Creature record / 1889
1889. Northeast Sikkim. Major Laurence Austine Waddell of the Indian Medical Service was crossing the snow with his party. Then they found them. A line of large footprints led across their route and climbed away toward the higher peaks. His companions said the tracks belonged to the hairy wild men of the eternal snows. Waddell was not convinced. He questioned Tibetans and never found a first-hand account. His answer was a bear. Ten years later he put the moment in print. Later writers would call it the first Western report of yeti tracks, more than 30 years before the name "Abominable Snowman" existed.
Sikkim was then a protectorate under British India. Since 1888, Laurence Austine Waddell had been posted to the Darjeeling district as a medical officer. He was a major in the Indian Medical Service, and much more besides. Graham Hoyland describes him as a soldier, explorer, professor of Tibetan, chemist, surgeon and archaeologist who "roamed Tibet in disguise."