, Mahantji of the Raghunath temple, T.N.
Swamy, Coomi Merwanji, Mr B.S. Negi for making available Central Public
Works Department (CPWD) records, and Mr Bhardwaj and Mr Narpat Singh of
the forest department. The staff at the Nilgiri Library, Ooty at the time of my
visit in 2008, (p.xiii) Sandhya Vasanth Kumar and Daphne Sampson, were
extremely helpful.
The staff at JNU library; the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi; the office of the deputy
commissioner of Darjeeling; the Himachal State Archives at Simla along with the
Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Simla; Abu Nagar Palika, the district
magistrate’s office at Mount Abu; the Sirohi collectorate office and records
room; Hardinge Library or Lala Hardayal Municipal Library; the Central
Secretariat Library—all rendered valuable assistance to my work. My gratitude
to the staff at the collectorate record room and the Government Library at Ooty
who gave me all the necessary assistance. The Jawaharlal Nehru Scholarship for
Page 2 of 4
Acknowledgements
Doctoral Studies by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund provided the

necessary financial assistance.
Portions of Chapter 3 ‘Acquiring the Station: Political Dynamics’, Chapter 4

‘Building the Station: The Early Years’, and Chapter 5 ‘Organization of Space:
The Imperial Spectacle’ were originally published in the article ‘Empire in the
Hills: The Making of Hill Stations in Colonial India’ (Pradhan 2007).
I am grateful to IIAS for granting the fellowship that enabled me to polish and
revise my thesis into a manuscript. My special thanks to Professor Peter Ronald
deSouza, the then director of IIAS, who saw the possibility of a book in my work,
to my university, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGS), New Delhi,
for granting me leave to refine my work. The constructive suggestions of the
fellows of the institute in the course of presentations, especially by Professor
Ghanshyam Shah, Professor Kamei, Professor M. Palat, and Professor Kavita
Panjabi, have been very useful. My friends in Shimla—Dhananjay, Ranjeeta,
Vinay Anna, Dr Veena Sharma, Jaya Sinha Tyagi, and Yogi—helped both
academically and emotionally. My current dean at GGS, Professor M. Afzal Wani,
spared me from university responsibilities during the final stages of my work. A
word of thanks to Renu Gupta who helped with suggestions and comments on
the initial draft of the manuscript. A special thanks to all my students to whom I
am eternally grateful for their interactions, from whom I have learnt a lot and
continue to grow as a teacher. To the entire editorial team at Oxford University
Press for (p.xiv) painstakingly going through my work and providing their
insightful editorial interventions.
My parents’ constant emotional motivation made the whole thing possible; they
have been my tireless companions during the course of my travails. My father
accompanied me to all my field trips. To them I dedicate my work. No less has
been the contribution of my sister and her family, Vandana, Deepak, Purva, and
Meru, for providing relief in moments of stress at the various stages of my work
and for making arrangements for me in Mount Abu. My cousin Gyanesh Kudesia
gave specific inputs to improve my manuscript; his sister and my cousin Geeta
Kudesiya got me references from NMML as and when I requested. My mama
(uncle) V.K. Saxena made my field trip to Ootacamund smooth. In moments of
doubt, my friends Dolon and Nimisha helped boost my spirit. My gratitude to
Romita Ray at Syracuse University, New York, for procuring the illustration of
Darjeeling in 1852 in the shortest possible time; to Bhoomika Joshi, a research
scholar at Yale University for helping me procure source information on two of
the appendices; to Vivek Sachdeva, whose presence in my life is a source of
strength: I thank him for his belief in my work and for inspiring me with his
words of encouragement. Last but not least, a word of thanks to my family for
bearing with my absence sportingly, and to friends and well-wishers for
Page 3 of 4
Acknowledgements
supporting me during the course of my work. Leaving Amartya (Nan) behind was
the most difficult thing to do.
Page 4 of 4
Introduction

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001
(p.xv) Introduction
Re-Imagining Hills—Theorizing Space
Queeny Pradhan
This book explores the multiple perspectives underlying the aesthetics and the
spatial politics of development and policymaking in different mountain sites in
India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The British developed a
large number of hill stations in the Indian colony. Different desires, aspirations,
and visions coexisted, marked by mutual paradoxes and ambivalences. Multiple
voices, sometimes intersecting, sometimes contesting, emerge throughout,
thereby transforming the nature of imperial discourse. It becomes evident that
the English settlers of the nineteenth century cannot be considered a monolithic
category. This book examines the politics in the appropriation and visualization
of the hill landscape in the mountain sites of Simla, Darjeeling, Ootacamund, and
Mount Abu during this period. In this process, the colonists attempted to erase
the past of the hills, and the Indian mountain spaces came to be viewed
specifically as places of idyllic and picturesque sojourns in nineteenth-century
English and European accounts. In sharp contrast to the ‘malignant’ and ‘hot’
plains of India and the ‘ugly’ industrial cities in Europe, the ‘sublime’ mountain
panorama enchanted the visitors.
During the course of my research on the making of the British Empire in the hill
stations, I found that these hills have been neglected in the study of societal
development. Most studies focus on urban–rural development and this approach
has been a flaw in India and elsewhere. We need to move beyond the stark
urban–rural divide to look into other spatial developments that have been taking
place simultaneously.
Page 1 of 10
Introduction
This work examines the unexplored linkages between empire, space, and culture
in the specific context of the colonial hill stations in India. In the Victorian period
largely, and in the context of the tropical empire, the hill stations as spaces and
a part of (p.xvi) place-making contribute to new knowledge and information
about the establishment of the Empire in India in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. It looks into the themes of spatiality and representation, spaces and
landscapes, and reproduction of social and cultural spaces.
The Four Hill Stations under Study

The various reasons for choosing these four hill stations as the subject of
research are: first, all of them were summer capitals and seats of administrative
authority of the Raj; second, through a comparative analysis of development
trends, an attempt is made to identify general patterns of the British imperial
policy in India and the establishment of the institutions for its maintenance;
third, the differences in the development of the hill stations provide insights into
the working of the policies of the Empire and the strategic position of the hill
stations in the imperial scheme of things. To illustrate the point, a certain
hierarchy is discernible among the hill stations. Simla gradually acquired a place
of pre-eminence.1 This primacy was acknowledged in imperial circles much
before Sir John Lawrence officially legitimized Simla as the summer capital of
the Raj in 1864.2 Darjeeling could be said to be second in importance among
these four hill stations. Its economic potential and geostrategic location amidst
China, Bhutan, Sikhim, Tibet, and Nepal whetted the ambitious visions of the
expansive colonial–capitalist state (Younghusband 1910: 99, 152). Darjeeling
offered endless possibilities: tea, proselytization, cattle stations, and entrepôt.3
If Simla was viewed as the political summer capital of the British Raj, Darjeeling
fitted the slot of the economic summer capital of the colonial state. Ootacamund
as it was popularly known, was termed the ‘Queen’ among the hill stations of
south India.4 It could be placed next in importance to Darjeeling in the colonial
scheme of things. It owed its exalted status in the south to the patronage
extended by the governor of Madras. Lord Ellenborough, who was also the
viceroy for a short while, made it the summer capital of the Madras Presidency.5
In the imperial hierarchy, governors of the presidencies came next to viceroys
and commanders-in-chief, with the latter two sharing an uneasy parity.6 (p.xvii)
Dodabetta (the ‘big mountain’) in Ootacamund is the highest peak of the
Nilgiris.7 It was also the habitat of the Todas, the most extensively discussed
Indian hill aborigines in ethnographic records (see Hockings 1997 and Slater
1936).
Mount Abu did not acquire similar importance inspite of it being surrounded by
powerful Rajput states on all sides. One reason cited in the foreign department
file is that ‘the climate of that place is considered little inferior to that of Simla
or Landaur (Mussoorie)’.8 Abu’s not-so-important position in the imperial
hierarchy is evident from the moderate expansion of the station and the
smallness of the European populace. As a matter of fact, Mount Abu was not
Page 2 of 10
Introduction
directly part of British possession. It was only in 1917 that the British authorities
drew up a formal deed of agreement with the maharao of Sirohi, for Abu fell
within its jurisdiction.9 A reason for this is hinted at in the imperial proceedings.
The maharao of Sirohi was berated by other Rajput rulers for acquiescing tamely
to the British encroachments in Abu,10 which seemed to undermine the Rajput
position under their very nose. Both the maharao and the British authorities
became extra careful in their dealings with each other. Mindful of the sensitive
egos of the Rajput rulers, who were crucial, subordinate allies of the foreign
rulers in their respective Indian colonies, the British policymakers took recourse
to diplomatic overtures.11 To ward off a sense of suspicion among the Rajput
princes, the British wanted Abu to be a point of interaction between them and
their Rajput allies on a more regular basis. A single bond of allegiance to the
values of the Empire was to be forged by the British initiative. Mount Abu
emerged as an informal channel of information gathering to keep an eye on the
goings-on in the princely states. To make this point, all the rulers of the
Rajputana and nearby Gujarat, big or small, were asked to build permanent
residences in Abu with their vakils stationed there throughout the year.12 These
conditions are peculiar only to Abu; no such stipulation is found in the case of
the other three hill stations.
Mapping the Historiography

The existing literature on the four hill stations in India is not vast. Studies by
Nora Mitchell (1972) on Kodaikanal, and by Pamela Kanwar (p.xviii) (1984),
Vipin Pubby (1988), and Raja Bhasin (1992) on imperial Simla, focus on
urbanization, social and cultural life, and on the nature of national movement in
the hills.
Kanwar has explored the trends in imperial Simla from the early nineteenth
century to the late twentieth century. She begins her study with the English
activities in Simla in the 1820s. In a decade-wise progression, she takes up the
events that resulted in the development of Simla. In doing so, she has brought to
attention the rich source of information in Ahrties (the records of the local
commissioned agents) to look into the development of India from an Indian point
of view. She has also dealt with the alarming demographic imbalance within the
hills, but she has not explored the issues extensively. According to her (1990:
237), two important ‘withdrawal symptoms’ from the third decade of the
twentieth century were the transfer of valuable property by the British to the
Indians (she cites the transfer of Clarks to Oberoi) and the increasing Indian
presence in the municipality. By the 1940s, the municipality mainly comprised
Indians (242). Kanwar’s study has two problems. In discussing the European
vision, she does not look at the internal tensions within their vision, nor the
conflict with the indigenous population. In similarly analysing the Indians, her
focus isolates the notions of colony and their interaction with the imperial
structure, or their questioning of imperial vision. Mitchell (1972) explores
Page 3 of 10
Introduction
changed functions and the continuing popularity of hill stations in the post-
Independence period.
Anthony D. King (1976) and Dane Kennedy (1996) give a general overview of the
hill stations of the Raj. King talks of the escape of the British from the three evils
of the Indian plains: the heat, the overcrowded cities, and the hostile people of
the plains (1976: 171). In the hills, the British developed exclusive ‘European
spaces’. Hill stations are thus seen as places of ‘social reproduction’—a point
constantly emphasized by Kennedy. In keeping with this point of view, Kennedy
views hill stations as ‘landscapes of memory’ (39), ‘home in the hills’ (88), and
‘nurseries of the ruling race’ (117). The annual migration is viewed as an
attempt to preserve this exclusive identity, closely aligned with the power
dimensions. The description of the ‘hill people’ in a romantic light as ‘noble
savages’ reduced the threat of subversion for the British (Kennedy 1996: 87).
However, (p.xix) the imperial records and travel accounts contain no uniform
image of the hill people. These conflicting images of the hill people are largely
ignored in Kennedy’s argument. His work delineates the broad, general trends of
the English social system in the hills, underplaying the internal tensions. One
gets the impression that Kennedy, like Kanwar, perceives the English as a
homogenous category. He sees the contradictions to an extent during the 1920s,
and even then he primarily looks at the role of the Indians in undoing the
imperial enterprise. He argues in his conclusion that the role of the Indians led
to the ‘failure’ of the British in the hills, but the English departure from the hills
was not a simple cause-and-effect phenomenon. He also largely ignores the
ecological and nationalist concerns.
The works of Pat Barr and Desmond Ray (1978) and Sten Nilsson (1968) provide
us with photographic illustrations of nineteenth-century hill stations with special
reference to architecture, photography, and photographers. A number of recent
ethnographic studies have focused on the indigenous communities in the hills
and their perceptions of the hills. Hockings’s 1997 study about the hill
communities of Badagas, Todas, and Kurumbas in the Nilgiris is significant in
this regard.
The central argument of my work is that the hills were an important part of
imperial life in India. From the early nineteenth century, hill stations such as
Simla and Darjeeling were resting places for the weather-weary rulers of the
Indian subcontinent. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the ‘exodus’ of the
imperial administration to the hills became a regular feature. This left its imprint
on the mountain spaces. The landscape created by the English settlers of the hill
stations of Simla, Darjeeling, Ootacamund, and Mount Abu makes for a
fascinating study in itself—how a particular culture imposes its dominance over
the topography in subtle ways, which can be read as texts of representations.
Page 4 of 10
Introduction
By linking Empire, landscapes, and culture, I argue that culture is integral to the
system of social reproduction. Perceptions of the landscape naturalize the
culture of a particular society as the only possible history, effacing all other
previous histories. However, landscapes are open to different meanings by
various social groups and classes. Here the argument is that power plays a role
in mediating (p.xx) and controlling meanings, ensuring the predominance of a
particular meaning. In the process, a certain myth or a mystique is created
about the place by constant emphasis on a particular point of view. The notion of
‘myth’ has an eternal, timeless, and transcendental value, ignoring all other
conflicting and non-consensual histories. Don Mitchell (2000: 93) in his study
argues that landscape ‘is an active agent in constituting a particular way of
seeing a particular kind of history, serving both as a symbol for the needs and
desires of the people who live in it (or who otherwise have a stake in producing
and maintaining it) and as a solid dead weight channelizing change in this way
and not that’.
The colonial settlers have left behind valuable information on development in the
hills in official gazetteers and non-official travelogues and memoirs. Although
these are useful sources for factual information, we need to be careful about a
subtle pedagogy. How are the indigenes in the hills represented in travel writing
and the imperial texts? Contradictory strategies were used to depict the local
habitat. Hills have been repeatedly described as ‘terra incognita’, with imageries
of ‘wilderness’, ‘desolation’, and ‘isolation’ being constantly used. It seems that
the past of the hills with its particular life systems is erased. ‘Natives’ or the
indigenous inhabitants exist somewhere in the periphery as the ‘exotics’ of the
‘picturesque’ location. There are representations of some existing habitations as
‘fossilized relics’ on the verge of ‘fading’ under the pressures of ‘modernizing
forces’ from the West. The imperial records, whether of the state or its
components, presented the colonized in a passive role as objects to be
represented, manipulated, and denied any agency of their own. The hill spaces,
peoples, their habitat, social customs, and lifestyle were thus laid bare to the
imperial eye, which scanned the entire topography.
It is interesting to explore the various ways in which local inhabitants contest

