A Mountain in Tibet

by Charles Allen

  The women even do not show that bashfulness and reserve which females in Hindostan in general exhibit, but made their comments with the greatest freedom. We could not help remarking that the female mountaineers exhibited the general failings of their sex, having their necks, ears and noses ornamented with rings and beads.

  As succeeding generations of visitors to the Himalayas have found, these attractive characteristics are common to nearly all hill-women. It seems to be part of the nature of the paharis, the people of the hills, that they should be more open and less hide-bound than the people of the plains, the biharis. The deeper into the hills one goes – and the further to the north and east – the more tolerant become the inhabitants, freed from inhibitions of caste and Islamic fundamentalism.

  On 27 April 1808 the party reached the village of Batwari, at the lower end of the deep thirty-mile cleft down which the Bhagirathi forces its way through the Great Himalaya Range. Now they found themselves having to follow the narrowest of paths that had been cut across the steep walls of the gorge far above the river. ‘A tremendous precipice was open on the outer side,’ wrote Raper. ‘For the greater part of the way we found it necessary to avail ourselves of the assistance of the bearers, to conduct us by the hand.’ On the evening of the next day Hearsey noted in his journal that their day’s march had been the hardest so far: ‘To preserve a footing on the slippery rocks we had to ascend, we were obliged to pull off our shoes; the consequence was that our feet got very sore and we were obliged to halt.’ The next morning they tried to press on for a few more miles; Webb called a conference and after a few minutes’ discussion they decided to turn back, less than forty miles from their goal.

  Though Webb was later to provide the Surveyor-General with a lengthy explanation as to why they had given up, his irresolution has never satisfactorily been explained. The most curious factor of all was that in order to make up for ‘the deficiency occasioned by my abandoning the Tour’, he dispatched ‘an intelligent native, furnished with a compass, and instructed in the use of it, with directions to visit Gangotri’. Both Webb’s letter to Colebrooke and Raper’s published account leave us with the blurred impression of some anonymous but faithful hill-man struggling to reach Gangotri. But this was far from the truth – as Hearsey’s journal makes clear. The ‘intelligent native’ was Hearsey’s own Hindu munshi or interpreter, who reached Gangotri without particular difficulty in the company of six of the Gurkha sepoys as well as a number of Hindu pilgrims. Indeed, he even penetrated some miles beyond the temple, following the river until it was ‘entirely concealed under heaps of snow’.

  Although it was still too early in the year for much pilgrim traffic the munshi’s journey showed that the road to Gangotri itself was open; so it would not have been impossibly arduous for the sahibs. Part of the explanation for their puzzling behaviour can be found tucked away in a passage from Captain Raper’s official account: ‘Although we had provided ourselves with Dandis [open sedan chairs] as substitutes for the Jampuans [large covered litters], we found them equally useless; for we were forced to walk the greatest part of the way.’ So totally unprepared to meet Himalayan conditions were these young and intrepid explorers that they had expected to be carried in litters to the source of the Ganga.

  Much chastened by their failure but certainly with a more realistic appreciation of the scale of their undertaking, Webb, Raper and Hearsey turned their attentions to their next objective – ‘visiting the source of the Alaknanda river at Badrinath before the setting of the periodical rains’. Without waiting for Hearsey’s munshi to return they made their way downstream to the temples and shrines of Deoprayag, perched high on a promontory above the confluence of the two Ganga tributaries. Here they quickly established that the eastern branch, the Alaknanda, carried a far greater volume of water than the other, so that even if the Bhagirathi was regarded as the traditional source, it was nevertheless the Alaknanda that actually had the best claim to be the major source of the Ganga. Cheered by this discovery they proceeded northwards again, passing through the Alaknanda gorge and eventually arriving at the temple of Badrinath, never realizing that they had come through the main Himalayan barrier.

