that I have ever met, with whom in later years I formed an intimate friendship in the Khasia hills.
The cinchona gardens were then being rapidly planted with the red barked species, Cinchona succirubra, which was found to succeed better at suitable elevations, 2,000 to 4,000 feet, than any other variety that had been tried. Though few of the trees were old enough to produce bark in quantities sufficient for any but experimental purposes, the gardens de- veloped later into one of the most successful and profitable investments that has been made by the Indian Government.
I also made excursions to the valley of the Rangit river, and crossed the Tista by a wonderful suspension bridge nearly 100 yards long and made entirely from rattan canes and bamboo. The Tista valley was then road¬ less, and the district of British Bhutan on the other side, which had been recently occupied, after the Bhutan war, was nearly all forest, with a few scattered clearings. I went along the ridge as far as Dumsong, a frontier post now abandoned, but the weather at this season was too continuously wet to make collecting profitable. Except for a few barking deer, which frequented only the steepest and most rocky places, there were no terrestrial mammalia or large game in the lower and middle regions of the hills, owing perhaps to the innumerable leeches which abounded during the rainy season.
In July I heard that Mr. William T. Blanford, of the Geological Survey, was desirous of making an expedition into the interior, and as he had the same objects and taste for natural history as myself, and was an experienced traveller in India, I arranged to join forces with him and travel together. I had plenty of time to make the necessary preparations for a journey which had not been attempted since Dr. Hooker's great expedition of twenty-two years before. Though the difficulties of supply and transport were known to be considerable, I had the support and good will of Major Morton, the Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling, and had acquired sufficient knowledge of the dialect used in the district, a mixture of Hindustani, Nepalese and Bengali. I engaged a Sirdar or headman, a Bhutia named Guruk, a capable and trustworthy man who lived at Darjeeling and knew Tibetan more or less. He had charge of a selected gang of twenty-two coolies, all Bhutias, and I had a Lepcha servant, and two collectors to assist in shooting and skinning and in drying plants. Blanford had his own Hindu chuprassi, and in addition I sent on a party of ten Nepalese, from the higher regions of Nepal, who were to make a depot of rice in the interior; and who, I hoped, would be willing to accompany us in case the Bhutias were afraid to cross the Tibetan frontier.
Each of these coolies was paid at the rate of eight annas a day, and was to provide his own food whenever it was procurable. The loads of rice and other necessaries for ourselves, which we made as few as possible, were all carefully weighed as a maund (eighty pounds) each, and packed in the long bamboo baskets which all these hillmen use, and on the top of which they put their own pots, a blanket to sleep in, and any spare clothing they may have, the whole being topped by a more or less waterproof mat of bamboo, which covers the man’s load as well as his head and
