SPORT AND WORK
ON THE
NEPAUL FRONTIER
OR
TWELVE YEARS
SPORTING REMINISCENCES
OF AN INDIGO PLANTER
By "MAORI"
1878
PREFACE.
I went home in 1875 for a few months, after some twelve years'residence in India. What first suggested the writing of such a bookas this, was the amazing ignorance of ordinary Indian life betrayedby people at home. The questions asked me about India, and ourdaily life there, showed in many cases such an utter want ofknowledge, that I thought, surely there is room here for a chatty,familiar, unpretentious book for friends at home, giving an accountof our every-day life in India, our labours and amusements, ourtoils and relaxations, and a few pictures of our ordinary dailysurroundings in the far, far East.
Such then is the design of my book. I want to picture to myreaders Planter Life in the Mofussil, or country districts ofIndia; to tell them of our hunting, shooting, fishing, and otheramusements; to describe our work, our play, and matter-of-factincidents in our daily life; to describe the natives as they appearto us in our intimate every-day dealings with them; to illustratetheir manners, customs, dispositions, observances and sayings, sofar as these bear on our own social life.
I am no politician, no learned ethnologist, no sage theorist. Isimply try to describe what I have seen, and hope to enlist theattention and interest of my readers, in my reminiscences of sportand labour, in the villages and jungles on the far off frontier ofNepaul.
I have tried to express my meaning as far as possible withoutAnglo-Indian and Hindustani words; where these have been used, asat times they could not but be, I have given a synonymous word orphrase in English, so that all my friends at home may know mymeaning.
I know that my friends will be lenient to my faults, and eventhe sternest critic, if he look for it, may find some pleasure andprofit in my pages.
JAS. INGLIS.
CONTENTS.
Province ofBehar.—Boundaries.—General description.—Districtof Chumparun.—Mooteeharree.—The town andlake.—Native houses.—The Planters'Club.—Legoulie.
My first charge.—How we get ourlands.—Our home farm.—System offarming.—Collection of rents.—The planter's duties.
How to get our crop.—The'Dangurs.'—Farm servants and their duties.—KasseeRai.—Hoeing.—Ploughing.—'Oustennie.'—Cooliesat Work.—Sowing.—Difficulties the plant has to contendwith.—Weeding.
Manufacture of Indigo.—Loading thevats.—Beating.—Boiling, straining, andpressing.—Scene in the Factory.—Fluctuation ofproduce.—Chemistry of Indigo.
Parewah factory.—A 'BobberyPack.'—Hunt through a village after a cat.—The pariahdog of India.—Fate of 'Pincher.'—Ramporeho