A Mountain in Tibet

by Charles Allen

  It was now obvious that no further progress could be made either up the river itself or along its banks. They had learned enough about the Abors to realize that the perpetual state of feuding that went on between one Abor village and its neighbour and between one Abor clan and another made it impossible for any visitor to proceed any distance into the hills. What this meant was that the solution to the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra connection would have to be found elsewhere – perhaps in Burma, for if the Irrawaddy could be tracked to its source and shown to be totally unconnected with the Tsangpo then the case for the Brahmaputra would be that much stronger.

  Returning to Sadiya, Wilcox and Burlton at once began making arrangements for a journey that would take them eastwards across the Patkai mountains to northern Burma. The only published account of this brave venture is contained in Richard Wilcox’s Memoir of a Survey of Assam, which was a summary of his three years’ work on the Upper Brahmaputra. Fortunately, a fuller account survives in Philip Burlton’s notebook, now in the archives of the Survey of India. If Burlton’s story had been published – as he had hoped it would be – then a much more dramatic and horrifying picture of the hazards of exploration in India’s North-Eastern Frontier would have emerged.

  The expedition set out from Sadiya on 15 April 1827, which was an unfortunate time to choose since the chota bursat, the little monsoon that precedes the midsummer rains, was now full upon them. ‘Very tedious’ is how Wilcox describes their passage up the Noa Dihing river in his Memoir. ‘More the appearance of drowned rats rather than officers and gentlemen’ is how Burlton saw themselves as they poled their boats upriver through torrential downpours.

  On 26 April they hauled their boat up out of the water and prepared to strike off into the jungle. This was not the open deciduous forest of the Indian plains but tropical evergreen jungle, the beginning of the dense rain-forest of South-East Asia, enclosed overhead by the branches of the tall hollong and hollock trees, festooned with creepers and made almost impenetrable at ground level by breaks of thorn-covered cane and bamboo and the coarse-leaved serat or giant stinging-nettle that could cripple a man who accidentally brushed against it. The hill tracts that it covered, uninhabited and rarely entered by man, were described by Wilcox as ‘a wild region where no paths exist but those made by the constant passage of wild animals. For the last two years none had traversed the wilderness, excepting the two Mishmis who were now our guides, and their only means of finding their way was to hunt for the notches left on the trees by themselves.’

  Having been warned by the tribesmen that their Bengali servants would not survive the journey Wilcox and Burlton had come prepared to fend for themselves, their party consisting of a ‘heterogeneous retinue’ drawn from every hill tribe in the area – ‘Sing Phos, Kamptys, Mishmis, Moolooks, Kamjauns, all speaking different languages’. However, this collection proved to be insufficient to carry all the supplies that they had brought with them in the boats, which meant that part of their stores – including ‘wine and solah hats’ (prototypes, perhaps, of that solid symbol of the Raj, the sola topee) – had to be abandoned. They had also arranged for an elephant to accompany them through the jungles, but the unfortunate beast kept losing its footing on steeper ground, and after nearly strangling itself on a slipped load it too had to be abandoned. So were a couple of ponies that they had transported upriver; their usefulness came to an end when they reached the first river, which could only be crossed by means of a simple basket and sling suspended from a strong cane rope:

  The passenger sits in this and by means of another cane and by his own exertions he is pulled across in perfect safety. To a man unaccustomed to crossing and subject to be giddy, the sensation may be rather unpleasant should he look down on the water roaring beneath him.

  Their guides led them eastwards towards a high mountain range that marked the divide between the river systems of Assam and Burma. As they marched deeper into the jungle they saw more of the wild creatures who were its sole occupants; troops of langur monkeys or long-armed gibbons crashing through the branches overhead, large herds of browsing elephants, the delicate kakur or barking deer and the larger sambur. Burlton recorded in his journal how they were kept amused for most of one day by an unseen bird – probably a coppersmith – that ‘for want of a name may be called the Bell Bird from the striking resemblance it makes to the sound of the bell tolling in the distance.’

