a few elephants and tigers on the slopes nearest to the plains. In the lowlands, tigers, rhinoceroses, deer and wild hogs are abundant. A few wolves are also found. Of small game, hares, jungle fowl, peacocks, partridges, snipe, woodcock, wild ducks and geese, and green pigeons are numerous in the tarai, and jungle fowl and pheasants in the hills. The mahseer fish is found in the Tista.
In 1901 the population was 249,117, showing an increase of 12% since 1891, compared with an increase of 43% in the previous decade. The inhabitants of the hilly tract consist to a large extent of Nepali immigrants and of aboriginal highland races; in the tarai the people are chiefly Hindus and Mahommedans. The Lepchas are considered to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the hilly portion of the district. They are a fine, frank race, naturally open-hearted and free-handed, fond of change and given to an out-door life; but they do not seem to improve on being brought into contact with civilization. It is thought that they are now being gradually driven out of the district, owing to the increase of regular cultivation, and to the government conservation of the forests. They have no word for plough in their language, and they still follow the nomadic form of tillage known as jum cultivation. This consists in selecting a spot of virgin soil, clearing it of forest and jungle by burning, and scraping the surface with the rudest agricultural implements. The productive powers of the land become exhausted in a few years, when the clearing is abandoned, a new site is chosen, and the same operations are carried on de novo. The Lepchas are also the ordinary out-door labourers on the hills. They have no caste distinctions but speak of themselves as belonging to one of nine septs or clans, who all eat together and intermarry with each other. In the upper or northern tarai, along the base of the hills, the Mechs form the principal ethnical feature. This tribe inhabits the deadly jungle with impunity, and cultivates cotton, rice and other ordinary crops, by the jum process described above. The cultivation of tea was introduced in 1856, and is now a large industry. Cinchona cultivation was introduced by the government in 1862, and has since been taken up by private enterprise. There is a coal mine at Daling. The Darjeeling Himalayan railway of 2 ft. gauge, opened in 1880, runs for 50 m. from Siliguri in the plains on the Eastern Bengal line.
The British connexion with Darjeeling dates from 1816, when, at the close of the war with Nepali, the British made over to the Sikkim raja the tarai tract, which had been wrested from him and annexed by Nepal. In 1835 the nucleus of the present district of British Sikkim or Darjeeling was created by a cession of a portion of the hills by the raja of Sikkim to the British as a sanatorium. A military expedition against Sikkim, rendered necessary in 1850 by the imprisonment of Dr A. Campbell, the superintendent of Darjeeling, and Sir Joseph Hooker, resulted in the stoppage of the allowance granted to the raja for the cession of the hill station of Darjeeling, and in the annexation of the Sikkim tarai at the foot of the hills and of a portion of the hills beyond. In August 1866 the hill territory east of the Tista, acquired as the result of the Bhutan campaign of 1864, was added to the jurisdiction of Darjeeling.
DARLEY, GEORGE (1795–1846), Irish poet, was born in Dublin in 1795. His parents, who were gentle folks of independent means, emigrated to America, leaving the boy in charge of his grandfather at Springfield, Co. Dublin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1820; but an unfortunate stammer prevented him from going into the church or to the bar, and he established himself in London, where he published his first volume of poems, the Errors of Ecstasie, in 1822, and became a regular contributor to The London Magazine. He was intimate with Cary, the translator of Dante, and with Charles Lamb. In 1826 he published under the name of "Grey Penseval" a volume of prose tales and sketches, Labour in Idleness (1826), one of which, "The Enchanted Lyre," is plainly autobiographical. Sylvia, or the May Queen (1827, reprint 1892), a fairy opera, met with no success, but about 1830 he became dramatic and art critic to the Athenaeum. His other works are: Nepenthe (1835, reprint 1897), his most considerable poem; introduction to the works of Beaumont and Fletcher (1840); with two plays, Thomas à Becket (1840), and Ethelstan (1841). He died in London on the 23rd of November 1846.
Selections from the Poems of George Darley, with an introduction by R. A. Streatfield, appeared in 1904. See also the edition by Ramsay Colles in the “Muses’ Library” (1906).
DARLING, GRACE HORSLEY (1815–1842), British heroine, was born at Bamborough, Northumberland, on the 24th of November 1815. Her father, William Darling, was the keeper of the Longstone (Farne Islands) lighthouse. On the morning of the 7th of September 1838, the “Forfarshire,” bound from Hull to Dundee, with sixty-three persons on board, struck on the Farne Islands, forty-three being drowned. The wreck was observed from the lighthouse, and Darling and his daughter determined to try and reach the survivors. They recognized that though they might be able to get to the wreck, they would be unable to return without the assistance of the shipwrecked crew, but they took this risk without hesitation. By a combination of daring, strength and skill, the father and daughter reached the wreck in their coble and brought back four men and a woman to the lighthouse. Darling and two of the rescued men then returned to the wreck and brought off the four remaining survivors. This gallant exploit made Grace Darling and her father famous. The Humane Society at once voted them its gold medal, the treasury made a grant, and a public subscription was organized. Grace Darling, who had always been delicate, died of consumption on the 20th of October 1842.
See Grace Darling, her true story (London, 1880).
DARLING, a river of Australia. It rises in Queensland and flows into New South Wales, forming for a considerable distance the boundary of the two colonies; in its upper reaches it is known as the Barwon, but from Bourke to its junction on the Victorian border with the river Murray, it is called the Darling. Its length is 1160 m., and with its affluents it drains an area of about 200,000 sq. m. During the dry season its course is marked by a series of shallow pools, but during the winter, when it is subject to sudden floods, it is navigable as far as Bourke for steamers of light draft. Excepting a narrow strip on the banks of the river, the country through which it passes is, for the most part, an arid plain.
DARLINGTON, a market town and municipal and parliamentary borough of Durham, England, 232 m. N. by W. of London, on the North-Eastern railway. Pop. (1891) 38,060; (1901) 44,511. It lies in a slightly undulating plain on the small river Skerne, a tributary of the Tees, not far from the main river. Its appearance is almost wholly modern, but there is a fine old parish church dedicated to St Cuthbert. It is cruciform, and in style mainly transitional Norman. It has a central tower surmounted by a spire of the 14th century, which necessitated the building of a massive stone screen across the chancel arch to support the piers. Traces of an earlier church were discovered in the course of restoration. Educational establishments include an Elizabethan grammar school, a training college for school-mistresses (British and Foreign School Society), and a technical school. There is a park of forty-four acres. The industries of Darlington are large and varied. They include worsted spinning mills; collieries, ironstone mines, quarries and brickworks; the manufacture of iron and steel, both in the rough and in the form of finished articles, as locomotives, bridge castings, ships' engines, gun castings and shells, &c. The parliamentary borough returns one member. The town was incorporated in 1867, and the corporation consists of a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors. Area, 3956 acres.
Not long after the bishop and monks of Lindisfarne had settled at Durham in 995, Styr the son of Ulf gave them the vill of Darlington (Dearthington, Darnington), which by 1083 had grown into importance, probably owing to its situation on the road from Watling Street to the mouth of the Tees. Bishop William of St Carileph in that year changed the church to a collegiate church, and placed there certain canons whom he removed from Durham. Bishop Hugh de Puiset rebuilt the church and built a manor house which was for many years the occasional residence of the bishops of Durham. Boldon Book,