Western representation. I trace the position of the Indian hill settlements at the
time of British arrival. One comes across multiple meanings with regard to the
hill habitat. The Indian hill sites have had culture-specific functions before the
time of the British. For the Brahmanic Hindus, mountains are sacred pilgrim
sites. For the local inhabitants, mountains are perceived as living places, which
is an amalgamation of their everyday experiences and legends. The settler
community had its own set of cultural and (p.xxi) politico-economic ideologies.
The technique of European landscape conventions was one way to visualize the
English presence in the hills by white colonists. How did the world view of the
indigenes differ from this? In this regard, I take recourse to the oral history
tradition, for the songs and folklore throw significant light upon the perception
Page 5 of 10
Introduction
of the indigenes. The Western notion of landscape clashes with the local
indigenous sensibilities.13 While reading Mitchell’s edited work on landscapes, I
found parallels between Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, America, and
India. The mountain sites in India occupy a liminal zone in the eyes of the
settlers. The mountain habitat provided ontological security to the imperial
diaspora with its numerical minority but political dominance of the subcontinent.
Issues of marginalization, contestation of space indicating undercurrents of

tension, and domination of the landscape by the settlers emerge significantly in
my work. The representation and invention of the urban stations took place
almost simultaneously. Hill spaces were reinvented to familiarize the unfamiliar
to the Occident. The colonial authorities collected and preserved information
about the hill people under the garb of ‘benevolent paternalism’. This
‘authoritative knowledge’ was used to recast the hill communities according to
their usefulness to the colonial capitalist enterprise. In this book, I argue that
there is a contestation of such representations. While the colonizers attempted
to negate the presence of the locals, the latter negotiated for their roles in these
transitional times. Drawing upon the argument of Edward W. Soja (1996: 68), I
find that the hill people find a space for negotiation from within the limits of the
periphery to which they were confined. The experiences of the settler enclaves
in other parts of the world have resonance in the hills; but the departure
towards the end of the nineteenth century is equally sharp.
The urban experience in the four stations led to a reorganization of spaces,

reflecting the cultural ethos of Europe. Sports, church, and schools reproduce
and reinforce an imperial ethic on the colonizers and the colonized. There is a
phenomenon of institutionalization of leisure in the hillscape. The colonial
authorities followed a concerted policy to popularize different hill stations as
summer retreats in the genre of ‘spas’ and ‘resorts’. In the specific colonial
(p.xxii) context, tensions arose between leisure and work. The serious work of
running an empire from the hills is apprehended to be jeopardized by the
‘frivolous’ aspect of the social whirl. This paradox was further complicated in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the spectre of disease in the
hills. The enchantment with the natural ‘Hygieia’ stations begins to show
increasing signs of disenchantment.
There is an inextricable connection between imperialism and capitalism. The

process of urbanization of the hill stations was closely associated with the needs
of capitalist accumulation. Every aspect of hill life became a marketable
commodity, a trend initiated by the expanding capitalistic market economy of the
colonial enterprise, without a pause to think about the dangerous implications
on the hill habitat. The constructed environment of the physical and social
landscape that begins from the early nineteenth century and accelerates in the
latter half provides for the predominance of capitalism. Banks, private property,
rents and taxes, communication and transport networks, technological
Page 6 of 10
Introduction
innovations and conversion of labour into wage labour, military and political
systems—all could effortlessly become means of capitalism to produce, circulate,
and accumulate without any costs. A strong nation state promotes the spatial
expansion of an ever-expanding capitalist desire for new markets and
consumers. The coming of the Empire in the hills in the latter half of the
nineteenth century leads to an enlargement in the scale of activities. Though not
a radical break from the early nineteenth century, one could see the ‘creative
destruction’ and the onset of modernity in the mountain sites.
There is a vast literature on frontier history in other parts of the world, looking
at the act of settlement and the reshaping of the environment under colonialism.
Historians such as Donald Worster (1985), William Cronon (1985 [1983]),
Tzvetan Todorov (1996), and Alfred W. Crosby (1986) have, to an extent, set out
to reveal the environmental dimensions of the imperial conquest. Nevertheless,
‘frontier history’ is still a developing area of comparative study and I make few
forays to link colonization, ecological, and environmental concerns that
manifested in the large-scale reorganization of the Indian hill spaces. This
unleashed a transformation of the hillscape with serious implications. The Forest
Conference held in Simla in (p.xxiii) 1875 raised serious concerns about the
excessive cutting of timber in various hill stations that caused landslips in many
places.14 In 1899, Darjeeling witnessed a serious landslip leading to a large
number of casualties. Some other hill authorities complained about problems of
subsidence due to rapid expansion. Tom Griffith and Libby Robins’s (1997: 10)
observation in the context of Australia that ‘a settler society, whether or not
numerically dominant, was an invading, investing, transformative society with an
internal frontier, both natural and cultural’ have similarities with the
developmental trajectory of these hill stations. During my field trip to Darjeeling,
I interviewed many Lepchas, considered to be the autochthons of this area, who
are increasingly apprehensive about losing their identity and becoming extinct.
There are many sholas in Ootacamund, which are ecologically a unique
phenomenon, but are becoming scarce in the Nilgiris.
I highlight the tensions and contradictions that beset the developments in the
hills. My premise is that environment and development are closely bound in a
paradoxical situation. The English settlers voice conflicting opinions in the local
newspapers of Simla, the Liddell’s Simla Weekly and the Simla Times, reflecting
the fact that there was no homogeneity among them, thereby revealing the
complexity of the colonial rule right up to 1947. One finds a continuous tussle
over the issue of development and the picturesque. It is here that development
concerns are tied with the issues of forests and the transformation of the hill
habitat. Some English administrators and residents protest that the natural
rejuvenating qualities of the mountain air are sullied by the indiscriminate
development of the summer capitals. How do the Indian hills fit the parameters
of the medical and ecological perspectives prevalent in Europe of the nineteenth
century? On issues such as death, disease, and sanitation, the entire debate on
Page 7 of 10
Introduction
the emergence of hill stations as health resorts, which is merely touched upon in
hill station historiography, is discussed in detail. There is an unstated
assumption that the hill stations were readily appropriated by the British as
‘ideal’ sites for the Europeans. I find in my study that the British were divided
upon the move to the hills. As the British settled in the hills and with the shift of
administration to the stations in summers, one is confronted with (p.xxiv)
increasing contradictions that eventually lead to the beginning of the unravelling
of the Empire by the 1920s.
The research is based on archival and oral sources. Field trips and a large
number of interviews have enriched the study. In particular, I mention the last
British tea planter in Darjeeling, Teddy Young; the Bhat of Velangri in Mount
Abu; Sarkemit Lepcha in Darjeeling; a Toda woman in Ootacamund; and Mian
Govardhan Singhji in Simla. I have also used church, school, and cemetery
records. The vast literature of memoirs and travel accounts primarily by
European men and women, and a few by Indians as well, have been used to
recreate the ambience of the period and to make visible the invisible. Some old
maps, photographs, and treaties have been analysed to fill the gaps in
understanding the mechanism of the Empire and its policies. At all places, I
collected information from district collectorates and municipal authorities. In
addition to this, I also visited the tombstones in all the four places from which I
gleaned useful information regarding a number of things related to my work.
The main contention in this book is that the assertion of power in the hills
implied a reconstitution of the hill spaces, the reinvention of the hill people, and
the construction of new imperial urban structures, sports and leisure
institutions, health resorts, and administrative infrastructures. This involved a
confrontation with the existing past of the hills, a pre-established mode of life,
and relationship to spaces. The study looks into this process of construction and
conflict through which the hill stations came to life. One can see a continuous
tension between binaries: leisure and work, development and picturesque,
natural Hygieia and diseases, enchantment and disenchantment. A range of
dimensions emerge in the development of the hill stations: how the hills figured
in the colonial imagination, that is, the social, cultural, political, strategic, and
ideological considerations; how hill spaces were reordered; why the question of
public health assumed importance; and why the municipalities sought to
institutionalize leisure and recreation. Despite differences and distinct roles in
the imperial scheme, the development trajectories of these hill stations also
converged. In this context, the study seeks to understand the complexity,
tensions, paradoxes, and ambivalence in the process of urbanization, issues of
health and sanitation, the social and cultural life of the Europeans, (p.xxv) the
perspective of the indigenes, and the patterns of growth that emerged in the
hills.
Page 8 of 10
Introduction
Notes
Notes:
(1.) ‘Sanitary Improvement of the Station of Ootacamund’, in Home
(Municipalities), Nos 32–6, April 1882, PWD, General No. 1772, from
Government of Madras, No. 287W, 1 February 1882, official noting in the Home
Department, from F.C.D. to the Secretary, 15 March 1882.
(2.) ‘Cost of Governor General’s Tour to Simla in April 1864’, in Home (Public),
Nos 41–7, Part A, 15 December 1864; Smith (1883: 471); and Towelle’s
Handbook and Guide (1880: 53).
(3.) ‘Cinchona Plantations at Kalimpong’, in General Department, A, Collection:

Settlement, 547R, 17–18 November 1897; ‘Resolution of Final Report on Survey
and Settlement of Kalimpong Government Estate in District of Darjeeling’, in
General Department, Collection: Settlement (Final Report of Kalimpong
Settlement), No. 9, 1904, 11 October 1905; ‘Grant of Lease of Boxley Location to
Mr Koetiz in Kurseong to Ascertain Rent’, in Collection II, No. 2, General
Department, 1904–5; ‘Abatement of Rent of Long View Tea-Estate’, in General
Department, Collection I, No. 1, 1904–5; and Memorandum No. 6785, District
Commissioner’s Office Records, Darjeeling, 23 August 1904.
(4.) ‘Sanitary Improvement of the Station of Ootacamund’.
(5.) ‘Annual Migration of Local Governments to the Hill Stations’, in Home

(Public), Part A, Nos 163–209, September 1889; and Price (1908: 40).
(6.) See Bradley (1985: 160) where Lady Curzon first mentions the ‘power
struggle’ between the viceroy and the commander-in-chief in a letter of 27 July
1905, addressed to her mother from the viceroy’s camp at Simla.
(7.) ‘Account of Hill Tribes of Neilgherries’; Francis (1984 [1908]: 4); and Molony
(1926: 45).
(8.) ‘Macnaghton, Secretary, Political Department in Indifferent Health’, in

Foreign (Political) Department, Nos 18–19, 27 September 1833.
(9.) See the Mount Abu lease agreement, September 1917.
(10.) Sirohee File No. 17, Vol. 1.P.5.A., 303.P., 11 July 1868.
(11.) ‘With Regard to the Chief Ship of Sirohi’, in Foreign (Political) Department,
No. 20, 27 September 1833; and ‘Devastation of the Sirohi Territory by the
Neighboring Rulers’, in Foreign (Political) Department, No. 17, 27 September
1833.
Page 9 of 10
Introduction
(12.) ‘With Regard to the Chief Ship of Sirohi’; and ‘Devastation of the Sirohi
Territory by the Neighboring Rulers’.
(p.xxvi) (13.) Landscapes and space have been widely studied in America and
Australia by Bender (1993), Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), Hirsch and O’Hanlon
(1995), and Mitchell (1994).
(14.) Cederlof and Sivaramakrishnan (2005), Gadgil and Guha (1997), Guha
(1991), Rangarajan (1996), and Skaria (1999), among many others, have
discussed at length the forest policies of the British Raj and the consequences
thereof. They also mention the alternative modes of conservation by the
indigenes.
Page 10 of 10
Hills in the Colonial Imagination

Queeny Pradhan

Print ISBN-13: 9780199463558
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.001.0001

Queeny Pradhan
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199463558.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the dreams and desires of the colonizers with regard to
the mountain spaces in the Himalayas, the Nilgiris, and the Aravallis. These hill
sites were appropriated as ‘mini England’ in the tropics and a similarity with
Europe and ‘home’ was constantly invoked thereby giving rise to a strong sense
of nostalgia and community solidarity among the English settlers. This chapter
argues that the landscape together with the labour force had been deployed in
facilitating social change. As a result of this, a specific pattern of culture is seen
to emerge in the buildings, and naming of the sites. While there was an attempt
to project a consensus within the ruling émigré community, there was also
tension. The notion that landscapes were integral to the creation, perpetuation,
and sustenance of social reproduction and cultural politics in the hills was
undermined, if not ignored, as the English attempted to ‘invent’ a history of
these places. Therefore, the questions that come to the fore are: Whose history
is represented in these spaces? What is preserved about these places?
Keywords: Visions, picturesque, military concerns, ‘home’, climate, Pax Britannica, proselytization,
liminal spaces, power of the gaze, specialized spaces
Far as the western spirit may range,

It finds but the travails of endless change.
—The Pioneer*
The arrival of the European settlers and Western capitalism produced far-
reaching changes in the hill topography of India. The British developed a large
number of hill stations. This studyconcentrates on the four hill stations of Simla
Page 1 of 25
in the northern Himalaya, which was a part of the British province of Punjab;
Darjeeling in the eastern Himalaya, which came under the Bengal Presidency;
Mount Abu situated in the west, which was under the Rajput state of Sirohi; and
Ootacamund in the south, which was part of the Madras Presidency. In the
process of redrawing the contours of these mountain stations, myriad images
come to life.
In this chapter, I focus on the multilayered visions of the Europeans about the
hills. Complex and, at times, paradoxical impressions are seen. We find widely
shared ‘aides-memoires’ of cultural knowledge of Europe, and in particular
England, imposed on Indian hill stations.1 Despite a commonly shared
experience, one discerns a discursive structure emerging in the colonial
imagination that expresses the economic, political, social, and cultural
aspirations of the white colonists with regard to Indian hills. A certain
ambivalence underlines such conflicting aspirations.
The British inscribed the Indian hill sites with their perceptions of mountains,
aesthetics, and landscape. Practical utility and aesthetics combined to reproduce
a European landscape as the English tried (p.2) to construct a model of the
English countryside and an urban metropolis—all unified in a single space of the
hills. In this duality, we find a constant interplay between the mundane everyday
life and the imaginary existence, united within the hill space but still separate
(Hirsch 1995: 3). Thus, in the construction of the colonial hill stations, the two
seemingly opposite viewpoints—the empirical and the aesthetic—were made to
be complementary. One mapped a blueprint for the other. That which is in the
background in terms of the potential of the place is created in the foreground in
the layout of the hill station through a hazy picture of what a colonial traveller
would like to see and his readers to share. The mall, the promenade, the church,
the window shops, the parks, the cottages, the bandstand, the walks—all conjure
up the image that lies in the background. In an alien habitat, ‘culture’ becomes a
map or a blueprint that outsiders, here the English, draw to familiarize
themselves with the hill surroundings (Bourdieu 1992: 2).
Hill Station: A Liminal Zone

