BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 343 
themselves, like a dog, with a violence that nearly unhorsed me, neither 
his steed nor mine exhibited any symptom of fatigue. 
* I should like to stay here for some time, but it is impossible to have 
food sent to me. The road between this place and Choongtam is so 
bad that the coolies can carry little more than each man his own daily 
provisions and blanket. 
“ The unlucky Singtam Soubah is in an agony to be off, and as I 
shall go from Choongtam to the Lachong Pass, not twelve miles east 
of this pass, [ may probably find there the same plants; but I fear 
that pass has an elevation of 17,000 feet (and then, woe is me, for my 
poor head and stomach !), and also that it does not débouche upon, but 
descends to, this same plateau, ten or twelve miles east of * Kongra 
Lama’ and of Kinchin-jow. The road from Choongtam is good. 
Fever rages below, from Choongtam to Darjeeling. My people behave 
admirably, and I never hear a single complaint; but I find it very hard 
to see a poor fellow come in, his load left behind, staggering with fever, 
which he has caught by sleeping in the valleys on the way from Dar- 
jeeling ; eyes sunk, temples throbbing, pulse at 120, and utterly unable 
to call up the merry smile with which the kind creatures always greet 
me. Generally, I have no difficulty in bringing my patients round 
with quinine and calomel, in this region. ere, of course, and for two 
marches below Choongtam, there is no danger, and with a little ex- 
ertion and due precaution, my people might avoid illness ; but though 
I warn every one, when starting for Darjeeling, and Campbell does the 
same when sending them back to me, they are so heedless that they 
pay no attention, and recklessly sleep in the most pestilential holes in 
Sikkim,—places where no consideration should induce me to stop. As 
for myself, my work is not half finished—I mean my botany, though I 
am busy, collecting and drying, from morning till night, and giving 
little time to anything else. 
“We have almost no rain here, but much mist, and I find great diffi- 
culty in keeping my plants in order: happily, they are small. I do not 
expect to return to Darjeeling till September or October, and perhaps 
not then; so you need not be alarmed about fever, for I shall not 
descend below 6,000 feet; indeed, I have not been below 10,000 -feet 
for the last two months. I have led a hard but a healthy life, and I 
know not what it is to spend a lonely-feeling hour, though I have not 
a soul to converse with. Labelling plants and writing up my journal 
