IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
102 SIMLA TO KHAMBA .TONG
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-heighten-
ing 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 assist-
ance 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. 1 could naturally expect ordinary official civility
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