The colonial settlers in the tropics had to ‘negotiate between two worlds: the
recently lost metropolitan home, and the uncoded Otherness of the
present’ (Bunn 1994: 138). The colonizers found the hills a transitional space or
a midpoint between the temperate metropolis and the tropical periphery that
toned down the extreme differences between the core and the periphery. In the
colonial imagination, this liminal stage helped the colonists to reduce a sense of
aloneness in their new surroundings. By this ‘metonymic displacement’ (a
representational technique in poetry), the home scenes surmount the actual hill
habitat (139). In this process, the landscape of memory operated alongside a
negotiation with the colonial surroundings. The metonymic displacement of one
landscape into another articulated a sense of affinity, which Europeans felt in the
Page 2 of 25
hill stations. For instance, Kurseong, a station before Darjeeling, corresponded

to Nice (in France) (Anonymous 1857: 196–226). The colonial landscape was
domesticated by associating it with familiar places in Europe.
A specific conception of time and place enabled the writers to blur the actual
landscape of the Indian hills, blot out the visible (p.3) contrasts, and visualize
the Indian landscape as a European one. Twilight, dawn, dust, and cloudiness
became conventional tools to disperse the stark contrast of an alien surrounding.
The blurred visibility acted as a smoke screen that allowed the eucalyptus trees
at Ooty to be displaced by memory into ‘Scotch firs’ (Civilian 1921: 171). Lady
Eden (1930: 146), too, found the Jakko hills of Simla more appealing to the eye
in the twilight zone, amidst a cloudy ambience:
A sea of pinkish white clouds rolling over them, and some of their purple
heads peering through like the islands…. The clouds drew up like the
curtains in massy fold every now and then, there were the valleys, grown
quite green … tinged with sunbeams … and the want of shape for which
the hills are to blame on common occasions was disguised by all the
vapoury dress.
One could read contrary voices in the quoted passage as all the Europeans were
not completely taken in by the discourse of the picturesque. The hills, thus,
became acceptable in a play of optical illusion. The English wanted to be at
home in an alien environment and these modes of appropriation aimed at
masking the artificiality of the European presence. Furthermore, this newly
created familiarization allowed the settlers to move about freely in the new area.
The colonizers’ home images strongly imprinted the local landscape. An

emotional language of involvement permeates the personal accounts to
construct a collective allegiance to a common cultural style. Avery (1878: 20–1)
resurrects an image of ‘mini-England’ in ‘the charming villas; and bungalows,
nestled in the most picturesque’ situations among the pretty and ‘well laid out
gardens’, which ‘gives a most pleasing foretaste of the pleasure in store.
Advancing along the broad Mall, past the bandstand, the sense of agreeable
surprise is enhanced … and more one sees of the station, the more does this
view become confirmed.’ The consumers of such narratives, that is, the English
readers were made to believe that the hills were ‘home’ devoid of any Indian
presence. In transposing an essentially European town (The Liddell’s Weekly
1913) onto the new territory, the colonial settlers had to bring a recognizable
conjunction ‘between the here and nowness’ (Carter quoted in (p.4) Hirsch and
O’Hanlon 1995: 3) and a background or horizon to which it could be related. In
the Civilian’s South India, the writer stresses such a claim over the space of Ooty
where ‘the very houses are bungalows in the sense known to the London house
agents; and the village and farms are built into terraces in the hillsides with the
air of Scottish Croft’ (1921: 172). The power of representation and the imperial
Page 3 of 25
ideals, as visualized in the mind, unfolds on the hill canvas. The émigré
community continuously attempted to bring in view their shared European
experience. J. Chartres Molony (1926: 44) observed that Ootacamund was
carefully planned with the vision of ‘home’ in mind: ‘Ootacamund is not a mere
assemblage of houses, stuck one by one like barnacles on the hill-sides. Imagine
Lambourn raised thousands of feet above sea-level, with the Berkshire Downs
stretching around and about it, and the picture is not unlike that of the modern
summer capital of the Madras government.’
The urge for England was strong among the British and in the Indian hills they
felt close to ‘home’. William Lloyd and Alexander Gerard (later lieutenant
general), among the early visitors to Simla, were transported to the days of their
childhood on their first sight, identifying fruits and trees common to the Indian
hills and the British metropolis (see Figure 1.1). The following passage is imbued
with a whiff of nostalgia, whereby hills become landscapes of memory:
This day’s journey I shall always remember, for it reminded me of home,

the days of my boyhood, my mother and the happiest of varied
recollection…. I recognized a great number of trees and flowers common
there; such as the fir, the oak, the apricot, the pear, the cherry, together
with wild roses, raspberries, strawberries, thistle dandelions, nettles,
daisies and many others. There was, too, an indescribable something in the
breeze, which brought back a comparative similarity of feeling. (Lloyd and
Gerard 1840: 141)
The ‘Otherness’ of the ‘Orient’

is made familiar by encoding it
into the cultural index of
Europe. Lady Eden (1930: 125)
becomes nostalgic at the sight
of the ‘red rhododendron trees
in bloom in every direction’ in
Simla, cut on all the sides of the
hills, along ‘beautiful walks like
English shrubbery’. Thomas
Munro likened the (p.5)
‘numberless green knolls of
every shape and size’ of Figure 1.1 Captain Gerard, among the
Ootacamund to the smooth early travellers to Simla, carefully
lawns of English parks (Price constructed the route, familiarizing the
1908: 37–8). Europeans to the distant places in the
colony
The climate also evoked
reveries of the metropolis. An unknown writer felt that ‘when Darjeeling is
reached, the European finds a climate in many respects like that of
Page 4 of 25
Europe’ (Anonymous 1857: Source: Digitized from a map constructed

201). Buck (1925 [1904]: 21) by W. Lloyd and A. Gerard (Lloyd and
wrote: ‘Just as in England a Gerard 1840).
cloudless day of delight follows
a week of mist and rain, so in
the Himalayas of the northern India, weeks of paradise follow months of
purgatory.’ The Loreto Sisters on reaching Darjeeling could not help
commenting on similar climatic conditions in Darjeeling and England: ‘Here in
Darjeeling the climate is rather like our own’ (Loreto Convent Records 1900–35).
It also reflects a strong sense of nostalgia and yearning for home. The cool,
temperate climes of the hill stations drew them close together in a shared,
familiar whiff of home-like ambience, away (p.6) from the heat of the Indian
plains that reminded them of the constant ‘hostile’ tropical environment with its
malignant diseases. For six months the urge to ‘flee back home’ reduced and the
stay in the tropics become bearable. Lady Eden (1930: 125) reasoned: ‘The
climate! No wonder I could not live down below! We never were allowed a scrap
of air to breathe—now I come back to the air again. I remember all about it. It is
a cool sort of stuff, refreshing, sweet, and apparently pleasant to the lungs.’ Ooty
was found to possess ‘a climate, which for mildly invigorating properties and
equable seasonal changes throughout the year is perhaps unrivalled within the
Tropics’.2 The climate was both a reminder of ‘home’ and the heat of the Indian
plains.
A sense of dominance and possession is discernible in the manner in which the

space was disengaged and re-engaged in different cultural settings. The
European community seemed to stake its claim to the belief that it had a right
and the resources to be away from home and yet be at home everywhere. Their
narratives represent the perception of a dominant class—the European elite who
acquired the hill spaces for themselves. Lloyd and Gerard (1840: 145) assert
such an appropriation of the landscape: ‘Around us … grew hollies, wild mint,
ferns and many other plants of a northern climate. It was Europe, not Asia.’ This
kind of appropriation reassured the Europeans in an unknown habitat. The way
in which hill spaces were named and settled, such as Snowdon, Shrubbery,
Wenlock, and Annandale, suggests such linkages. The names of the imperial
settlers such as Elysium Hill, after the sisters of Governor General Lord
Auckland,3 were forcefully superimposed upon the topography of the hills as
political landmarks of the European presence. The British marked their presence
on the hill surface definitively. The place names record the actions of the early
nineteenth century official explorers and the prominent politico-historical
colonial figures who ‘opened’ out the hill stations for European expansion. The
imperial rulers ensured that their memory continued to remain in the land. Lord
Combermere,4 William Bentinck5 (Bentinck Castle, Simla), Sir Trevor6 (Trevor
Tank, Mount Abu), Sir Wenlock7 (Wenlock Downs, Ootacamund), and Sir Ashley
Eden8 (Eden Sanatorium, Darjeeling) were some of the leading imperial
Page 5 of 25
representatives who governed these places and played important roles in

spreading the (p.7) imperial hegemony. Rudyard Kipling, an English writer who
stirred the imagination of the colonists with the adventurous escapades of Kim
and his stories in The Jungle Book (1894) and The Plain Tales from the Hills
(1964 [1933]), was often quoted by European colonists, by recalling the action of
his character at a particular place in the hills. For instance, as quoted in the
Statesman on 28 May 1916: ‘The Hindustan-Tibet road was remembered for Kim
and his “beloved Lama” who “made their way to the inner mountains by the very
road”.’
Despite all the glowing accounts, reservations about the colonial habitat
remained among the English. The British could not accept the hill prospect
completely. Even while accepting that the Himalaya on the side of Darjeeling
commanded the grandest known landscape of snowy mountains, Hooker (1852:
122–3) still felt that it paled in front of the Swiss Alps which ‘[t]hough barely
possessing half the sublimity, extent, or height of the Himalayas, are yet far
more beautiful.’ The long snowline of the Himalaya restricted viewing, which
was a must for a colonial state. The lofty heights, the snowy landscape, and the
dense forests impeded the excursiveness of the eye, essential for assimilation
and surveillance of the hill prospect. The power of gaze becomes crucial in this
appropriation (122–3).
The Search for the Picturesque

For an increasingly jaded urban audience, the Indian landscape, in particular the
mountainous landscape, came to be perceived as repositories of romantic
subject matter. Clearly, this revaluation is linked to ‘the degradation of
experience in metropolitan centers, the expansion of capitalism towards
accumulation on a world scale, and the consequent displacement of the country-
city dichotomy onto the world geography’ (Bunn 1994: 129). Industrialized
England, with its steaming chimneys, unhygienic hutments, and monotonous
similarity of capitalist assembly-line products affected the sensibilities of the
romantics. In the Indian hill landscape, with its diversity of vegetation and
variety of hill people, many Europeans sought a land of Goshen, an Eden of
Adam and Eve, of fairies, elves, and wood nymphs. An Englishman using only (p.
8) the initials ‘NMT’ claimed to have found such a romantic, idyllic site in the
hills:
In these hills of India … you may still find that lost ‘paradise’ and regain
some of the enchantment of that ancient yet ever young world, where the
people are children and where you feel that fawes [sic] and elves and even
a satyr or two may be round the next corner! … Here … the gods of nature
still reign and are worshipped.9
The colonial landscape, as discernible from the above quote, often provided
dramatic or romantic contexts for individual explorers. Such yearning for a pre-
Page 6 of 25
industrial landscape in the hills was not a simple cause-and-effect phenomenon

increasingly tied to the world capitalist force, but a complex articulation of
discursive needs. The economic, political, and cultural forces at work had a
relatively autonomous and disparate existence associated with the emergence of
the colonial state.
Few English settlers were also influenced by the rustic countryside tradition in
vogue in Europe of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. The
form and nomenclature of the cottages conformed to the images of an English
countryside. In the following description, through the assertion of a controlled
personal vision, the writer involves the readers (the colonial European settlers,
in particular), in ordering a scene known to Europeans. A writer with the
pseudonym ‘Civilian’, orders the features of Ootacamund’s landscape into that of
the English countryside. Dodabetta’s round ‘green hog’s back’ look ‘with a
crescent fir wood running up one side’ seemed to the writer to belong to the
Pentlands or the Ochils (Civilian 1921: 171–2). The road from Coonoor to
Ootacamund seemed like Cromdale. He delineated one end of Ootacamund to be
‘like Dunkeld or the Pass of Killiecrankie’ and ‘the other where hunting is done’
to be like the Braids or the Downs of the English Coast (172). The settler
colonists sought a specific ‘countrified landscape’ in the hills alongside
metropolitan comforts and amusements, but minus the ugliness and
disadvantages of the imperial city.
The landscape, thus, in this context also became a medium for expressing values
and sentiments, mediating between the cultural and the natural. It implied a
selective representation of a landscape (p.9) with a predilection for an agrarian
tableau. At times, this specific outlook voiced the perceived potential of
agriculture for the economy of a colonial state, imprinting fundamental
configurations upon the reader’s mind. The landscape described by Sir Thomas
Munro thus becomes a prospect full of political nuances. The representation of
nature was interspersed with a distinct bias in favour of agrarian society in his
description of Ootacamund:
It has no ground, but is composed of an assemblage of hills green to the

summit with narrow winding valleys. The sides of the hills are at present
covered with a purple flower … which make them look as if they were
covered with heath. A few hamlets inhabited by the Bargaras, an
agricultural race, are scattered on the face of the hills…. The cultivated
fields, running upon the face of some of these hills to the very top, have a
beautiful effect. (Price 1908: 37–8)
At the same time, the countrified vision combined spectatorship of nature and
urban entertainment to cater to the expansive capitalistic need for
commodification. Commodified nature was part of that metropolitan circuit
which fetishized the rural prospect by constant representation. A structure of
Page 7 of 25
spectatorship linked to a rustic tradition in vogue in the nineteenth-century

culture of London influenced Lord Lytton’s description of an Ootacamund
afternoon: ‘The afternoon was rainy, and the road muddy, but such beautiful
English rain, such delicious English mud. Imagine Hertfordshire Lanes,
Devonshire Downs, Westmoreland Lakes, Scotch trout streams and the
Lusitanian views’ (Price 1908: 63).
The initial appeal of the rural scenery was that it reminded the spectator of an
English landscape picture. This appreciation took a self-conscious hold in the
English context in the eighteenth century (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995: 2). The
idea or imagined world as depicted in the various genres of landscape painting
was linked to the perception of the countryside. However, in the colonial context,
the imperial authorities and the colonial settlers strove to modify and ‘improve’
the natural landscape of the hills according to their criteria and yardsticks. This
tendency is reflected in the way Western notions regarding society and culture
were applied to the domains of social and cultural life of the British in the hill
stations, in which the rulers united town and country—otherwise (p.10) seen as
mutually exclusive—in a single space. This could be made possible only by a
colonial state of affairs, which addressed those social constituencies (the
dominant European elite) who not only had the economic resources and leisure
to make trips to hill stations, but also identified closely with the imperial centre.
There is, furthermore, a relationship between an ordinary, enervatingly hot
workday life in the Indian plains and an ideal, imagined existence, vaguely
connected to but still separate from that of the everyday. The former comprising
the plains is the foreground actuality of colonial life and the latter is the
background potentiality, which the rulers sought in the hills. Donaldson (1900:
37) seemed to perceive such a connection: ‘Those only who have lived for years
in an enervating climate in the plains can appreciate the peculiar pleasure
experienced in the pure bracing air, the mountain scenery, novel surroundings,
and that free out-door life of the inhabitants in which we intended to share as far
as English characteristics and the necessities of civilization would allow.’
What emerges from the representation of the countrified outlook is a form of

picturesque landscape that helps to locate the colonial self in its new context
(Bunn 1994: 140). The picturesque paradigm (see Figure 1.2) dwells at length
upon ‘nature’ as an object of appraisal and sightseeing. This had two aspects.
First, the literate class, viewing it as an outsider, detaches nature from its
surroundings, cleaving it from human meaning or significance. (p.11) Second,
nature sightseeing could be seen as a form of symbolic capitalism, with the
emphasis on where to go and what to do (Green quoted in Hirsch and O’Hanlon
1995: 36). In that respect, picturesque representation makes the hill landscape a
marketable commodity. An attempt is made to transcend the homogenized and
depersonalized nature of capitalism in an appreciation of variety in the hill
landscape. An unexpected variation in Simla’s panorama delights an English
army officer, Major General Newall (1882: 104): ‘Who that has visited Simla can
Page 8 of 25
forget its pine covered hills and cultured valleys, gleaning away far below the
mountain sides into the misty “straths” and the purple glens and gorges; its
flush of rhododendron forests and gorges of oak and ilex, its wild flowers and
breezy ridge, haunts of the chikor.’
Avery (1878: 21) finds similar

variety in Darjeeling, which
possesses ‘scenery more
sublime, more stupendous,
more charming, more varied’.
In the European perception,

