74 A COLLECTING TRIP 
les, lizards, wasps, large grasshoppers, ete., a fine lot. 
I spent the night in the government rest house quite 
comfortably and a day getting back here, collect- 
ing on the way. In the valley it was very hot, but 
about the hills the air was very bracing. I was not 
even stiff from sixty miles of riding and walking. 
*% * % * * * 
But the ride was glorious along the foot of 
Kinchinjunga, 28,350 feet high, within nine hundred 
feet of the highest.in the world. The native villages 
were very interesting. The people are very like Chi- 
nese, wear long pigtails to their heels, ete. Such filth I 
have never seen before. Prayer flags were flying 
from every house and everywhere along the road 
where devils were likely to lodge. I met numerous 
people from Bhutan and Tibet coming here to trade 
and got some odds and ends from them. The trip 
was the very best yet and well worth the trouble 
even had I not obtained any butterflies, just to see 
some country really away from the hordes of tour- 
ists who infest India. This town is at the end of the 
railroad and is the last one in British territory. Here 
Sikkim, Nepaul, Bhutan and Tibet all corner in. All 
but Sikkim claim China as a proteetive power and 
Sikkim has China and Great Britain both; England 
is rather more useful, I imagine. 
The people here drink brick tea. They put a 
ehunk into a churn with a handful of salt and a large 
lump of butter and some hot water; they then mash 
this all up and drink it. I did not think that it 
looked particularly appetizing. 
I hope I have some good photographs, but most 
of the people jump and run at the first indication of 
