Silchar Cachar district
Nov 26 / [18]50
Mr dear Father
My letters have not reached me for a long time & I do not expect any till I reach my next halting place at Chittagong. So if you have addressed me any queries by the last 2 or 3 mails I hope you will excuse my inability to answer them.
Our last 3 weeks at Churra [Cherrapunji] were very long ones arranging & packing our collections. We left the hills on the 10th & I had the pleasure of seeing them all stowed safe away in a large boat hired to send all to Falconer from Pundua. The dried plants in 70 bales are camphored & put up like bales of cotton in gunny tight & dry. I could get no boxes. The woods Palm Bamboos &c are similarly put up, but being very long, some 10 feet, they got a dunking going down the hill on mens' backs -- I hope none are injured & they had all dried when I followed them. 7 ward's cases are full of Palms Pines a few oaks & Laurels, Nepenthes &c. The Palms look splendidly -- amongst them a new species

of Wallichia 20 feet high. There are also boxes with smaller things & bottles, with fruits & flowers of more than 500 species of plants in spirits These are have all labelleds tied on the bottles, & the bottles numbered with a diamond the numbers answering the duplicate catalogue in my possession generally referring to the tickets in the dried herbarium.
The woods are marked with cuts or brands & of these I have also the catalogue. As to the Calami & Bamboos -- I ticketed them, wrapping the tickets up in folds of paper, but I doubt their surviving, & I do not see how they can be made available for the Museum except by Thomson & myself. The same may be said of the woods Tree ferns &c, which can only be worked at with the Herbarium, & that will be a work of great time & trouble. I wish very much that the Gov[ernmen]t. would give me a house at Kew for the collections & a small salary to engage

me working them up for the Museum & Public & leave me to get a publisher who would illustrate & over whom I should have some hold by having the offer of my journal. I should greatly prefer this, to having a grant for publication made to me[.] I shall never write well for profit, & would willingly give all my material dry scientific & popular to the publisher searching no profit, but excercising[sic] a control over the amount of illustration to be given to both Nat[ural]. Hist[ory]. & Journal. To make the latter what it ought to be, to do me credit, will be a work of much time there is so much to work at in itself & such extensive reading required to bring the amount of country & inhabitants & productions up to the present state of knowledge. I should like too to publish cheap, in a small form. & to illustrate copiously with wood cuts to the latter indeed I would like to elevate what profits might otherwise be the authors.
Colvile writes me word of your having forwarded DC [De Candolle] very many thanks, &

Falconer that the picture of myself & Lepchas is at last returned. This is I suppose Reeve's fault; & I guess you sent it him ages ago to be returned, & before you knew that it was a present -- This you have known, now many months, & the picture you told me was returned, as last March, to Calcutta [Kolkata]. This is too bad of Reeves.
The latter has sent me some drawings of Rhod[odendron]s & Victoria, all most splendid to behold, & a very civil letter. He seems to be going on with great spirit & energy, & certainly is the most go-ahead Nat[ural]. Hist[ory]. publisher of this or any other day. He seems too to be getting quite a great man & talks of inviting Harvey to his home as if he were a professor himself. All which sounds very odd to me, who used to blow him up 3 years ago, till the poor soul hardly knew whether he stood on his head or heels. However he is a most energetic man & deserves all his success. He tells me you are at Eastbourne. Although where that is I am profoundly ignorant, but have a myth--like vision of some gardening

Lady of property a friend of yours having a name linked to "Eastbourne".
Reeve says on the sea--side. where I cannot find it on any map. It is all one however, you have left it long ago, only I should like to be walking there with you.
We came here from Sylhet several days ago, by water, in little boats along the bottom of which we lay for 4 days only getting out to Botanize. The plain here is a dead flat, but not a swamp as below Churra, & the Mts rise to the N[orth]. & East. to 4--5000 ft, thickly wooded, but inacessable[sic] in most directions for swamps or savages, here there is a small military detachment with our Churra friend Col[onel]. Lister & L[ieutenan]t Raban & we are very happy & comfortable. Low hills rise from the flat two hundred 200 ft or so above the sea only -- yet we have fine oaks Kadsura & Camellia? Munnipore is the best direction from this & I go to the frontier Mts tomorrow for some days. Thomson is poorly & cannot come & so I go alone. The forest commences 1 1/2 marches from this to East[war]d & thence the hills rise to 3--4000 ft. up which I hope to go. Munnipore itself I have given

