Dear Mamma,
Since I wrote last I have had two letters, one from Charlie dated March 27^th and one from you dated April 13^th.

I think the weather has pretty well broken now, last month was very hot but we are now having the "chota busate" or little rains, a sort of preliminary ???? before the big rains begin next month. The streams will soon be full of water and the roads a mass of slush. I am glad to say Government have made an effort to do up our main road this year and if the rains are not too heavy it may stand. I for one devoutly hope it will, it has gone regularly every year I have been here so this will be a record if it holds.

A few days before the rain started we had a pretty smart earthquake which lasted several minutes, this is a double storied bungalow and I was sitting upstairs, the whole building swayed from side to side creaking and groaning and the iron roof cracked like a lot of little shots, I felt very uncomfortable I can tell you. I believe the old wooden bungalows are far safer in an earthquake, all the same I have never heard of any building coming down in this neighbourhood.

I met an old chap of the name of Irving the other day and found out quite accidentally that his daughter married George Bush. The old chap had been in silk and now recruits coolies for tea Gardens. He goes in for collecting orchids, stamps, butterflies etc. I believe he makes a good thing out of it, he showed me one stamp worth R300. He had also been in the gold diggings in Australia and showed me a nugget he got there worth about £10 - £15. By the way I believe the gold mine I told you of in me last letter is going to turn out well, they have come on a rich vein of quartz and one piece which showed no visible gold was treated by a specialist and yielded 5oz of gold to the ton. This is exceedingly good - the richest mine in the world only yields 7oz to the ton.

I am afraid my letters are very dull. There is really no news to give you at present. The chief topics of conversation here are the price of tea and the falling rupee. The latter is worth a little over 1/- at present and people say it will go down to -/10^d. I am afraid it will mean perpetual banishment. I don't see how one is to get home if it goes as low as that. Government officials are of course all right as they get a fixed value on exchange.

I see they have put up income tax at home. I have got off so far I am glad to say, we had a Baboo Collector round a short time ago but he did not find me out so I am safe for another year. It was a surprise to me to hear of Frank's engagement, please give him my hearty congratulations when you next write to him. I am awfully glad to hear that he has got over his illness and I hope he will stand this climate better now, it will be a pity though if he has to come out now as he will come in for all the hot weather. I must try and take a run up to see him next cold weather if I can find the time.

I am glad to say that I have been keeping very good health myself. I have had no fever since last year.

With love to all
I remain
Your affec son
A.N.J. Story.

July 1894

Dear Mamma,
Since I wrote last I have had two letters dated June 1^th and June 13^th.

We are well into the rains now but so far I am glad to say that we have come off fairly well, there have been no heavy floods so I have not had much difficulty in getting about. Each year I have been out we have had a flood in the 1^st week in July but this year there was none. The next usually comes about the second week in August so we may consider ourselves safe till then. I only hope it goes on like this and then there is some chance of the main road holding out this season.

Things are jogging along in the same old routine, everyone very busy making tea and my work is going as usual. I have had a great deal of sickness amongst coolies and the Europeans have been laid up a good deal too but not so much as in the next district. As for myself I had a go of fever which lasted a couple of days at the end of last month but on the whole I am keeping better than I have done before and feel more fit for work. I have given up drinking bier altogether I find my liver will not stand it and have a ??? or a little light wine at meals which suits me much better.

We are getting lots of fruit just now, mangoes, pine apples, lychees and passion fruit and of course plantains. It is hard to say which is best but I suppose the mango is. It is is quite impossible to eat one tidily and enjoy it, when you come to the stone you require to gnaw it to get all the pulp away properly. Indian corn is another things that requires to be gnawed to enjoy it properly, I believe in civilised parts they scrape the grains out but of course in the wilds we eat the things as they were meant to be eaten with our fingers.

I don't know that when everything is said that the fruits out here beat those at home especially pears, peaches and nectarines. Some fellows have tried growing English fruits here but they have not been a success. We have several peach trees in the compound here, the fruit forms but as soon as the rains start they all rot and drop off. The rainfall is too heavy for them. One man tried coffee in this district but it was an utter failure for the same reason.

I think I told you that I had been made Lieutenant in the Volunteers in one of my letters. I have to get a sword of course. I don't know whether you have poor old Ted's Militia one or not. If it is at home would you mind my having it as it would save my buying another. I am reading up my drill at odd minutes as I shall have to drill our squad here next cold weather, now that I have taken the thing up I want to try and improve matters a little if I can.

I told you in my last that I did not want anything in the way of clothes but I shall have one or two "wants" next cold weather and as it takes some time to get things I will tell you now. I should like another pair of long boots and a pair of small ones, the long boots "Elcho's" the same as you sent before only if possible of stronger leather. The small boots of brown leather. I find it absolutely impossible to get a decent boot in Calcutta, everyone here grumbles of the same thing. The small boots I got from Goodenough before I came out, they were an excellent fit and have lasted well, the only thing is they might line them with leather. I am not sure whether Goodenough have my measure or not. Also if you would not mind getting a pair of riding breeches from Haldane and Pugh, of cord strapped with buckskin at the knees, the thicker the cord the better.

It will be awfully good of you if you will send these things out by October if possible. I wish I could afford to get them myself but it is hardly good enough with the rupee at its present value.

I am sorry to hear Evie is not doing well, remember that if he gives up his farm and wants work I might get him something to do here but he would find it very different I am afraid and the climate bad. I hope Robert will come out in the cold weather, he would get some good shooting and I am sure he would enjoy himself.

I suppose this letter will find you at home again. I am afraid the journey would be rather trying and the climate not very pleasant after the "sunny south".

With love to all
I remain
Your affec son
A.N.J. Story.

