DEPARTURE FROM SIKHIM
storm came on, the worst I have ever experienced in these hills, and before nightfall not a vestige of blossom or leaf was left. It sounds an exaggeration, but many of the hailstones were the size of golf-balls and weighed two and three ounces. When morning came the trees stood up bare and wintry against the sky without a leaf; tree-ferns, rose-bushes, everything, were nothing but leafless stems where twenty-four hours before there had been a wealth of blossom. Even the lawns were pitted all over by the force of the hailstones. The conservatory, built of ¼-inch-thick ribbed glass, which had stood all former storms, was smashed to atoms, and so were the lights in the verandahs. The Maharaja and Maharani were with us at the time, and exclaimed that the gods were showing their displeasure at my departure, an opinion endorsed by all the natives.
So it was a scene of sad desolation to which we bid good-bye next morning, as, accompanied by the Maharaja, and preceded by the pipers of Mr. Hickley’s Sikhim Pioneers, we took our way down the hill for the last time, with the whole populace lining the roads to bid us godspeed and filling the air with lamentations.
Throughout the journey the same scene was enacted, the headmen and villagers of every village we passed coming out to kiss my feet and weep over me, and I was glad when we were at last in the train at Ghoom.
The night before I left Gangtak I received no less than two coolie-loads of letters from Sir Ugyen Wang-chuk and his family, and from all the Bhutan officials, both great and small, expressing the hope that I would some day return and visit them as a private individual if I could no longer come officially. Rai Ugyen Kazi Bahadur and his sister met us below Kurseong with Bhutanese refreshments of tea and fruit, laid out by the roadside for the last time, and we parted with many expressions of mutual goodwill, while Rai Harri Das Bahadur, Lambodar, Luchmi Narain, and all the leading Paharias saw me actually into the train.
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