# Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History/Chapter 7

Memoirs of Travel, Sport and Natural History by Henry John Elwes was first published in London in 1930, and edited by Edward G. Hawke
CHAPTER VII
THE TIBET EMBASSY AND THE RISHI-LA, 1886
In 1885 the late Mr. Coleman Macaulay, then Secretary to the Government of Bengal, after an expedition to the frontier of Sikkim of which he published an account, thought that the time seemed favourable for doing what Warren Hastings had attempted more than a century before, namely, to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Tibet. The Tibetan traders had always said that there was nothing they would like better than a free exchange of products, but that they were prevented from doing so by their suzerain, China. Macaulay first came to England to see how far the Government would support his endeavours, and finding Lord Randolph Churchill, who was then Secretary of State for India, very favourable to the scheme, he went to Pekin to try to overcome the difficulties which were made by the Chinese Government. He was accompanied by a clever Bengali Babu named Sarat Chandra Das, who had visited Lhasa two years before on his own initiative in order to study the Buddhist religion at its headquarters and who, after suffering many hardships on the journey, came back speaking Tibetan more or less fluently. During his stay at Pekin Sarat Chandra Das was entertained at the Tibetan monastery. Through the influence which Sarat Chandra Das exercised on the Tibetan lamas and through the ability which Macaulay showed in his negotiations, a formal consent was obtained during the late autumn of 1885 to the despatch of a Mission from the Indian Government to Lhasa. When Macaulay was in England earlier in 1885 he consulted Sir J. Hooker as to the selection of a naturalist to accompany the Mission, and the result was that he proposed that I should go with him in this capacity. When, therefore, I received a letter from him at Pekin saying that all was arranged, and that the expedition would start early in 1886, I thought it was best to arrange matters with the India Office without delay, so that I might be ready to join the Mission in India before it started. At an interview with Lord Randolph Churchill it was settled that I was to travel at my own expense to India and back, receiving my out-of-pocket expenses only during the time the Mission lasted. I was naturally much pleased to have such an opportunity as this of visiting a place which no European had seen under what seemed such favourable conditions, especially as I was the only man on the Mission not in Government service. As I had sufficient knowledge both of wool and of tea, which might be the two principal articles of commerce with Tibet, I endeavoured to learn all that was possible in the time so as to fit myself for reporting on the past history and probable future prospects of the Tibetan trade, as well as on the natural history of the country.
To my surprise, however, Macaulay, instead of going straight back to Calcutta, and organising the expedition as quickly as possible, came to England again, ostensibly with the object of purchasing the presents which we were to carry with us, and for which a sum of 30,000 rupees ​had been allowed by the Indian Government. I have always believed that the India Office never was so favourable to the Mission as Lord Randolph Churchill himself was; or else it had begun to question the policy of sending the Mission. At all events I found that Macaulay was by no means so keen about starting early as he had previously been; and at least two months were wasted in elaborate preparations for an Embassy on a much larger scale than seemed wise to me, or to others who were better acquainted with the facts and difficulties, both political and physical, which had to be overcome.
However, I left England in March, 1886, and arrived in April at Calcutta, where I found the late Mr. Paul, who had been for many years Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling, and who, because he knew the people and the country of Sikkim more intimately than anyone, had been appointed second in command of the Mission. He informed me that nothing was ready and that, until Macaulay returned from England, he had no authority to give orders. In the meantime I had better go up to Darjeeling, and find out on the spot how matters were progressing. He told me that the following officers were to be the members of the Mission: Colonel Tanner, R.E., as Surveyor; Captain Gwatkin, of the Bengal Cavalry, as commander of the escort and transport; Dr. Leahy as medical officer; Mr. Cunningham; Mr, Oldham as geologist. Mr. Warry, a member of the Chinese Consular Service, who spoke Chinese, was also to accompany us as commercial adviser and Chinese interpreter. An escort of fifty Punjabi sappers and twenty-five mounted men of the Guides were to join us before starting, and no fewer than 500 mules which had lately been employed in the transport of the Indian contingent on the Red Sea coast were to come up from Poona to carry our baggage. Now it seemed to me, as it did to Mr. Paul, that such a large and cumbersome expedition might appear to the Tibetans, when magnified by Oriental exaggeration, rather in the light of an invading army than of a peaceful embassy, and when I got to Darjeeling I found that the Tibetans had already assumed a hostile attitude. The Commissioner told me that the letter he had sent to Chumbi to inform the Tibetan frontier officer of the prospective arrival of the Mission had been returned unopened, and it was generally reported that the Tibetans meant to resist our entry to the country and were already collecting armed men with that intention. I at once offered to go up to Chumbi with the letter and find out how matters really stood. But the Commissioner thought that it would be better to wait until Macaulay arrived.
Whatever the Chinese may have said to Macaulay in Pekin, there now seemed to be little doubt that they did not want the embassy at all and had probably told the Tibetans privately to keep us out if possible. I think it is quite probable that if Macaulay had returned from Pekin and started at once with a small and lightly equipped party, he might have been able to get into Tibet, if not to Lhasa itself, before the apprehensions of the Tibetan Government had been roused. But now that the favourable moment had passed and the rainy season, which would add immensely to the difficulties of getting through Sikkim, was rapidly approaching, it seemed uncertain whether we should be able to cross the frontier peaceably.
​Colonel Tanner, who arrived soon after me as survey officer to the Mission, had had long experience in travelling in the North-West Himalaya and Ladakh. He agreed with me that our best chance of doing any real work in surveying and collecting was to organise our own transport and supplies independently, so that we could see more of the country than would be possible in company with such a large party. So I set to work to buy ponies and engage servants suitable for a long and difficult journey. My old syce came to me as soon as he heard of my arrival, and Gammie recommended a young Nepalese from among his own men as a suitable bearer. Ponies were scarce and dear at this season, but there was a Bhutia horse dealer in the station, Ugyen by name, with whom I had rather an interesting deal. He came one day with a pony which he said was a lama's pony and would carry me wherever a pony could go. tie was a raw-boned ugly beast with a head as big as a coffin; he had very good shoulders and loins, but he was so much out of condition that he did not look as if he was worth half the money which Ugyen asked. I had just bought a very good-looking pony from a planter for 200 rupees, but it seemed inclined to shy—a very bad fault on narrow mountain paths—and I asked Ugyen if he would swap. To this he replied that he should want money thrown in, as his pony was the better of the two. I laughed at him and he then offered to race me up to the bandstand in Darjeeling and back, owners up and the winner to take the two ponies, Ugyen was a big stout man, who, in the clothes he wore, looked as if he was two stone over my weight, and I thought it was good enough to accept his proposal. But when he returned to the back verandah to strip and had taken off three or four heavy Tibetan blanket coats and other garments, he appeared in a pair of English riding breeches about three stone lighter than I had thought before, and as my friends told me that he was a firstclass jockey, I thought it best to pay forfeit and buy his pony.
"The Lama" as I called him, turned out the best hill pony I ever rode, and was so sure-footed that I could canter up and down the winding hill-paths about the station without fear of his coming down. The only time that he came to grief was when I was riding up from Mongpo. As we were crossing a wooden bridge over a small watercourse, the middle log of the three forming the bridge gave way and let the pony through, all but his head and one foreleg. After a few struggles he lay still, and I took off the saddle and sent my syce to look for help. On the inside of the bridge the stream below was about ten feet down, and the banks very steep and rocky, and I thought it impossible that a horse could climb out of such a place if he fell through the bridge. But after lying for a few minutes the Lama with a struggle managed to get one hind foot up and then jumped right over the bridge into the torrent, out of which he climbed like a cat on to the road again, quite unhurt.
