12
May 1882 Indian Museum Calcutta Mss Eur C258/1
from
Tom La Touche to Norman, his brother
My
dear old chap
I
am now settled in this place and suppose will stay here until October when I
will have to up stick and away to the hills again. I should like very much to come over to Bombay and meet you
old Fellow - it would be a grand lark- And if I have some spare cash abut that
time I could easily get a week's leave and do it. Talking of the [?salary] I think you will find that Rs 350 a
month is plenty to live upon. I
suppose you get travelling and horse allowance as I do i.e. Rs 130 extra as
well as expenses paid. Altogether
I find that during camping season I get about Rs6-700 and that is the time to
heap up riches. I have just sent
£40 - i.e. Rs 475 home which I think is pretty good in the first 6 months and
still have Rs350 in the bank. Things here in Calcutta are very expensive. I think the general rule is that what you pay a shilling for
at home you give a rupee for here. Except in the matter of baccy, at any rate cheroots, which are dirt cheap and nasty.
2
Jan 1882, Ryuk a Garo village about 15 miles from Durgapur Mss Eur C258/1
My
dear father, first six lines omitted.
We
have walked to this place from Dargapur through a country perfectly covered
with jungle. Our baggage has been
brought up the river in native boats which are simply dugout cut out of the
trunk of a tree about 20 or 30 ft long and 18 inches or so broad. We have about 40 of these boats and 80 natives to work them. These Garos are almost savages and were
only brought under English rule about 8 years ago. Before that they used to make raids on the Bengalis in the
plains at the foot of the hills for heads with which to decorate their
houses. They are a very jolly set
of people, nevertheless, and are capital fellows to work. They have no caste prejudices like the
rest of the Indians and will eat anything from snakes to puppies. There follows descriptions of
the way of life of the Garos, "I
shall have to live among them for the next three months" --- We generally
start about 8 in the morning and walk through the jungle, the railway men
making notes of the lie of the country, and I examining any outcrops I come
across, but the hills are so covered with jungle that it is hard to find
any. We get over 5 or 6 miles by
two o'clock and then come down to the river where the tents have been pitched
and have breakfast. Then we go out
with our guns and try to shoot jungle fowl but have not had much luck as
yet. Then a bathe in the river in
beautifully clear water and dinner at half past six after which a smoke and a
chat and to bed about 10. I enjoy
the life exceedingly but I should much like to hear from you. It is a fortnight since I have had any
letters, that was at Mymensingh but I suppose they have stuck somewhere on the
road.
It is after bed time now so
I must turn in, so much love to Mother, Mary and Grace.
I
remain your ever affectionate son , Tom
20
Jan 1882, Shemshagiri, Mss Eur C258/1
note
at top I am longing to hear how you
get on with the fossils
My
Dear Father,
I am sending this
from Tura, the only place in these parts where one can get provisions that are
eatable, and it is four days march away, so I have an opportunity of letting
you known how I am getting on. I
have been by myself now for a week having left the rest of the party to go on
through the hills while I have to wander about at my own sweet will and hammer
away at every rock I find poking its nose above ground. Geology is very different here from
what it is at home where there are plenty of railway and road sections. Here one has to go poking about in
thick jungle along the banks of streams and then perhaps you only find a square
yard or so of rock and that may be a boulder for all you know. However, it is a very jolly sort of a life. I find the people very easy to get on
with although they don't understand a word of Hindustani even and wear
remarkably little clothing. I have
been staying at this long named place for the last two or three days hunting up
an outcrop of coal that I found on Wednesday, and every day the headman has
brought me a little present, a few eggs or a fowl, the everlasting murgli- I
have tasted no other meat for the last three weeks and suppose I shall not see
any other for a couple of months - except wild fowl- I forgot them. I shot a pea-hen yesterday and another
today which will last me a long time. They are splendid big birds and there are lots of them.---more on
hunting and the weather---By the way,
one of the survey men, Lydekker by name, an authority on Siwalik fossils, is
just going home and will probably go down to see those at Ludlow. Perhaps you could help him get a sight
of them, as he trusts to the tender mercies of Coching and Co., he will have to
be content with a sight of them through glass only, With much love etc. Tom
27
April 1883 Ashley, Shillong Mss
Eur C258/2 To his father,
I
have been here now nearly three weeks and like the place very much. It is one of the prettiest places in
the hills and certainly the best I have seen for a large hill station as the ground
is level enough for good roads and there are plenty of trees all pines and a
good water supply. Nearly every
house has a small stream though its grounds. My house is a pretty little one with a good garden, I have been growing vegetable seeds and
hope they will do well.