  On 1 May they camped at the foot of the main mountain range. ‘The greater difficulties of our journey now commence,’ noted Burlton. ‘We have before us the pleasant prospect of 12 days journey without the chance of seeing a village or human being besides ourselves.’ As they started the climb they made contact with the insects that were to torment them for the rest of their journey, the aptly-named dam-dooms (or dim-dams):

  It flies on a noiseless wing, and has no hum like the mosquito to announce its treacherous attack; neither is the bite immediately felt, but a little blister is soon after seen, filled with extravasated blood, and the itching becomes so intolerable that it defies the utmost exertion of patience.

  Dressed in their European clothes Wilcox and Burlton were better protected from the dam-dooms than their native companions in their loincloths: ‘Our friends with the “bottomless breeks” were infinitely worse off than we were,’ wrote Wilcox, ‘and indeed those of the plains were in a few days almost disabled by the inveterate sores caused by these abominable pests.’ His colleague noted in his journal that it was just as well that the dam-dooms appeared to confine themselves to the Burmese borderland: ‘God forbid they should ever emigrate westward, for as they make their attacks by day in thousands, they would prove a greater annoyance than any pest at present known in India.’

  A week later they crossed the 10,000-foot mountain barrier that effectively marked the divide between India and Burma. As they reached its summit Wilcox’s foot struck what he at first took to be a lump of quartz but which turned out on closer inspection to be a human skull, the remains of some ‘unfortunate wretch who must have died a miserable lingering death in the snow’. Almost as if on cue two of Burlton’s men lay down on the ground and refused to go any further. With their food supply now almost exhausted Wilcox and Burlton knew they had no alternative but to leave the two men where they had fallen. ‘To assist them was impossible,’ Burlton wrote. ‘Carry them we could not, even had we rice sufficient to enable people to bring them on. However melancholy the circumstances, they must be left to their fate.’

  Burlton’s entry in his journal on the following day shows how seriously the health of the expedition was being affected:

  9th of May. Heavy rain all the morning. A halt would be most desirable, to allow the two unfortunate men to come up and give rest to the whole party. Almost every man is knocked up; swelled feet and dreadful sores the general complaint, & several men with fevers. Leeches and Dam Dooms scarcely bearable; we once took the trouble to count the collection of about half an hour, and 35 leeches were torn from one leg.

  One of those suffering from fever was Philip Burlton himself; he put it down to a combination of the rice diet and ‘perhaps to too many raspberries’. Meanwhile his companion had become so lame in one foot from the dam-doom bites that he could barely hobble along.

  Four days after crossing the mountains they came, at last, to a broad river. They camped beside its waters and as they boiled up what was almost the last of their rice one of the two men who had been left to die staggered into sight. His companion was dead and he himself had eaten nothing for four days. On the following day they waded across the river – ‘with great difficulty, for many from weakness were unable to stand against the current’ – and were met on the other side by some Burmese. They knew then that their troubles were nearly over. ‘The sight of some new faces gave us fresh alacrity,’ wrote Wilcox, ‘and we hailed our approach to a civilized country with that joy which those only could feel who had suffered from fatigue and privation as we had.’

  Soon they found themselv
es looking out across a cultivated plain – ‘to us an Eden’ – dotted with small, fortified villages and inhabited by Khamtis, mountain people of Shan extraction, who welcomed them with great friendliness: ‘They had never heard, even by report, of Europeans, and the crowd attracted by our white faces and the musical snuff box was immense.’ This musical snuff box turned out to be an even greater crowd-puller than the two Britons, and was kept in almost constant use during their short stay in Burma. Nor was it forgotten: though sixty years passed before Europeans visited this remote corner of Burma again, they were at once asked to produce their musical box – which, happily, they were able to do.