When I left Darjeeling four months later, I gave the Lama to my friend Gammie on the understanding that he was not to sell him, or on any account to allow Sir Richard Temple to ride him. Sir Richard, then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, was very fond of coming up to Darjeeling and prided himself on the rapidity of his journey when riding relays of other people's ponies. But as he was reputed to be utterly without con​sideration for horses, I resolved that he should never get a ride on the Lama. Ten years later, when he had retired, I met him at Lord Northbrook's country place and we had some chaff over this matter, which he had not forgotten.
Early in May the 500 mules which had been sent from Poona to Siligori by rail arrived at the foot of the hills in charge of a sergeant of the Transport Corps, one of the most efficient, energetic and excellent men I have ever worked with. He had a very inferior lot of mule drivers, hastily got together for the expedition. When they got out of the train, the men were rather prematurely served out with warm clothing which had been supplied by the Government; many of them, thinking that if such clothes as these were necessary they would probably be frozen in Tibet, deserted then and there. A lot more were found medically unfit when inspected by Dr. Leahy. As mules are animals which require much experience to load and manage, I quite expected that the difficulty of feeding and getting them into condition would be very serious. But with the help of some friendly tea planters I engaged Nepalese contractors who undertook to supply fodder at Darjeeling until we started, and the mules were brought up to the station and picketed in lines on a bare grassy spur above Ging, which is the only open space of any size anywhere near Darjeeling. Here they were allowed to graze for two or three days till the Bhutia milkmen who used this place as a feeding ground for their cows struck work and said that no more milk could be supplied if the mules were allowed to eat up the grass. The European ladies of the station then rose up in arms, and the Commissioner issued an order that the mules were not to go off their pickets in future. By this time a large supply of fodder consisting of the leaves and small stems of the little hill bamboo known as "Maling" was brought in daily by my contractor, who employed 200 Nepalese in cutting and carrying it from the Goompahar, where there was a good supply. But again we were met by an outcry from all the private horse-owners that their putta-wallahs (as grasscutters are here called) could not get their usual supplies, and our men were obliged to go ten miles off to the slopes of Tonglu in order to find sufficient fodder. I have often seen the coolies carrying on their backs the bundles ten feet long and four feet in diameter, which, when weighed by the commissariat clerk, scaled over two maunds (160 pounds) apiece.
By this time all the members of the expedition were assembled except Macaulay. When he at last arrived, he told us very little about the progress of the negotiations which were going on daily by telegraph between Simla, Pekin and London. He had sent up a Portuguese cook engaged in Calcutta at a very high salary, and an immense quantity of European tinned luxuries, wines and spirits and liqueurs, among which, I well remember, were several boxes pâté de foie gras in tins. Biscuits, however, which to my idea were a much more necessary article of rations, were conspicuous by their absence, and though we had not less than twelve mule-loads of medical stores and appliances, I was the only member of the expedition who had Elliman's embrocation or carbolic acid. These and many other little things seemed to point to the fact that, however clever and able Macaulay might be as a diplomatist, he was not ​the man to organise and lead a large expedition through such difficult country of which he had no previous experience. By this time I had had several talks with Sarat Chandra Das, who was to have accompanied us as a Tibetan interpreter, but who, owing to some friction or misunderstanding between himself and Macaulay, now flatly refused to go. In consequence we should have been dependent on the services of a youth from the school at Darjeeling, who, whatever his knowledge of colloquial Tibetan might have been, seemed quite unlit for such a difficult and responsible post as that of translator and interpreter to a political and commercial embassy.
Sarat Chandra Das never would tell me anything definite about what had passed in Pekin or since, though, knowing that I was not in the Indian Service but independent of Macaulay's present or future goodwill, he talked more freely to me than to the other members of the Mission. He seemed to have private sources of information, and though I never thought that, to use a common expression, he "funked the job," yet I could see that he was not at all sanguine of our success.
At the end of May, though the rains had not yet become persistent, there were many heavy showers and moths began to appear in great numbers and variety at the camp and in the station. I spent my time between the Club at Darjeeling and Mongpo, and as I had no regular occupation I determined to make my collection as complete as possible. In this I was materially aided, first by my friend Mandelli, who allowed me to select many rarities from his collection, secondly by Gammie, who was still in charge at Mongpo, and lastly by Mr. A. Knyvett, at that time Superintendent of Police in the Jelpigori district, who had collected largely both in the Terai and at Darjeeling, where he often stayed.
The best account I know of collecting moths in tropical regions is in Wallace's Malay Archipelago, where he describes his work in Borneo. Though his success was great, I think my own was even greater. I found, as he did, that the best nights for taking moths at a light were warm, dark and wet nights in the rainy season, and that the best situation for the light was an open verandah with a white wall and low roof overlooking a considerable extent of country, so that moths can be attracted from a great distance. The verandah of the Club at Darjeeling had all these advantages, and whenever the night was good I used to work the lamps for some hours after dinner and often with great success. I remember that one night in July when Mandelli was dining with me and it was raining steadily, though not very heavily, we could hardly get through dinner on account of the number of moths that came in. When, armed with large killing bottles, we went into the verandah, we found the walls covered with such numbers that it was not easy to select the rare from the common varieties of which I already had enough. As fast as my bottle was filled, I sat down to pin the moths, whilst Mandelli in turn filled his. A net was not often wanted, as the majority of the moths sat quietly on the whitewashed wall within reach. The majority were small, but some large Bombyces would hardly go into the bottle, and the variety was so great that on this particular night we caught, between half-past eight and midnight, something like 2,000 moths belonging to about 125 species. This is, so far as I know, a record for this kind of work in the Old World, ​though no doubt it might be surpassed. I am inclined to think that the fact that the reflector lamps in the verandah were stronger than any other lamps in the station was the reason why the Club was the best place I ever found. After selecting the best specimens and drying them thoroughly, I used to pack my moths the next day, pinned in flat boxes, and send the boxes away by parcel post two or three at a time. During June, July and August that year I sent home 8,000 specimens, which arrived for the most part in perfect condition. Among them were found very many novelties, most of which were described by Sir J. Hampson in his catalogue of Moths in the British Museum.