threat of violence, inevitable in Figure 1.2 A countrified and agrarian
any process of colonization, is landscape appealed to the picturesque
reflected in the picturesque sensibilities in the pencil sketches of
aesthetic of the sublime. Newall
According to W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘a Source: Newall (1882).
predatory view of the landscape
is stylized in the sublime to
conceal the imperial artifice of violence and repression’ (1994: 16). A sense of
lurking violence in the natural landscape is highlighted as one of the strategies
by which certain conventions of landscape are forcibly naturalized to erase the
signs of the colonial settlers’ own destructive activity (16). The ideal colonial
spectator of the landscape, significant in the aesthetics of the picturesque
discourse in the colony, is grounded in the visual field of violence (hunting, war,
and surveillance) (16).10 The predatory instinct prevails in the use of semantics
like ‘stealing’ and ‘shadows of night’ applied by Newall (1882: 104) in his explicit
description of the Darjeeling panorama:
Who that has witnessed ‘Kanchinjinga’, its peaks lighted up by the sinking
sun, whilst the gray shadows of night are stealing over the lower
mountains can ever forget a sight almost unique in the world! … The grand
river scenery impending over the bright flashing tributaries from the
western watershed, with the deep green flood of the Teesta—semi-tropical
foliage clothed its margins and lateral glens—certainly presents glorious
objects of admiration to the lover of picturesque.
(p.12)
The picturesque discourse attempts to overcome all contradictions in conquering
the hills by incorporating a ‘progressive Whiggish narrative’ (Mitchell 1994: 19)
of science, reason, and naturalistic discourse in their textual representations.
The hills are treated as a spatial region that was to be ‘opened’, ‘discovered’,
and ‘constructed’ as an object of scientific and artistic representation. The
imperial vision placed the hill landscape in a dialectical movement from the
‘wild’ to the ‘civilized’ and ‘progressive’, thereby revealing a unilinear approach
Page 9 of 25
in European thought. The historical and the temporal movement of colonization

is slotted in an evolutionary paradigm via the mediation of the picturesque
semiotics. The Darjeeling gazetteer presents such a point of view, intermingled
with picturesque overtones, ‘Natural beauty of the woods situated on the Birch
Hill—wealth of vegetation, shady walks and old moss covered and creeper bound
trees—show what Darjeeling was like when it was first discovered’ (O’Malley
1907: 187). It deprives the hill of its immediate past mediated by the ‘native’
human presence. The picturesque was theorized initially as ‘passive’ and bound
by rules for viewing. Subsequently, the picturesque emerged as an ‘active’ field
of activity, operated by the powerful colonists. Edwin Arnold (1886: 301)
displaced the hill space from its Indian context and locates it in the convention
of Western landscape painting. He revels in the experience beyond the everyday
existence of colonial life, which further alienates the hill station from its tropical
moorings: ‘The rising sun shone mildly upon the sea of white clouds laid near
and far upon the face of the lower country, through which black mountain
summit here and there lifted itself precisely like an island from the Ocean.’
A melodramatic magical experience was recreated in transforming landscape

imagery. Thomas Munro underlined the dramatic effect and a sense of surprise
and anticipation in his description of Ootacamund: ‘The face of the country is
covered with the finest verdure … and there is hardly one of them which have
not on one side or other, a mass of dark wood shola terminating suddenly as if it
has been planted’ (Price 1908: 37–8). Avery (1878: 21) wrote that the ‘cloud-
capped tower, the gorgeous palaces, calm, cold, stately and grand, compose a
scene forever ineffaceable from the memory; no (p.13) pen can ever depicture
[sic] its awful solemnity’. This was an exotic and out-of-this-world projection.
At times the picturesque landscape articulated the glorification of the colonial

self. In this endeavour, the picturesque discourse, the colonial presence, and the
romantic imaginations combined. A sense of mystique and the felicity of divine
nature that were so often invoked by ‘the romantics’ in India were influenced by
William Jones: nature was perceived to be imbued with the power of the
omniscient spirit (Drew 1987: 59–60). This influence shows in Leopold von
Orlich’s (1845: 195) description of a picture-like spectacle with divine magical
qualities in the hills: ‘In no other country in the world does it diffuse such an
indescribable magic, and such splendour of colour as in India. The little clouds
beam like rubies, and the east glitters in a roseate hue from the reflections of
the evening red, above which the snowy masses of the Himalayas rise in the
silver light.’ Jones was of the opinion that the mysticism of India was acquired by
the power of nature. In Jones’s perception, the key to understanding India lay in
unravelling this mystery for the success of the colonial enterprise and this the
rulers attempted to master by indexing the various aspects of the ‘new
prospect’ (the hill terrain) through a combination of empirical representation
and the picturesque mode of interpretation. There is a reflection on the
Page 10 of 25
combined influence of the picturesque, the romantic, and the powerful in the
following extract:
Abrupt slopes, deep ravines, cleared patches and mountain streams,

encircled by the lofty mountains make up a picture which, when lit up by
the rays of the rising sun, can have if any rivals. Both are calculated to stir
the poet’s muse, or to inspire the artist with a desire to give in mimic form,
the great realities of nature nor will the ordinary mind be unimpressed
with the greatness, wisdom and benevolence of Him who made the whole.
(Anonymous 1857: 204–5)
Crucial to the picturesque enterprise is the metaphor of an unimpeded excursion

of the eye, thereby the power of the gaze. It consists in quickly scanning the
landscape features, organizing with serendipity the objects into a preconceived
structure and conventions. A traveller, like a landscape painter, locates himself
(p.14) outside the actual foreground of the hill surroundings and paints a
scenario of freedom and bold prospects. The enquiring colonist objectively
appraised the hill habitat, unhindered. The colonial settlers resorted to the
vision of the beautiful to relate to the alien prospect. The following extract from
Darjeeling Ditties and Other Poems contrasts a frozen passiveness with the
unimpeded power of gaze, which exults in the freedom of the eye’s
excursiveness to conquer the mountain space:
Scan the vista, day by day;

Nature’s glories here survey …
View, as far as eye can see,
Height and depth, and cloudland free.
Mighty mountains, hooded white,
Rise in front, and add delight,
Here perambulate, recline,
Heath the snow pure crystalline,
… High around great forest range,
O’er the peaks that never change.
Snows eternal, heavenward climb,
Towering … grand, sublime.
(Keble 1908: 13)
Surveillance, prospects, pristine, devoid of human presence, unchangingly

passive—the writer conjures up a spatial history of the hills, denying the hills
any past except a timeless one (see Figure 1.3).
Page 11 of 25
Thus, the picturesque landscape

and the power of the gaze were
tied together in the carving up
of a political discourse. The
representation of the
topography of a colonial frontier
had to be carefully plotted
because of the aspect of sight
and surveillance. Rendering
things visible is an essential Figure 1.3 A photograph of the Ooty
requirement for administrative landscape, 1870
control by the colonial state. Source: Francis (1984 [1908]).
The boundlessness of nature is
brought under visual control.
Yet nature’s vastness could not match the all-encompassing gaze of the colonist.
For men of reason and imagination, the prospect became an all-conquering
phenomenon that transcended all barriers. Lloyd and Gerard (1840: 147–8)
wrote:
The sky appeared an enormous dome of the richest mossy sapphire,

overhanging the lofty pinnacles of the Himalayas, which were of (p.15)
indescribable deep hues and strangely fantastic forms. At length five vast
beaming shadows sprung upwards from five high peaks, as though the
giant day had grasped the mighty barrier to raise himself … and soon the
glorious orb arose with binding splendour over the Yoosoo Pass and
assumed the appearance of a god-like eye.
This new way of looking reorganized the hill landscape into the foreground,
distance, and background, divided into the outside and inside views,
institutionalizing rank and class consciousness. The imperial eye mapped out
distance and position in the construction of the hill stations that lends strategic
social control over the hill landscape through the medium of vision. In this
context, the colonial eye becomes an excursive self, which acquires the
omniscience of the divinity for its own self. An invisible eye becomes a symbol of
the colonial state’s panopticon positioned atop the mountain ranges, which
surveys the whole area unseen. The highest point of all the hill stations was
remoulded into the panopticon space from where the imperial eye could look
unseen into the hill station. The power of the gaze is revealed as more pervasive
than actual domination and repression. The panopticon point in the hills focuses
on the visual power in its nomenclature—‘Observatory Hill’. The European
settlers recoiled at the proximity of the Indians. The (p.16) distance thus
becomes critical to the European settlers threatened by the proximity of the
indigenes of the plains from which they recoiled. The hill stations had to be
based on the idea of distance and many of the imperial narratives stressed this
Page 12 of 25
aspect. A Bengal civilian, John Beames (1984: 167), expressed this point of view
in his text:
All around was a view unparalleled in the world. Far below us the steep
mountain slopes sank away through many gradations of colour, from rich,
mellow green to deep grays and violets in the dark, sunless gorges. Across
these narrow-winding valleys rose other hills, and beyond them others …
till, far off on the southern horizon, the eye dimly perceived Darjeeling on
its wooded crescent with cloud-capped Senchal towering behind it.
At Abu, the description of the ‘gigantic blocks of syenitic rocks, towering along
the crest of the hills’ (Dhoundiyal 1967: 7) draws attention to the strategic
placement of the eye. Words like ‘mighty’ and ‘gigantic’ articulate a landscape of
dominance and possession through the use of picturesque conventions. The
colonial eye constantly searched for a central vantage point from which a
synoptic view could be obtained. The distance and position thus naturalized
social and political hierarchies and protocol in the ingrained gradation of the hill
environment. In Simla, the viceroy and the commander-in-chief resided upon the
two highest points of the station (King 1976b: 171).
The Descriptive Landscape

If an emotional language of involvement defined the picturesque and the
romantic visions above, then an empirical and a detailed scientific observation
signified the descriptive language (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995: 11). This mode of
appropriation aimed at ‘an absolute positionality’ (17) of the colonial structure.
The descriptive language, also termed as the Cartesian view, stressed a dry,
narrative description. It was completely objective and rational in approach in
order to acquire knowledge about a particular place with a map-like clarity
shorn of all imagery and metaphor (16). (p.17) An eye for minute detail was
evident in the descriptions of the flora, fauna, and the other varieties of plants
which were placed in Carl Linne’s scientific system of nomenclature and
classification. The classification detached the plants from their local existence,
which was then ordered within a new Eurocentric system. The following passage
from the book titled Illustrations of Indian Botany or Figures Illustrative of Each
of the Natural Orders of Indian Plants Described in the Author’s Prodromus
Flora Peninsula Indiae Orientalis by Robert Wight, surgeon of the Madras
establishment,11 used the descriptive mode to introduce a sense of objectivism
in the quest for epistemological knowledge about southern India:
The descriptive portion of the work, it will be perceived is very full,

especially in the Botanical details more so indeed than was originally
intended. This course I have been in some measure forced to adopt, from
having in the course of the examination of the material required in the
composition of this division been unavoidably led to the conclusion, that
much of our ignorance of the more valuable vegetable productions of India,
Page 13 of 25
the arborious plants in particular, is attributable to the deficiency of

botanical knowledge among us, and that whatever tends to increase the
labour will equally enlarge our acquaintance with the former.12
The hill stations, as evident, were not appropriated by visions of beauty alone.
Hooker (1848: 159), while describing the beauty of the hills, simultaneously
presents an authentic knowledge of botany and the plants: ‘At Darjeeling, the
ripening of peaches follows the English seasons, flowering in March and fruiting
in September, when the scarce reddened and still hard fruit falls from the tree.
European vegetables again grow, and thrive remarkably well through out the
summer of Darjeeling, and the produce is very fair, sweet and good.’
The geographical–scientific technique was also actively used to aid the imperial
project. At times, a team of surveyors, men of science and medicine, did the
groundwork and prepared cartographic descriptions of the hills. In 1828, visiting
Chungtong to the west of Darjeeling, Captain G.A. Lloyd and Mr J.W. Grant, the
commercial resident of Malda, gave a generalized account ‘of the climate of the
Siccim country, and of the advantages which would attend the establishment of
the sanatorium or station of health at Darjeeling’ (p.18) (Herbert 1830: 89).
For more specialized details, Governor General Lord Bentinck deputed a
scientific officer, J.D. Herbert, to form a more correct appreciation of the
advantages. Herbert’s knowledge of the north-western Himalayan ranges
allowed him to compare the peculiarities of the new station (Darjeeling) with the
old ones (Simla). Herbert (1830: 89) builds his case by calculating the altitudes
of the hill sites:
That advantages of a residence at Darjeeling will be equally great as at the

northern stations of Simla, Landaur or Almorh, can admit, I imagine, of no
doubt. The elevation being within less than 300 feet of the former, must
give it a temperature at all times within one degree of Simla. The latitude
is certainly lower by three degrees….
Simla, Herbert (116) deduced, had nothing to defend it from the hot winds of the
plains, while Darjeeling, which faced north, was well screened by the Gardan
Katta range:
For the rising fogs and the exhalations of the plains will be checked in the
progress northwards by the cold air, which must always rest on the summit
of this mountain, while the winds will be turned off; so that if there be
anything deleterious in the air of the country at the foot of the hills, it
would be neutralized.
The descriptive mode also appropriated the hill landscape through the ethno-
medical perceptions of nineteenth-century Europe (Mitchell 1972: 1). The
Englishmen sent to survey the hill habitat used scientific language to describe
the advantages. Dr J.D. Hooker, on his visit to Darjeeling in 1848, wrote, ‘The hill
Page 14 of 25
station or sanitarium of Darjeeling owes its origin (like Simla, Mussoorie & Co.)
to the necessity that exists in India, of providing places where the health of
Europeans may be recruited [sic] by a more temperate climate’ (115). Lieutenant
Colonel Adams (1899: 34), a surgeon in the imperial medical service posted in
Rajputana for a long time, in his medical topographical account of Rajputana,
approved of the salubrity of Mount Abu as ‘[t]he temperature is cool and
pleasant, and there is none of the stifling damp heat of the plains; the climate
too is healthy at this season’.
(p.19) Landscape of the Future

