Page 3 of 11. An Electronic Supplement to Bilham, R.,Tom LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: letters from the epicenter. Seism. Res. Lett. 79(3), 426-437, 2008. doi: 10.1785/gssrl.79.3.426.
1882 to 1890 Synopsis: Garo Hills, Leeches in Shillong, Kashmir and the Sapphire Mines. Death of E. J. Jones Oct 1889. Meets with Oldham in Srinigar. Tom proposes to Nancy.
Transcription notes --- three dashes indicates omitted material, phrases in italics are non-verbatim summaries, or explanatory material some words were undecipherable and are shown in square brackets with a query [?Harrarpur]some words are now rarely used: bandobast=arrangements or discipline, forgainst=an opposing position, faute de mieux= for lack of something better, stultify=to cause to appear ridiculous, scamped =sabotaged
12 May 1882 Indian Museum Calcutta Mss Eur C258/1
from Tom La Touche to Norman, his brother
My dear old chap
I am now settled in this place and suppose will stay here until October when I will have to up stick and away to the hills again. I should like very much to come over to Bombay and meet you old Fellow - it would be a grand lark- And if I have some spare cash abut that time I could easily get a week's leave and do it. Talking of the [pay?salary] I think you will find that Rs 350 a month is plenty to live upon. I suppose you get travelling and horse allowance as I do i.e. Rs 130 extra as well as expenses paid. Altogether I find that during camping season I get about Rs6-700 and that is the time to heap up riches. I have just sent £40 - i.e. Rs 475 home which I think is pretty good in the first 6 months and still have Rs350 in the bank. Things here in Calcutta are very expensive. I think the general rule is that what you pay a shilling for at home you give a rupee for here. Except in the matter of baccy, at any rate cheroots, which are dirt cheap and nasty.
2 Jan 1882, Ryuk a Garo village about 15 miles from Durgapur Mss Eur C258/1
My dear father, first six lines omitted.
We have walked to this place from Dargapur through a country perfectly covered with jungle. Our baggage has been brought up the river in native boats which are simply dugout cut out of the trunk of a tree about 20 or 30 ft long and 18 inches or so broad. We have about 40 of these boats and 80 natives to work them. These Garos are almost savages and were only brought under English rule about 8 years ago. Before that they used to make raids on the Bengalis in the plains at the foot of the hills for heads with which to decorate their houses. They are a very jolly set of people, nevertheless, and are capital fellows to work. They have no caste prejudices like the rest of the Indians and will eat anything from snakes to puppies. There follows descriptions of the way of life of the Garos, "I shall have to live among them for the next three months" --- We generally start about 8 in the morning and walk through the jungle, the railway men making notes of the lie of the country, and I examining any outcrops I come across, but the hills are so covered with jungle that it is hard to find any. We get over 5 or 6 miles by two o'clock and then come down to the river where the tents have been pitched and have breakfast. Then we go out with our guns and try to shoot jungle fowl but have not had much luck as yet. Then a bathe in the river in beautifully clear water and dinner at half past six after which a smoke and a chat and to bed about 10. I enjoy the life exceedingly but I should much like to hear from you. It is a fortnight since I have had any letters, that was at Mymensingh but I suppose they have stuck somewhere on the road.
It is after bed time now so I must turn in, so much love to Mother, Mary and Grace.
I remain your ever affectionate son , Tom
20 Jan 1882, Shemshagiri, Mss Eur C258/1
note at top I am longing to hear how you get on with the fossils
My Dear Father,
I am sending this from Tura, the only place in these parts where one can get provisions that are eatable, and it is four days march away, so I have an opportunity of letting you known how I am getting on. I have been by myself now for a week having left the rest of the party to go on through the hills while I have to wander about at my own sweet will and hammer away at every rock I find poking its nose above ground. Geology is very different here from what it is at home where there are plenty of railway and road sections. Here one has to go poking about in thick jungle along the banks of streams and then perhaps you only find a square yard or so of rock and that may be a boulder for all you know. However, it is a very jolly sort of a life. I find the people very easy to get on with although they don't understand a word of Hindustani even and wear remarkably little clothing. I have been staying at this long named place for the last two or three days hunting up an outcrop of coal that I found on Wednesday, and every day the headman has brought me a little present, a few eggs or a fowl, the everlasting murgli- I have tasted no other meat for the last three weeks and suppose I shall not see any other for a couple of months - except wild fowl - I forgot them. I shot a pea-hen yesterday and another today which will last me a long time. They are splendid big birds and there are lots of them.---more on hunting and the weather---By the way, one of the survey men, Lydekker by name, an authority on Siwalik fossils, is just going home and will probably go down to see those at Ludlow. Perhaps you could help him get a sight of them, as he trusts to the tender mercies of Coching and Co., he will have to be content with a sight of them through glass only, With much love etc. Tom
1883--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
27 April 1883 Ashley, Shillong Mss Eur C258/2 To his father,
I have been here now nearly three weeks and like the place very much. It is one of the prettiest places in the hills and certainly the best I have seen for a large hill station as the ground is level enough for good roads and there are plenty of trees all pines and a good water supply. Nearly every house has a small stream though its grounds. My house is a pretty little one with a good garden, I have been growing vegetable seeds and hope they will do well.