There
is not much to be done geologically near the station and the only rocks for
some miles round are quartzites, granites and schists, without a trace of
fossils and there is nothing between them and Cretacous rocks mostly sandstones
with a small field of coal. I did
not have much success in finding minerals this season- most of the rocks I
marched over were as I think I told you before late Tertiary sandstones of
enormous thickenss. The jungle was very thick, mostly bamboos, but fortunately
dry during the cold season so I escaped with only a few slight touches of
fever. My servants did not escape
so well and one of them is still down at times with it. That part of the country was at one
time more thickly populated than it is now, but the Barmere in their raids seem
to have exterminated them - One comes across the ruins of temples and tanks in
the midst of dense jungle - sometimes with stone carvings of Hindoo gods.
The
worst of the jungle is that as soon as the rain begins, swarms of leeches make
their appearance so that on the march one gathers them up in crowds - they are
about ½ inch long and make a very nasty bite. I have to keep to the house now because some bites I got 4
or 5 weeks ago have just broken out, and I can't get my shoes on.
8
Dec 1883 Tezpur, Mss Eur C258/2
La
Touche writes to his mother from Tezpur about how the Surveyor General for Assam
-Col. Woodthorpe is clearing top of hill of trees for survey work. Also fighting with local tribes.
Camp
Garo Hills 1 Feb 1886 Mss Eur C258/5 Letters to his mother
On
his way from Tura to Durabandagi .
"It is a large village but not marked on the map you have. The nearest to it is Nakolgiri, which
as far as aI know has no existence in fact, but the fellows who made that map
didn't care for such trifles as the names of villages---mentions a tiny
earthquake and damage to buildings by the 14 july 1885 quake
Camp
Nongsobal, Khasai Hill 26 Mar 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
Out
of the low lying forests on higher, healthier ground avoiding fever.
Calcutta
26 June 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
working
in the museum on fossils.
"There
are 4 men here now working in the museum besides Mr. Medlicott, and they are
about the only people I know in Calcutta so living here is not very
lively. I get a game of
tennis sometimes after office but now that the rains have come on, the ground
is generally too wet to play on. All the courts here are grass so the rain does not run off so quickly as
in Shillong where the they are made of sand."
Shillong
10 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
I
have brought a friend up here to keep me company. His name is Middlemiss &
he is also in the Geol Survey, so of course he is a jolly good fellow. We had a miserable journey up here from
Gauhati in the tonga. The distance
is 63 miles and we took over 18 hours over it. The road is full of holes in places and in others I covered
with new metal so that the ponies could hardly get along. On the last two or three stages the
ponies would stop every fifty or sixty yards and we had to get out and put our
shoulders to the wheel and walk the greater part of the distance. Then to make matters worse it began to
pour with rain about sunset and rained hard until we got in at 12 o'clock at
night. I never had such a journey
in my life.
Shillong
18 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
Middlemiss
seems to like the place very well. He will stay till about the end if the month and then has to go into
camp away to other side of India near Naini Thal [stet]
Shillong
31 August 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
My
friend Middlemiss is with me still and is much better, He has been very ill with fever this
last fortnight.
Shillong
22 Oct 1886 Mss Eur C258/5
"I expect to be off in about a fortnight to Manipur ----We shall have a good number of Sepoys with us this time, about 1000 I think, so there is not much chance of our having trouble with dacoits. There are a lot of amber and jade mines over there which I am anxious to be the first geologist to see.
