330 LAST DAYS IN SIKKIM 
of Sikkim, its chief interest being in its botanical geography 
and the eclat attending the traveller who traversed it from 
end to end ; as to the latter, ' doubtless its vegetation is richer, 
though not so novel as that of Nepaul,' for it had been visited 
several times. (March 18, 1850.) 
But the balance is finally struck with fair contentment 
(April 27) when a new actinometer and telescope had arrived 
and been tried. 
I could wish they were going with me to Nepaul instead 
of the Khasia Mountains ! Still I really believe the latter 
country is the best in a botanical point of view both for my 
companion and myself, and it is certainly far the most 
practicable. 
And the journey justified itself. He writes on August 8th : 
I have here the means of making extraordinary collec- 
tions : had I remained in Sikkim, the same expedition would 
have procured no more plants. 
Accordingly in mid- April he returned the weary five- days' 
journey from Calcutta to Darjiling, to make ready for the 
start, having 
been so much out and about Calcutta that I am very sick 
and weary of it. Greater kindness no man could receive 
than I have, but it is a killing sort of kindness that requires 
the compression into fourteen days of the good feeling of all 
Calcutta, 
of which he says in a * sadly idle gossiping letter ' of April 6 
to his mother : 
On the whole the society is more entirely agreeable than 
any I have ever mixed in. There is very little personal 
feeling shown, and there is much more real friendliness and 
kindness amongst the people than in your starched circles 
at Kew, where one feels far more 'patronized than shown 
attention to for your own sake, or from any desire of 
cultivating an acquaintance. Hospitality is here literally 
a ruling passion, and I am sure that I know twenty house s 