There is not much to be done geologically near the station and the only rocks for some miles round are quartzites, granites and schists, without a trace of fossils and there is nothing between them and Cretaceous rocks mostly sandstones with a small field of coal. I did not have much success in finding minerals this season- most of the rocks I marched over were, as I think I told you before, late Tertiary sandstones of enormous thickness. The jungle was very thick, mostly bamboos, but fortunately dry during the cold season so I escaped with only a few slight touches of fever. My servants did not escape so well, and one of them is still down at times with it. That part of the country was at one time more thickly populated than it is now, but the Barmere in their raids seem to have exterminated them - One comes across the ruins of temples and tanks in the midst of dense jungle - sometimes with stone carvings of Hindoo gods.
The worst of the jungle is that as soon as the rain begins, swarms of leeches make their appearance so that on the march one gathers them up in crowds - they are about ½ inch long and make a very nasty bite. I have to keep to the house now because some bites I got 4 or 5 weeks ago have just broken out, and I can't get my shoes on.
This photograph of Ashley Hall, 14 years after LaTouche stayed there, was taken after the June 1897 Mw8 earthquake (©Bilham archive)
8 Dec 1883 Tezpur, Mss Eur C258/2
La Touche writes to his mother from Tezpur about how the Surveyor General for Assam -Col. Woodthorpe is clearing top of hill of trees for survey work. Also fighting with local tribes.
Camp Garo Hills 1 Feb 1886 Mss Eur C258/5 Letters to his mother
On his way from Tura to Durabandagi . "It is a large village but not marked on the map you have. The nearest to it is Nakolgiri, which as far as aI know has no existence in fact, but the fellows who made that map didn't care for such trifles as the names of villages---mentions a tiny earthquake and damage to buildings by the 14 July 1885 quake
Camp Nongsobal, Khasai Hill 26 Mar 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
Out of the low lying forests on higher, healthier ground avoiding fever.
Calcutta 26 June 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
working in the museum on fossils.
"There are 4 men here now working in the museum besides Mr. Medlicott, and they are about the only people I know in Calcutta so living here is not very lively. I get a game of tennis sometimes after office but now that the rains have come on, the ground is generally too wet to play on. All the courts here are grass so the rain does not run off so quickly as in Shillong where the they are made of sand."
Shillong 10 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
I have brought a friend up here to keep me company. His name is Middlemiss & he is also in the Geol Survey, so of course he is a jolly good fellow. We had a miserable journey up here from Gauhati in the tonga. The distance is 63 miles and we took over 18 hours over it. The road is full of holes in places and in others I covered with new metal so that the ponies could hardly get along. On the last two or three stages the ponies would stop every fifty or sixty yards and we had to get out and put our shoulders to the wheel and walk the greater part of the distance. Then to make matters worse it began to pour with rain about sunset and rained hard until we got in at 12 o'clock at night. I never had such a journey in my life.
Shillong 18 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
Middlemiss seems to like the place very well. He will stay till about the end if the month and then has to go into camp away to other side of India near Naini Thal [stet]
Shillong 31 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
My friend Middlemiss is with me still and is much better, He has been very ill with fever this last fortnight.
Shillong 22 Oct 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
"I expect to be off in about a fortnight to Manipur ----We shall have a good number of Sepoys with us this time, about 1000 I think, so there is not much chance of our having trouble with dacoits. There are a lot of amber and jade mines over there which I am anxious to be the first geologist to see.
