Note 123 — SIR JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER [115a]

As a further instance of the treatment Hooker received from the Indian authorities, I cannot resist quoting from vol. ii., p. 145: “The Court of Directors snubbed him before he set out, refusing him assistance and official letters of introduction to India, and even a passage out. . . . It was Hooker who surveyed and mapped the whole province of Sikkim, and opened up the resources of Darjiling at the cost of captivity . . . and the consequent loss of all his instruments and part of his notes and collections. Yet the India Board actually sold on Government behalf the presents the Rajah made him after his release,” though they owed to his energy the Government sites of the tea and cinchona cultivation.