Alas! when we at last reached the summit, all was hid in cloud. Fresh from the steamy plains, we shivered in the damp mists, and when we reached Darjiling itself rain was descending in cataracts. It was depressing, but it had the advantage that it enabled me to recuperate a little from the hot, trying railway journey through the plains of India, and be all the more fit therefore to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the great view when at last it should be revealed.
Many times afterwards I saw it, and each time with a new and more wonderful impression. Sometimes in the eddying cloudy billows a break would come, giving a glimpse into heaven itself; and through the little inlet would be seen a piece of sky of the intensest blue, and against it a peak of purest white, so lofty and so much a partner of the sky and clouds it seemed impossible it could ever be of earth. This was Kinchinjunga in one of its aspects. At another time, when all was clear of cloud, I would look steeply down from the tropical forests of Darjiling for 6,000 feet to the bottom of the narrow valley beneath, and then up and up through tier after tier of ever-heightening ridges, till, far up in the skies, suffused in the blue and dreamy haze, my eyes would rest on the culminating range of all, spotless and ethereal, and reaching its climax in one noble peak nearly 28,000 feet above the valley depths from which it rose. And at yet another time, when the houses were all lit in the bazaar, and the lamps lighted along the roads, and night had almost settled down upon Darjiling, high up in the skies would be seen a rosy flush: Kinchinjunga was still receiving the rays of the sun, long since set to us below. In these and many other aspects Kinchinjunga had never-ending charms.
Darjiling itself, with such scenery and vegetation, was, it need hardly be said, an exquisitely beautiful place. And it had about it none of the busy air of Simla. It was at this season nearly always shrouded in mist, and seemed wrapped in cotton-wool. No one was in a hurry, and the whole tone of the place was placid and serene.
Sir James Bourdillon, the acting Lieutenant-Governor; Mr. Macpherson, the Chief Secretary; Mr. Marindin, the Commissioner; Mr. Walsh, the Deputy-Commissioner, were all most helpful to me, and I appreciated their assistance all the more because I could not help feeling somewhat of an interloper and poacher upon other people’s preserves. Since 1873 the Bengal Government had been working for the settlement of their frontier affairs with Tibet, and now at the crucial moment a stranger dropped down from the Olympian heights of Simla to carry out the culminating act. I could naturally expect ordinary official civility from them. But they, every one of them, went out of their way to put their whole information and experience at my disposal. More than that, both they and their wives were more thoughtful and kind to my wife than I could possibly record during all that time of anxiety and depression when we subsequently advanced to Lhasa, and we have ever felt most deeply grateful to them.
The Bengal Government, I have often thought, has experienced a hard fate over Tibet affairs. It was a Governor of Bengal—Warren Hastings—who initiated the idea of sending a mission to Tibet. It was another Lieutenant-Governor who revived the idea of intercourse in 1873. It was a Bengal officer, Colman Macaulay, who originated and pushed through the idea of a mission to Lhasa in 1885. It was a Bengal officer, Mr. Paul, who negotiated the Trade Regulations of 1893; and it was a Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Charles Elliott, who, in 1895, made what seems to me to have been the most suitable recommendation for the settlement of the question, an occupation of the Chumbi Valley.
But gradually, in the course of years, the conduct of frontier matters has been taken out of their hands by the Government of India and out of the hands of the latter by the Imperial Government. There has been a greater and greater centralization of the conduct of frontier relations, which may be necessary from some points of view, but one of the effects of which is apparent locally. The local Government loses its sense of responsibility for frontier matters. Local officers feel little inducement to fit themselves for the conduct of such affairs. And, consequently, when good frontier officers really are wanted in future, they will not be found, and the next mission to Lhasa will in all probability be led by a clerk from the Foreign Office in London.
I left Darjiling on June 19, in drenching rain. To realize it the English reader must picture to himself the heaviest thunderstorm he has ever seen, and imagine that pouring down continuously night and day. I was, of course, provided with a heavy waterproof cloak, with a riding apron and an umbrella; but the moisture seemed to soak through everything, for there was not only the rain beating down from above, but the penetrating mists creeping in all round. But I could not be depressed by mere rain, however much. The road passed through a forest of unsurpassable beauty. Chestnuts, walnuts, oaks, laurels, rhododendrons, and magnolias grew in great magnificence, and among them Himalayan kinds of birch, alder, maple, holly, apple, and cherry. Orchids of the most brilliant varieties I could have gathered in basketfuls. The perpetual moisture and the still atmosphere nourished the most delicate ferns; while the mosses were almost as beautiful, and hung from the trees in graceful pendants, blending with the festoons of the climbing plants.
After riding for some miles along the ridge, we descended towards the Teesta River, and again met with the magnificent tree-ferns, palms, bamboos, and wild bananas. We passed by several flourishing tea plantations, each with its cosy, but lonely, bungalow, surrounded by a beautiful garden. By the roadway caladiums of every variegated colour brightened the prospect. But as we descended the atmosphere grew more oppressive and stifling, till when we reached the Teesta itself, which here lies at an altitude of only 700 feet above sea-level, the atmosphere was precisely that of a hothouse. The thermometer did not rise above 95°, but the heat was well-nigh unbearable. Perspiration poured from every pore. Energy oozed away with every drop, and the thought of a winter amid the snows of Tibet became positively cheering. It was a curious beginning for such an expedition as was to follow, but the Indian officer has to be prepared to undergo at a moment’s notice every degree of heat or cold, of storm and sunshine, of drought or deluge, and take everything he meets cheerily as in the day’s work.
SIKKIM SCENERY.