1887--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rawalpindi Punjab 1 August 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
Tom La Touche to his brother William
My dear Villiam [stet], I have just got over the second stage of my journey to Kashmir viz. a railway journey of 3 days and nights from Calcutta to this place where I arrived last night. I came through Allahabad, Cawnpore, Delhi and Lahore but hadn't time to see any of those places, as the train doesn't long stop anywhere for more than an hour. It was much cooler than I expected as there was plenty of rain for the greater part of the way………….and so on for 3 more pages, Tom
Srinigar 12 August 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
My
dearest mother,
I arrived at this place yesterday afternoon after a 30 mile march from the hill station of Gulmargh where I went to see the Resident to whom I was told to report my arrival in Kashmir. From Kohala where I posted a PC to Mary after my march down from Murree, I came 30 miles on a Tonga along a new road which is being made up the Jhelum Valley. There I had 3 days marching up this valley doing about 20 miles a day. The scenery gets rather monotonous after a time and the weather was very hot so those marches were not very pleasant. I met a good many people going down, one of whom was a man called Chance who was at school at Shrewsbury with me, but only one man going up, and he wasn’t much of a walker so he had to ride most of the way. I left the Jhelum at a place called Nowshera and had a 4000ft climb up the hills on the southern bank to a plateau covered with grassy glades and forests of huge pine trees, which was a very pleasant relief from the heat and monotony of the valley. That 4000 ft bought me up to nearly 9000 ft above sea level, and the ground was covered with various kinds of English flowers. It reminded me very much of Linley Drive. From the top of the hill to Gulmurg was about 13 miles nearly all the way through pine forest. As 'murg' is upland to which the people take their flocks of sheep in the summer to graze, and Gulmurg means the murg of roses, though I don't see any roses about. Perhaps this isn't the right time of the year for them.
A small hill station is just being started up there, to which the resident Mr. Plowden, and which most of the people who go to Kashmir on leave, go up in the hot weather. The houses are merely huts built of wood and plastered with mud, but I dare say they will be improved in time.
I called on Plowden as soon as I arrived and dined with him and his family in the evening and had a very pleasant time. They had a piano so we had some music. I had to come away the next day as it is getting so late in the year that I must make my way to the Saphire mines as quickly as possible or I shall have difficulty getting back as the passes will be blocked with snow.
…….here follows a half page of description of Srinigar's resemblance to Venice because of the lake-like setting.
The first thing I did was to go and see the Prime Minister, Lachman Dass with whom I had a long talk. He speaks English perfectly and has a house furnished beautifully in the English style. He promised to do everything possible to help me, and then sent me off on one of his boats to the quarters that had been got ready for me. They are in one of the small houses reserved for European visitors and are fairly comfortable. Another of our men, a fellow named Oldham, who has been geologising in Ladakh for some time is living in the same house. I have not seen him since '83 so it is jolly to meet him here and talk over our respective work.
Srinigar 14th Aug. 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
I have just been down to see Lachman Dass again to make final arrangements for my starting for Zanskar tomorrow, and after that was over, he took me to the palace and introduced me to the Maharajah. He is an insignificant looking little fat beast of a man & can't talk a word of English. In fact he seemed hardly able to put two words together in Hindustani so our interview was not a long or interesting one. [four pages follow]
5 June 1888, Kashmir Mss Eur C258/7
Letter to Willie from Camp talks of hunting (and missing) bear. A letter to Lucy from the Sapphire Mines at 12000' describes scenery and hunting, and a card to her depicting his tent on 19 Nov 1888. Letter to Grace relating snow on 1 Nov and with a drawing of him crossing a river under a rope bridge. Letters to his father with details of mineral identification, photo methods and sunglasses. Mentions blackening nose and under the eyes with charcoal. Letters to mother detailed descriptions of scenery and other matters.
6 March 1888, Calcutta, Mss Eur C258/7 To Grace,
My chief Dr King went away on Wednesday last, and since then I have been bossing the office here, but there are a good many official letters to read and to answer, so I get plenty to do every day from 11 till 5 which are our office hours. Out of office there is very little to do, as I am here for such a short time I don't care to join any of the tennis clubs etc so I don't get much exercise except a walk in the evening, and that is not very pleasant because of the awful smells that one comes across everywhere. The state of the city is something awful and it will be no wonder if there is a bad outbreak of cholera when the weather gets hotter.
28 March 1888 Calcutta to Grace , Mss Eur C258/7
I have got my orders to go back to Kashmir and shall leave Calcutta on Sunday next. Another of our men, Mr. Oldham, came in from camp on the 25th so we are more lively in [the] office. He will take charge of it when I go.
1889-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cherrapunji 1889 Mss Eur C258/8
La Touche's letters to his sister Polly are from Cherrapunji where he is surveying two small coal fields. He talks of mock battles, playing cricket, feeling fit, meeting watching the Khaisis killing a 7 foot snake, and of his preference to go to Burma via Manipur rather than to Baluchistan where it is hot and dry.
1 November 89 letter Shillong, to Polly Mss Eur C258/8
A very sad thing happened a short time ago to one of our men, a young fellow called Jones, a School of Mines man. [Jones wrote the report on the 1885 Kashmir earthquake. Jones, E. J., Rec. Geol. Surv. India, 1885, 18, 221–227] He went up to Darjiling with some of the Calcutta Volunteers in the Durga Puja holiday and got fever and dysentry there, and the exposure to rain and fog while on parades killed him. He was a very jolly fellow and quite strong looking, and also a clever man, and we shall miss him very much in the survey. He had been thinking of paying me a visit in the Puja instead of going to Darjiling and I wish very much he had as he would probably have been alive now and well.
