LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2214, 31 March 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE ADVENTURES OP A LADY AMO.SGBT THE NA'3AS. [" Chambers' Jou.naL"J Some thirty-five years ago my late husband, then a young man, accepted an appointment under the Assam Tea Company, and after an absence of a few years returned home. We had been brought up together as children, indeed we were distantly related j and although Willie was some six or seven years my senior, he always declared I was to bo his wife. He had bought an outlying garden of the company's, and asked me to return with him as his wife, to superintend his home in the far distant jangles of Aseam. So when he was twenty-four, and I barely eighteen, we were married in our quiet Scotch kirk, and left shortly afterwards for Calcutta by the newly established overland route. In 1845 there were no steamers plying up the Brahmaputra River, so, after reaching Calcutta, we had the prospect of a three months' voyage In boats. I was assured I should find it a monotonous journey ; and notwithstanding the m»ny and varied scenes which wo daily witneßued, I must own I was heartily glad when we arrived at Nazareh, the headquarters of the Assam Tea Company. Hero we were hospitably entertained by tho manager and officers of the company, and after a few days rest, left our home, a five days' journey on elephants. We arrived safely at oar destination, not much the worse for our trip, but much shaken by the jolting of the elephants, and much bitten by tho mosquitoes en route. My husband had been formerly manager here; and on thrc company's concentrating their gardens and selling seme of the outlyinp ones, he had jpurohased this, and therefore ' not only knew the place well, but was well known by all the neighboring tribes, who used to bring him seed of the indigenous te»-plant, found growing wild amidst their hllla. Our house, I found, was a long building, with front and back verandahs raised on piles five feet high—with a wooden floor, plank sides, and thatched roof, eitoated in a pictureequo spot close to a mounta : n Btream, and at the foot of the Naga Bills. The building itself was acmewhtt

desolate looking, and but poorly furnished ; but I had brought many nioknaoka with mc, and in a few days onr home looked all the brighter for them. Our nearest European neighbors were eleven miles off. In front of our house, between it and tbe river, wo had a Email garden, in which in the cold season most English flowers throve amazingly. On our left we had a large kitchen garden ; and on onr right, a large enclosed spaoe where we kept goats, fowls, geese, ducks. &o. In our rear lay the Tea Garden. We had then about seventy acres of old taa, about fifty acres of new; and in a very short time we had some thirty more acres oleared, ready for planting. Every morning at daybreak I was up, and sometimes accompanied Willie gun, in his rounds. He never went without hia and seldom returned heme empty handed ; for peafowl, pheasants, sr.d jangle-fowi were abundant in the garden itself; a ° d "J going to a swamp a fow miles off, buffaloes, doer, pig, and tigera were in plenty; and as my husband was an enthu-iastic Bpnrtsrnan, I r.iways accompsnied him in the back seat of the howdab ; aud I must own that I almost enjoyed the sport aa much as he dM, till nno day I met with an accident by bsing thrown from my elephant's back, and my husband would never take me out again.