During the month of July a very welcome break in the rains occurred, of which I took advantage to make a sixteen days' trip along the Singalela ridge in order to collect butterflies and moths. Though the lower valleys had already been thoroughly ransacked by native collectors and a great number of specimens had been bi ought from the Chumbi and the Lachen and Lachung valleys by natives employed by Mandelli and myself, yet, owing to the lack of sunshine and to the heavy rainfall which usually prevails at this season, the insects of the western frontier of Sikkim above 10,000 feet were very little known. I had an unusually successful trip. I caught a number of new moths both at night and by day, and several new species of butterflies which nearly all belonged to various genera of Satyridæ, such as Zophœssa and Lethe. These are specially numerous, both in species and individuals, in Sikkim, and are almost all inhabitants of the forest at heights varying from 6,000 to 12,000 feet. These butterflies are nearly all dark brown in general tint, with ocelli above and beautiful patterns of waved lines and ocellate spots on the underside; they seem to be more adapted to a sunless climate than other butterflies flying in the shade; and often on dull misty days they would settle in little flocks on the path wherever any ordure or decaying object had been dropped. I also secured numerous day-flying moths belonging to the orders of Sesiidæ and Agaristidæ, many of which are very beautiful. But even up to 12,000 feet, which was about the highest level reached on this occasion, I found few or no insects of the genera which are so abundant at similiar elevations in the mountains of Central Asia and China, such as Parnassius, Colias, Erebia, Oneis, Argynnis, all of which seem in this region to be confined to the dryer, sunnier and, in winter, much colder regions of the frontier of Tibet and the Chumbi valley. The flora of the Singalela range at this season was extremely varied and beautiful. I saw a great number of fine herbaceous plants not seen on my previous journeys, some of which are now fairly well known in our gardens, though many more seem to require a constantly saturated atmosphere, which has been provided only in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens by means of fixed spraying apparatus. Meconopsis nipalensis in particular formed glorious masses of golden poppy-like blooms which covered acres of open ground, but the beautiful primulas were mostly out of flower. A gentian, G. stylophora, with large yellow flowers as big as a small teacup, was another discovery; but this, though raised from seed by Max Leichtlin, has failed to grow in England. Of lilies I saw only L. giganteum in a few places; bulbous plants generally are scarce. Of ​birds I hardly collected any, as most of them were now in bad plumage, and we had already worked this range pretty thoroughly.
When I returned to Darjeeling I found that it was still, uncertain whether or when the expedition would start. Rumours of the invasion of Sikkim by the Tibetans were rife. Even if we had not been opposed on the frontier, the condition of our transport .mules, which had now been for two months exposed on a bare ridge without shelter and with little exercise in the height of the rains, was very unsatisfactory; and I feel certain that if orders had come to start, we should have lost a great many of the mules before getting into Tibet. Telegraphing between Simla and England continued daily. I fear that if any inquisitive Member of Parliament had asked questions as to the cost of the Mission, the replies would have been extremely unpleasant both to the Indian Government and to Macaulay. But so far as I ever heard the only question asked was why an embassy which was intended to negotiate a Treaty of Commerce included no commercial member; to which it was replied that I was supposed to have the necessary knowledge—a compliment which I neither anticipated nor deserved.
At this time (July, 1886) a change of Government had taken place in England, and I was rather surprised to notice the immediate. change of attitude on the part of Macaulay towards myself. Ever since he arrived I had observed a decided coolness, which I could only account for by supposing that he did not want a member of the expedition who, though under his orders for the time being, had nothing to gain or to lose by subservience to his ideas; his dictatorial methods, I thought, characterised the Indian Civil Service at that period and were distinctly prejudicial to independence of thought or action. These methods were said to have been to some extent made fashionable by Sir Richard Temple, who was a Governor of extraordinary ability and energy but masterful to a degree. Macaulay was one of his men and had been inspired with the same ideas, but when he learnt that my brother-in-law, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, was a member of the new Conservative Government, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, it seemed as though he looked on me as a person whose influence might possibly be useful, Anyhow, for the rest of the time he allowed me to go about as I liked.
I wished to explore a new route to the Tibetan frontier which, from the little information we could get, seemed likely to be a shorter and less difficult route to Chumbi than the roads over the Jelep-la, Yak-la, or Cho-la passes, all of which at that time were in much the same bad or impassable condition for pack animals as they had been when I first visited the frontier in 1870. I obtained the assistance of a qualified surveyor, Mr. Prestage, who was an engineer on the Darjeeling railway, and we started together to examine this route known as the Rishi-la.
I started on August 12th, after arranging to meet Mr. Prestage, who was not able to leave till two days later, on the other side of the Tista. Mr. Paul, who was going to settle up accounts and send away the elephants which had been awaiting the start of the Mission near Rhenok, ​accompanied me as far as Kalimpong; and I found the society of this gentleman, who had resided in that district for some time when acting as settlement officer, a great advantage, We took the road via Jor bungalow to Pashok, which, though I have previously described it, was as full of interest and beauty as ever. A fresh set of plants had replaced those which I found here in flower in June, mostly Balsams and Gesneraceæ, but the grandest plant I found in flower during the day was a tall robust red-flowered Hedychium, which grew in the jungle just before reaching the tea plantation of Pashok. The forest at about 5,500 feet before reaching Lopchu was, or had been, one of the most magnificent in Sikkim, but though the giant trees had not been felled, yet some Bhutia cow-keepers had settled in it and by cutting the branches of saplings to get food for their cattle in the dry weather, had destroyed much of its virgin beauty. I thought birds were much scarcer than when I went over this road on returning from Sikkim in January, 1881, with Mr. Godman, but birds never seem so numerous in the height of the rains as they do in the cold weather, and perhaps the agreeable conversations of Mr. Paul prevented my looking out so much for them. Butterflies also were not abundant, and with the exception of a few Raphicera, Lathes and other Satyridæ, I saw nothing worth taking till I descended to about 5,000 feet, where I found the lovely gold and black Ilerda brahma common by the roadside on the edge of the jungle. The clouds cleared off as we got out of the forest and descended through the Pashok tea garden to the bungalow, where we found a hearty welcome as usual from Mr. Munro. He was one of the few planters who know or care much about flowers, and I found in his garden, among other things, the beautiful Lilium Wallichianum, which, as far as I know, grows nowhere in Sikkim out of this neighbourhood. A species of Gloriosa with smaller flowers than those of G. superba and a fine large Crinum were also in bloom; the Crinum, like the lily, is confined to the dryer spurs of the inner valley near the Tista river. Though Pashok is, at 3,200 feet, but little lower than Mongpo and not more than ten miles north of it, the climate is much drier and the rains are not so continuous. About 80 inches is the average here, against 150 inches at Mongpo, and 220 at Rungbi, which is even nearer. Pashok also seems much more windy than Mongpo, perhaps owing to its situation on a spur above the junction of the Rangit and Tista rivers. But the dryer climate does not seem to affect the crop of tea, which is as large in quantity and good in quality as in other gardens in the district; though not so much is made at the beginning of the season, it goes on flushing longer than on the other side of Darjeeling.
On enquiry I found that Lilium Wallichianum grows at about 4,000 feet elevation near Pashok, among brushwood, and makes its growth late in the season after the rains begin, at about the same time as in England. I saw a few plants close to Mr. Milton's bungalow at Lopchu, but the bulbs were small and many of them not flowering. In the garden it attains ​four or five feet in height, and bears one to three large trumpet-shaped sweet-smelling white flowers, which do not differ from those which I have grown in England from the North-West Himalayas. The Crinum is found in dry soil on the ridge leading down to the Tista bridge among Sal trees; the bulbs of it which I took home in 1881 did not succeed well in cultivation, though perhaps this was owing to want of heat and too much moisture in the resting season. A pretty little pink-flowered plant, Didymocarpus mortoni, was a great ornament to shady wet rock, on the face of which it clung at 4,000 to 5,000 feet, but this, like so many of its Eastern congeners, is too fugacious to be suitable for general cultivation in England, like the American Gesneraceæ which it represents in the Himalayas.
On August 13th we started early to cross the Tista before it got very hot, as though the weather had been wet and cloudy for some weeks previously, the valley is always extremely hot during the rainy season. We walked down the four miles of steepish descent to the bridge, along a good broad path through the stunted Sal trees, on the branches of which Ærides odoratum, Dendrobium and other orchids were here and there to be seen; but the accessible trees near the road have been much denuded of their showy orchids by the Lepchas who hawk them about Darjeeling, where they soon perish. Costus speciosus was the showiest flower I saw on the descent, but some fine Gingers and other Scitaminous plants are abundant along the road, though not now in flower.
