308 CAPTIVITY AND RELEASE 
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 bulk}' the undried 
plants of these chmates 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. StiU 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. 
Boihng point is a perfect nuisance at these elevations, 
and the Barometer is the only useful, accm'ate, or simple 
method. You must have a man to carry the wood and 
often the water too ; blowing the fixe 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 tem_perature 
never comes up to the true B.P. 
I have just had dinner (for which and all other mercies — 
including the safety of poor Cam^pbelFs neck, who wTites 
affectingly on the subject and says he is spared a little longer 
to love n^e 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 
