308 CAPTIVITY AND BELEASE 



the best and most patient coolies you can conceive, never 

 complaining. . . . 



I have just had the big tin vasculum up from Calcutta, 

 at which you shook your head so gravely. The Lepchas are 

 charmed with it, and there will be a competition as to who 

 is to carry it. You have not an idea how bulky the undried 

 plants of these climates are ; the otherwise very large vasculum 

 I use does not hold half, hardly one-third morning's collec- 

 tion. As to drying paper, you know I stow well, yet that 

 ream of Bentall's paper does not suffice to lay in one day's 

 collection, nor near it, if you take woody with other things. 

 You may well wonder how I get on ; it is only by changing 

 and drying papers every day. Bentall's is not nearly so 

 good as the sugar refining paper I bought at Calcutta, and 

 of which my stock cost £15. But after all good English 

 brown paper is the best for all plants, as Mr. Brown always 

 said. . . . 



You will be glad to hear that I quite got over my head- 

 aches at great elevations and most of my other distressing 

 symptoms, and I would not hesitate going to 20,000 feet if 

 the mountains were but accessible so high. Still the lassitude 

 is trying, and a sort of weight, like a pound of lead, dragging 

 down the stomach, probably caused by over-action of the 

 lungs straining the diaphragm, or diminished atmospheric 

 pressure actually relaxing that organ and causing the ab- 

 dominal viscera to drag heavily downwards. It is a horrid 

 feeling. 



Boiling point is a perfect nuisance at these elevations, 

 and the Barometer is the only useful, accurate, or simple 

 method. You must have a man to carry the wood and 

 often the water too ; blowing the fire gives intolerable head- 

 aches, without blowing the best wood will not burn owing 

 to the deficiency of Oxygen (i.e. rarity of the air) ; and if 

 , there be any wind (as there is sure to be) the temperature 

 never comes up to the true B.P. 



I have just had dinner (for which and all other mercies — 

 including the safety of poor Campbell's neck, who writes 

 affectingly on the subject and says he is spared a little longer 

 to love me as a brother). To return to the dinner, it was 

 a fine grouse tasting strong of Juniper tops, followed by 

 the peaches, all I can say of which is, that if Loti were no 