The hill landscape simultaneously possessed the potential for variegated
developments. Descriptions of the hill stations by the early explorers expressed
their hope of what it might become. The visions of the future were promoted
both by the institutions of the state and individuals. Avery (1878: 12) conceived
the ‘prospects’ of the ‘new’ land of Darjeeling in terms of its economic potential:
‘The time may come when the wildest dreams of my sanguine friend Mr. Edgar,
may be fulfilled and we may see this line carrying the cotton goods, metals and
salts of Europe, and the indigo, tobacco and the tea of India to be exchanged
with the gold dust and wool of Thibet, and the silks of China.’
Darjeeling’s location amidst Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal, China, and Sikkim was ideal
for commerce and traffic across borders. The imperial settlers first felt that once
a road was constructed through the Sikkim country, alongside the easy
navigability of Teesta, the Bhutias of the Dharmaraja (the title of the ruler of
Bhutan) country would avail of this road to open traffic not only between
themselves and the inhabitants of Darjeeling but also between Bengal and
Chinese Tartary (Bayely 1838: 40) (see Figure 1.4).
Simultaneous with the

expansion of the European
political order into the hills,
capitalism was beginning to
expand its capacity to
reproduce itself on the wider
geographical space of a colony.
In Towelle’s Handbook and
Guide (1880: 39), this vision of
the hills as an economic
prospect is identified in the East
India Company’s anxiety to
divert the trade in pushum or
shawl wool of Chinese Tartary Figure 1.4 Darjeeling, marked as ‘X’ in
from Kashmir to their own the figure, was mapped out for its
territories by establishing a trading establishment at Kotgarh, near Simla. The
logic of capitalism required an ever-increasing connection of geographical
Page 15 of 25
spaces to facilitate the temporal economic potential as it is strategically

flow of commodities within located with regard to the frontier trade
larger consumer markets. To Source: Dozey (1989 [1922]).
tap the resources of
Ootacamund, Arnold (1886:
285) urged the need to ‘strive more and more to develop the boundless
resources of the country’. In this search for markets, imperial surveyor Mirams
(1924: 2) found Abu’s benefits to be ‘negligible’ ‘[f]rom [a] commercial point of
view....’
The colonial–capitalist enterprise generated another kind of imagery relating to

the objectification of land as commodity. In (p.20) this disengaged and
detached vision, land was disassociated from tradition and its past referent. The
hill landscape came to be viewed in a number of ways: cattle country, a pastoral
highland, agricultural land, and finally a tourist spot. The view of the cattle
landscape comes through in the impressions of early explorers like Captain J.D.
Herbert. About Darjeeling, Captain Herbert felt that ‘in no part of the world
were to be found such extensive tracts of superior pasturage, as proved by the
fine condition of the cattle not only in Sikkim, but in the British provinces to the
north-west’ (Herbert quoted in Bayley 1838: 39). Dr Chapman found Darjeeling
to be a forest where the cattle appeared to find plenty to eat and keep in good
condition (39). Herbert envisaged a ‘profitable scheme of sheep-farming’ in the
mountains by naturalizing the Tibetan sheep, which were considered ‘fully equal
to the best European’ (p.21) sheep and ‘the wool superior to the best
merinos’ (39). Reports of many early explorers invoked the imagery of a cattle
station. The sublime ‘southern Alps’, the picturesque lakes, the river valleys, and
the sheep-herding economy made it seem tailor-made for the imposition of the
European vision of the pastoral.
A pastoral vision would soon be exchanged for one with an agrarian or

plantation landscape. The survey reports of the imperial service men are
characterized by a dry description of the land, paying particular attention to the
nature of the soil and its agricultural potential. Two surveyors, Keys and
MacMahon, reached Ootacamund in 1812 to evaluate the terrain. Not much is
known about their evaluation.13 Later, a home department official enumerated
the economic possibilities open to the colonial settlers of Ootacamund. Various
ferns associated with tea and coffee plantations were also ‘discovered’. The blue
gum, acacia, poppy, berbery, and other valuable fibres and dyes were found.
Cinchona imported from outside grew with vigour. Hops were also cultivated.
The vast variety of ‘exotic floral plants’ and fruits and vegetables, such as
grapes, plums, apples, peaches, pears, oranges, strawberries, raspberries, and
wild gooseberry were ‘racy, full of flavour and grew well’.14 Captain G.P. Thomas,
a visitor to Simla, viewed it as a ‘vineland’ country, like Burgundy: ‘A good land,
a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of the valleys
and hills, a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a
Page 16 of 25
land of olive oil and honey…. A land whose stone are iron, out of whose hills thou
mayest dig brass’ (Buck 1925 [1904]: 15). An anonymous English writer echoed
similar sentiments about Darjeeling for ‘enterprising people’ with agricultural
tendencies, Darjeeling was a ‘territory with hope’ (Anonymous 1857: 224). The
colonial state could perceive in this a potential for revenue earning, and the
possibilities of permanent settlement. This is underlined by Molony (1926: 47)
who observed that ‘old officers of the Indian army, who had lost all touch with
the Homeland’ could pass their days in ‘the sweet half-English Nilgiri air’.
At times, the hills appeared to possess industrial and commercial possibilities.

The English accounts of the nineteenth century combined scientific–
geographical and economic descriptions. The locations that had some
geographical advantages were also marked (p.22) for commercial extraction.
Newall (1882: 109) mapped out industrial circles in the mountains: ‘We felt that
the plateau of Damsong and the bluffs of the Kalimpong ridge would form
appropriate depots or marts for commerce, should trade relations ever be
opened with Thibet. Here India-rubber, shellac and gypsum were naturally
available.’ A study of geology, enlistment, and classification of mineral resources
of industrial utility were also undertaken with this in mind. Buck considered the
eco-geology of Simla to be ‘very limited’ (Buck 1925 [1904]: 2). The Nilgiris
gazetteer identified at Ooty a great mass of foliated gneissose rock,
charnoockite, dykes of olevine-norites, laterite and quartz vein, ocherous clay,
and a small quantity of iron and kaolin (Francis 1984 [1908]: 10). Mount Abu
was mainly composed of greyish, large-grained granite, with distinct veins of
quartz, trap, green stone, gneiss, and schist. Fragments of mica, hard crystalline
limestone, fine specimens of rock crystals, and compact blue slate were also
found (Adams 1899: 17). The soil in Darjeeling was found to be stiff red or
yellow lair. Lime was found in the form of tuffa or travertine. The rock at
Darjeeling was identified as gneiss; slate occurred in great quantities, a supply
of pure and rich iron ore was found at Morung at the foothills. There was also
copper, manganese, and lime (Anonymous 1857: 205; Bayley 1838: 10). All these
would be found useful for undertaking construction works, which the
establishment of the civil stations entailed.
The British identified a military landscape by taking note of the martial

capabilities of some sections of the hill community. Colonel Tod mentioned the
convocation of the gods at Abu to regenerate the warrior castes of the Rajputs
(The Imperial Gazetteer of India 1908: 5). The Limboos and the Khamba Lepchas
of the Darjeeling hills were also seen displaying warrior mettle. The Khamba
Lepchas, immigrants from Tibet, were certified as a fighting race. The ruler of
Sikkim belonged to this branch of the Lepchas (Avery 1878: 72). The Limboos
and their successors, the Gorkhas, who dislodged the former with a lot of
difficulty from their stronghold in east Nepal, had already proved their fighting
capabilities to the British. Hooker described the Gorkhas to be equally brave and
cruel in battle. Unlike the Lepchas, the Gorkhas enlisted at Darjeeling and were
Page 17 of 25
also employed by the raja of Nepal in his army (Hooker (p.23) 1848: 137). Even
before Hooker’s observations of 1848, the British had sampled the fighting spirit
of the Gorkhas during the battle of Malown on 15 May 1815. The fortress of
Malown, the last Gorkha fortress on the border of British territories and Nepal,
was ‘stoutly defended’ by the Gorkha General, Ummer Singh Thappa, and the
officer commanding the fortress, Buckta Thappa. Both died defending the
fortress against the British army led by Sir David Ochterlony (Harrop 1925: 16;
Towelle’s Handbook and Guide 1880: 15). However, it gave the British a fresh
group of mercenary soldiers. Subsequently, Darjeeling emerged as an important
recruiting ground for the imperial army in the course of its development as a hill
station (Sen 1989: 61).
The hills also came to be perceived as a natural line of strategic defence. Major
Archer (1836: 210) opined: ‘As a bulwark to our possession in Hindoostan, the
hills are of infinite value, presenting a bold and natural line of defense, easily
maintained as the events of Goorcha War proved.’ Newall (1882: 60) devotes
some chapters of his work in discussing the hills as possible reserve circles or
landwehrs. In the late nineteenth century, Newall’s conception reflected the
anxieties of the Empire. After 1857, power passed to the British crown. To
safeguard the Europeans and their interests in the colony against internal
insurgency and external aggression, military strategists like Newall spent
considerable time in looking at possible military enclaves for the Europeans in
the hills. In the Simla hills, Newall suggested the formation of a second refuge in
the Keyonthal comprising Simla, Dagshai, Sabathu, Jutogh, and Kasauli. He felt
that this group of hill stations presented an aggregation of military posts
forming, in the main, an excellent strategic site, dominating the entire Cis–Sutlej
states and the north-west provinces beyond Trans-Jumna. He envisaged that
troops could easily rush to the plains of Delhi, even at the height of the rainy
season, without any delay due the ‘non-intervention of the troublesome
intersecting rivers or mountain-ridges.’
In Darjeeling, Newall (1882: 102) mapped out to the tiniest detail the
development of the reserve circles or landwehrs for safe evacuation from the
Indian plains in case of any unrest. He was convinced that with a few additional
reinforcements Darjeeling ‘could easily form a refuge for outlying settlers in
times of peril’. He wrote: ‘This (p.24) fine station [Darjeeling] would in the
event of rupture with Nepal form the refuge of the whole district’ (101). The
following passage suggests a realignment of hill space as a line of strategic
defence:
[B]y converging roads on our Frontier Post No. 17, from the Nepalese fort
of Elam … which is within 20 miles of Darjeeling … a hostile force might
be, in the course of one long moonlight night, thrown across our
communication with the plains via Kursiong etc. In view of the importance
of this position, I think that the garrison of Jullapahar (the burnt
Page 18 of 25
mountain), on which the barracks are situated, should be strengthened by

a few pieces of heavy ordinance etc., so as to enable a portion of the
garrison to take the field if necessary, and operate on ‘the line of least
resistance’ leading into our territory.
Pax Britannica
From the latter half of the nineteenth century, the hill stations emerged as
administrative seats of authority during the summer months. The formation of
the colonial hill station was conceived by J.W. Grant as ‘a good example’ of a
‘peaceably-conducted and well-governed station’ amidst ‘our turbulent
neighbours’ (Hooker 1848: 116). The British presented themselves as the
carriers of ‘peace’ and ‘progress’ in contrast to the ‘warring ways’ of the Indian
rulers. This is constantly reflected in their self-portrayals, the colonists
perceived their entry in the field of eastern Himalayan politics in the nineteenth
century as the ‘liberators’ of Sikkim from the shackles of the ‘bigoted and
warlike Hindus of Nepal’ (Risley 1973 [1894]: 111).
The question of power is directly related to the political dynamics of the hills.
The hill prospect was fashioned as a spectacle in the hands of the colonial state,
providing viewers with an experience of domination and possession. In their
political negotiations with the local rulers, the British displayed a similar
confidence. In the case of Simla and Darjeeling, the British encroachments
began from the very beginning of the Gorkha wars, 1814–16. In 1817, the British
placed the ruler of Sikkim back on the throne with a guarantee of his
sovereignty. However, the British took over some portion of the Sikkim territory
that included Darjeeling and consolidated their hold over Sikkim by the Treaty of
Titalya (Risley 1973 [1894]: iii). (p.25)
Arnold (1886: 285) brought into ‘view’ the hegemonic stance of the imperial
settlers: ‘I am personally convinced by the observation and inquiry that the roots
of our Raj—despite drawbacks and perils—were never so deeply struck into the
soil as at present…. India at large knows well that … she never has received
from Heaven a richer blessing than that of Pax Britannica.’ The foreground
actuality, signified by the colonial state, and the background potentiality of the
Pax Britannica were combined in the colonial hill stations to provide a
hegemonic grounding to the imperial vision. These images and visions provide a
stringing together of historical events with specific historical foci that reflect a
Eurocentric placement of the nineteenth-century British Empire—the coming of
the Romans, the Norman conquest, and the European settlement.
The geostrategic considerations were linked with the vision of Pax Britannica.
Darjeeling station was seen as necessary to ‘support’ and ‘protect’ Sikkim as a
buffer between Nepal and British territory. Newall’s concerns were voiced by
Risley (1973 [1894]: xv) who felt that Sikkim could not stand by itself ‘and if we
withdraw our support it must ultimately fall either to Thibet or to Nepal’. Such a
Page 19 of 25
prospect would threaten British possessions in India, the nearest one being
Darjeeling. Risley in the late nineteenth century apprehends that if the hold of
the British rulers relaxed, Sikkim would become the ‘Alsatia of Eastern
Himalaya, and such a state of things would react most formidably on the security
of life and property in the great European settlement of Darjeeling’ (xv). The
vision and polity combined to shape the imperial discourse. The colonial process
transformed the hill landscape to fit the imperial scheme of things.
The ideological framework of Pax Britannica was complemented by the vision of

the Christian missionaries. There were points of conjunction between the two.
The image of discipline, order, peace, progress, and belief in the white man’s
burden to civilize and acculturate the Palladian landscape was deeply ingrained
in the colonists’ mentality. There is, however, an inherent ambiguity in the
imperial vision of Pax Britannica. The process of colonization in itself entailed
violent dispossession of the ‘natives’ of the colony and a suppression of local
identities. The European Christian missionaries formulated strong Christian
images and an ‘ameliorative’ vision, (p.26) mediated by the imperial
experience. The hill country in its ‘natural’ state was perceived as an ideal
ground for proselytization. An unknown writer in the Calcutta Review maps out
the field of activities:
Such a country, we believe, has been cast in our way for a far higher
purpose than that of securing health or recreation for [the] sick and weary.
As a field of Mission, Darjeeling territory should not be lost sight of by
those who are interested in the diffusion of Christianity in the East, and
especially on our northeastern frontiers. A determined effort should be
made to diffuse the knowledge of Christian faith over this wide and
interesting field. Here we have a country bordering on Thibet, and within a
month’s journey of Lhassa, its capital, on one hand and other stretch away
to the very border of Burma and China, with Darjeeling, a most healthy
spot, as a center, from which the rays of Christianity and of civilization
might be sent forth to cheer and guide those who sit in darkness and in the
shadow of spiritual death. The door is wide open; who will enter in and
possess the land for Him, who is destined to be the lord of all? (Anonymous
1857: 225)
In Ootacamund, the British constantly referred to the endeavours of the first

Europeans, in the form of Syrian Christian missionaries, to bring the Nilgiris in
‘view’. In 1602, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Syrian Christians of the
Malabar Coast had dispatched a priest and a deacon to the Nilgiris to ‘search
back and bring into the fold certain Christians who were stated to be living in
the hills’ (Francis 1984 [1908]: 105). The mission mentioned in brief hill
communities like the Todas and the Badagas were living in the hills. This
Page 20 of 25
exercised the imaginations of the later colonists. In the process, the mission
provided a description of the routes to be taken to reach the Nilgiris (105).
Landscape of Space (Specialized Places)