On reaching the river at 8 a.m. I remained for three or four hours to collect butterflies, Paul going on alone. The sun did not come out till 11 o'clock, but I found many nice Hesperidæ, Lycænidæ and a few Papilios of the commoner species. A fine female of Neope Bhadra, the only tropical member of its genus, was taken; and a pair of the large grey Sphinx moth were clinging together on a rock where they were difficult to see. T went down the river a couple of miles, and found the road much damaged by landslips, but it was being repaired under the inspection of a babu whom I found quartered in the well-built wooden bungalow which is kept up at the bridge for the use of European officers and travellers. He gave me something to eat, and told me that, though he did not suffer from fever whilst down at the river, he usually had an attack on returning to Darjeeling; and I should advise no one who can avoid it to sleep there between the months of April and November. The fine new iron suspension bridge which now spans the Tista is a great improvement on the old cane bridge by which I crossed it on the same day of August sixteen years before when starting for Tibet with Blanford. What this bridge cost no one but the Public Works Department can say, but there is no doubt that much money was wasted on the heavy iron castings which were brought out from England to carry the wire ropes, but, proving unsuitable, lay rusting by the path. The carriage of any ironwork of this sort over footpaths by coolies is always very difficult, but the engineers in India are, or were, often too fond of ignoring the conditions under which such works must be carried on, and insist on having everything on the same elaborate and expensive scale as if they were in England.
After breakfast I mounted my pony to ascend the long steep zigzags ​which lead up to Kalimpong; though the road had been much improved since I last went over it, it remains one of the hottest and stiffest ascents in the district. I got up about 3 p.m. and found Paul in the house which he had formerly built as his residence, but which was now turned into a dak bungalow, as there was no European officer there except the Deputy Conservator of Forests, who had charge of the very large but almost entirely unworked tract of virgin forest in British Bhutan. I rode with Paul to the bazaar, where he was received with marks of respect and pleasure by many of his old enemies, the Marwari shopkeepers. These clever traders have spread all over British Sikkim and Bhutan, and as money-lenders, cloth and grain dealers, they grew rich and prosperous. They would soon have every Bhutia and Lepcha and a good many of the Nepalese in the country in a state of virtual slavery, were they not checked in every legitimate way by the European civilians. Even as it is, many of the simple hillmen, who have no more chance in dealing with them than, a Russian peasant has with an usurer, are so much in their debt that they cannot hope to free themselves. These Marwaris are said to act as middlemen between the Tibetan traders and the Darjeeling merchants for whom they act as agents; and many of the Tibetans, who dislike the journey across the hot Tista valley to Darjeeling, stop to dispose of their goods and make their purchases here.
Kalimpong is now the principal place in British Bhutan, and has a police station and dispensary. When I was formerly here there were a few huts; now there is a regular bazaar on the ridge overlooking the thriving, prosperous and well-cultivated valley of the Dikchu. The immense improvement which has taken place in this district, since the Bhutan war, is mainly attributable to the admirable settlement of the country which was made by Mr. Paul. This, together with a good climate and rich soil, has attracted a large number of industrious and peaceable Nepalese cultivators. These men, under the protection of our Government, have turned what sixteen years ago was a mere jungle, with only a few Bhutia and Limboo inhabitants, into one of the most thriving and best-cultivated districts I have seen in the Himalayas. Rice, both dry and irrigated, Marwa and Indian com, seem at this elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet to grow most luxuriantly, and the cattle are also better than in Sikkim. A small plantation of Cinchona succirubra, made as an experiment by Mr. Paul, was growing well; and Cryptomerias, ash trees and other exotics in his old garden seemed flourishing. The six elephants, which had been sent up for the embassy and which were now going back to Jelpigori, were camped just below the baazar and seemed in very good condition after the long halt; I could not help thinking how different their lot would have been if we had taken them to Tibet, where cold, starvation and work would most probably have soon killed them.
After Paul had received the salaams and offerings of his former subjects, we went on to call on the Lama of the monastery. We found him shut up in solitary confinement in a small portion of his room. He salaamed through a hole in the partition, through which he received his food, and informed us that he was spending three months in retreat, but whether the penance was voluntary, or ordered in consequence of some ​breach of religious discipline, he did not say. The Marwa beer which his servants gave us was excellent, as it usually is in a monastery. We then went on to visit Ugyen, the horse dealer from whom I had bought my black pony at Darjeeling. We found him in a large new house with a corrugated iron roof; his old house had been burnt down. One of the rooms was being fitted up by a Chinese carpenter from Darjeeling as a sort of oratory with the usual Buddhist emblems and carvings. His mother, a dirty but well-mannered and very sweet-voiced old lady, received us with great civility and presented pomegranates and Marwa beer. Ugyen showed us a number of Bhutanese cloaks, saddle-bags, swords and other equipment, some of them curious and rather nicely worked in wool and cotton; but though he was evidently anxious to trade, I found his ideas of their value much larger than my own. His father resides in Western Bhutan on the other side of the Juldoka river, where he acts as agent for the Bhutan Rajah in dealing with the Nepalese settlers who are rapidly crossing from our territory into independent Bhutan. The relations between them and the Bhutanese are said to be fairly good at present, but as the Nepalese get stronger and more numerous they are certain to resist the exactions of Bhutanese tax gatherers, and collisions will ensue. Between such a determined, persevering and courageous race as the Nepalese, and a turbulent, cowardly and overbearing set of semi-savages as the Bhutanese, there must sooner or later be quarrels. If the Nepalese are not checked I see no reason why they should not by degrees colonise all that is worth having of the lower parts of Bhutan adjoining the Dooars, and in this case we should find them very much more desirable neighbours than the Bhutanese, The constant struggle for power which is taking place between the various chiefs in Bhutan, together with the anarchy, oppression and misrule which prevail in that country, make it highly desirable that such good neighbours as the Nepalese should be encouraged.
On August 14th, Paul was obliged to return to Darjeeling, so I said good-bye to him, and after some trouble got three coolies to take my things on to Rississum, an easy march of about thirteen miles. Though the population round Kalimpong is so large, and the pay for coolies higher than they can make by carrying their own goods to market at Darjeeling, they are not easy to find, as at this time of year the maize harvest is going on in the lower and warmer fields on the road a little beyond Kalimpong. I called on Mr. Sutherland, a missionary who had been established here for some years, and was working with some success among the Lepchas at Sittong, where he had a small church, and also among the Nepalese in the Kalimpong district. A great improvement in the moral and material condition of the Lepcha converts is already visible, as Mr. Gammie had already told me. They do not wander and change their residence so often, they cultivate better, and do not live so much hand to mouth as formerly. Their family relations are also improving, and though the Lepcha race is dying out and becoming amalgamated by intermarriage with the Bhutias in British Sikkim, yet the mortality from fever and scarcity of food in the spring is not so great as formerly.
FIG. 4.—UGYEN KAJI, GOVERNOR OF WESTERN BHUTAN.