  After a brief rest at the first Khamti village the party continued its journey eastwards until on 20 May 1827 they climbed a low range of hills and saw ‘the object of our deepest interest’ in the distance: ‘the Irrawaddy winding in a large plain, spotted with light green patches of cultivation and low grass jungle.’ Also visible were the roofs and pagodas of Mong Se, the Khamti capital (sited about five miles north of the present town of Putao). As they descended they were met by a reception committee led by the son of the Rajah of Mong Se, who had thoughtfully provided two ponies for Wilcox and Burlton to ride. Flanked by their escort and ‘noised by incessant beating on two little gongs’ they entered the Khamti capital and were led to the town hall. Here they were provided with a splendid meal sent over from the royal kitchens:

  It was served up à la mode Kampty on Burman laquered trays, and numerous small china basins. The repast we found so excellent that we hinted that we should not be sorry to dine from the same source during our stay. From that time forth we ‘feasted sumptuously every day’. We were also provided with a supply of distilled liquor, very much like whiskey, but not quite so strong; it was very acceptable, our own small stock being nearly exhausted.

  For the next week Wilcox and Burlton remained in Mong Se, savouring the Rajah’s hospitality and all the comforts that this friendly Buddhist principality provided. After resting his poisoned foot for the first two days Wilcox felt well enough to start taking short walks around the town, visiting the Rajah in his palace and the chief priest in his temple – though always in the company of a great throng of spectators. Burlton had not yet shaken off his fever, however, and he blamed a new attack on the ‘suffocating heat occasioned by the crowds’. He had hoped that once the novelty had worn off they would start to disperse but instead they grew steadily day by day, ‘pouring in to see us “once before they die”.’

  Their goal was now less than half a day’s journey away to the east. The two officers set off on horseback early on the morning of 24 May accompanied only by a local guide. Riding at a gallop for most of the way, they reached the banks of the Irrawaddy in two hours. ‘I could not help exulting,’ Wilcox recalled in his Memoir, ‘when standing at the edge of the clear stream, at the successful result of our toils and fatigues.’ The river was even smaller than they had expected it to be, no more than eighty yards wide and shallow enough to be forded. Wilcox had been determined to secure ‘ocular and incontrovertible’ proof that the Irrawaddy was not the lower extension of the Tsangpo – and here it was:

  Before us to the north rose a towering wall, stretching from west to east, offering an awkward impediment to the passage of a river in a cross direction. We agreed on the spot that, if Mr Klaproth proved determined to make his Sampo pass by Ava [Burma], he must find a river to his purpose considerably removed towards or into China.

  Fortunately for Wilcox and Burlton they went no further; another two days’ march eastwards would have brought them to the banks of a second and larger affluent of the Irrawaddy, and to the start of that extraordinary bottleneck between Burma and China where four great rivers (Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtse) run in parallel lines with less than a hundred miles separating the first from the last. Happily unaware of this complication, the two surveyors were able to return to India convinced that they had destroyed the foundation of Herr Klaproth’s theory. This proved to be the case: although Klaproth himself still clung to his belief for some years, the connection between the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra was never again seriously disputed.

  The expedition had now to get back to Assam before the main force of the summer monsoon – the burra bursat – was thrown against the Patkai hills. The Mong Se Rajah provided the party with rice for the return journey, refusing to accept payment. In the face of such generosity there could be only one response: after first taking it to pieces to show him how it worked Wilcox presented the Rajah with his musical snuff box.

  The return journey began on 29 May. ‘An unconcerned spectator would have laughed had he witnessed the scene a little before our departure,’ Burlton recorded. Since most of their coolies were still too weak to carry much more than their own rations they had been forced to make further drastic reduction of their loads:

  We were obliged to give & fling away almost everything we had with us; useless articles had gone many days before. Shot belts, powder, flints, clothes, shoes, shaving & hair brushes etc were to be had for the picking; even soap was too cumbersome to carry.

  With the help of more reliable guides loaned by the Rajah they were able to make a more comfortable return journey across the mountains. Two weeks later they were back at the village where they had left their boats and stores. Burlton’s relief was undisguised:

  Here end all our troubles from marching, wading, climbing, slipping & falling, and all our torments from leeches, Dam Dooms, sand flies, bugs, ticks et id genus omne.