An understanding of dystopia and utopia is relevant in this study. These are
contrasting categories—dystopia is diseased, unhealthy; utopia is ideal (Harvey
2000: 156–7). Imperial records continuously differentiate between the hills and
the tarai to justify their move to the hills. The tarai, a space of dystopia, was
termed an ‘unhealthy, malarial place’. Mountains were ‘naturally salubrious
Hygieia’ spaces. (p.27)
For the English settlers, the mountains were perceived to be everything that the
plains of India did not possess. The mountain spaces were the antitheses of
everything that the tropics implied to the British. A strong critique of the plains
is woven into the description of the mountains as natural health resorts. The
regenerative potential of the mountains underlined the limitations of the plains.
Herbert (1830: 89) emphasizes both the prejudices about the climate of the
orient and the images of indolence:
It is not so much the mere temperature of a mountain station (though that

is a great point), that renders it [Darjeeling] so delightful a retreat to the
debilitated Europeans, who for twenty years or more has suffered under
the fervours of an Indian sun. There is a lightness and buoyancy in the air
or rather in our spirits, in mountain regions, that to him, who has doled
away years in apathetic indolence, inevitably induced by the climate of the
plains, and particularly of Calcutta, feels like taking a new lease of life, or
rather like passing into the new and superior state of existence. Instead of
that listlessness in which we of the city of palaces pass our lives,
apparently insensible even to extraordinary stimuli, the dweller in the
mountains feels an energy and vigour, a power of exertion and a freshness
of feeling, which is not found in the plains.
The hill landscape was thus viewed as an abode of the Greek goddess Hygieia
and a natural sanatorium. This imagery of natural rejuvenating qualities was
reinforced by Major William Lloyd (Lloyd and Gerard 1840: 139) during the
course of his journey in the Himalaya in 1821, ‘The mountain air seemed to have
instilled ether into my veins, and I felt as if I could have bound headlong down
into the deepest glens or sprung nimbly up their abrupt side with daring ease.’
Sated with the vitiated industrial environment and the experiences of the
metropolis, the English found the hill landscapes to be ‘almost throughout pure,
clear, crisp and bracing’ (Eden 1930: 125). A colonial experience in the tropics
further heightened awareness about the hills as islands of health, ‘Nobody can
praise Ooty too much, or exaggerate the advantages to Madras of possessing
this island of Health’ (Arnold 1886: 295). The hill landscapes, in many ways,
were viewed to cauterize the fear that the Europeans had of the tropical climate.
Page 21 of 25
‘To the merely wearied or fever-stricken denizens of the Indian plains,’ Arnold
stressed (p.28) (295), ‘however, it must be like Paradise to climb to the lap of
the great Dodabetta, and drink in new life with every cool breeze...’. William
Lloyd rejoices at the life-giving properties of the hills the moment he steps in
Simla in 1822, ‘Delectable climate—clear, bracing, exhilarating air which
invigorates the body and makes [the] soul rejoice…. Life is no longer existence—
it is life!’ (Buck 1925 [1904]: 21).
The portrayal of the hills as health stations is not appropriated by emotional

language and dramatic presentations alone. The board of directors of the East
India Company appointed Dr Chapman to prepare observations, both scientific
and climatic, on Darjeeling. Scientific tools were instantly put to use to provide
an objective and rational view. Bayley (1838: 29), writing about Darjeeling,
quotes evidence from Dr Chapman’s weather register that he maintained
between December 1836 and May 1837: ‘The air was generally dry, and bracing,
imparting a feeling of increasing vigour, and desire to active exertion.’
A salubrious vision of the mountains enhanced the potency of the hill

surroundings as a marketable commodity in the form of ‘natural sanitaria
resorts’. A home department official in the 1860s observed a trend towards the
creation a of sanatorium, ‘No sooner were these hills discovered and their
eminent and other climatic advantages known, than the Europeans began to
establish sanitaria on the more extensive scale’.15 Jacquemont (1834: 226)
described Simla in June 1830 as ‘the resort of the rich, the idle and the invalids’
like Mont d’or and Bagneres. This imagery was consciously reified and
fetishized. Women and children displayed evidence of the healthy surroundings.
Hunter wrote: ‘I believe that children’s faces afford as good an index as any to
the healthfulness of a climate, and in no part of the world is there a more active,
rosy and bright young community, than at Darjeeling’ (O’Malley 1907: 119–20).
The easy reach of the hills in comparison to distant Europe, due to the poorly
developed communication between the metropolis and its colony throughout the
nineteenth century, led to a further crystallization of the image of the hills as
‘resorts’. Captain Peter Mundy focused on this particular imagery: ‘Invalids from
the plains resorted there [to Simla] and built houses instead of breaking up
establishments and sailing for the Cape of Good Hope with little (p.29) hope of
reaching it’ (Mundy quoted in Buck 1925 [1904]: 7). A diorama of its healthful
qualities was presented in the text. Darjeeling was viewed as the ‘only
sanitarium resort for Bengal and Behar, save broad blue sea, which weary and
jaded invalids of place can look for renewed health and reinvigorating
spirits’ (Anonymous 1857: 224).
The conception that a healthy constitution in the colonies could be sustained

only at higher elevations in the hills led to constant comparisons between the
terai, the lowlands immediately preceding the higher elevations, and the hill
Page 22 of 25
sites. O’Malley (1907: 53–4) compared the highlands of Darjeeling with the
country down below: ‘The district is composed of two portions, the Terai, a low
malarious belt skirting the base of the Himalaya, which is notoriously unhealthy,
and the hills, where the climate is wonderfully bracing.’
Landscape, in the final analysis, is constituted through a process that relates a

‘foreground’ everyday social life (us the way we are) constrained in the plains to
a ‘background’ potential social existence (us the way we might be) as mapped
out by the Europeans in the hills. The imperial policy-makers and European
settlers conveyed the impression that the British were always at ‘home’;
wherever they resided, they could always create a ‘home away from home’.
Avery (1878: 21) remarked, ‘Ye Englishe’ know how to make themselves
comfortable even in the Hills.’ Yet, the imperial baggage of contradictory visions,
which pulled in different directions, ultimately left asunder the illusion of
permanence that the imperial builders carefully crafted upon the landscape of
these mountain stations.
The point is that the landscape is not inert, but dynamic. It was appropriated
and reworked by the British in a variety of ways as seen above. The Englishmen
and women made an attempt to foreground an English way of life in the hills,
but this could only stay in the background, never attaining the desired outcome.
Actuality as the foreground and potentiality as the background, continually
counteract each other. As such, the everyday life of the Europeans, with their
efforts at replication and ritual re-enactment of (p.30) metropolitan society
could not attain the idealized perfection of a painting, leading to breakdown and
shaking their sense of complacency. This was realized by the Europeans
themselves by the turn of the nineteenth century. A writer conveys this irony
with wry humour, ‘But for the certain newness about the road-work and the
buildings [in Ooty] you might be almost anywhere between Leeds and
Pitlochry…. Yet the fact remains that you are only a little more than ten degrees
from the Equator, and very considerably south of the Sahara Desert and the Red
Sea (Civilian 1921: 172).
The tensions and contradictions enacted on a daily basis in the colonial urban
hill stations are visually captured. At one and the same time an uneasy
relationship between the foreground European hill enclave and the background
Indian surroundings appeared within a single representation. The meaning of
the word ‘landscape’ is reified from an artistic symbol to the concrete world
depicted in that symbol, defined by a given individual viewpoint. The
ambivalence of the European position in the colonial setting is revealed in the
conflicting visions—the aesthetic versus the empirical, the romantic versus the
economic, the picturesque versus the developmental—that would constantly
come up during the course of the expansion of the hill stations. The sense of
‘uniqueness’ of the European experience projected in the representations is
itself a contradiction. How could the hill environs be presented as unique places
Page 23 of 25
when the colonists transpose the European landscape conventions and visions
upon the new vistas? How could the colonists reconcile the need for difference
with a yearning for familiar places (Mitchell 1994: 21)? The idyllic, the natural,
and the picture-perfect imagery of the mountains clashed with colonial
imperatives.
Another trend discernible from the above discussions is that the hill landscapes
are often imagined as ‘natural paradise’ to be inculcated with ‘civilization’ and
‘culture’. A paradox emerges, the hill landscape is emptied of rival ‘native’
presence and their artifice. The techniques of landscape representation
developed in the European painting tradition since the seventeenth century gave
expression to the notion of inside and outside that were earlier less evident. This
perspective is tailor-made for the colonial discourse that positioned itself
precisely in the authoritative role of a ‘privileged’ outsider. At the same time, it
intensified the dichotomy between the (p.31) insider, that is, those who relate
directly to the land in the landscape itself as the memory, and the outsider, that
is, those who relate to it as a form of transaction, for whom the hills are the
landscape of memory for a distant metropolis. The colonist representing himself
as a viewer or a prospector transcends time and space, freeing the hill space
from its past tradition, such that it can be appropriated by a gaze which looks in
from the outside. As such it privileges vision over the other senses. This vision is
associated with a self-conscious way of seeing that was structured by the
European experience.
Notes:
(*) Quoted in ‘The Romance of Simla: Change That Has Taken Place in Forty
Years’, The Pioneer, 13 January 1925.
(1.) This observation is based on my reading of Kuchler (1993: 85–106).
(2.) Home (Public), 103–4 (A), 11 April 1868.
(3.) Governor General Lord Auckland visited Simla in 1838 along with his two
sisters Emily and Fanny.
(4.) Lord Combermere was the first commander-in-chief to Simla.
(5.) William Bentinck was the governor general of the East India Company in
India.
(6.) Sir Trevor was the agent to the governor general in Rajputana.
(7.) Sir Wenlock was the governor of Madras Presidency.
(8.) Sir Ashley Eden was the first lieutenant governor of Bengal Presidency.
(9.) As quoted in the Daily Chronicle on 6 June 1927.
Page 24 of 25
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Muikkais suuta morsialle,
Pian niinkun pilkan vuoksi,
Härnäten häjytapaista.
Haispa viinalta vähäsen
Häjyn neitosen nenähän. 75
Kohta koplasi kuvetta,
Tunsi lasin lakkarissa.
Tuosta sai tytölle tuska,
Alko pauhata pahemmin
Sulhaselle suutuksissa: 80
"Heitä lasi lattialle,
Heitä helvetin kovasti,
Heitä heti kappaliksi;
Osta uuri sen siahan,
Taskukello kelvollinen, 85
Kultavitjat ja komiat,
Että hohtais housun päällä,
Kiiltäis kirkon lattialla,
Se olis kaunista katella."
Wasta poika puolestansa 90
Alko vastata vakaasti,
Halki haastella asian;
Kovin kauan kuunteliki
Ihan ilman äänetönnä.
Sanopa ensisanoiksi: 95
"Sitte on sika nimeni,
Jos ma tänne toiste tullen,
Ehkä oli ensikerta,
Kun ma luonasi lepäsin,
Ompa varsin viimmenenki. 100
Kos et kuitenkan hävennyt
Haukkumasta hallin lailla!
Laita poies puolestasi,
Mitkä on minun omani
Avioksi aiottuna, 105
Liiton merkiksi minulta.
Kun ma luulin kunnollisen,
Saavan armahan avion,
Jonka kanssa kaunihisti
Woisin aikani asua 110
Aina asti vanhuutehen,
Suuren suomasta Jumalan,
Joka avion asetti."
Eipä enemmän puhunut

Poika sille puolisolle, 115
Kisko kihlansa takasin,
Jätti tytön tyhjillensä.
Tämä näin typerä tyttö

Outti miestä onnellista,
Lykyllistä lyylätteli; 120
Kun ei toista tullu'kana,
Joutu renkirehjanalle,
Juomarille heittiölle,
Saalihinsa tuhlajalle.
Warsin sarkavaattehetki 125
Häjyn kurkusta kurahti.
Eukko ylpiä ärisi

Julman juomarin tarvoille,
Ihan ensivuoellansa;
Jopa toissa toimitteli 130
Wiinatilkan viriästi
Ukon suuhun ja — omahan.
Tuli julma juoppoeukko,
Loppu äiältä ärinä.
Sitte kahen kallottelit, 135
Wuoron kuppinsa kumosit.
Ei se ukko elänytkän
Marsin kauan vaimon kanssa;
Pian kuoli kulkemasta,
Jätti eukkonsa elohon, 140
Jätti lapset lattialle,
Kaikki kylänkynnykselle,
Äiti ärmätin käsihin,
Jok'ei huolta huomenesta,
Pitänyt pientensä ylite, 145
Piti viinan vinkerästä.
Joka päiv' ol'juovuksissa,
Kanto kaikki vaattehensa,
Puumulinsa, silkkisensä,
Wiinan myöjälle visusti, 150
Weipä vielä kultahelmet,
Että pienen kirkkopeilin,
Tilkan eistä tiettämästi;
Kaikki suimi suuteksensa
Wiinassa ihan visuhun. 155
Wiina viekas se vetäpi
Waimorukan vaattehia,
Tuli loppu lappaminen,
Akkarukan appaminen.
Alko sitte akkurukka 160
Kuleksia kupparina,
Huusais huonoja hyviä,
Teki ämmät terveheksi.
Saihan sitte sarvillansa,
Hankki hameheittiöitä 165
Pahan paikan peitteheksi.
Joshan jollon suuruskouran
Anto akat palkastahan,
Jopa neki julma akka
Waihto viinaksi visusti, 170
Lapsiltansa lallutteli,
Suulta lasten surkioien,
Joita nälkä näännytteli.
Akkarukka allin lailla

Kohmelossa kuikutteli, 175
Kun ei einettä etehen
Ollut mitän ottamista,
Siinä harmista havahti
Kysyi ensin iteltänsä!
"Kuhun joutu koreuteni, 180
Mihen kauneus katosi?
Mik' oli nuorena minulla,
Kun se suuttu sulhopoika,
Kun ma vaatteita valitin,
Sanoin kulkeman sarassa, 185
Kehnosti kun kerjäläisen;
Itellenpä ennen sattu,
Sattu keskelle sanani."
Se sama sanottu vaimo
Neuo ensin neitosia, 190
Sano viisailla sanoilla:
"Ottakai minusta oppi,
Ettei sulhoista suloista
Piä sunkan suututella,
Ensikerran käyessähän, 195
Waikkapa vielä viinaltasi
Henki vähän haisahtaisi;
Ei se sieä sulhopoika
Joutavia jaaritella.
Jos on housut huonommatki, 200
Nuttu sarkanen selässä,
Hattu halpa ja matala,
Häränkoivet kurpposina;
Leip' on kuitenki leviä,
Pellot kanssa kasvamassa, 205
Toista tuomassa eloa.
Minä tieän miestä monta,
Koska on kotikylässä,
Jok' ol viinalle vihanen
Wielä nuorra naimatonna, 210
Ja nyt juopi julmemmasti;
Tieän myöski miestä monta,
Joka lassa lällutteli
Joka verassa viteli,
Uuri vyöllä kirkkotiellä; 215
Nyt on pellot piertamina,
Kaikki suossa suurusjauhot,
Petäjässä pellonsiemen,
Kaikki kauneus lamassa.
Wielä sanon viimmeseksi 220
Teille, naiset naitavaiset,
Ettei piikasten pitäisi
Kenokaulon kaahatella,
Käyä kirkon lattialla,
Etupenkkihin pöhätä; 225
Kaunis katotaan takoa,
Siviä selempätäki.
Ei myös peiliä pitäisi