The ridge falls steeply close to the bungalow on the north where one looks over on to the deep valley of the Rilli river and the slopes of Rhenok beyond. There is a good deal of clearing in the lower part of the valley and a large village inhabited by Bhutias and Limboos, whose clearings are encroaching on the forest in many places. The bungalow stands at 6,400 feet, and there is a Nepalese settlement near where fowls, eggs, milk and Indian corn can be had. I arrived about four and at once sent off a messenger with a note to the Abbé Desgodins, who lived at Pedong about four miles away. This gentleman was a French Lazarist missionary priest who has resided many years in Eastern Tibet, and had taken up his abode in this isolated spot with two younger priests, in the hope of finding a favourable field for missionary work among the Bhutias. In the evening after a short but heavy thunderstorm, which recurred almost every day that I was in Rississum, the weather cleared, and on the following morning I had a superb view of the whole country up to the Donkia pass. It was a fine sunny morning, and I started early to collect butter​flies in the forest to the eastward, and to explore the road towards Laba. This road had been opened some time, and though in places rather swampy at this season, it is an easy road for ponies and the principal means of communication with the eastern parts of British Bhutan. It passes through dense virgin forest for many miles, and seems one of the most favourable roads for collecting the butterflies which inhabit the zone from 6,000 to 8,000 feet, many of which are peculiar to the Eastern Himalayas. Half a mile beyond Rississum I crossed a narrow saddle and found on a rock a large patch of that lovely little plant, Kæmpferia linearis, a Scitaminous plant allied to Roscœa, with dwarf slender stems, and large white orchid-like flowers with purple base and wings. I collected a bunch of it to send alive to Mr. Gammie, and a dozen specimens to dry. It is apparently, as Hooker says, an annual, and numerous seedlings were springing up. If this plant can be successfully introduced, I believe it should be grown like Utricularia in a basket of moss, or on a block like an orchid, and it should succeed in a damp shady greenhouse without artificial heat.
I then ascended gently for a mile or so, shooting one or two green pigeons as I went along, and then came to one or two little openings in the forest where buffaloes are brought to graze. It was too early now for many butterflies to be out, but as I returned I found in this spot Limenitis daraxa and other local species. I left my insect collector Bush here to try and catch Teinopalpus imperialis, which we had seen in the opening, and went on with Aten alone. As the sun got higher I took numerous butterflies of the genera Lethe, Neope and Rhapicera, which settle on the path and are not difficult to catch as they rise. Most of them were freshly out and in beautiful condition. A little further on at about 7,500 feet I saw a large dark insect sail down the path and by a lucky stroke I secured the beautiful Neorina hilda, a rich brown butterfly, four inches across, with a band of yellowish cream colour across the wings and large ocelli below. The female of this is seldom seen in the forest with the male, but I took one on the open top of Jellapahar hill close to the observatory, after a tough race with a soldier who had also had his eye on the prize.
Ascending the slopes of a hill called Khumpong which seems to be the culminating point of the ridge at about 7,800 feet, we heard the sharp bark of a muntjac, or barking deer, in the forest, and we approached with cautious steps. Just as we were coming round a corner where we expected to see the animal, the bark, which is repeated at intervals of a minute or so, suddenly stopped, and a Nepalese policeman on his pony came round the corner and disturbed the deer, much to the annoyance of Aten, who wanted to know what he was doing there. These small barking deer are almost the only large game that one ever sees in the thick forests or bikkim. The Serow, a larger goat-like antelope, is also found on many of the steeper rocky slopes, but it is so shy that it is hardly ever seen and seldom killed unless you have good dogs to bring it to bay. At the ​top of Khumpong I tried to get a view over the country to the east and north, so as to have some idea as to the route before me, but the forest was so thick that I could only get glimpses of a densely wooded tract of steep hills running up to a long ridge which leads to the top of Rishi-la, the point we wished to reach. The policeman said that the track was so much obstructed by landslips and fallen trees, that it would be impossible to take ponies beyond the turning from the main road; but I have found by experience that the information one gets from those who have not actually been over the ground is often incorrect, and the difficulties exaggerated. Returning from here to Rississum I saw but few birds except the common ones, and the special object of my search, the lovely blue Nuthatch, Sitta formosa, which is said to be found on the hills near, remained invisible, though Aten, whose eyes were sharper than mine, and who knew the note of every bird in the district, kept a sharp look-out in the high trees whilst I was searching for butterflies on the ground. I met my pony on the road back and cantered up to the bungalow just in time to avoid a heavy thunderstorm, which drove in my butterfly hunter as well. The few hours of sunshine which one has even during a break in the rains must be made the most of by a collector. Though many of the butterflies in these woods fly more or less even during cloudy and wet days, yet many of them are so rare that one cannot hope to get more than an idea of their variety in a few months' collecting.
In the afternoon Prestage arrived after a long march from Pashok, and brought a brace of Kalij, the black crested pheasant of the Eastern Himalaya, which he had shot on the road. He was provided with a couple of tarpaulin sheets to make tents, and had enough of his own coolies from Darjeeling to carry such supplies as we should need for the next few days. On the following day we did not start till the afternoon as I expected Abbé Desgodins to breakfast. The morning being very bright and fine I spent several hours profitably in collecting butterflies, which came in some numbers to the little open clearing round the bungalow. Among them were the beautiful green Papilio arcturus; the very rare Papilio gyas, which I had never seen before; the splendid Teinopalpus imperialis, of which five or six were flying with great rapidity round the top of the trees, though these were as usual very hard to catch. Limenitis zayla and L. daraxa, one or two rare and beautiful Theclas, and other Lycænidæ were taken. I also saw a single specimen of Zophœssa yama, the largest and finest of the genus. The Abbé arrived on foot about eleven with his net, for though not such an ardent naturalist as our mutual friend the Abbé David, whose scientific discoveries in China and Tibet have given him a world-wide fame, he collects insects for friends in France. He was delighted to talk his native language, and gave me much valuable information as to the feelings of the Tibetans, whose language he understood thoroughly. His opinion was that the withdrawal of the Mission would have the worst possible effect on our relations with Tibet, and would make them believe that their hostile demonstrations had frightened us away.
After an animated conversation with our guest we took leave of him about two, and started to overtake our coolies, who had gone onto Pashiteng, ​a short march of about nine or ten miles. After crossing the summit of Khumpong we descended about 1,000 feet to a small clearing in the forest called Laba, where a Nepalese had built a house and started a shop. After making some enquiries about the road, we went on three miles to a place where the Forest Department had erected a small wooden house in the heavy jungle. There was a chokidar in charge who admitted us, as in the rainy season, when the ground is swarming with leeches and a dry spot cannot be found whereon to pitch a tent, any sort of roof is better than none. We soon spread our beds and made ourselves comfortable. A sheep brought on from Rississum was killed and divided amongst the coolies and ourselves, and orders were given to be ready to start at daybreak. The view from Pashiteng would be very fine if the forest were not so dense, as it lies just at the top of a very steep descent into the valley of the Dikchu and overlooks the Western Dooars which are close below, and the old Bhutia fort of Dalimkote which was stormed by our troops during the war, and where several officers and men were killed by the explosion of a powder barrel. If a really direct and easy road is wanted from Calcutta to Tibet, it must be made somewhere near here, for, as we found in the next two days, a track exists which at very small cost might be made into an excellent pony road from Laba or Pashiteng to the top of the Rishi-la. The night was clear and the morning fine, so we got away by twenty minutes past six, taking five days' supplies for the coolies, who with our three syces, two servants, three shikaris and ourselves made up a party of twenty-one. The track up the steep hill above Pashiteng lay through a dense forest and was so much overgrown with herbage and blocked by fallen trees that the first 1,000 feet took us an hour to ascend. We then got on to the top of the ridge, which was covered with dense bamboo, and plodded for two or three miles along a deep muddy track until we got to the place where the road from Laba came in on the left. As we went along, Prestage's dog occasionally winded a small covey of wood partridges, Arboricola rufigularis, which seemed very abundant in this district from 6,000 to 9,000 feet. They run among the dense bamboo, and when flushed either fly up into a tree or go off with a heavy whirring flight. Five or six were shot on the way up to Rishi-la but they are not very good either for sport or for eating, though with the red monal or tragopan, Ceriornis satyra, which is both rarer and shyer, they are the only game birds in these forests. Kalij are only found lower down, and neither the blood pheasant nor the Impeyan descend into these dense damp sunless forests. We found the track very much overgrown with grass and bushes, and had to keep our kukries in constant use in cutting the bamboo which had fallen across it. We took our ponies to see if the path was practicable for them, but I do not think either of us rode a mile during the whole day. I never realised so forcibly how all-important it is to the naturalist to have a good clean open path in order to enable him to see and collect either plants, birds or insects. When the hands and eyes are constantly occupied in clearing away obstructions, and there is no bare ground or open space in which insects can settle or birds can be watched, you get little or nothing. Showy plants also were apparently far less numerous in this forest than on the ​road up to Tonglo. On the ascent of Punkasari some miles further on, we passed through one of the most beautiful and remarkable oak forests I have ever seen in the Himalayas, where the ground was fairly clear under the trees; yet the greater part of the immense tract of forest through which we passed was too much encumbered by a dense undergrowth of bamboo and shrubby brambles to have much terrestrial plants of interest.
