But tea growing is not all profit. Sometimes a hailstorm ruins the year's crop, frost blights the plants, and losses occur in other ways. The planters rarely own their gardens, but are usually in the service of companies in England. They are not overpaid; a manager in the Duars generally receives six hundred rupees a month, together with a house, allowances for his horse and certain servants which make his salary up to another hundred, in all about forty-seven pounds. But an assistant begins on less than twenty pounds a month. Engineers, who look after the machinery, are better paid; and some economically minded companies promote the engineer to be manager, and so save a salary. The expenses of living are not great, and a frugal planter--if such a being exists--can save money. To those fond of an outdoor existence the work is pleasant enough. Early in the morning manager and assistants mount their ponies and set out to ride over the hundreds of acres of the estate, inspect the plants, visit the nurseries, and watch the coolies at work among the bushes or clearing the jungle. Then through the factory and, if it be the season, see the baskets of leaves brought in and weighed. And back to a late breakfast, where tea rarely finds its way to the table, and a siesta until the afternoon calls them forth to ride round the garden again. It sounds an easy life and idyllic, but the planters say it is not. In any land the sight of the rich plains stretching away from the foot of the barren hills is always a tempting sight to the fierce mountain dwellers. And for the Bhutanese it must have been a sore struggle to curb their predatory instincts and cease from their profitable descents on the unwarlike inhabitants of Bengal. Wealth and women were the prizes of the freebooter until the shield of the Briton was thrust between him and his timorous prey. Yet even to-day, although their nation is at peace with us, the temptation sometimes proves too much for lawless borderers. And parties of raiders from across the frontier swoop down on the Duars. A tea garden, when a store of silver coin is brought to pay the wages of the hundreds of coolies, is their favourite mark. The few police scattered far apart over the north of Eastern Bengal are powerless to stop a rush of savage swordsmen who suddenly emerge from the forest, loot the _bunniahs_ and the huts on a garden, and disappear long before an appeal for succour can reach the nearest troops. With the fear of the white man before their eyes they do not seek to meddle with the Europeans in their factories and bungalows. But the fearless planters do not imitate their forbearance. In one garden a terrified coolie rushed to the manager's house to inform him that Bhuttias were raiding the village. Without troubling to inquire the number of the dacoits the planter called his one assistant; and taking their rifles the two Englishmen mounted their ponies and galloped to the village.