Kahmaloissa kanniksella,
Siellä huivinne sisässä, 230
Mutta paljoa paremmin
Hengen peilistä pitäisi
Sielun virhiä sihata.
Riikinkukko se koria,
Kaula kaunis ja siliä, 235
Jalat rumat ja rupiset;
Hänen täytypi hävetä,
Eikö ihmisen enemmin
Pitäis häntänsä hävetä?"
Jälkimaine. Tässäki Rautalammin Ihalaisen tekemässä runossa on

kyllä varten olettavia neuoja tyttärillä, joista neuoista toki ei
tarvinnvekan minun pitemmältä kertoa. Näemmä värsyistä 59, 60 ja
v. 81—84 tytön viinanki ryyppäämisestä sulhoa soimanneen. Ei kyllä
haittaisikan mielestämme, tyttöin vähin varalla pitämän, etteivät
menisi juoppolalluille, vaan väärin tehty on kuitenki, siitä sulhoansa
haukkua, jos ryypyn ottaisiki. Haukkumalla tosiaanki ei saa häntä
tavastansa luopumaan, jos ei kaaneilla ja siviöillä puheilla vähitellen.
Paha kyllä on senlaiseen joutavaan tarpeeseen, kun paloviinan
nauttimiseen, itsensä totuttaa, mutta monenki miehen,
vanhempainsa ja omasta ymmärtämättömyydestä jo pojasta alkain
viinaa maistelemaan ruvettua, tulee se sitte vaikiaksi yhtäkkiä
heittää, vaikka kyllä näkeeki älyävämmällä iällänsä, siitä paljo
enemmän turmellusta, kun hyödytystä olevan. Sillä tosiaanki
paloviinasta ei ole mitänä hyödytystä ihmisellä, jos ei muutamissa
erinomasissa tiloissa, niinkun ylellisissä rasituksissa, kovassa vilussa
eli kuumuudessa, sateessa, usvassa ja sumussa, koska sitä
lääketten verostä vähä kerrallansa ja jollen kullon nautitaan.
Semmoisissaki tapauksissa on kuitenki hyvä olut paljo
virvottavaisempi ja terveellisempi.
Mutta mikä on se vähä hyöty paloviinasta niiden tu hansien

turmioin suhten, joita siitä lähtee niin erityiselle ihmiselle, kun koko
maalle ja koko ihmissuvustolle! Se polttaa ja koventaa sisällykset,
etteivät voi täydellisesti ruokia huvettaa, josta usein pitkälliset
reväsimet, muut vatsaviat ja kohtaukset saavat alkunsa, juontuu sitte
veren seassa keuhkohin, aivoon ja ympäri koko ruumiin, pilaa älyn,
mielen, muistin, voiman ja muun kunnon, turvottaa, pöhistää ja
vavistuttaa ihmisen, vähentää luonnollisen lämpimän ruumiissa,
syyttää moninaisia raskahimmia, ikuisia tauteja, heikkopäisyyden,
halvausvian, ampujan, kaaduttajan, ähkyvikoja, vesiahman,
luuvalon, vesipöhön ja muita pöhötauteja, turvottumisen, kelta- ja
keuhkutauteja, verisyljyn ynnä muita lukemattomia vikoja, joiden
viimmenen loppu on levoton omatunto ja kauhistuttava kuolema.
Sillä tavalla useinki turmelee palovina terveyden ihmiseltä, vaan

jos sitäkän ei aina silminnähtämästi tekisi, niin kuitenki aina
menettää ilon, onnen ja siunauksen perikunnissa, turmelee hyvät
tavat ja kauniit, siivolliset menot, tuhlaa arvaamattoman työajan ja
tavaran, saattaa monta miestä hyvättäki elolta maantielle. Myös on
verisillä tappeloilla, murhilla ja kaikenlaisilla pahatöillä tavallinen
alkunsa paloviinasta. Ei kymmennettä osaakan havata niistä ilman
paloviinatta tapahtuneen. — Joka sentähden tahtoo terveenä,
raittiina ja onnellisna elämänsä iltaan päästä, tekee hyvin, jos hän ei
koskaan ota palovinaa suuhunsa, vaan vieroo sitä kun muutaki
myrkkyä. Wielä vähin totuttuaki voipi ryyppäämisen tämän helposti
heittää, vaan viimmen muuttuu tapa tarpeeksi ja ihminen vapaasta,
mielitahtosesta olennosta paloviinan orjaksi. Waan jos siksi ei
muuttuisikan ryyppimisen tapa, niin jopa ilmanki viinaa
maistellessaan ihminen toisinaan tulee siitä runsaammasti
nautitsemaan, niin että juopuu. Waan juopuneenapa mies on mieltä
vailla ja voipi helposti yhtyä senlaisiinki seikkohin, joista saapi
ikuisen turmion nimellensä, arvollensa, elollensa ja kunniallensa,
taikka joutuu raskainten rangastuksen alaseksi. Paras on sentähden
ottaa korviin runoniekan opetus, joka sanoo:
"Jos nyt tahot tarkimmasti,

Osata oikein eleä,
Niin viero viina peräti,
Sekä karta karvojansa.
Ole viinalle vihanen,
Heitä pois lihan hekuma,
Tee jo kelpaava katumus
Armon aikana aiota!"
Parempi toki onki peräti välttää kiusausta, kun suotta sen kanssa
taistelemaan antauta. Muuten vaan viimmen ehkä myöhän taidat
toisen kuulusan runoniekan kanssa havata onnettomuutesi ja
valittaa:
"Wasta minä vanhoillani
Oivalsin tämän asian,
Kuinka kunnia menepi,
Alempi miehen armo,
Kaikki rakkaus katoopi
Entisiltä ystäviltä,
Miesi velkahan veäksen,
Joka ryyppeää rysyltä,
Wiinan viljassa eläpi,
Monet päivät pääksytysten,
Wiikkokauet vieretysten.
Maailman makia seura,

Tapa vanha tarttuvainen,
Jot' ei arvata alusta,
Saapi semmoiset vahingot.
Aivan on asian kanta

Sillä lailla, lapsukaiset;
Minä sen toeksi tieän,
Jok' olen itekki ollut
Taipuva tähän tapahan,
Saanut semmoiset vahingot:
Terveys on turmeltuna,
Kaikki rikkaus kaonna,
Arvoni alentununna;
Matti taskussa makaapi,
Tuskat turkkini povessa,
Ristit, vaivat rinnassani.
Wielä suututin sukuni,
Esivaltani vihotin;
Näytin ihteni olevan
Irvihampaille iloksi,
Hyvänsuoville suruksi."
Muutamin paikoin vähemmin tuttuja sanoja edellisessä

Naimarunossa taitavat olla v. 7. Keisti s.o. kensti, ylävä, ylpia, kopia.
v. 12. Hojotti; meni hopulla; isosti, eteensä katsomatta. v. 13. Lakois
(lakosi); meni lakoon, kaatu, lankesi. v. 17. Pöjötti; tunki itsensä
tuhmasti, mielettömästi. v. 40. Kutjuttelet; kävelet, kulet kehnosti. v.
73. Härnäten; suututellen, pilkaten, v. 76. Koplasi; siveli. v. 120.
Lyylätteli, toivoeli, lauleli tulevan. v. 146. Miinan minkerästä; hajusta,
nenään pistämästä hajusta, v. 203. Kurpposina; kenkinä, karvasina
kenkinä. v. 223. Kaahatella; keviä- mielisesti astua, liikkua, v. 225.
Pöhätä; yhtäkkiä pistäytä.
Matkakertoelma Hiiden linnaan.
(Muualla saatu).
Ammon olima kuulleet mainittaman Hiiden linnasta ja lukimaki

Gananderin Mythologiassa tästä asiasta, jotta voima päättää, tämän
muka jossaki Sotkamon ja Ristijärven kirkkokuntiin rajamailla
löytyvän. Kun ei tästä merkillisestä paikasta mitanä missiä tietty, eikä
kukaan häntä ollu nykyjään käyny kahtelemassa, niin tuumasimaki
asianalkain lähtiä hakemaan.
Jo alko pimittää kun, tiistaina 26:tena päivänä Hei- näkuuta v.

1836, kolmen miehen läksimä Kajanista astua teppomaan. Ilta oli
sateisen päivän perästä raitis, vaan kun myöhemmin alko kolkostua,
päättimä, keskiyön kostuttavalta unelta virkistäytäksemme, eräässä
torpassa muutaman tiiman levätä. Tultua kartanolle, eikä tahtoen
talonväkiä makiasta unestansa herättää, pöhkäsimä yliselle kussa,
lehtikerpuilla peittäytyneet. Unosen kalliita antimia nautitsima.
Aamulla, päivän kanssa liikkeellä, kulkima elävän Salmijärven
kylätse Jormualahden etelärannalle. Tämä lahti pistää, Oulujärven
koillisrannalta, penikourman pituudelta itään päin. Tässä nakkausima
heinämän ja korkian vaaran kupeella olevan ahon laialle
levähtämään. Yksi matkakumppaleista kiipesi korkeimmalle kukku-
lalle, josta hän palattua kerto nähneensä ison osan Oulujärvestä,
kaikkine saarine, niemine, lahtine ja ympärillä olevine taloine. Hyvin
oli häntä tämä näkö vaikuttanut. — Wä'hän edeskäsin käytyämme
tulima ihanaan Hillerin torppaan ja yhtä kaunoseen Loikkalaan,
Paltamon pilajätä, eteläpuolella Jormualahtia. Sihen aski olivat tiet
välttä'viä ja olimaki sinä päivänä kulkeneet 7 neljännestä. Wieläpä oli
mieli, ennen yötä, päästä 5 neljännestä eteenpäin, Paatinmäkeen
joka jo on Sotkamoa. Niinpä saattauttamaki veneeltä sormualahden
nenätse ja läksimä neuottua tietä astumaan, koilliseen päin. Woi
kuitenki näitä maailmoita kulettavia! — Terva- tynnyrien
vyöryttämällä sydänmaalta lahden rannalle, oli tie kulunu vyvälle
kuopalle, jossa sateella kokoutunu vesi jokena juoksi. Mehtäänkänä
ei kaatuneilta puilta ollu menemistä. Kuitenki, jos paljollaki vaivalla,
pujottausima tästä ja tulima, oikialta tieltä jo eksyttyä ja tiettömiäki
samottua, summia suunnan mukaan aivotulle yö sialle.
Loppumatkalla kasteli sadetki jo korvamme.
Syötyä, panima maata pirtinlattialla levitetylle vuoteelle. Aamulla

nostua, maksoma yösiasta ja ruuasta, minkä vähän soveliaksi
katsoma; sillä näillä seuduin eivät millonkaan määrää ruuan hintaa,
vaan heittävät matkustavaisen suosioon, paljastuvat jos vähänki
maksaa, ja välistä vaan pakkaamalla saapi heidät mitänä ottamaan.
Lähettyä liikkeelle, kulkima 6:den neljänneksen taipalen, kaunisten ja
lehteviin kunnasten ja mehtiin kautta, Härmämäkeen. Tällä
talottomalla taipalella sattu eteemmä sauna, jossa kotvan
lepäsimäki. Semmosia mehtäsaunoja laittaa tämän maan kansa
itselleen työpaikoille sydänmaassa, asuen niissä talvellaki
työaikansa niillä tienoin.— Wieläki on täällä omituisen somuudensa
vuoksi muistettava lampi. Pitkä ja kaitanen; puolikuun mukanen;
erinomasesti kirkas vesi, pohjan parin sylen syvyydestä näkyväksi;
kahen puolen korkiat, nousevat mäet tiheimmältä ja kauniimmalta
petäiköltä peitetyt, jossa tuskin hirreksi kelpaamatonta puuta olisit
löytänyt: — kaikki se anto tälle paikalle omituisen, kolianihanasti
vaikuttavan muodon.
Härmänmäessä, joka on Ristijärven rajataloja, haasto meille

emäntä eräästä Wenäläisestä, joka näitse sydänmaan taloitse
kulkien ja herraksi itsiänsä korottaen, miesten poikessa ollessa,
vaimoväeltä komentamalla ruokaa, kyytiä, passuuta ja muuta
senlaista oli narrannut. Tässäki sitä oli hyvin koettu palvella. Kuultua
jälempätä, tämän olleen ainoastaan talonpoika-rietan, joka, aivan
rahatonna ollen, niin konnallisesti koki matkansa perille päästä;
haasto hän meille hyvin vikevästi, ähmissään tästä hävyttömyydestä.
En ole ikänäni kuullu niin jäykkää ja jykeätä Suomen puhetta, joka
näytti oikeen ihmeteltävän voiman kauan sorretussa kielessämme
löytyvän. Lähti siilon pakinata: ei siinä sanoja puuttunut, eikä toinen
lause toistansa kauan vuottanut. Kun olisi käyttäny lyiyspännällä
muistoksi kirjoitaa mitä tässä, ei kiertelemällä, kun lyhyesti vaan
jykeästi käytettiin; niin olisi siitä ollu Suomen kielikäytökselle ja
sanakirjalle paljoki hyövykkiä.
Tästä lähettyä, tulima Eskolan taloon, Pyhännän kylässä, yöksi.

Siitä torstai aamulla ihanaan Liuskonniemen torppaan.
Tästä meni matkamme Hiisijokia ylöspäin, ja lähtimäki liikkeelle
noin kello 10. Päivä oli mitä kauniimpia. Aurinko paisto lämpimästi ja
lieviältä tuulelta vesikalmolle somasesti käyristetyt lainoset
läiskyttivät hiljasesti venettä vasten. — Entä vielä sitä
vaikuttavaisesti ihanaa Hiisijokia! — Kaitanen; monimutkasesti
suikerteleva; kahen puolen korkiat, heinävät niittytörmät, koristetut
kaikkinaisilta kesän kukkasilta ja yleensä istutetut ikivanhoilla
hyötökoivuila, jotka rannalta levittäen pensiät lehvänsä joen päälle,
varjosivat meitä auringon kuumilta säteiltä: — eikö siinä kerraksi
katsomista! — Niittymiehet, siellä täällä työssänsä, elähyttivät vielä
enemmän tämän ihastuttaman näkemän. Itse istuma veneessä,
soudetut kahdelta nuorukaisesti kukostavalta neitoselta vanhan
äitinsä kera. Heidän muoto ja silmät ennustivat kaunista ja puhdasta
sydäntä, ja se sulonen hymy huulillansa näytti, mitä koriat ja iloset
ympärystät ynnä onnellinen, jos köyhempiki elämä, olivat heiän
päälle vaikuttaneet. Istuessamme emmä voineet muuta kun
ihmehtellä tätä paradiisistä matkaa, joka, kolme neljännestä pitkä,
yhtäläisessä somuudessaan oli kuitenki alinomaa vaihehtelevainen.
Wieläki ilahtaa sydän tätä muistellessani ja, valkamaan tultua,
tarjosinki, kiitolliseksi muistoksi tästä ihanasta kulusta, kukkasen
kummalleki neiolle, jonka he, silmät siviästi alaalla ja niiaten, ottivat
vastaan. Niin erkanima toinen toiselle onnia toivottaen ja meidän
matkue astu siitä 3:men neljänneksen matkan Pekolan taloihen,
Hiisijärven kylässä.
Pekolan talot ovat länsipuolella Hiisijärviä. Tämä järvi, ennen

enemmin kun puoli penikuormaa pitkä ja leviä, laskettiin talonpoijilta
v. 1701 ison tulvan keväillä ollessa ja kymmenisen sylen pitusen
hietaharjun läpikaivamalla. Wielä puhuvat vanhat miehet kuulleensa,
tämän juoksemaan päässeen vesijoukon kauhialla räiskeellä metsän
läpi itsellensä tien uurtaneen ja talonki hävittäneen. Oli ennenki
juossu pienonen puro Tuomaanjärvestä tulevaan jokeen, vaan nyt
meni vesi omia teitänsä. Tästä työstä onki Hiisijärveläisille
mahottomat hyvät niittynsä syntyneet. Nyt on järvi tuskin enempää
kun neljännestä pitkä ja leviä. Mikä ennen järven pohjana, oli nyt
niittynä eli 75 vuotiassa koivistona. Länsipuolella oli kuitenki tuulelta
ajeltava hieno hiekka semmosen aian pysyny ruohottumatonna ja
metittymätönnä. Sillä hiekka muuttaupi, pölisten tuulella, ja kinostaa
millon mihinki kuni lumi talvipyryllä, peittäen niin jokainuan nousevan
piikin. Kaukaa katsoen tätä lavialta vaalattavata paikkaa, luulin
ensiste vaahtevaksi koskeksi. Santa on erinomasesti hieno ja
luulisimaki sen lasiteoksi käyttävän.
Pekolan taloissa kuulima Hiien linnan olevan kaksi neljännestä

tästä etelään päin, Sotkamon, Paltamon ja Hyrynsalmen pitäjäin
yhteisillä rajamailla, vaan paraite kuitenki Sotkamoon kuuluva.
Sanovatki miehet joskus näillä paikoilla käyneensä. Nyt havahtimaki,
tehneemmä Paakinmäeltä laskien, parin penikuorman mutkan ja
kulkeneemmä vempelen. Sotkamon kirkolta olisi Hiiden linnalle ollu
tuskin kolme penikuormaa, ja matkamme siis sen kautta kaikkia
lyhyin.
Oli lauantai ja 30:nes päivä Heinäkuuta, kun noin kello 9 e.p.

