I 



SIKKIM POLITICS 253 



answer, and thus place our Government in the quandary of 

 putting up with an insult or sending me with an armed 

 force. Such is the Kajah's dread of the English, that he 

 declined receiving an Ambassador, laden with English 

 presents ; and when the hot-headed Colonel Lloyd (who 

 bargained for Darjeeling) hunted him like a hare to strike 

 the bargain in person, he would only meet him with a river 

 between. In pushing my ow^n way there is nothing to 

 apprehend but the lack of provisions ; the Eajah is too weak 

 even to put a traveller in confinement as China does, and 

 too much afraid of England ; but he can withhold supplies 

 and frighten your servants. Hence all my wanderings have 

 been hitherto only so far distances as I could carry provender 

 for myself and the men, and through the least inhabited 

 parts of the country. Towards the snow the country is 

 more populous, the convents, nunneries, and villages are 

 numerous (though small), and the people (Bhoteas) are a 

 disagreeable and morose race, immigrants from the East 

 into Sikkim. What Lord Dalhousie may do I know not. 

 Elliot,^ the Secretary to Government, proposes the using 

 * douce violence ' with the Eajah, and insisting that he 

 shall behave like a friendly power, but this view cannot be 

 supported in Council. My own conviction is that, if the 

 Eajah allowed me to visit the snowy Passes, China would 

 punish him, not ostensibly but indirectly, and the only 

 profitable part of his revenue is derived from Darjeeling 

 (which did not yield him 200 rupees when we bought it), 

 and a property called Chumbi in Thibet, which he rents 

 from China, and which is a fruitful place yielding turnips, 

 radishes, and Pine-wood ! To proceed with Oriental crooked 

 policy. Sir Herbert Maddock, Governor of Bengal during 

 Lord Hardinge's ^ absence, in a fit of spleen assumed that 

 the rent which the Eajah received for Darjeeling, 3000 



1 Sir Henry Miers Elliot (1808-53) entered the E.I.G. service in 1826, 

 and became Secretary to the Governor-General in Council for Foreign Affairs in 

 1847. With Lord Dalhousie, after the Sikh War, he negotiated the treaty with 

 the Sikh chiefs for the settlement of the Punjaub and Gujerat, receiving the 

 K.C.B. (1849). His valuable historical work dealt especially with India in 

 Mohammedan times. 



2 Sir Henry Hardinge (1785-1856) was the Peninsular veteran and later 

 Secretary at War, so highly esteemed by Wellington, and was Governor- 

 General of India between Ellen borough and Dalhousie (1844-8). At the 

 conclusion of the First Sikh War, he was created Viscount Hardinge of 

 Lahore. 