Rawalpindi Punjab 1 August 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
Tom
La Touche to his brother William
My
dear Villiam [stet], I have just got over the second stage of my journey to
Kashmir viz. a railway journey of
3 days and nights from Calcutta to this place where I arrived last night. I came through Allahabad, Cawnpore,
Delhi and Lahore but hadn't time to see any of those places, as the train
doesn't long stop anywhere for more than an hour. It was much cooler than I expected as there was plenty of
rain for the greater part of the way………….and so on for 3 more pages, Tom
Srinigar
12 August 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
My
dearest mother,
I arrived at this place yesterday afternoon after a 30 mile march from the hill station of Gulmargh where I went to see the Resident to whom I was told to report my arrival in Kashmir. From Kohala where I posted a PC to Mary after my march down from Murree, I came 30 miles on a Tonga along a new road which is being made up the Jhelum Valley. There I had 3 days marching up this valley doing about 20 miles a day. The scenery gets rather monotonous after a time and the weather was very hot so those marches were not very pleasant. I met a good many people going down, one of whom was a man called Chance who was at school at Shrewsbury with me, but only one man going up, and he wasn’t much of a walker so he had to ride most of the way. I left the Jhelum at a place called Nowshera and had a 4000ft climb up the hills on the southern bank to a plateau covered with grassy glades and forests of huge pine trees, which was a very pleasant relief from the heat and monotony of the valley. That 4000 ft bought me up to nearly 9000 ft above sea level, and the ground was covered with various kinds of English flowers. It reminded me very much of Linley drive. From the top of the hill to Gulmurg was about 13 miles nearly all the way through pine forest. As 'murg' is upland to which the people take their flocks of sheep in the summer to graze, and Gulmurg means the murg of roses, though I don't see any roses about. Perhaps this isn't the right time of the year for them.
A small hill station is just being started up there, to which the resident Mr. Plowden, and which most of the people who go to Kashmir on leave, go up in the hot weather. The houses are merely huts built of wood and plastered with mud, but I dare say they will be improved in time.
I called on Plowden as soon as I arrived and dined with him and his family in the evening and had a very pleasant time. They had a piano so we had some music. I had to come away the next day as it is getting so late in the year that I must make my way to the Saphire mines as quickly as possible or I shall have difficulty getting back as the passes will be blocked with snow.
…….here follows a half page of description of Srinigar's resemblance to Venice because of the lake-like setting.
The first thing I did was to go and see the Prime Minister,
Lachman Dass with whom I had a long talk. He speaks English perfectly and has a house furnished beautifully in the
English style. He promised to do
everything possible to help me, and then sent me off on one of his boats to the
quarters that had been got ready for me. They are in one of the small houses reserved for
European visitors and are fairly comfortable. Another of our men, a fellow
named Oldham, who has been geologising in Ladakh for some time is living in the
same house. I have not seen him
since '83 so it is jolly to meet him here and talk over our respective work.
Srinigar
14th Aug. 1887 Mss Eur C258/6
I
have just been down to see Lachman Dass again to make final arrangements for my
starting for Zanskar tomorrow, and after that was over, he took me to the
palace and introduced me to the Maharajah. He is an insignificant looking little fat beast of a man
& can't talk a word of English. In fact he seemed hardly able to put two words together in Hindustani so
our interview was not a long or interesting one.
5
June 1888, Kashmir Mss Eur C258/7
Letter
to Willie from Camp talks of
hunting and missing bear. A letter
to Lucy from the Saphire Mines at 12000' describes scenery and hunting, and a
card to her depicting his tent on 19Nov 1888. Letter to Grace relating snow on 1 Nov and with a drawing of
him crossing a river under a rope bridge. Letters to his father with details of mineral identification, photo
methods and sunglasses. Mentions blackening nose and under the eyes with
charcoal. Letters to mother detailed descriptions of scenery and other matters.
6
March 1888, Calcutta, Mss Eur C258/7 To Grace,
My
chief Dr King went away on Wednesday last, and since then I have been bossing
the office here, but there are a good many official letters to read and to
answer, so I get plenty to do every day from 11 till 5 which are our office
hours. Out of office there is very
little to do, as I am here for such a short time I don't care to join any of
the tennis clubs etc so I don't get much exercise except a walk in the evening,
and that is not very pleasant because of the awful smells that one comes across
everywhere. The state of the
city is something awful and it will be no wonder if there is a bad outbreak of
cholera when the weather gets hotter.
28
March 1888 Calcutta to Grace , Mss Eur C258/7
I
have got my orders to go back to Kashmir and shall leave Calcutta on Sunday
next. Another of our men, Mr. Oldham, came in from camp
on the 25th so we are more lively in [the] office. He will take charge of it when I go.