Water is scarce on the road, but after a succession of short sharp ascents and occasional descents of a few hundred feet, during which we kept due north along the ridge, which leads over the top of the hill called Punkasari, about 8,500 feet in height, we came to a place where two or three decaying huts had been built in the forest. Finding water a little way below the track here, we halted for breakfast and enjoyed a halfhour's rest. The coolies, who were lightly loaded and all Nepalese, came on very well; but though one of their number had been over the ground last year we could not make out how far we should have to go before finding another good camping ground. This place, which is marked on the map, is perhaps the best camp between Laba or Pashiteng and the top of the Rishi-la, as water might not be found further on in the dry season. After a short ascent we came over the top of the ridge, and turning rather to the left descended steeply for eight or nine hundred feet. Then we wound along for some miles either on the ridge or close to it through very dense forest, gradually ascending till we came to a place where a small herd of elephants had come on to the track and followed it up to the top of the mountain. Their marks and the broken bamboos, which were freshly twisted and bent in all directions, showed that they had passed within four or five days, and added much to the difficulty of forcing a passage. On the road we met two wild-looking Nepalese, the only human beings we saw all day, who were bringing down a few wretched sheep from the pasture above. About 2 p.m,, as rain appeared imminent and the chance of reaching the top that day was doubtful, we took advantage of a good spring close to the track to camp. Our men drew their kukries and speedily cut down a quantity of bamboo stems, with which they built a level floor or machan, resting on two forked sticks, over which to fix our tent. In the rainy season this is usually necessary on account of the wetness of the ground and the leeches, which, however, were not so bad there as usual. The men also erected shelters for themselves by breaking the joints of a number of bamboos in several places so that they would open out flat; when placed close together and lashed down tight with strips of the outer bark on a light frame-work, bamboos form a really watertight roof. Constant practice has made all these hill-men wonderfully handy in erecting shelters for themselves in the forest, but the hill bamboo is indispensable for the purpose, and all the mats which are used for roofing the temporary dwellings of the Nepalese are made of it. Higher up in the pine forests split shingles are used, and in the hot valleys grass thatching forms a very durable and watertight roof; but bamboo of one sort or another is a sine qua non in all Himalayan houses, and is used for every imaginable purpose. We got a comfortable dinner and turned in early. During the night there was a sudden alarm in camp caused by the ponies breaking loose in terror, which made the sleeping natives jump up and yell in ​order to frighten away whatever had alarmed them. We seized our guns, thinking that either elephants or a tiger must be close at hand, but, hearing nothing, we tied up the ponies again and went to sleep. As we could find no traces of any large animal.in the morning, we concluded that it was a false alarm; but as our ponies were of no use and were in great risk of being lamed by the sharp bamboo stubs and logs through which they had been dragged, we sent them back to wait for us at Laba.
Starting at about 6 a.m. we began soon to ascend the steep shoulder of the hill which led up to the top, and after an ascent of 1,600 feet or more, we came to a place where a long ridge runs down in a northwesterly direction towards Rhenok. This is the British frontier and is marked on the map by a pillar which, however, we could not find. .At this point, which is about 9,500 feet, Rhododendrons, Buddleia Colvilei and other Tonglo trees first appeared, and the large bamboo was replaced by the dwarf one which grows along the Singalela. The path from here was level for half a mile, following a deep trench among roots of trees, sometimes boggy, and then passing through extremely dense jungle of small stunted trees. Then we had a very steep climb up rocks covered with scrub for about 500 feet. This was the only part of the road that was impassable for ponies. But there would be no great difficulty in cutting a few zigzags, and, as the elephants had found their way up by diverging from the track, it must be easier than it looked. On this climb I found among the dense growth of bamboo some plants of a curious little white-flowered orchid, Goodyera sp., which I had never seen before, a dwarf Anæctochilus out of flower, and a green-flowered Habenaria with long spurs. At last, about 9 a.m., we reached the summit, but found no place from which a good view of the surrounding country could be obtained, as, though there were one or two very small openings, the whole top of the hill was covered with low forest. To the west and north we could see, over the deep valley of the Jaldhaka river, the ridge up which the Tibet road passes on to the open table-land above Lingtu; to the north a long forest-clad ridge seemed to run from where we were standing into the shoulder of the table-land. With a glass we could just make out the stone blockhouse which had been lately constructed near the head of the steep ascent to oppose the progress of the Tibet Mission. To the south and west we could see but little owing to the cloud which had already begun to rise from the plains, but a long ridge runs south and east in a nearly parallel direction to that by which we had ascended, and in one or two places we made out what we thought to be groves of fir trees in the midst of the forest. As the existence of fir trees in this part of the country, and so near the outer edge of the hills, was unknown to botanists or to the officers of the Forest Department under whose control the whole of this country is nominally placed, I was anxious to make out what the species was. This I succeeded in doing on our descent by sending a man to cut off branches. It proved to be the Silver Fir, Abies Webbiana, which I had never seen elsewhere in Sikkim in a mixed forest of Oak, Chestnut and Magnolia; elsewhere it was always in a forest to itself apart from other trees. Sir Joseph Hooker has remarked on the absence of conifers on these wet outer ranges of Sikkim, and the lowest point where the Silver Fir grows on Singalela is ​at least 1,500 feet higher than the small clump from which I procured my specimen, two or three miles north of Punkasari and probably not more than 8,000 feet above the sea.
A little way beyond the actual summit we came on a small open place with a pool of rainwater, which, though anything but sweet, proved to be the only water we could get. We camped there and sent Prestage's shikari to look for some shepherds who were said to be about, and whose dogs we could hear not far away. In the meantime I made the most of the sunshine, and caught all the butterflies I could see; but they were both in variety and number much fewer than on Tonglo, and the only species I took were Zophœssa jalaurida and Lethe maitrya. which were common; two or three Colias and a stray specimen of Pieris Lalage. Not a single blue or skipper was seen, and birds were conspicuous by their absence. On a bare knoll of pasture just above our camp I found a few very pretty plants of a more Alpine character. The large rosy-flowered Pedicularis megalantha was the most beautiful and abundant, but I also found a pretty pink-flowered orchid, Satyrium nepalense, a Lobelia near L. erecta, Halenia elliptica, and a Phlomis with heads of lilac flowers, a small pink geranium, Arisœma Griffithi, and others of lesser beauty.