August 1894

Dear Mamma,
I got your letter of July 14^th the first week in this month, as you say I was rather surprised, I quite expected you would be home but I am quite sure you enjoyed seeing all the sights.

This is a very sad year altogether here. I have just lost another of my patients quite suddenly. I was away from here for 3 or 4 days visiting some of my Gardens a long distance off and the first thing I heard was the death of this poor fellow and it was just possible that had I been on the spot I might have saved his life but the assistant on the Garden is quite a youngster and did not recognise how serious matters were so they did not send for me till the man was at the point of death. I have been very busy and have had some very bad rides. One day I left one Garden at 8 am and did not get in here until 4 pm riding a long way on an elephant. I had nothing to eat or drink the whole time and was alternately grilled by the sun and soaked to the skin. I should have been able to get something to refresh the inner man at a half way bungalow but the Manager was away and the whole place shut up so I had to go on. There had been no cholera to speak of this year but every other disease pretty well seems to be on the war path. Even the cattle have not been spared, foot and mouth disease has been raging for the last few weeks and the smell of dead carcasses along the roads and riding through the jungle is something awful. The natives will not take precautionary measures all they say is that a devil has got in amongst their cattle and only a small minority have been wise enough to send their sound animals away to the Bhutan Hills at once. We have had our milk supple cut very short in consequence and for two or three days had to use Swiss milk which we luckily had a little of.

As for myself you will be glad to hear I am keeping very fairly well. I had a day of low fever the day before yesterday but have had no fever since. These 3 months August, September and October are always my worst but I hope to get through then this year with less fever than I have had before.

I am afraid you will think this letter is a perfect catectony of woes. I am not done yet, we have been having a lot of trouble with our servants. I had to send mine away and have been more than a week without one and all the others in the bungalow have had to go too except one, so that we have been living rather a hand to mouth existence for some time.

Aug 19^th
To continue I have been into Jalpaiguri since I started this - our cook ran Thomson in for hitting him and I had to go in as witness, luckily the business was settled out of court and I got away the next day, the rascal thoroughly deserved the licking he got. When the case came on he got frightened and agreed to take his pay and clear out. It is always a serious business when a European is run in by a Native for assault as you never know what false evidence they will put in. The journey in and out of Jalpi this weather is anything but pleasant and I did not bless the man for making me go in. I have been writing to the Deputy Commissioner about the state of the roads here to try and get them repaired. I had a nasty spill last week owing to the bad state one of them was in. Very few of the planters will bother themselves to do anything so I am going to see what I can do myself.

I had a letter from Lou last mail, she seems to think I ought to be getting a holiday soon and coming home. I am afraid I cannot manage it till the year after next if then and even so I expect I should have a deal of difficulty in getting a man to come here for the rains as he would be pretty certain to get s???

With love to all
I remain
Your affec son
A.N.J. Story.

September 1894

October 1894

Dear Mamma,
I received two letters from you last month but I forgot the dates and I am writing this away from home.

The Poojah holidays are on at present, they are a Hindoo festival chiefly remarkable about here for everyone (natives I mean) being in a complete state of stupidity from drink for the best part of a week.

I came down to this place Banandanga yesterday to keep Rawson, the Accountant to the D.T. Co. company as he could not get away, we were to have gone up the river today and had a picnic but it rained hard during the night and so we had to give it up.

I told you in my last letter that I had had a letter from Weatherly the doctor at Keenseong asking me if I could go up there. One of my patients here got very s???? and I took him as far as Keenseong myself. It was very cold up there after the plains, the line up to Darjeeling from Silliguri is a wonderful piece of engineering. Keenseong is 5000 ft up and Darjeeling 7000 ft so you can imagine the line had to take a good many turns and twists to get there, in one place there is a complete figure of 8 and in two or three places they have to stop, then back up and then go on again; I do not think there is any railway of this kind in Europe. I believe on the Bombay side there is one and also in Australia.

I only stayed one night at Keenseong, the hotel was crammed and we had to go and stop in a house some way up the hill behind the hotel. The accommodation there was shockingly bad and so I made my patient go straight up to Darjeeling next day and I came down. On the way down there was a landslip so we had to wait while this was cleared off the line delaying us about 1½ hours. It is a wonderful thing that there had never been an accident on this line, landslips have come down time after time just before or just after the train has passed but never on top of the train. There is one place called "pugla jhora" - mad stream, when the water comes straight down the side 

[ REST MISSING  but there is a note on the top of the first page - "P.S. Please excuse scraps of paper, but there is a scarcity here. A.N.J "]

This is the last he wrote, the next sad letters are from that "rough Scotsman" Thomson.

December 1894

Mrs Story

Dear Madam
I am deeply grieved to have to inform you of your son Arthur's death which took place on the 27th Nov. Knowing well the pain it must give you and it is only as a duty that I can bear to impart the sad intelligence.

We have been more or less living together since he came to the district both at Bhogotpore and here at Looksan. We miss him very much from among our small community and all alike must feel for you the deepest sympathy in your great loss.

He left me to visit some gardens lying to the east of here and was taken ill at a garden called Telepara belonging to the Niana Tea Co. All that medical skill could do was done by the civil surgeon as well as other local medical men as well as with the assistance of a trained nurse who was got from Calcutta but of no avail.

Should you require my service in any way I shall be only too glad to receive your instructions.

Again assuring you of my deep sympathy with yourself and Dr Story's relations.
I remain
Yours faithfully
D.J. Thompson.

He includes a newpaper cutting:

DEATH

STORY --- At Telepara Tea Estate, Duars, on the 27th November, Dr. A.N.J. Story. Deeply regretted by his many friends in the district.