  Here, at last, Webb was able to find what he regarded as a satisfactory source for the river. A few miles up the valley they came to the large Bhotia village of Mana, where Andrade and Marques had found their guide before setting out for the Mana pass two centuries earlier. But instead of following the main stream, the Saraswati, northwards as the Jesuits had done, Webb chose to take the party westwards – to the Alaknanda’s traditional source, which lies in a narrow valley at the foot of the Badrinath massif. ‘Proceed near one mile of snow – the river lost – no vestige remaining of its channels,’ Hearsey jotted down:

  We halted opposite a cascade of about 200 feet high – two streams fall from the mountain which by force of the wind is scattered with spray and freezes as it falls. Not a shrub or blade of grass in the vicinity of this place, nothing but snow and shivered black rocks. It is the most solemn appearance of winter I ever beheld.

  It was against this dramatic background that Webb chose to site his ‘visible Source’ of the Alaknanda. He was now satisfied that he had carried out Colebrooke’s original instructions as far as it had been possible; he wrote to the Surveyor-General to say that Hearsey’s munshi had returned with ‘convincing testimony’ that the Cow’s Mouth was ‘entirely fabulous’, while their own explorations had shown that the Alaknanda had no connection with the fabulous lake Manasarovar, whether by tunnel or any other means. Hearsey suggests in his journal that he would have liked to continue, having heard stories of a city built by the gods that was said to lie higher in the mountains, but his guides refused to go any further, saying that ‘if we wished to be turned into stones (I suppose alluding to our being frozen) then we might make the attempt ourselves.’ In the event, they decided it was time to return to the plains.

  Rather than head back along the pilgrim route that had brought them up the Alaknanda valley, they chose a parallel route over the mountains further to the east, which took them out of the territory of Garhwal and into neighbouring Kumaon. They soon became aware of an increasingly ‘unfriendly disposition’ on the part of the Nepalese. Messengers appeared with contradictory orders, threats of decapitation or dismemberment by kukri began to be made against anyone who offered them assistance, and Gurkha sepoys began shadowing their trail. Finally all their porters decamped overnight, forcing them to abandon most of the baggage and supplies. To add to their misery the rains now set in; paths became watercourses, clothes stayed permanently sodden and leeches clustered by the score on every leaf and branch that overhung the trail, working their way into the most sensitive areas of the human anatomy. Very soon ‘every puncture festered and turned to large sores, what with the flies and walking through the water.’ Hearsey was not so badly afflicted as the other two officers, which he put down to the fact that ‘instead of knocking the leeches when they attacked, I let them have their fill and drop off.’

  The expedition was finally brought to a halt when it was within a day or two’s march from the Gurkha fort at Almora, the provincial capital of Kumaon. Since their funds and their stock of gifts were now exhausted, they were no longer able to buy their way out of trouble. It took a week of delicate negotiations, coupled with promises to send gifts up from the plains, before the Governor of Kumaon would allow them to go on their way.

  For some time Robert Colebrooke had been waiting anxiously at the new frontier station of Bareilly, ninety miles due south of Almora, for news of the expedition from which illness had forced him to withdraw three months earlier. Finally, at the end of June, four bearers carrying a single palanquin were sighted approaching the station. In it lay William Webb, seriously ill with ‘jungle fever’. The other two sahibs and the rest of the party straggled in several days later.

  Even if he was disappointed at Webb’s failure to get to the source of the Bhagirathi, the Surveyor-General sti
ll had good cause for satisfaction. The expedition had swept away many of the mysteries that had surrounded the river – including, so it seemed, the old story of the cow’s mouth – and had reduced the Ganga to intelligible geographical dimensions. Colebrooke now felt free to take the home leave that had long been due to him; his own health was deteriorating and he was convinced that a sea voyage and a long spell in England were the only answer. Early in August he left Bareilly and set off for Calcutta, taking with him Raper’s journal.

