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Joseph Dalton Hooker - The Himalayas

When Joseph Hooker returned to England late in 1841 he immediately began planning his next expedition. His friend Dr. Hugh Falconer had recommended Sikkim as 'being ground unseen by traveller or naturalist', and later Lord Auckland would express this same opinion quite independently.

Hooker was eager to compare tropical vegetation with the many interesting plants he had discovered while on his Antarctic travels. His father helped him secure a commission of £400 per annum to explore the northern regions of India to collect and catalogue plants for Kew, and on November 11^th 1847 he boarded the steamship 'Sidon' at the Southampton docks, and sailed for Alexandria via Lisbon, Gibraltar and Malta.

Egypt is an ancient land with many imposing wonders, not the least of which are the pyramids and the enigmatic Sphinx, but Joseph Hooker was just as interested in the natural features of the country. In fact he was so distracted by all that this strange new land had to offer, he failed to notice his travelling companions had left without him. He managed to catch up with them, on camelback, at the city of As-Suways (Suez) just in time to sail for Calcutta. The Indian navy steam frigate, the 'Moozuffer', was in miserable condition, and to make matters worse, his cabin was right beside the boiler room. His drying papers, critical for the collection of herbarium specimens, were lost to water and coal-smoke damage.

The 'Moozuffer' arrived at Calcutta on the 12^th of January 1848, and Hooker faced his first big disappointment; collecting any plants without a supply of clean drying papers was pointless, as the material would simply rot in the tropical heat and humidity. However, his first side trip was to be a geological one; David Williams of the Geological Survey was looking for coal, and on the 28^th of January Joseph set out to join him, driving to Hoogly and then following the Grand Trunk Road westward to the coal basin of the Damooda Valley.

Returning to his original mission, Hooker engaged a boat to carry him back down the Ganges to Bhagulpore, and from there he proceeded to Sikkim. He stopped briefly at Patna where he witnessed the manufacture of opium, and was given a complete set of specimens, and even drawings illustrating the whole process of manufacture, which he saved for his father's Museum of Economic Botany. He continued his journey travelling inland to Purnea by dawk, a system where groups of men transported the heavy supplies by relays, an arduous and slow method of travel.

He noted the change in climate as he journeyed from the low plains up toward the mountains; the air was more humid and the vegetation was distinctly denser. He carefully recorded all these facts, as he was an accomplished amateur geologist, geographer, meteorologist, and cartographer, as well as a botanist. Some fifty years later the maps he created during his travels were still in use, and found to have a remarkably high degree of accuracy.

At last he arrived at the hill station of Darjeeling in Sikkim on the 16^th of April 1848, where he met Brian Hodgson, scholar and eminent zoologist, and was offered the use of his house as a base for his expeditions. There would be many delays as he applied for permission from the local Raja to travel in the Sikkim region, and during the next several months he was able to complete his 'Flora Antarctica'. Ironically, something he had been unable to do during the six years he had been back in London. He also used this time to better investigate the plants around Darjeeling, and discovered a number of new rhododendrons in the process.

The British political agent to Sikkim, Dr. Archibald Campbell, attempted on numerous occasions to secure permission for Hooker to take his expedition into the region, but time and again they were refused. Finally they resorted to the bellicose language of empire and threatened invasion by military force if a suitable arrangement could not be agreed upon.

It is very easy to sit back and pass judgement on this sort behaviour, but closer examination of any modern trade or diplomatic negotiations will uncover surprisingly similar tactics still in use today. This is not to defend what was done, but merely to place it in context. Joseph Dalton Hooker was hardly free of prejudice by modern standards, and his attitude toward the indigenous people he encountered was often condescending, but never abusive or disrespectful. This oddly contradictory attitude may be summed up in these two quotes;

'I have always found frankness and kindness good policy with any nation, especially if combined with a reasonable amount of personal vanity, which I abundantly possess, and assumption of superiority and, above all, a liberally flattering opinion of the people openly expressed.'

And his opinion of the indigenous Lepcha people, a number of whom he hired as porters;

'…conspicuous for their honesty, their power as carriers and mountaineers, and their skill as woodmen; for they could build a waterproof house with a thatch of banana leaves in the lower or of bamboo in the elevated regions, and equip it with a table and bedsteads for three persons, in an hour, using no implement but their heavy knife.

Kindness and good humour soon attach them to your person and service. A gloomy-tempered or morose master they avoid, an unkind one they flee. If they serve a good hills-man like themselves they will follow him with alacrity, sleep on the cold bleak mountain exposed to the pitiless rain without a murmur, lay down the heavy burden to carry their master over a stream or give him a helping hand up a rock or precipice - do anything, in short, but encounter a foe, for I believe the Lepcha to be a veritable coward. It is well, perhaps, he is so: for if a race, numerically so weak, were to embroil itself by resenting the injuries of the warlike Ghorkas, or dark Bhotanese, the folly would soon lead to destruction'

Permission was finally, begrudgingly, granted by the Raja, and so on October 27th 1848 he set out with his team of 56 porters, plant collectors, cooks, bird collectors (after all, this was very much an expedition for the general advancement of the science of natural history, not just botany) and guards. The later were necessary as there were still significant uncertainties about the safety of the mission. While the Raja may have given permission, his second, the Dewan was the real power behind the throne, and he ordered his

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker

• The Antarctic
• Sir James Clark Ross
• Megaherbs
• Charles Darwin
• The Himalayas
• Further Journeys
• Marianne North

Sir William Jackson Hooker

• Kew, a Botanical Garden for the Ages
• Sir Joseph Banks

For more detailed information on the extraordinary life of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker...

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