Two years sped. We had been doing well. We had nearly 300 seres under plant, aud although oar life was an uneventful one, its monotony was occasiona'ly bro'.< en by a visit from some neighboring tea-planter, or some gentleman in search of a suitable locality for opening out a garden, or by some officer of the 2nd Jssam Light Infantry on sport intent. I had no children, but found plenty of employment in household matters, in establishing schools for the coolies' children, in looking after the tick and the welfare generally of our dependents. I soon learned Bengalee and Assamese. But although the Nagas often paid us visits, and we were apparently the best of friends, I had not succeeded in learning any of their language, nor did I acquire any confidence in them ; but we lived, as we thought, in perfect security, and although we beard of occasional raids by tbe Hill tribes, they were not in our direction, The Nagas are a sturdy, ugly, treacherous, but withal brave raoe, much given to head hunting, like moat of the tribes on our north-eastern frontier; but thoy had been severely handled by onr troops not long before, aud it was thought they had settled down into peaceable folks. Things went on quietly enough till November, 1847. My husband had "just left for a few days on one of his half-yearly journeys. I had been very busy all day; the season was an unusually sickly ono, and our hospital was full of sick women and children, on whom I had been attending all day, and I was thoroughly tired before I retired to rest. I had noticed many Nagas, accompanied by many of their women, go past our lines that day ; and though I had been told it was a bad sign when thesa savages came down into the plains alone, I never gave it a thought; and after seeing everything made fast I went to bed. I had not been asleep for more than an hour or two, when I was awakened by the most fearful yells and screams of men, women and ohildren, together with the glare of our tea-houses and coolie-lines on fire 1 I had just time to spring out of bed and to put on a few clothes, when our bungalow was surrounded by a band of savages, armed with spears and clubs, and carrying torches, which they t - rew on to our roof. The place was Instantaneously in flames; and to escape suffocation, I rushed out as I was, and was immediately felled to the gi ound, and lay insensible for some time. When I recovered I found myself pinioned, whilst all around me was desolation. Our late home w&sa rna<s of charred and smoking ruins ; and oh ! horror of horrors, a pile of heads of men women and children was lying close by me! The savages were hunting about for more victims. Msny of them were drunk, and covered with blool; aud every now and then an agonising tcream and an exultant laugh would proclaim that some wretch had been but too successful in his search, and that another poor coolie had been discovered and sacrificed. This dreadful Boene lasted fully two hours, when tbe Nagas seemed satisfied that there were no more victims alive, aud gathered together round where I lay, and apparently discussed what my fate was to be. Home wore evidently olamorous for my head ; others—and amongst them I fancied were some who had been in tbe habit of visiting as—were more humanely inclined; and at one time I thought it would end in a fight between the two f actions. But'another and stronger party, headed by e chief whom I recognised as one to whom my husband had shown much kindness, and whose child had been nursed by me through a dangerous illness, at once decided my fate, by ordering a stretcher to be prepared, on which I was placed, and earned by two men along a jungle path leading to the mountains. My head was fearfully swollen from the blow I had received ; I suffered tortures from racking pains in the head, and also frc-m cold, for 1 was but partially dressed, and the weather in Assam, especially in the hilly districts, is bitterly cold from November to the middle of February. As if my other miseries were not enough, I was almost eaten alive by mosquitoes ; and every now and then horrid tree leeches would fall down upon me as we brushed through the jungle, immediately fasten on me, aud (nek away till, from repletion, they fell off. We moved at a rapid rate all the remainder of that night and till noon next day, when wo halted for an I hour by a Btream, and where I must have again become insensible, for I remember nothing further till the starry sky above proclaimed night once more; but still our party hurried on, nor did we halt till close on daybreak. A small party or advance guard then went on. whilst the main body rested, and formed Into something like a procession. At dawn, the sound of gongs and drums was heard approaching us. The chief who had interposed to save my life headed the savages ; immediately behind him came relayß of men, two and two, carrying a pole betweonthem some eight or ten heads ; then our two elephants and ponies ; then myself on the stretcher; then a few of the bestlooking girls and female children, who had been spared to became the slaves of their captors; and last of all, a miscellaneous collection of loot. As we wound round tbe hill, up a steep path, leading to the fortified village, the savages began to yell forth a chant; many of them danced and capered ; whilst the women coooo-ed and clapped their bands, bowing their heads to the ground as we passed by; and amidst tho yelling of men, women, and children, the heating of tom-toms, gongs, and instruments resembling those called cholera horns of India, we entered the stockade by a narrow doorway. The stockade itself was nearly a square, each face about one hundred and seventy-five long. On three sides there were houses, built in lung lines, and well raised off the ground ; and the fourth side, the only one apparently approachable by an enemy was strongly fertified and iho space in front pangied. Pangies are bamboo spikee, hardened, sharpened, and jagged, driven into the ground for some distance round every stockade ; and covered over with fallen leaves. Often they are poisoned. They will go through the toughest sole, and once in the foot, cannot be extracted ; and if poisoned, death followe in an hour or two. Henoe they aro greatly dreaded. Several gingals were placed, and rude towers flanked the position, on which were collected huge stones, or lather rocks, ready to hurl down upon an invading foe. In the centre of the stockade was a long pole, and arranged rouid it we r o human heads, besides those of gavals, buffaloes, and deer ; whilst tied tffihtly down to five poßa were aa many gayals, which were forthwith slain. Copious draughts of an intoxicating drink made of fermented rico were drunk. The women then formed in a ring and danced round the pole to slow measure, twice or thrioe, then leaned do" n with their heads bowed to the ground, whilst amidst a perfect fury of tom-toms and gongs the ceremony of fiayiDg the slain cattle tornmenoed. And after another march round the pole and a general chorus, a chief stepped to the front and made an oration, which was greatly applauded. The women danced round hand -in-hand," and opening out into two parties, allowed the men with the gay. aV heads to enter, and closed up tho space behind them. Tho five heads were placed equidistant frum one another and from the pole ; both men and women stepped ovor them with a mincing gait, clapping their hands and keeping time_ t» the rude music, salaaming at the same time to the human heads. (To be continued.)

But few men can handle a hot lamp ohimnoy and say there is no place like home at Uit Mtme timej