  It was the worst time of the year for travelling as well as for sickness and disease. A month after Colebrooke’s departure Webb received a letter from him in Cawnpore. He was suffering from dysentery and had decided to complete the rest of his journey by boat: ‘I have determined to leave Cawnpore the day after tomorrow, being convinced that the river air is less favourable for my disorder than that of the Cantonments. It is most likely that I shall take my passage for Europe this year.’ But Robert Colebrooke never lived to take his passage home. He sailed on down his beloved Ganga – now in full flood – growing weaker every day, until he died at Bhagalpur on 19 September. He had lived in India for thirty years without a break and he left two widows to mourn his passing; an English wife with nine small children, and an Indian bibi with a fourteen-year-old son, to whom he left a pension of fifty rupees a month. He also left behind a nasty scandal over a map.

  The map in question now lies in the Map Record and Issue Office of the Survey of India at Hathibarkala, on the outskirts of Dehra Dun (an estate that once belonged, by a curious coincidence, to the Hearsey family), and it is clearly identified as having been drawn by Hyder Jung Hearsey. It carries two pencilled comments in the margin, written by another of Webb’s brother-officers from the 10th BNI, Captain John Hodgson: ‘This map was pirated from Captain Webb’s documents’ and ‘Webb fell sick at Bareilly.’ Also among the records of the Survey of India is a letter written in 1813 by John Garstin, the new Surveyor-General of Bengal. Garstin had been asked to explain why he had refused to employ a ‘half-caste’ named de Crux in the Survey of India. In his reply he cited a curious precedent:

  When Lieutenant Webb was sent to the Gangoutri, or source of the Ganges, he was accompanied, among others, by Mr Hearsay, a pensioner of the Mahratta Horse, who, when the survey was over, surreptitiously obtained a copy of the Survey, and had the impudence to send it to the Court of Directors, as if he had been the discoverer of this Holy Fountain’s head. On Lieut. Webb’s laying the case before Government, they took the affair up very warmly … with these examples before me I could not possibly take upon me to recommend De Crux.

  Strange, to say the least, that a man should be judged as unfit for employment on the basis of another man’s alleged misdeeds, stranger still that so senior an officer in the Company’s service as the Surveyor-General of Bengal should make such allegations. Yet the charges against Hearsey stuck, and to this day they remain the official version of events: that a half-caste stole a map from a sick man’s bedside and called it his own.

  The surviving evidence suggests a very different interpretation of events. Two accounts of the expedition are available. The first is Raper’s Journal, which was discovered among his cousin’s effects by Henry Colebrooke and published in Asiatick Researches in 1810. The other is the shorter, less formal account from Hearsey, which fell into the hands of a director of the East India Company in London and has been more or less neglected ever since. There is evidence of the close relationship that existed between the two Company men, William Webb and Felix Raper: in 1809 Webb was asking that Raper be allowed to join him on a second Himalayan expedition ‘as our long acquaintance and friendship will render me most happy in his company.’ But nothing in Raper’s Journal or from Webb indicates that either man enjoyed the company of their fellow-traveller, which is not surprising when we consider that this hardened, country-bred mercenary of twenty-five was supposed to take his orders from an overcautious twenty-two-year-old. Indeed, Hearsey’s name scarcely appears at all in Raper’s account, where he is referred to as ‘Captain Hearsey formerly in the service of the Madhaji Sendiah’ – which is not only factually incorrect but implies unfairly that Hearsey fought for the Marathas against the British, rather than the other way round.

  Hearsey’s journal provides a more solid account of his part in the expedition and makes it clear that he saw his role as something more than just an escort. His technical references to surveying show that he was already well versed in the mapping skills that he used to good effect in later years. He would have had plenty of opportunity to pick up these skills from Colebrooke or even from Webb during their months together surveying in the terai – if he had not already acquired them earlier, for his father, Colonel Andrew Wilson Hearsey, was certainly capable of teaching him: among the Hearsey family papers are some neatly-executed route surveys drawn by him while campaigning in South India in the 1780s. There is no doubt that Hyder Jung was a good draughtsman; indeed, his gifts as an amateur artist were widely recognized. Emily Eden, who met him in Dehra Dun during her privileged travels Up the Country, admired his drawings while deploring his rough manners, and enough of his watercolours have survived to show that he had genuine talent.

