254 TO DAEJILING : FIEST HIMALAYAN JOUKNEY 



rupees, was too little. He attacked Dr. Campbell, the 

 Political ;i Kesident, for allowing the poor Prince to be so 

 shabbily treated by England, voted the 3000 to be doubled, 

 without any sufficient reason, and did this without even 

 stipulating that the Eajah shall behave more civilly to 

 Europeans. Campbell, who ought to have flung the repri- 

 mand back in the Governor's teeth and complained of the 

 unjust treatment to the Board, took it all quietly, doubled 

 the Eajah's revenue, and thus threw away a fulcrum which 

 would have moved the Himalayah to within our reach. 

 The Eajah is consequently more persuaded than ever of our 

 foolishness and desire to take over his valued kingdom (of 

 which we would not accept the gift). Is it not incredible 

 that a m.an can be so weak as to fear the very power which 

 placed him on his throne and to this day maintains him 

 thereon from the being trisected, as Poland was, by the 

 Goorkhas, Bhotanese, and Thibetans, any one of which would 

 swallow him up in an hour ? Lord D. has plenty of time now 

 to think of the affair as I cannot go till October, the 

 rains f and the unhealthiness of the intervening valleys both 

 precluding the attempt. 



Six months passed before Sikkim, after repeated refusals, 

 conceded a reluctant assent to the direct demands of the 

 Governor-General. The chief expedition through Sikkim 

 took place in the following year, albeit hampered by the 

 obstructive devices of the Eajah's Dewan, which were suc- 

 cessively overcome by Hooker's good-humoured firmness and 

 amusing bluff. 



But the partial permission for the autumn of 1848, followed 

 by efforts to take away with the left hand what had been 

 granted by the right, brought indirectly a still greater triumph. 

 Thanks to the goodwill of the famous Jung Bahadur, Nepaul 

 opened her eastern valleys to the traveller, and the Ghurka 

 escort, disgusted by the petty machinations of the Sikkimese 

 to prevent Hooker from ever reaching the northerly point at 

 which he was to enter Nepaul, undertook to lead him the whole 

 way through their own territory to the Tibetan Passes on 

 the west of the Kinchinjunga group, through country never 

 before and never since traversed by any European. 



