which surpasses that of any other uncivilised people with whom I have ever come in contact. The Lepcha language is perhaps richer than any other in names for plants, birds, animals and insects, as the people seem to have a special talent for collecting plants and natural history specimens generally, which has been developed by long practice.
Colonel Mainwaring, a retired officer of the Bengal Army, who had lived at Darjeeling for many years, had studied their language, and had compiled a dictionary, very carefully and neatly written out in manuscript. He told me that there were approximately as many words in it as in Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, and that there were few birds, beasts or insects too minute to be without a name in the Lepcha language. These primitive people have been gradually displaced from their homes by the great number of Nepalese, who have been attracted by the employment on tea plantations and public works, and who have settled in great numbers on the rich land in British Sikkim and Bhutan. These people, being much bolder, more energetic and industrious than the Lepchas, seem likely to overrun the lower hills of the Eastern Himalayas, where they are constantly extending eastward, even as far as Assam.
As I found the climate of Darjeeling too damp and foggy at this season to be suitable for my work, I accepted an invitation to stay at a tea planta¬ tion called Ging, 2,000 feet lower down on the road to the Rangit, which was managed by Mr. A. Macdonald for an English company. Finding this much pleasanter, I arranged to live with him until the weather made my expedition into the interior possible. At this plantation we lived in a good bungalow with plenty of room, and I had the advantage of being able to dry all my bird skins, insects and plants in the tea factory, where charcoal fires are constantly kept up to dry the tea. This tea industry, which had been started a few years previously, had then begun to recover from the very severe depression which was due to the extrava¬ gant and ill-managed operations of the companies who commenced it. Some of the gardens opened up at first were at too high an elevation, or on land so steep that the terraces were continually washed down by the rains. Many of them had been planted originally with China tea, which, though more delicate in flavour, could not compete in yield or in price with the stronger and more astringent tea made in Assam from the indigenous plant, which was now replacing the China variety everywhere in the district. But though a great deal of money had been lost from mismanage¬ ment at a time when almost any European was thought capable of looking after a tea plantation, yet wherever the land and situation were good, the management efficient, and the capital adequate, tea was paying very well indeed, and I have never made a better investment than in a plantation which, at Macdonald’s suggestion, we took up a year later.
The planters and civilians were all very hospitable, and though some of the civilians hardly seemed to recognise that the whole wealth of the Darjeeling district was due to the capital and enterprise of the planters, I made several friends among both sets, all of whom, I fear, have passed away. I also visited and spent a few days at the Government cinchona plantation at Mongpo, which was then under the temporary superintend¬ ence of Mr. C.B. Clarke, one of the most remarkable men in his way