18 November 1889, Shillong, Mss Eur C258/8
I believe I am to sail on Wednesday to Chittagong. It is only a two day journey and the bay should be pretty calm at this time of the year.---the only cooking to be done will be the heating up of tins of commisariat beef.---I have just heard that one of our men in Baluchistan who came out a year ago has been knocked up by the sand [?sins] and will probably have to retire from the survey. That will leave us very short-handed now that Jones is dead. We miss him very much as he used to do the laboratory work and look after the museum, and besides he was a first rate fellow in every way, and every one who knew him liked him.
14 December 1889, Camp Demagiri, Mss Eur C258/8
I am waiting here now as one of my coolies has gone and got ill with dysentry and I am very much afraid I shall have to send him back again to his home in Assam. There is a lot of sickness knocking about here now and three of the Europeans were down with fever yesterday, but barring a slight cold I am all right and hope to keep so. The nights are very cold and foggy and the huts we are living in are very open and draughty. They are built of bamboos entirely and every wind that blows can circulate freely through them. I have been accustomed to the same kind of thing in Assam so I don't think it will hurt me now, however, I intend to take care of muyseld as much as possible. --- a paragraph on fishing and uninteresting geology ---Nothing has been heard of the enemy yet and no one knows whether he is likely to show fight or not. I expect all the fighting will be on the Burma side, and that the people on this side will cave in as soon as we begin to advance- but of course there is no telling what savages like the Lushais will do. He describes a narrow pass that can be defended by a few men, and food -tinned beef and flour- , and the fact that villagers charge a lot for eggs and fowl. He also describes the interesting blue paper photo process that "is very convenient in camp as it wants no chemicals, all one has to do is to print the picture in the sun, and then wash it in water."
27 December 1889, Fort Lungleh, Mss Eur C258/8
This place is built on a narrow ridge about 3500' above the sea with deep valleys filled with jungle all around. He then describes the jollities of Christmas. They finish up burning the bamboo table and singing into the night. His letter to his mother 22 Dec has a drawing of a hut. I am going out tomorrow with a reconnaissance party toward the north. We expect to be away about ten days…
20 Feb 1889 Mss Eur C258/8
letter to his father indicating he had received a letter from Sir Joseph Hooker (who, like Lapworth, is a friend of his fathers) Mention of massive sapphires
5" long 3 inch diameter hexagonal double pyramids in boxes containing 30 lbs worth
3500 rupees 3000 pounds or 6500 rupees 6000 pounds stirling depending on quality.
The file ends in Chittagong
1890--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(March 1889-Sept1890. In part of this 14 month gap LaTouche returns to England on furlough and meets his future wife Nancy. In the following letter he proposes to her.)
Sept 19 1890 Charing Cross Hotel, Tel No 3574 Mss Eur C258/11 Tom proposes to Anna
My Dear Miss Handy (The High School, Swansea)
I wish to ask you a question which I am afraid will come upon you rather suddenly, and for which I would like to prepare the way in some manner, only that I do not see exactly how I am to do so. The questions is, Will you be my wife? It is perhaps rather an unorthodox way of putting such a serious question, but what can I do. If I had, say a month, or even a week, in which you might have come to be, let us say, interested in me, to prepare you for it, and then whispered the question in your ear, under the moon, it might have been more in accordance with the fitness of things , and maybe I might have been more likely to obtain a favourable answer. etc
Her reply Mss Eur C258/11
Dear Mr. La Touche,
I got your letter from Charing Cross.
It was as you thought, I should be extremely surprised. It all seems to me very strange, considering the extreme shortness of our acquintance. The honour that you have done me has touched me very deeply, but how do you know that you have not made a mistake? I think it will please you best if I should speak plainly as ever I can. It is not very easy but I shall do my best.
First of all I liked you, of course. You were so good to tell me about Edith and then you are a friend of hers. There is not anyone that I care about in that way, but how could I tell that I should ever care for you more than as a friend, and I should think it highly improbable that you on further acquaintance would change your mind I hope you do not mind me speaking so plainly. It is surely the best thing to do.
Thank you very much for the great honour that you do me,
Believe me, very sincerely, Yours, Anna Handy
15 Oct 1890, Calcutta Mss Eur C258/9 Tom writes to his father.
Well it struck me that Grace's friend Miss Hardy was the right sort of girl, and before leaving London I wrote to her and asked her to be my wife. You will say I suppose that this was a very rash proceeding on my part, knowing so little about her, but I thought about it a good bit before I wrote that letter, and I do not think it was so rash as it may perhaps seem to you. Anyway I have had a letter from the young lady, received this morning which gives me a fair amount of encouragment, though I can see she had been a good bit startled by the proposal as was to be expected. The letter is a very excellent one, but I don't wish to lose sight of it as you can imagine