Cherrapunji
1889 Mss Eur C258/8
La
Touche's letters to his sister Polly are from Cherrapunji where he is surveying
two small coal fields. He
talks of mock battles, playing cricket, feeling fit, meeting watching the
Khaisis killing a 7 foot snake, and
of his preference to go to Burma via Manipur rather than to Baluchistan where
it is hot and dry. The file ends in Chittagong
1
November 89 letter Shillong, to Polly Mss Eur C258/8
A
very sad thing happened a short time ago to one of our men, a young fellow
called Jones, a School of Mines man. He went up to Darjiling with some of the Calcutta Volunteers in the
Durga Puja holiday and got fever and dysentry there, and the exposure to rain
and fog while on parades killed him. He was a very jolly fellow and quite strong looking, and also a clever
man, and we shall miss him very much in the survey. He had been thinking of paying me a visit in the Puja
instead of going to Darjiling and I wish very much he had as he would probably
have been alive now and well.
18
November 1889, Shillong, Mss Eur C258/8
I
believe I am to sail on Wednesday to Chittagong. It is only a two day journey and the bay should be pretty
calm at this time of the year.---the only cooking to be done will be the
heating up of tins of commisariat beef.---I have just heard that one of our men
in Baluchistan who came out a year ago has been knocked up by the sand [?sins]
and will probably have to retire from the survey. That will leave us very short-handed now that Jones is
dead. We miss him very much as he
used to do the laboratory work and look after the museum, and besides he was a
first rate fellow in every way, and every one who knew him liked him.
14
December 1889, Camp Demagiri, Mss
Eur C258/8
I
am waiting here now as one of my coolies has gone and got ill with dysentry
abnd I am very much afraid I shall have to send him back again to his home in
Assam. There is a lot of sickness
knocking about here now and three of the Europeans wer down with fever
yesterday, but barring a slight cold I am all right and hopeto keep so. The nights are very cold and foggy and
the huts we are living in are very open and draughty. They are built of bamboos entirely and every wind that blows
can circulate freely through them. I have been accustomed to the same kind of thing in Assam so I don't
think it will hurt me now, however, I intend to take care of muyseld as much as
possible. --- a paragraph on fishing and uninteresting geology ---Nothing has been heard of the enemy yet and no one
knows whether he is likely to show fight or not. I expect all the fighting will be on the Burma side, and
that the people on this side will cave in as soon as we begin to advance- but
of course there is no telling what savages like the Lushais will do. He describes a narrow pass
that can be defended by a few men, and food -tinned beef and flour- , and the
fact that villagers charge a lot for eggs and fowl. He also describes the
interesting blue paper a photo process that "is very
convenient in camp as it wants no chemicals, all one has to do is to print the
picture in the sun, and then wash it in water."
27
December 1889, Fort Lungleh, Mss
Eur C258/8
This
place is built on a narrow ridge about 3500' above the sea with deep valleys
filled with jungle all around. He then describes the jollities of Christmas. They finish up burning the bamboo table
and singing into the night. His letter to his mother 22 Dec has a drawing of a
hut. I am going out tomorrow with a
reconnaissance party toward the north. We expect to be away about ten days…
20
Feb 1889 Mss Eur C258/8
letter
to his father indicating he had received a letter from Sir Joseph Hooker (who,
like Lapworth, is a friend of his
fathers) Mention of massive saphires
5"
long 3 inch diameter hexagonal double pyramids in boxes containing 30 lbs worth
3500
rupees 3000 pounds or 6500 rupees 6000 pounds stirling depending on quality.
15
Oct 1890, Calcutta Mss Eur C258/9
Well
it struck me that Grace's friend Miss Hardy was the right sort of girl, and
before leaving London I wrote to he and asked her to be my wife. You will say I suppose that this was a
very rash proceeding on my part, knowing so little about her, but I thought
about it a good bit before I wrote that letter, and I do not think it was so
rash as it may perhaps seem to you. Anyway I have had a letter from the young lady, received this morning
which gives me a fair amount of encouragment, though I can see she had been a
good bit startled by the proposal as was to be expected. The letter is a very excellent one, but
I don't wish to lose sight of it as you can imagine