My servant, he said, must stay with him
and return to Simla with my traps.
So an hour later I mounted for my long ride, provided with a revolver
and some rupees in a bag, in case of need. The country, my entertainer
informed me, was considered perfectly safe, unless I feared the _tap_,
the bad kind of fever which infests all the country at the base of the
hills. I was not afraid of this. My experience is that some people are
predisposed to fever, and will generally be attacked by it in their
first year in India, whether they are much exposed to it or not, while
others seem naturally proof against any amount of malaria, and though
they sleep out of doors through the whole rainy season, and tramp about
the jungles in the autumn, will never catch the least ague, though they
may have all other kinds of ills to contend with.
On and on, galloping along the heavy roads, sometimes over no road at
all, only a broad green track, where the fresh grass that had sprung up
after the rains was not yet killed by the trampling of the bullocks and
the grinding jolt of the heavy cart. At intervals of seven or eight
miles I found a saice with a fresh pony picketed and grazing at the end
of the long rope. The saice was generally squatting near by, with his
bag of food and his three-sided kitchen of stones, blackened with the
fire from his last meal, beside him; sometimes in the act of cooking his
chowpatties, sometimes eating them, according to the time of day.
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