  Unkempt, unshaven and unwashed, they arrived back in Sadiya to find David Scott waiting to greet and congratulate them. And here on 16 June 1827 Burlton closed his journal with one final, emphatic statement:

  In the above journal it may be said that too much egotism has been displayed in mentioning our own personal hardships and troubles. They have been mentioned merely that a true idea of the many difficulties to be encountered should be known, in order to warn any European from ever attempting the same journey. The chances are much against a man’s ever returning alive; and, even to us who have had much experience in travelling of the same kind, the effects of the journey are not yet known. Lieut. Wilcox is at present confined to his bed with a dangerous fever, and Lieut. Burlton has scarcely recovered. All who accompanied us have also suffered more or less.

  Today, when the mountains and jungles of South-East Asia have been mapped and reduced to order, the voids filled, and a hostile world of dangers known and unknown has been neutralized, Burlton’s words cannot help but sound a little theatrical. Yet they would certainly have rung true to the survivors of the retreat from Burma, who were forced to find their way through those same hills and jungles in the early summer of 1942. Nor was Burlton exaggerating the poor state of health to which he and Richard Wilcox had been reduced; the sores from the insect bites soon healed but the dysentery and malaria that they had contracted never left them. Wilcox thought seriously of resigning his post and returning, as Bedford had done, to revenue surveying. ‘I cannot help reflecting on how many officers have been cut off in Assam’, he wrote in a letter to John Hodgson. But the Surveyor-General had no intention of letting such a valuable officer transfer to revenue work. ‘It was affected with great difficulty in Bedford’s instance,’ he wrote back, ‘but you have a much more important part to fulfil and I hope your health will bear you out.’ It was agreed that as soon as an opportunity arose Wilcox would make his way downriver to Calcutta and from there embark on a long sea voyage as a means of recovering his health. In the meantime he had to survive the Assam rains, and the only effective answer to that was to escape to the hills.

  As it happened, David Scott had just come to an agreement with the Khasi chief of Nongkhlao, a small village perched on the northern escarpment of the Khasi hills, by which the British would be permitted to build a road up from the Assam valley through Nongkhlao and Khasi territory to Bengal. The Khasi hills ranged from three to nearly six thousand feet and offered an ideal refuge from
the enervating heat and humidity of the plains. Nongkhlao itself was a perfect place for a sanatorium and the Khasis had no objection to a bungalow being built there for this purpose. One of its first occupants was Richard Wilcox, who was carried up from the valley in a closed palankeen.

  Not long afterwards he was joined by Philip Burlton, who had been ordered by Scott to take charge of the surveying and building of the new road through the Khasi hills. Both men had set great store by the publication of Burlton’s Journal. It had been sent off to Calcutta within a week of their arrival in Sadiya and Wilcox had made it clear to the Surveyor-General that he hoped to see it published as soon as possible. However, Hodgson had other plans. Despite the fact that a number of senior officials in Calcutta showed great interest, he refused to let it be published. Burlton was not a member of his staff and what Hodgson wanted was an official account from Wilcox himself. The end result was a five-year delay before Wilcox’s official Memoir appeared in print – and the effective concealment (to this day) of Burlton’s Journal among the records of the Survey of India.

  Wilcox had been recuperating at Nongkhlao for less than two months when he received a message from the Khamtis in Northern Burma inviting him to return to their country and explore the lands beyond the Irrawaddy. Evidently the temptation was irresistible, for Wilcox at once set off from Nongkhlao and almost immediately collapsed. In January 1828 he wrote to Hodgson asking to be recalled to Calcutta: ‘I am still suffering for my temerity in venturing thro’ the jungles in May & June. Nor am I alone in this, for here I found Lt Burlton obliged to leave his road making to seek medical aid.’ It distressed Wilcox to see his friend denied what he felt was due to him and before he left Nongkhlao he tried to do something about it. ‘The annoyances endured, with loss of health,’ he argued in a letter written on Burlton’s behalf to the Surveyor-General, ‘ought to incline the Government to act more generously towards him than at present they seem inclined.’ Hodgson’s reaction is not recorded.