Item 31 - Letter from Joseph Dalton Hooker to Brian Houghton Hodgson

1 letter

July [8] Allem Samdong

My dear Brian

I have just received your two of July 23rd with kind communications and offers of more supplies. I shall have an abundant stock at Choongtam to last me a month on my return there, for I cannot get coolies along this road for the men's food and that is of course my first object. Again lasting thanks for your goodness. The advice about the route back is excellent but really I doubt if I should not protract this [?] life throughout the rains there are whole Nat. families of which hundreds of species are enumerated as Himalayan yet hardly above ground! partly due to their over late flowering and partly to the late [inclement?] brumal solstice. My great difficulty is drying plants abut for that there is no help, no one can do it - but myself, and no once can collect these alpines but one long accustomed to a glacial flora. Drawing on the spot too is essential - of many even the best dried little can be made at home and my collection of drawings is now so superb that I [long[ to render it unequalled (for my opportunities) These passes take long to explore too you know I waited 11 days for the sun on the [gyema?] river the other day, and then you didn't know which way to turn for a Mt that will prove acceptable for 1000ft, and yield a view after all. Thank God Campbell has kindly got and sent me routes and so that I can [move?] with confidence and freedom. I doubt not you are right about the Plateau. I thought of the possibility of such as plateau but have been or wholly out five hundred times in surmises that I do not now dwell in my own hypotheses. I am quite convinced that, the traveller until he has stood on and seen knows less that the student at home, Distances objects occupancy and exceptional features even of a trifling extent shroud all the great ones. An accumulation of details is often all he gets for his pains it cannot which requires a very steady head and well trained mind. Hence the traveller may visit every river in the Himal and at the end fail to class them as you have done. The induction philosopher will always be the better, perhaps wrong in details, but the safest guide if he will not gloss over exceptional features. Should I come back in August I will take care as to what you say, and can easily march from Khidong to Yangany in the day. Pray do not think of sending the [pony] he will slip and cut all his knees to pieces - it is a very steep road as C. knows, quite impassable ["sevan servece"] in most places and the perpetual mounting and dis(mounting) I cannot abide. It is no great distance at all I assure you. I will keep your advice in my eye about Lachoong route and depend upon it. D.V. will not leave the pass till I have done my very best, but do not be too hopeful, my best is but little in this season of mist and the reiterated disgusting disappointment that follows each [T?] ascent to be [balked] of a view. The Quaber says you see the plain of Cheen below you, from Lachoong There are two passes at Lachoong I hear a new and far one and I should try to see both Doubiah Lah is of course Waugh's Powhunry. All tell me that the Lachen not the Lachoong route leads [?] on to [?] Plateau winding among low hills, but quite low and undulating and that from Lachoong you descend considerably but these [beasts?] call any thing 'maidan' that is short of an absolute precipice! I am so absorbed in Botany that I have even less than usual interest to give you. I have just written to Campbell all I can guess about the rain [question?] topical influences, are as you say every thing and with the glaring fact that a guage 40 ft above the ground will not catch by 1/3 so much as are on the ground, it is evident that in a mountainous country, that alone inextricably [complicates] the phenomenon. I have thought and thought over what I said to F and "humph" is the only answer I can afford myself. My [garden?] bill and 2 letters from him came with my last despatches amongst the items I find the matter of 2-300 Rupees for tin packing boxes, glazed cases and many of them the months of April, May and so that I hope he has sent a lot of things home lately. My father is much vexed and sends me a list of all Kew has received, some 5 packets of the very commonist orchidae of the Himal not worth 6d and not a single thing else Magnolia nor Arum nor Rhododendron, not Raspberry, nor any of the hundreds of fine things from your [?] [?] and Taylor which I sent last year to Calcutta Gardens for division and which to this hour are not acknowledged. Talk about ["Waleah?] by George [?] could not outhector this. Clothes, bedding, books, instruments all over and over again asked for since my first arrival at Dijauli to this day an outcome. When the things went over from Peel's to the Garden F shortly informed me there were no shirts! amongst them if so I must have been precisely plundered and left the best part of a 6 years Indian outfit from Thresher and Glenny but F has never answered my enquiries for particulars yours of 20th has not come to hand yet. I exceedingly regret to hear of Campbell's disappointment about [Nibal?] can you lend me a good water-tight round tin? If so I will send you my Rhododendron drawings. If "del Crasca" de Cruz my new half caste has arrived he was to bring a dozen tins for packing drawings for him far more than I shall want so pray use them as your pleasure. I do not offer you Pines [etc?] of which I send a lot of roots to Campbell yours are all dying I see and really they require much more care and skill whilst young than your garden gives them. I do not like to send them to Bowling not wishing to cultivate an aquaintance there Campbell will I think do the needful for them i.e. keep them alive until I return. I ask him to send you a couple of Ab. Brummania and Lilium Giganteum the former must be actually be planted in a damp cool place in rich soil and carefully looked after.

Ever your affectionate
Jos. D. Hooker