After a time the shikari returned with two of the shepherds who were near by with about 200 sheep belonging to a man near Parheteng. They told us that the elephants had crossed over the hill five days before our arrival, that they had descended to the eastward without staying, and that they did not know their drinking or feeding places. Prestage was very anxious to kill a wild elephant if he could get one within the Sikkim or Bhutan boundary, but it was not allowable to lull them in British territory. I do not think, however, that in such extremely dense forest it would be at all easy, and it certainly would be dangerous work, as the dense thicket of bamboo would make it impossible to move freely in many parts of the forest. It seems very strange that elephants should ascend to such an elevation as this, but it is their regular habit during the rainy season; Mr. C.B. Clarke told me that when returning from the Yak-la pass in May, he came on the fresh tracks of wild elephants in the snow at an even higher elevation. The number of elephants which frequent the Western Dooars had been diminished by the numerous clearings for tea cultivation and the large immigration; but they are still numerous a little to the eastward, and elephant catching, by means of trained females and nooses, is a regular occupation along the edge of the Dooars. The right of elephant catching is annually farmed out in the district, as in Assam, to the highest bidder, and as the elephants during the rains are often in Bhutan territory, some of the hunters take advantage of having purchased permission from the Bhutan authorities to poach in British territory. My friend Mr. Knyvett, the police officer in charge of the district, had received information that this poaching was going on, and in August, 1886, he took measures to stop it. A letter describing his adventures on this occasion is so interesting that I transcribe it here.
"Our suspicions were aroused last year that the elephants, professedly captured in Bhutan, really belonged to British forests. It was possible, ​of course, that along such a boundary as ours is there should be tracts of forest and valleys in which the elephants might be noosed. But in the nature of things such places must be few and far between, and hardly capable of yielding the continually increasing number which were being led out. The time selected for hunting operations was during the height of the rains, and this was suspicious, as at this time of year the police outposts are withdrawn, and the Dooars during that time are considered most unhealthy for natives and deadly as far as Europeans are concerned. Then there had been much enquiry lately to get more passes from the Bhutan Government, and they, ignoring the fact that they had already leased the whole of their Dooar jungles to one man, accepted subsequent tenders from others and granted leases two or three times over. This awkward matter was arranged by the parties interested, which was also a most suspicious fact.
"All doubts, however, were set at rest by information we received a few days before we started for Buxa. An old Phandait (nooser), with a face like Judas Iscariot and similar motives, came in and betrayed his quondam employers and put me in possession of full information of what had been going on for two years. Fourteen elephants had already this season been taken out of British Government forests, and three parties were at that time actually at work. Mr. Dalton, Deputy Commissioner of the Division, and I decided to take up the case ourselves to prevent anything like escape by bribery, which of course in such a case would be freely resorted to, or by hard swearing and false witnesses if bribery failed.
"Accordingly, on September 14th, we started with Major Gordon, Superintendent of Gooch Behar, for the Pana nuddee about fourteen miles west of Buxa, and reached the elephant catchers' camp at sunset. It was situated on a small spit of land between two rivers with perpendicular hills like walls at the back, on Bhutanese ground. The party had captured five elephants and taken them out to graze, and in bringing them home it was apparent that they would have to cross a point which lay on British territory; so we waited for them here and soon arrested them. There was a faint show of resistance at first, but as soon as the fact had been digested that the Sahibs were out, and there was no hope of any kind except in unconditional surrender, they gave in, and by nightfall we had the^ whole party, mahouts, koonkees (tame females used for catching the wild) and newly caught elephants safely in custody, and before going to sleep we recorded the full confession of the principal man. One old snarer only held out, and with that inimitable ease which in such case a Bengali only possesses, swore roundly that all the captures had been made on Bhutan territory, and actually pointed out one or two hills to mark the spots where his story might be verified. However, he gave in by two the following morning.
"On the 10th we made another excursion to a place about ten miles to the east of Buxa. The nest was empty, but we got all the local evidence we wanted, and started homewards with the knowledge that five more wild elephants were on their way to a certain place a day's journey off, and would in a short time become Government property. This was the day ​we were lost in the jungle; I think I sent you an account of our adventures We had been from 9.30 a.m. till 12.30 a.m. on pad elephants and did not get to our camp till 2.30 a.m. Well, to make a long story short, we have in all seized thirteen elephants up to date, and have information of eleven more, which sooner or later must fall into our hands. Thar makes twentyfour! Not a bad haul for Government, as the men who caught them may be fined at the rate of 500 rupees for each elephant, so that we deserve well of Government. But it's all in the way of duty, and I've no doubt they will abolish us or cut down our pay to-morrow if it suited them. The Government and its sins, and their effects on us, the working bees of the service, is one of the burning questions of the day."
This long digression well illustrates the energy and activity of some of the ill-paid police officers on the Northern frontier, whose service is spent in a climate so unhealthy that only the toughest of them are able to carry on their work without frequent attacks of fever, whilst their constant endeavours to check and punish the almost universal corruption of their native subordinates meet with but little success.
I will revert to my own story. We found the shepherds established in little temporary bamboo huts in a small marshy open spot in the jungle. Their sheep, which were guarded by large dogs, were lying in groups close to the huts for safety, as tigers or leopards were in the close vicinity and had killed four sheep within a day or two. Whilst creeping through the jungle in search of plants, we came on the fresh tracks of what was either a small tiger or a very large leopard, and found the remains of two of the sheep. This life, in a constant state of wet, harassed by wild animals, and without any food except the milk of the ewes and Indian corn carried up from Pashiteng, must be very trying, but the children of these hardy Nepalese, clad in very scanty woollen jackets, and always barefooted among the broken stubs of the bamboos, seemed as happy and healthy as children could be, and I cannot help thinking that their savage life is preferable to the life of children bred in the slums of large English cities.
We explored the path for some little way along the ridge, but the drizzling rain which came on and the density of the bush made it impossible to see where we were going. As the shepherds said that the nearest inhabited place was many hours distant through dense forest of the same character as that we had passed through, we soon returned to camp, much disappointed with the results of our exploration. No doubt if a few thousand acres of this hill-top were cleared, it would, in a few years, become good pasture for sheep and cattle, like the top of Tonglo. The evening was very wet, but the night was clear and cold; we slept very comfortably in our tent, and the men, though they had no blankets and only very bad water for cooking, seemed very happy in the morning. I got a few moths at the candles before going to sleep but hardly any differing from those caught on Tonglo and far fewer of them.
In the morning we started before seven with the intention of getting back to Laba at any rate, and to Rississum if possible. The descent was much easier than the ascent, as the path was now more open and there were no delays in getting the ponies over the bad places; as there was ​nothing to detain us on the road except an occasional shot at a wood partridge or a pigeon, we made good way, and passed our previous camp long before breakfast. The coolies also, having exhausted their food, and knowing that there was nothing to eat nearer than Laba, marched splendidly, and when we stopped to breakfast in the fine open oak forest of Punkasari they were nearly all up. Having made a splendid breakfast on a box of biscuits and a tin of delicious cooked tongue, we went on like giants refreshed, and, walking steadily, reached Laba at half-past three; the last hour it rained in torrents, and the track was like a wet ditch full of leaves and mud, which would soon have destroyed the soles of the feet of any but these Himalayan mountaineers. After I had halted for an hour to drink tea and change my clothes in the hut at Laba, the coolies, who had come up, said that they could go on to Rississum, and we got there at dark without anyone falling out. This march of about twenty-one miles, of which fifteen was very bad travelling, does not seem much on paper, but it took us eleven and the coolies twelve hours of steady going with only two or three halts. I should advise anyone following our steps to camp the first night on Punkasari, which would divide the distance very fairly, and allow time to get into camp on the Rishi-la without fatigue.