up for Chittagong, for several reasons.
1. The road was blocked up by contending Rajahs till this morning, when a signal victory has been gained & the worsted man takes refuge with us & is now here -- 2. Jenkins strongly advises me not to go to Chittagong in preference, as the low hills about Munnipore are all cultivation & Bamboo jungle & it is far too late for elevations above 4000 ft -- 3. The Chittagong Flora is unexplored, more wood, en route to Calcutta [Kolkata] & [Thomas] Thomson goes there at any rate. On my return therefore from the Munnipore frontier I go straight to Sylhet & hire boats from Chittagong, hoping to arrive there about 20th Dec[embe]r. NB the frontier rows here are all settled & never have had any thing to do with our gov[ernmen]t. our Resident being undisturbed at the Munnipore capital throughout.
At Sylhet we spent a day with the Judge, a Mr Hainforth, whose name I mention as you may by accident hear of it. About Patchouli I can get no satisfaction -- the only Pogostemum plant here smelling of that scent is a Geniosporum . A Pogot. very like that you figure (& I doubt not the same) is common enough in the hilly parts of India and here & in Sikkim but has no smell

but is green. I shall however take every means I can of getting at the bottom of the Patchouli plant. It certainly is not the plant with which Kashmir shawls are scented, which is true Kortus described in L[innean]. S[ociety]. Trans[actions]. by Falconer.
I hope you have ere this received my map of Sikkim -- that of the Khassya, as far as I know them, I finished this morning a very poor affair it looks. Thuillier will send it you with a copy after he has copied it for insertion in the general atlas of India. That finishes my survey work I am glad to say, the work has cost me great time & labour, but I do not admit that it was so much time taken from Nat[ural]. Hist[ory]. for I have had plenty of that too, as much as I could well put up with.
I see that Royle has been distributing Falconer's collections *1 & I suppose all of others that were in the India house up to this last year. I do hope he will not touch Thomson's which have arrived in England by the "Duke of Wellington" Thomson will go home by the February steamer. I suppose I must go to Ceylon *2 at least Thwaites seems to expect it fully. if so I shall probably be

off by the March steamer as I want to be a fortnight in Calcutta to work at the Gardens with Falconer, & get you some of the common Bengal articles for the Museum & I shall of course be only a month in Ceylon & take the following steamer for England. At least those are my present notions. The Flora N.Z. [New Zealand] & V.D.L. [Van Diemen's Land] *3 I shall recommence at one whether the Govt admiralty will re--advance me to my former pay or not, for to that I am bound, but I cannot undertake my Indian collections except the W. & F. [Woods & Forests Department] will continue my patrons.
Tell Mr Bentham that a Capt Cave a son of a neighbour of his at Pontrilas, (a Mr Cave,) is second in command & Ass[istan]t. Pol[itical]. agent at Churra, he is an exceedingly nice kind fellow very fond of gardening & married a sister of F. Beauforts wife.
I wrote to Smith by the last mail. The account of the Edn[?]. Brit. Assn. in the Atheneaum reads very well but Botany as usual is represented by Babington! -- What a splendid fellow Paxton must be, his success will kill Lobb who calls P[axton].a very poor stick, thinks very little of Lindley & talks of giving up taking the Gard[eners] Chron[icle].! He[?] Lobb is a most thoroughly respectable well conducted man, but you are woefully mistaken about his modesty. I fear he will not collect in Malabar except you write to Veitch about it & that is of all others the least explored & most promising part of India -- a dreadful climate however. but Lobb is obstinate & will get through I hope.
*4 Best love to my mother & Bessy. You had better address me to Ceylon I think as I may leave by the February steamer -- & send only a short note by the Jan[uar]y Southampton if in time to Falconers care for me. Best love to my mother & Bessy.
your affectionate son
Jos D Hooker [signature]