[13] The only other reference I have uncovered on this unique plant is by Peter Goullart in Princes of the Black Boney John Murray, 1959. Goullart mentions: 'I was told by an eminent botanist that high up on the slope of Minya Konkka, shooting through the snow, grew a remarkable primrose, called Primula Glacialis, one of the rarest flowers in the world discovered by a Catholic priest. It rivalled the sky in the purity of its blue colour and delicacy of its contours… Why did the most beautiful, most enchanting and delicate blossoms on the planet grow so high and under such impossibly hard conditions, braving frost, hail, landslides and cruel winds, out of reach of humanity?'
[14] Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker travelled throughout India (1848-50) particularly the Sikkim Himalayas, to study the distribution and evolution of plants. He was one of the most eminent of nineteenth century scientists and a close confidant of Darwin.
[15] Sherlock Holmes makes very similar statements in The Final Problem and the case preceding it, The Naval Treaty. It is interesting that the metaphysical strain in him should surface so conspicuously on these two occasions just before his finalencounter with Professor Moriarty – surely the most deadly, yet significant, moment in his life.
[16] Could this have any connection with 'the repulsive story of the red leech' that Dr Watson mentions in his introduction to the adventure of The Golden Pince-nez
[17] Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the great French detective, was the father of the revolutionary system of classifying and trapping criminals by measuring and recording certain unchangeable parts of the human body. He called his invention 'anthropometry’ or body measurement.
[18] In 1896, in the district of Hooghly in Bengal, the Inspector General of Police introduced, for the first time anywhere in the world, the system of fingerprinting for identifying criminals. Only in 1901 did Scotland Yard adopt the Henry system of classifying prints by patterns and shapes.
[19] In spite of its seeming novelty, the air-rifle had been in use earlier in history. Louis XIV hunted deer with one. It even saw military service when the French used it quite successfully against the Austrians in the Napoleonic Wars. An air-rifle was also used by Lewis and Clark on their celebrated expedition.
[20] Intermediate. One of the many classes on Indian trains in the past. Between third and second class.
[21] The Brahmo Somaj or Divine Society was founded in 1828 by Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the great Indian reformer and doyen of the Bengal Renaissance. He took his stand on the principles of reason and the rights of the individual as expressed in the Upanishads. These he said were basic to both Hindu and Western thought and formed a basis upon which they could mutually borrow. He attacked the institution of sati and abuses of caste, advocating the raising of the status of women and the abolition of idolatry.
[22] Probably
[23] The monastery of Tashi-lhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lamas. Early European travellers to Tibet and writers mistakenly referred to the Panchen Lama as the Teshoo' lama or the 'Tashi' lama, after the monastery.
[24] In 1860 an Anglo-French expedition led by Lord Elgin occupied Peking after defeating Imperial Chinese forces and forcing the Emperor to flee to Jehol. Every palace, temple and mansion in the capital was thoroughly plundered, and the Imperial Summer Palace burned to the ground. The occasion that provoked this war was the 'Arrow' incident of 1856, when a Chinese-owned but Hong Kong-registered ship, the Arrow, was forcefully boarded by Chinese police at Canton for the alleged purpose of searching out a notorious pirate. Incidentally, Elgin is buried in an old church yard at Dharamsala, the present headquarters of the Dalai Lama in northern India.
[25] This annual trade caravan was also a tribute envoy to the Grand Lama from the king of Ladakh. Known as the Lopchag (annual prostration) mission it was established in the seventeenth century at the end of the Ladakh- Tibet-Mongol War. See'The Lapchak Missionfrom Ladakh to Lhasa in British Indian Foreign Policy,' John Bray, The Tibet Journal, Vol. XV No. 4.
[26] In 1881, Kintup (or K.P. as he is listed in Departmental records) was sent secretly to Southern Tibet to throw marked logs into the Tsangpo river to prove its continuity with the Bhramaputra. This intrepid spy pushed his way through unexplored jungles infested with wild animals, cannibals and head-hunters, and after four years of thrilling adventures and narrow escapes finally managed to throw the marked logs into the river. But there was no one watching for them below in Assam as the officer in charge of the experiment had died. For a full account of Kintup's feats see 'Exploration on the Tsangpo in 18804', Geographical Journal XXXVIII (1911). Survey of India Records IX, L.A. Waddel.
[27] Jingals. Heavy match-lock muskets mounted on stdfids'and worked by two men.
[28] Asterman was not exactly wrong. Tibetan tantric ceremonies require many strange objects for their efficacy. The meteorite iron was probably used to cast ritual implements like 'ghost daggers' (phurba), bells (drilbu) and Adamantine sceptres' (dorjee).
[29] A phrase coined by Spencer in 1852.
[30] Holmes expresses something very similar in his article 'The Book of Life', which Watson mentions (rather disparagingly) in A Study in Scarlet, his first published account of his meeting with the great detective. It is remarkable that neither Watson nor the generations of Holmesian scholars should have noticed the clear spiritual bent in Holmes's character.
[31] Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, and Manaslu.