läksimä, Pekolan vanha ukko oppaaksi saatua, Hiidenlinnalle
astumaan. Ilma oli lämmin, vaan liikkeelle lähettyä alko jo ankarasti
sataa. Kulkima ensistä neljänneksen verran tihiätä ja tietöntä
viiakkoa, kastuen siellä jo pahanpäimäseksi sekä sateelta että
märällä metsältäki. Siellä kotvan telmettyä ja montaki mutkaa tehtyä,
tulima viimmen suon-rannalle. Waan nyt vasta vaivat alkavat! Liejuun
ja vetiseen suohon upposima joka askelelta melkeen polvia myöten.
Soita ja korpia kauan rämmittyä, tuskissamme jo kysäsimäki
oppaalta, eikö paikka lähestyne. Hän vastasi, ei kaukana olevan, ja
viittasi muutamalle suunnalle. Waan mitä siellä ja täällä olevista
puista saattoma merkitä,[4] vei hän meidät välistä yhdelle, välistä
toiselle suunnalle. Niinpä jo penkoen ukon eksyneen, kysymä
useenki häneltä matkasta, vaan saima aina samanlaiset vastaukset.
Jo olima moniaita tiimoja, sateen yhä pitkittäessä, kahlanneet
suossa polvia myöten. Wiimmen tuskausi ukko, tunnusti
eksyneensä, heittäysi puhumattomaksi, ja tässä työssä auttoki häntä
eräs matkakumpaleista, joka, sanankana virkkamatta, alakulossa
vääntäysi jälessä muien, hien otsasta tippuessa ja muutonki
märkänä kun kuikka. Toiset koimma kuitenki, ehkä yhtä märät ja
väsyneet, vaivat leikiksi muuttain, ilosempana pysyä.
Astuessa näkiniä monessaki paikassa merkkiä kontion elelemästä

näillä seuduin: välistä kololle syötyjä eli suomittuja muuriaispesiä,
välistä silpottuja kantoja ja puupökkelöitä; useen vereksiäki, suohon
painuneita jälkiä. Aina kun jälet tapasima sano ukko vakasella ja
juhlallisella äänellä: "tuostai on mehtolainen juosta jolkutellut." —
Wiimmen, sinne tänne sikseen väsyneeksi käytyämme, havahtima
ihmisen jälet suossa, jotka tarkemmin tutkittua, omiksemma tunsima.
Kohta tulimaki samalle paikalle, josta, tiimoja sitte, olima suolle
laskeuneet. Nyt olivat jo voimamme melkeen vähissä. Kuitenki piti,
uuelleen yritettyä, panna viimesensäki; ja otettua tarkemmat
suuntamerkit, tulimaki tällä kerralla suoraan linnalle, noin kello 5 j.p.
—
Niin olima nyt levähtämätä 8 tiimaa semmoisia maita rämpineet!

Muullon ei ollu meillä koko matkalla opasta, ja nyt pitiki näin pahasti
eksyä — Rastiteitä[5] ja neuvoja myöten olima tähän asti hyvästi
kyllä itseksemmä osanneet, jos ei aina tavallistakan rataa.
Niinpä olima toki vihdon matkamme perillä. Pohjas- puolelta
nostua suonsaarelle, kulkima kohti linnaa. Yhtäkkiä kuulima oudon
rääkymisen, ja kuta likemmäksi tulima, sitä kolkommalta ja
kovemmalta se kuulu. Olisi tätä voinu luulla jonku pahan
parkumiseksi; niin kamala ja läpi luien men'evä oli ääni. Etemmä
kulettua näkimä lintuparin, havukkaheimostosta, joilla mahto olla
pesänsä jossaki linnan luolassa, koska lähestyissämme aina
kiivaammasti huutaen milt' eivät tahtoneet päällemmä tulla. Opas
nimitti ne poutiaiseksi. Tästä ei huolien, menimä kuitenki linnalle.
Hiiden linna on keskellä mainittua osiksi metittynyttä, osiksi

kaljakkata suonsaarta. — Lounasesta koilliseen menee sen keskite
läpeinen halkema. Kahen puolen tätä ovat kuutta, seitsentä syltää
korkiat, veitsiviilot kallioseinät, noin 8:ksan syltää toisistaan, ja
välissä syvät lampareet. Oppaamme lausu niillä ei pohjaa
olevankan. Rannat ovat varsinki pohjaspuolella päällekasvaneelta
kuohulta peitetyt. Lounaspuolella on pirttisepeliksi nimitetty suolampi,
josta vesi parikyinmentä syltä pitusen, kaitasen puron kautta juosta
lirisee Hiiden linnan lampiin ja siitä taas koillisessa päin olevaan
toiseen lampiin. Keskimmäisen lammin pohjaspuolella on itse linna.
Puolentoista kyynärän paksunen muuri eriää kalliosta, välissä
heittäen jotaki luolan näkostä. Wieressä on kallio luisumpi. Siitä
rannalle laskeuttua kuulima maan alta, kallion sisästä, hiljasen
jyminän, joka mahto tulla jostaki siellä olevasta lähteestä. Muuta
linnan näkostä emmä havanneet,[6] emmäkä itse haltiata tavanneet,
jos hän vaan ei lie edellä mainitun Poutiaisen haamussa ilmottaunu.
Kaikki yhteenlaskettua, näyttää paikka kyllä oudolta ja kamalalta, ja
mahtavat sentähden esivanhempamme luulleet, ei minkään hyvän
haltian tässä paikassa asuvan. Muuton mahtaa kallio joltaki
maanjäräykseltä halenneen ja semmoseksi kumauneen, jonka
vastaavain kallioseiniin tarkasti tutkimalla havataan.
Pari tiimaa linnalla vivyttyämme, kaikki tarkon tutkimalla ja
mieleen panemalla, menimä yli puron lammin eteläpuolelle. Siellä
vyöryttimä vielä kiven lampiin, josta poreet kotvan jälestä nousivat.
Siitä heittimä paikan ja kulkima neljänneksen matkan etelään päin,
Hillerin torppaan, joka on Sotkamoon kuuluma.
Anoissamme ruokaa vastattiin ei olevan muuta leipää kun

petäjäistä. Nälkä käski kovasti ja täytynnä sihen tytyä. Waikk' ei sitä
olisi siltään saanat nielastuksi, vaan olisi, kuni sanovat, aina
päällimäissä suussa pyörinyt; meni se kuitenki voin, kalan ja maion
kanssa mukiin, varsinki nälän ahistaissa. Syötyä, panima vaatteet
kuivamaan ja vaipuma virvottavaisen unen käsiin.
Tästä läksimä pohjanmaan halki Kuhmoon päin kulkemaan.

Kuhmo on
Sotkamon pitäjän ainoa kappeli ja tästä itäsuuntaa kohti.
Ensistä kulkuna Teirivaaratse kauniita ja pahojaki matkoja

Petäjäniemelle, 5 neljännestä; siitä 3 neljännestä Kusiajärven yli
Häikiövaaralle. Tämä vaara on kamalasti vaikuttava, korkiain,
mehtäviin kukkuloinsa ja niiltä jyrkästi kuinka syvälle laskeviin
laksoinsa vuoksi. Sentähden lie uskottu, hänessä ennen jonku
Häikiön (pahan hengen eli haltian) asuneen, josta hän mahtaa
nimensäki saanut.
Siitä astuma penikuorman taipalen, kauniisti Kuurtajajärven

rannalla olevaan Kuurtajan taloon, jossa yöpymäki. Tässä oli
erinomasesti siistiä ja valastua väkiä, jota ei harvon pohjanmaissaki
ihmeekseen tapaa. Koko edellinen päivä oli paraasta päästä ollut
satamaton ja kaunis.
Maanantaina ensi päivänä Elokuuta läksimä tästä ja tulima, jo
vähän eksyksissäki käytyä, penikuorman taipalen, suuren
Ontojärven rannalla ja sen luodesopussa olevaan Hietaperän taloon.
Siitä saattautima neljänneksen järviä Katajalahteen. Waikka kesken
kiireensä olivat parassa luokopäivänä lähteneet tästä kyytiin, eivät
kyytimiehet kuitenkaan millää kontrahilla tahtoneet ottaa palkkaa
saattamastansa ja täyty heidät kauan houkuttelemalla sihen
taivuttaa.
Tästä oli vielä 9 neljännestä kirkolle. Matkamme meni, paitsi

moniaien talojen sivu, myös kolianihanasti vaikuttavan Multitörmän
ylitse. Siinä kulkima parin neljänneksen pituudelta ikivanhalla
petäiköllä kukoistavaista hietaharjua, josta puien välitse näkyvät
etäiset järvet saarinesa ja talot niittyne, peltone ja huhtane. Täällä oli
myös vanha petäjä, jonka kupeessa luettiin vuosiluku 1788
leikattuna. Jälestä kuulima senaikussa sotaaikana täällä olevan
sotavahin sen puuhun piirtäneeksi.
Noin kello 6 j.p. tulima pappilaan. Terve! sinä vanha pappila

vanhane harmajapäine isäntänesi, jolla, paitsi elämän kaikkia
vastakäymisiä, nuorukaisen ilosuus on vielä jäleltä säylynyt; — Joka
matkustavainen kiittää sinun hyväntahtosesti ja ilosesti
vastaanotettuasi ja ruokittuasi! —
[4] Kumpassin (suuntalin) puutteessa, on pohjanmaita

kulkemalle isoksi avuksi yksinäisten petäjäin kuorta merkitä.
Pohjoseen on se aina paksumpi ja ylemmäksi mustumia kun
etelään käsin, sillä pohjatuulten tähden on se puoli tarvinnutki
vahmemman peitteen. On muitaki merkkiä niink. teien
muurahaispesistä etelä suunnalle meneminen; muurahaisten
asuminen kannoissa päivän puolella; lehvien isompi pituus sinne
käsin jne.
[5] Rastiteiksi kutsutaan sydänmaan teitä, jotka puien

pilkkomisella ovat viitotut. Äkkinäiselle kulkialle on tämä isoksi
avuksi, estäin eksyttäväisille karjanpoluille menemästä.
[6] Gananderi puhuu erään, Hiisi nimisen, Kalevan pojan, 10

(vanhaa) penikulmaa itään päin Kajaanista, keskellä suota,
rakentaneen suuren summattoman linnan hirmusesti isoista
kivistä ja mullasta, sylenpitusilla sinne vievillä porrasvälillä eli
pykälöillä. Katso Gan. Myth. Fenn. sivu 29. Nähtävästi puhuu
Gananderi samasta linnasta, vaikk' emmä me minkäänlaisia
rakentajan jälkiä ja merkkiä paikalla tavanneet.
Satuja.
1. Poika ja Äiti.
Mökkiläispoika varasti rikkaan talon kirjavasusta pienen kirjan ja

toi sen äitillensä eikä salannutkan varastustansa. Äiti sano: "pahoin
kyllä teit, että varastit, mutta ei nyt talo tuosta pienestä kirjasta
häiviä, jonka tähden pidänki sen, enkä laita sinua häpiänalaseksi
sillä, että ilmottaisin ja veisin takasin. Waan kuitenkan ei sinun pidä
vasta mitään tuvasta ottaa." Sillä tavalla nuhteli äiti poikaansa ja
saiki sitä usiasti tehdä, sillä useinki näpisteli poika pieniä kaluja ja toi
ne äitillensä. Niin kasvo hän aikaa voittain julkiseksi varkaaksi ja
joutu viimmen hirsipuuhun. Hirsipuusta sanotaan hänen vummesiksi
sanoikseen lausuneen; "Äitiäni saan minä tästä hyvästäni kiittää. Jos
hän olisi kurittanut minun, ensikerran pienen kirjan varastettuani, ja
vienit kirjan jälle, niin toki en enää toiste olisikan semmoiseen työhön
ruvennut, vaan kun hän ainoastaan nuhteli ja uhkasi, niin siitä vaan
yllyin pahemmaksi."
Te vanhemmat! kasvattakaa lapsenne kurituksessa ja Herran

pelvossa. Sillä joka yhden niistä pienimmistä turmelee, parempi
hänen olisi, että myllynkivi ripustettaisi hänen kaulaansa ja hän
viskottaisi meren syvyyteen.
2. Kaksi koiraa, vanha ja nuori.
Wanha koira neuo nuorempatansa ja lausu: "se ei ole ollenkan

kaunis tapa, ihmisiä haukkua ja vielä pahemmin tehty on, ketänä
purra." Nuori koira rupesi ajattelemaan, mikä kumma siinä oli, että
nyt semmoisia kuuli vanhan lausuelevan, joka kuitenki ennen oli
äkein kaikista ollut ja monta ihmistä pahasti purrut. Wähä
mietittyänsä pian löysiki syyn: saarnaaja oli itse hampaaton ja
muutenki vähävoimanen ketänä haukkumaan.
Niin ihmisetki usein harjottavat kaikenlaista pahuutta

nuoruudessaan, vaan vanhemmallaan ei enää pahoin töihin
kyetessä tekeyvät siivoiksi ja alkavat muita nuhdella.
taikka
Ei ole voista veitsettömän, hampahattoman lihoista.

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Empire in the hills : Simla, Darjeeling,

Ootacamund, and Mount Abu,

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Empire in the Hills: Simla, Darjeeling,

Print publication date: 2017

(p.i) Empire in the Hills (p.ii)

(p.iii) Empire in the Hills

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

© Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2017

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First Edition published in 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Typeset in Berling LT Std 10/13

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(p.v) For my parents

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—Bracker (1942: 3).

—Price (1908: 241).

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(p.ix) Table and Figures

5.2 The Indian labour at work in the construction of road to Darjeeling

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My first and foremost gratitude is to my guide, professor Neeladri Bhattacharya,

In addition, a number of individuals in Darjeeling, Simla, Ootacamund, and

Doctoral Studies by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund provided the

Portions of Chapter 3 ‘Acquiring the Station: Political Dynamics’, Chapter 4

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Empire in the Hills: Simla, Darjeeling,

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The Four Hill Stations under Study

Mapping the Historiography

It is interesting to explore the various ways in which local inhabitants contest

Issues of marginalization, contestation of space indicating undercurrents of

The urban experience in the four stations led to a reorganization of spaces,

There is an inextricable connection between imperialism and capitalism. The

(3.) ‘Cinchona Plantations at Kalimpong’, in General Department, A, Collection:

(4.) ‘Sanitary Improvement of the Station of Ootacamund’.

(5.) ‘Annual Migration of Local Governments to the Hill Stations’, in Home

(8.) ‘Macnaghton, Secretary, Political Department in Indifferent Health’, in

(9.) See the Mount Abu lease agreement, September 1917.

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Hills in the Colonial Imagination

Abstract and Keywords

Far as the western spirit may range,

Hill Station: A Liminal Zone

hill stations. For instance, Kurseong, a station before Darjeeling, corresponded