From Jim Corbett’s biography: How a hunter of man-eating tigers became a legendary conservationist

The first European settler had reached the Nainital valley in 1841, and more houses, built on plinths, with roofs of corrugated iron painted bright red, had quickly gone up as British soldiers and colonial officials discovered the beauty of the place and its climate. Then on September 18, 1880, the little town was hit by a natural disaster, as heavy rain – over 50 inches in two days – set off a mud-slide which swept away many of the houses and buried most of the shops, a hotel, a Hindu temple and the Assembly Rooms, killing 151 people, including 43 Europeans.

Undeterred, the survivors dug in, but only six months later Christopher Corbett was struck down by a heart attack, and after a few days died, aged 58. His widow Mary Jane had already bought a plot of land on Ayaparta Hill, opposite the scene of the disaster, and now supervised the construction of a dwelling there. A two-storey structure with four bedrooms, it was called Gurney House, and it became the family’s summer home. Nainital was then the summer capital for the British administration of the United Provinces. The Governor would arrive by the end of April, and remain in residence...

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