[[1]] *1
(To Miss Henslow)
Extract from a letter received from Dr. Hooker June 27th 1848.
Darjeeling April 26th 1848
Your last letter I received after a very hard day's work, when arrived at a wretchedly
cold, rainy house on the hills, 2000 ft above the sea. I had been kept waiting at the
foot of the mountains for 3 days for my baggage, without a stitch to put on but what
was on my back, no papers to put my plants into; & altogether in a very disconsolate
condition: & was waiting to go up to Darjeeling, about 30 miles into the mountains.
On the arrival of my traps I started, ascending the flanks of the most extraordinary
mountains in the world, covered with forest, & Fogs dripping with moisture, now hot
& now cold, never pleasant, & so steep that it is all but impossible to leave the path
on either side. I had a pony sent down for me to Punkabarrie [Pankhabari], where I
was detained; but the plants were so attractive that I never mounted it, & I was
botanizing the whole way along, diving into little gullies, & coming out loaded with
new plants & Ferns, & my legs with leeches, which swarm about the foot of the hills,
bite through your stockings, & roll themselves up into little balls like thick--skinned
goosberries, & thus lie with impunity within your shoes.
The road zigzags in the most extraordinary fashion up the faces of the mountains, &
then plunges into ravines, winding in and out along the steeps, sometimes carried
along a spur from which you peep on one side through the fog; down to and over
many hundred miles of the dead flat plains of India, & on the other look down
wooded gullies, far deeper than broad, 6000ft. down,
[[2]] & covered with forest from top to bottom: on which the clouds hang like sheep's
wool on a hedge. I walked from 6 in the morning till dark, ascending from the hot
Palmy groves at the bottom to the Oak & Rhododendron forests, with violets,
Geranium, yellow raspberries & red brambles innumerable, when it became dusk,
with a thunderstorm & the fog so dense that it was impossible to see one's hand
before you one.
My poor servant was so tired that I gave him the pony, & wrapping my silk rug, my
only bed, up into the smallest possible compass, we sketched out for the first
Bungalow 10 miles off, on the road. After a hearty ducking it cleared up with a bright
moon but the trees dripped so that I was still soaked on arriving late at night at
Pacheem; the most horrible looking, ghastly, desolate place you ever beheld. It is a
low, Swiss looking, one--storied house raised on posts & built of wood & plaster: it
stands on the edge of a precipice, backed by Mountains 9000ft high (itself is 8000) &
overlooking a tremendous wooded valley, the stream at the bottom of which is little
above the plains whither it runs; & is fed by rills from the hills all round that keep a
constant roar. There is something peculiar in the situation of the place; for it always
rains there. On arriving, I called for the housekeeper, a dirty Hindoo [Hindu], who
came shivering from a hovel hard by, half asleep & very stupid:-- he brought the key;
& I ascended the platform over creaky, rotten boards, & entered a great, square,
white--washed room, streaked with damp, lighted by 2 ugly Gothic pointed broken
windows there was a large fireplace, but no fire, & a broken--down bedstead in one
corner. The adjoining dressing room was equally ill--favoured the plaster roof had
fallen in, & the following wet had eaten a hole through the floor, through which one
looked into black darkness
[[3]] below: ugly black beetles clung to the wall & feigned dead as the light
approached, whilst still more sinister many legged ones, hurried off with a
precipitation along the floor, that made my skin creep, as I hopped first on one leg,
then on the other, lest they should take refuge on my person. Altogether, I was so
fagged after the vexatious delays below, and the extraordinary excitement of the
superb scenery & vegetation I had passed through, that I was thoroughly out of
sorts, had a splitting headache, (the first since leaving England), & felt myself
personally & relatively in a position to be described for a gloomy Romance. There
was only wet wood, & no firegrate or irons to make a fire, which however, I kindled
below the chimney, & smoked mercilessly. I drew a broken chair to it, waiting the
cooking of a fowl whose dismal screams assured me I had long to wait; took out my
note book, & began to chronicle the days events, when a batch of letters arrived from
Calcutta, enclosing all those of Jan[uar]y from England, which I need not say set me
all to rights in a very few minutes.
I must shortly write to your Father on the subject of cultivation on the Himalayah,
which, from what I learn, is carried higher on the north than opposite or sunny
slopes. The subject is a very complicated one, however, & statements contradictory.
Also I want to tell him of a noble Paris found here, & the way it varies in number of
parts of flower; on which subject, as affecting the P. quadrifolia, we once lucubrated
together.
I am often reminded of an English spring by this place where it is now spring, & the
early flowers are violets, Paris, Convallaria &c-- Here it has thundered &
lightened[sic] every evening tremendously; but it never strikes somehow. The
weather is constantly, or all but so, a thick misty fog, occasionally brushing off &
renewing: it is a desolate climate, but a place laden with Botanical treasures.
ENDNOTES
1. This letter is a copy not written in the hand of the original author, JDH, and is
unsigned. It was probably copied from the original by JDH's mother or sister soon
after receipt so that one version could be circulated amongst friends and family.
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