Next day we went on to Kalimpong. I caught the rare female of Lethe bhairava in the Dumsong forest, and Prestage shot one of the red and black hornbills which are not uncommon in this forest. But the road to Kalimpong is not a good one for collecting at that time of year. I noticed that the Tenas hecabe, which were very abundant, were much smaller and less strongly marked than those taken in the Tista valley, 4,000 feet lower. On August 21st we left Kalimpong at half-past six and walked down to the Tista bridge, where I left Prestage, intending to return myself to Darjeeling via Mongpo. The day was sunny and intensely hot in the valley. One of my ponies, who had cast two shoes, was too tender on his feet to ride, and I reserved the other for the long ascent in the afternoon. The journey of nine miles along the river-side was very trying, owing to the heat, and whenever we came to shady places we wetted our heads to cool them a little. When I left the valley of the Tista at the point where the Ryeng river comes in from the west, I soon found that landslips had made it nearly impossible. After dragging my ponies through dense bush to avoid a dangerous place, I found a landslip which could not be avoided by any detour, so I was obliged to send the syces back with them to go up a side path which leads to Gielle tea plantation far up on the hillside, and go on myself without them. In one place only a few inches of earth were left of the path, on the side of a perpendicular bank, which we crossed in fear and trembling lest it should slip under our weight, and then we got on to the debris which had rushed down from the upper valley during the great rains of June. After a mile of this we came to the river, which luckily was not so high as usual, or it would have been impassable. The bridge being washed away, we had to make one, and here the pluck and handiness of my Nepalese bearer, Coolman, were well brought out. The longest bamboos we could find were only just long enough to span the torrent, and sagged down so much in the middle that the water rushed over them. Coolman with some risk managed to drag ​himself along them through the water to the other side, and then we piled up stones to support a handrail. The whole structure was so shaky that I should not have ventured to cross it if Coolman had not already done so, and even with bare feet I found it very difficult. One of the coolies also got over with his load, but the others refused to do so seeing how dangerous the crossing was. Coolman stripped again and went back. I waded out as far as I could to support the bridge on the lower side and he carried the loads over successfully, one by one, much to my admiration. It is impossible to live and work with men like these Nepalese without feeling for them a respect which one never has for Hindus.
After we were all safely over the stream, I rested a couple of hours in the shade by the river before beginning the long hot ascent to Mongpo. I watched the flight of the great gorgeous butterflies which came up and down the stream, sailing in and out of the foliage as if searching for suitable roosting-places for the night. I have never been able to understand how these large insects manage to protect themselves during the torrential rains which so frequently occur. When there is no wind, the undersides of large leaves no doubt give shelter, but when every leaf is in a state of violent agitation, many of the butterflies must be almost drowned; in fact, they soon lose their freshness, so that, of a dozen which one catches, not more than one or two are absolutely perfect. The road up to Mongpo, a constant ascent of 3,000 feet, was very fatiguing, and the stifling air of the lower half of the road made me think it longer than ever. When after two or three miles I reached the lower groves of cinchona, the sweet scent of the flowers filled the damp hot air, and attracted many butterflies, Pienda ornithoptera and Papilios, which I was too tired to pursue. Half an hour before dark, a pony, kindly sent down to meet me by Gammie, was welcomed as I had never welcomed a pony before, and the cool of the evening and a good dinner soon made me forget the exhausting labour of the day.
At the Bath meeting of the British Association in 1887 I read a paper on this survey, and when I went down to Calcutta after the dispersal of the embassy I discussed the matter with Sir Richard Temple. But he had already another plan in his head, and I did not succeed in convincing him that the Rishi-la might be made at a comparatively small outlay into the easiest and most direct route between the plains of Bengal and Tibet. As I have not been over the cart road which was subsequently made in order to facilitate the military expedition to Chumbi which was the sequel to our embassy, I cannot compare the two routes.
On reaching Darjeeling I got the news that the Mission was abandoned. The Indian Government had made a bargain with the Chinese, that if the Mission was given up the Chinese Government would at once appoint a commission to delimit the frontier of Northern Burmah which had been a burning question for some time. Though we were all very much disappointed at the time, yet I am now sure that the Government were right in this action, as by this time the Tibetans had practically declared war by occupying and fortifying a place called Lingtu in Sikkim, which they had never even claimed as their own. This led to the military ​expedition to Tibet in 1888, when a force of European and native troops crossed the frontier and, after a few skirmishes with the Tibetans, occupied the Chumbi valley which we certainly should have retained. As, however, the history of this expedition has been fully written and I had no part in it, I will say no more on the subject.
I had an invitation from C.B. Clarke to spend a month with him at Shillong in the Khasia hills, and gladly availed myself of this chance to see a new and most interesting country which has never been better described than in Hooker's Himalayan Journals. I therefore packed up all my collections, paid off my servants and settled up my expenses with the Paymaster's Office at Calcutta, which led to some curious correspondence. I had kept vouchers for all the expenses which, under my agreement with the Government, were incurred since my arrival at Calcutta, and I was careful to leave out everything about which there could be any reasonable doubt. But the clerks in the Paymaster's Department seemed to think that they would not be justifying their existence if they did not cut off a little here and a little there, and they took particular objection to a charge for horseshoes and shoeing which had been paid to the Farrier Sergeant of the mountain battery at Darjeeling. I had at last to write a letter pointing out that I was not in the habit of falsifying accounts or attempting to rob the Government, and that if they would not pay the account in full I would take nothing at all but submit the matter to the India Office when I got home. I was told that no one in the service in India would venture to do this, as it would bring them into bad colour with the Paymaster's Department, and that it was quite simple to add on to other items what had been cut off from the disputed ones. Whether the correspondence ever reached the desk of the Paymaster-General or not I cannot say, but I eventually carried my point.
Our mules, after staying three months on the ridge where they were obliged to remain picketed, were sent down to the plains, leaving an immense mass of refuse and manure. A neighbouring tea planter thought that this would make some very useful manure for his plantation and wrote to the officer in charge of the station to know whether he might remove it, This gentleman, who was a bit of a wag, replied officially to say that at present " he had no instruction to dispose of the only tangible results of the late embassy to Tibet." This joke was told everywhere and made poor Macaulay furious; in fact, I believe that he never got over the disappointment and loss of kudos which the failure of his scheme entailed. We parted very amicably, but I never saw him again, and he died in India a few years later.
* ↑ June, 1885–January, 1886.
* ↑ Exactly the same trouble with the mule transport supplied by Government occurred with the Everest expedition in 1921.
* ↑ I afterwards found it where it had been overlooked by Hooker near Singtam in Native Sikkim; and there is a beautiful photograph of it in Mr. Claude White's book, Sikkim and Bhutan.
* ↑ In the Flora of British India, vol. vi., p. 223, I find that this plant has been described as K. sikkimensis, and is considered distinct from K. linearis Wall, which represents it in Assam.
* ↑ This was the Anglo-Chinese Convention, of July 24th, 1886.