India, Aug. 9 -- The Bhagirathi valley in Uttarakhand, where Dharali and Harshil, the two areas affected by last week's landslides, are located, was once the setting of a very unlikely story in which a deserter from the army of the British East India Company acquired wealth and power and is still remembered as the 'Raja' of Harshil.

Frederick Wilson or Whulsingh, was born in Yorkshire, in 1817. Like many Englishmen of his time, he joined the East India Company and found himself at Meerut. He is believed to have killed an officer during the 1st Anglo-Afghan War (1838-39), after which to escape the heat, both of the law and the Indian plains, he escaped to Mukhba, a remote mountainous village in Garhwal located at an altitude of nearly 300...