  Against this it has to be said that Hyder Jung Hearsey’s manuscript account of his first Himalayan journey conceals, not at all skilfully, what seems to be a deliberate deception. An examination of the document, now in the British Library, will show that in quite a number of places the word ‘we’ has been erased, as in the following passage:

  We proceeded up the mountains a little above Rehoul, from whence [we] had a view of the Mahadeo’s Ling – which [we] took the bearing of, with the Theodolite, from hence [we] perceived that we had entered the snowy range of mountains, many of the Peaks being S. of us.

  If Hearsey doctored these passages – and no one else would have had cause to do so – it can only have been to show his role in a more positive light. Yet, if it was an attempt to deceive, it was a very clumsy one that was bound to have been spotted and could only have discredited Hearsey still further. Just the sort of thing, in fact, to expect from a half-caste who stole another man’s map. But did Hearsey steal that map or draw his own? Whatever happened, it could only have taken place at Bareilly.

  From the British point of view Bareilly in 1808 was a new and still insignificant station a few miles south of Nepalese Kumaon. Formerly it had been the capital of Rohilkhand but had been ceded to the Company by the Nawab of Oude to cancel a debt. Although Hearsey had his property there, few Europeans had established themselves, so it was most likely that the other sahibs – Colebrooke, Webb and Raper – would have stayed at his house while they were in Bareilly.

  That is supposition. What is known for certain is that Robert Colebrooke left the station early in August 1808 and Webb’s old chum from the 10th BNI soon afterwards, when he was recalled to regimental duty in Delhi. We know also that Webb resumed his survey work in December 1808, when he was ordered to map the Oude terai, and that Hearsey followed him to the same area at the start of the new year, when he was hired by the British Resident in Lucknow to stop Nepalese settlers from invading Oude. This suggests that the convalescent Webb was alone in Bareilly with his host for not less than four months – ample time, in fact, for Hearsey either to have ‘pirated’ his map from William Webb’s documents while he lay sick (if we are to believe John Hodgson) or to have ‘surreptitiously obtained a copy’ of it (as John Garstin claimed).

  But whether it was his own or copied, Hyder Jung Hearsey’s map was certainly finished by 13 December 1808, when it was handed over, together with Hearsey’s own journal and an accompanying letter, to a Captain Williams in Cawnpore. Captain Williams had instructions to deliver it to Sir James Rennell, the retired Surveyor-General, in London. ‘By the earliest opportunity that occured I have the pleasure to transmit the accompanying sketch of a late Tour to the Sources of the River Ganges,’ Hearsey wrote in his letter. All three officers had suffered financially from t
he confiscation of their belongings by the Nepalese, but since he was not a Company man, and had lost his patron with the death of Robert Colebrooke, Hearsey could not look forward to receiving any compensation. ‘As this Tour was undertaken at our individual expense, may I beg you to present the sketch to the Hon. the Court of Directors, should they deem it worthy a remuneration, whatever their liberality may award, or permit private publication.’

  Hearsey’s attempt to get something for himself misfired badly. His map was beautifully drawn, covered entirely new ground and presented solutions to a particular geographical problem to which Rennell had been seeking answers for several decades. Small wonder that he was both captivated by it and deeply suspicious: ‘The map is certainly a very curious one and bears the stamp of Truth, as far as Internal evidence goes.’ Although he passed it on to the Court of Directors of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street, he also wrote at once to the Surveyor-General in Calcutta asking for an explanation – and the end result was that Hearsey was branded as a liar and a cheat.

  John Garstin’s chief concern was to protect the standing of his department. When he received Rennell’s letter of inquiry he knew very well that his own man, William Webb, had still not completed his map – and he was desperately keen to see it finished. ‘I understand Major Hearsey has sent one Home,’ he wrote to Webb in January 1810, a full thirteen months after Hearsey’s map had left Cawnpore. ‘I much wished to have been able, by the last despatch, to have sent a General Map … from your hand, as well, as the twelve sheets of the Survey, and still hope to have them in time for the March Fleet.’