Darjeeling
July 24, 1848 *1
My dear old Father
I cannot tell you how sorry I am to hear by todays post of your accident & though this is said to have been the very last day for catching the August mail I will chance this catching it & reaching you with my other letters. I wish very much that I had been near you at the time though I might have done no good. Julius should not have let you wait for etherization: as every minute prolongs the subsequent pains & difficulty of reduction: he should have had the apparatus himself for in all such cases it is a great blessing & I would take it myself rather than suffer the terrible agony of reducing a dislocation. Your arm will no doubt long be weak: but it is a real blessing that it was not broken.
I have sent Falconer a great lot of mss &c to go home by this mail & have written so many letters this

last wee that really I can hardly get pen to drag along the paper. Today I have got a Bamboo bow poisoned arrows & quiver with some of the poison root from Bhotan[Bhutan]: but none of these simple ignorant people can tell me any--thing about it. It’s a well known thing however, & when my books come I shall know. Falconer is despairing of an opportunity of sending me the latter & they are therefore on their way by Post! in small packages
The richness of this Flora is very remarkable & new things come in every day. I depict & draw roughly the most important including all the Orchideae[.] There is nothing in seed yet: but a handsome Crawfordia will be soon & many other things. It is very difficult to dry the seeds in this place for the damp is so great that all my collections are piled in chairs before a blazing fire. They are as yet in capital order. I am dreadfully

badly off for paper, having used all that Falconer sent me up & all the newspapers (do you remember the Hurkarus in which Mrs Macks collections came?) I can lay my hands one. I have however sent three men across the mountains into Nepaul [Nepal] for as much as they can carry, & in the mean time by dense packing manage to stow away without checking the drying operation on this account. One of the most common plants here is a Streptolirion the curious genus figured in Linn[ean]. Soc[iety]. Trans[actions]. by Edgewor I long took it for a Saurureae till it flowered. I sent roots to Calcutta *2 which died: but as soon as my tin boxes come will send others: it is white flowered; pretty but not handsome, & immensely abundant here crawling over the ground with Polygona, Potentilla, Fragaria, Arugus Lysimachia, Balsams, Hydrocotyle & Cyrtandra
I am startled at the prospect of moving the B[ritish] M[useum]. Herb[arium]. to Kew, because Brown

must take deadly offence at it & how this obstacle is to be got over passes my comprehension. When I reflect on what you have done at Kew in 6 short years I lift up my hands in astonishment. That it is the only proper place for the B[ritish].M[useum]. Her[barium]. is evident but how Brown is to be transferred with the latter is indeed a puzzle. Jenkins invites me to pass a month with him on my way to upper Assam, but I fear that when I do start I must push on[.] I am writing to him to have a collection of drugs, articles &c &c. ready for me & to expend one or two hundred Rupees on such a collection. I think I told you I still hope to reach the Snow here, & shall under any circumstances make the attempt in October before which it is impossible to travel through these hills the innumerable valleys are so unhealthy & the rains so heavy. You have no idea what a poverty stricken place this is as far as the natives are concerned, I cannot buy any string even, & yet there are some dozen or two English good European families. Insects are immensely numerous & I bottle down the beetles &c, but the butterflies damp so fast that I have given them up. I have still but one Pine & the yew, an Abies Smithiana webbiana & a Juniper: I shall hope to get Griffiths Larch if I get to the Snow but it must from his journal be a very local plant. I hope you will like my yarn about the Rhododendrons. I would put odds & sods of things in my letters but assure you the 5 days of incessant rain they pass through damps every thing & they would mildew the paper: all books coming by post in double oil skin arrive wet & have to be dried by the fire. When the rains are over the climate will be totally changed. Poor Hodgson is very bad this two days, depressed to a degree[,] I enticed him out to ride this evening for an hour, his system is very much deranged & though he won’t own it, the news he got to day, from Gray, of a collection of Thibet [Tibet] &c animals having been ruined on the passage home has not improved him, some of the animals are unique & procured from beyond the Snow, at an enormous cost. I have sent two of my men into the interior & expect a large basketful of plants in 15 days. I pay very liberally, often for trash,& they all like to bring me things. The Lepchas or aborigines of Sikim [Sikkim] (descended from a god & goddess who still live on the tip--top of Kinchin junga [Kanchenjunga]) are a most charming people, so kind & good humoured, regular Tartars, all small, peaceable, moral, wretchedly po [part of mss missing] intolerably dirty. Booteas from the neighbouring country are very [part of mss missing] & oppose the English: they are insupportably insolent dirty rude [part of mss missing] cowardly immoral people double dies: every [1 word illeg.] of rice [part of mss missing incl entire bottom line of text]

*3 [mss illeg.] of Sikim is a Thibetan from [1 word illeg.] but with no sympathy with any of the above but who we [part of mss missing]

obstacles to Europeans entering the country. The Bootanese are so incorrigeable[sic] that our Gov[ernmen]t do not acknowledge & will have nothing to do with them. I have just seen the death of Ld Burghesh Fane's brother, in the paper -- a sad sot if I remember right. Fane I think is next heir & will go home perhaps. he is a fine frank rollicking young fellow badly educated but most amiable & void of pride or vanity. LD. & Lady D[alhousie]. will I *4 think be very sorry to part with him. I have written to Wheatstone & Wilmot by this mail but you have engrossed all my correspondence & I shall be surprized[sic] if you have not enough for once[.] I am still sanguine about Franklin: these ships have the lives of cats. how my dear Father I hope all your pains are over long ere this. I wish this could have reached your bed side & hope some previous letter may have You & my mother make Francis uncommonly happy & in this also your most affectionate Son JD Hooker [signature]
Affectionate regards to Harvey[,] Bentham & all old friends -- Citoyen & Fitch -- When you have occasion to send me an overland put in a few steel pens or any thing; old knife -- Let Reeves send me overland the L.J.B. *5 regularly I can afford to pay for its coming out: beginning with this post & any -- onwards -- it is all I ask from him for allowing him to print journal in it, tell him he is a kind man & will not neglect to me have it regularly.

[Page seven contains several hand drawn illustrations and diagrams. One shows genera that appear on the plains and at different heights on the mountainside, including Rhododendrons at 7000 ft. Another roughly plots the relative heights and locations of Punkabarrie, Kursiong, Pacheem and Dorjeeling [Darjeeling] above the plains. There is also a diagram showing mountain peaks Tonglo and Sinchal labelled with plants that appear on them as well as those that appear in the valleys, a sketch of Hooker's view of Kinchin junga [Kanchenjunga] from Darjeeling, 28178 ft, a sketch labelled Quercus and a sketch of Hooker's boat on the Ganges.]