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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unveiling of Lhasa
+
+Author: Edmund Candler
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2010 [EBook #33359]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNVEILING OF LHASA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Asad Razzaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in
+    the original.
+
+  Some typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected. A
+    complete list follows the text.
+
+  Words italicized in the original are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+  The 'oe' ligature is represented as oe.
+
+
+
+
+              THE UNVEILING
+                OF LHASA
+
+                   BY
+
+             EDMUND CANDLER
+
+      AUTHOR OF 'A VAGABOND IN ASIA'
+
+
+       _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP_
+
+                 LONDON
+              EDWARD ARNOLD
+      Publisher to H.M. India Office
+  41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
+                  1905
+          [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+                    THESE PAGES,
+     WRITTEN MOSTLY IN THE DRY COLD WIND OF TIBET,
+  OFTEN WHEN INK WAS FROZEN AND ONE'S HAND TOO NUMBED
+          TO FEEL A PEN, ARE DEDICATED TO
+
+               COLONEL HOGGE, C.B.,
+
+                       AND
+
+         THE OFFICERS OF THE 23RD SIKH PIONEERS,
+   WHOSE GENIAL SOCIETY IS ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT
+            MEMORIES OF A RIGOROUS CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The recent expedition to Lhasa was full of interest, not only on account
+of the political issues involved and the physical difficulties overcome,
+but owing to the many dramatic incidents which attended the Mission's
+progress. It was my good fortune to witness nearly all these stirring
+events, and I have written the following narrative of what I saw in the
+hope that a continuous story of the affair may interest readers who have
+hitherto been able to form an idea of it only from the telegrams in the
+daily Press. The greater part of the book was written on the spot, while
+the impressions of events and scenery were still fresh. Owing to wounds
+I was not present at the bombardment and relief of Gyantse, but this
+phase of the operations is dealt with by Mr. Henry Newman, _Reuter's_
+correspondent, who was an eye-witness. I am especially indebted to him
+for his account, which was written in Lhasa, and occupied many mornings
+that might have been devoted to well-earned rest.
+
+My thanks are also due to the Proprietors of the _Daily Mail_ for
+permission to use material of which they hold the copyright; and I am
+indebted to the Editors of the _Graphic_ and _Black and White_ for
+allowing me to reproduce certain photographs by Lieutenant Bailey.
+
+The illustrations are from sketches by Lieutenant Rybot, and photographs
+by Lieutenants Bailey, Bethell, and Lewis, to whom I owe my cordial
+thanks.
+
+                                                    EDMUND CANDLER.
+
+        LONDON,
+    _January, 1905._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
+
+PAGES
+
+  A retrospect--Early visitors to Lhasa--The Jesuits--The
+      Capuchins--Van der Putte--Thomas Manning--The Lazarist
+      fathers--Policy of exclusion due to Chinese
+      influence--The Nepalese invasion--Bogle and Turner--The
+      Macaulay Mission--Tibetans invade Indian territory--The
+      expedition of 1888--The convention with China--British
+      blundering--Our treatment of the Shata Shapé--The
+      Yatung trade mart--Tibetans repudiate the
+      convention--Fiction of the Chinese suzerainty--A policy
+      of drift--Tibetan Mission to the Czar--Dorjieff and his
+      intrigues--The Dalai Lama and Russian designs--Our
+      great countermove--Boycotted at Khamba Jong--The
+      advance sanctioned--Winter quarters at Tuna               1-21
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OVER THE FRONTIER
+
+  From the base to Gnatong--A race to Chumbi--A perilous
+      night ride--Forest scenery--Gnatong three years ago and
+      now--Gnatong in action--A mountain lake--The Jelap la
+      and beyond--Undefended barriers--Yatung and its Customs
+      House--Chumbi--The first Press message from
+      Tibet--Arctic clothing--Scenes in camp--A very
+      uncomfortable 'picnic'                                   22-34
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHUMBI VALLEY
+
+  The Tomos--A hardy race--Their habits and
+      diversions--Chinamen in exile--A prosperous valley--But
+      a cheerless clime--Kasi and his statistics--Trade
+      figures--Tibetan cruelties--Kasi as general
+      provider--Mountain scenery--The spirit of the
+      Himalayas--A glorious flora--The Himalayas and the
+      Alps--The wall of Gob-sorg--Chinamen and Tomos--A
+      future hill-station--Lingmathang--A cosy cave--The
+      Mounted Infantry Corps--Two famous regiments--Sport at
+      Lingmathang--The Sikkim stag--Gamebirds and
+      wildfowl--Gautsa camp                                    35-61
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHARI JONG
+
+  Gautsa to Phari Jong--A wonderful old fortress--Tibetan
+      dirt--A medical armoury--The Lamas' library--Roadmaking
+      and sport--The Tibetan gazelle and other
+      animals--Evening diversions--Cold, grime, and
+      misery--Manning's journal--Bogle's account of
+      Phari--History of the fortress--The town and its
+      occupants--The mystery of Tibet--The significance of
+      the frescoes--Departure from Phari--The monastery of
+      the Red Lamas--Chumulari--The Tibetan New Year--Bogle's
+      narrative--The Tang la and the road to Lhasa             62-82
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
+
+  A transport 'show'--Difficulties of the way--Vicissitudes
+      of climate--Frozen heights and sweltering
+      valleys--Disease amongst transport animals--A tale of
+      disaster--The stricken Yak Corps--Troubles of the
+      transport officer--Mules to the rescue--The coolie
+      transport corps--Carrying power of the transport
+      items--The problem and its solution--The ekka and the
+      yak--A providentially ascetic beast--Splendid work of
+      the transport service--Courage and endurance of
+      officers and men--The 12th Mule Corps benighted in a
+      blizzard--Rifle-bolts and Maxims
+      frost-jammed--Difficulties of a Russian advance on
+      Lhasa--The new Ammo Chu cart-road                        83-98
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
+
+  The deadlock at Tuna--Discomforts of the garrison--The
+      Lamas' curse--The attitude of Bhutan--A diplomatic
+      triumph--Tedious delays--A welcome move forward--The
+      Tibetan camp at Hot Springs--The Lhasa Depon meets
+      Colonel Younghusband--Futile conferences--The Tibetan
+      position surrounded--Coolness of the Sikhs and
+      Gurkhas--The disarming--A sudden outbreak--A desperate
+      struggle--The action of the Lhasa General--The rabble
+      disillusioned in their gods--A beaten and bewildered
+      enemy--Reflections after the event--Tibetans in
+      hospital--Three months afterwards                       99-114
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A HUMAN MISCELLANY
+
+  In a doolie to the base--Tibetan bearers--A retrospect--A
+      reverie and a reminiscence--Snow-bound at Phari--The
+      Bhutia as bearer--The Lepchas and their
+      humours--Mongolian odours--The road at last--Platitudes
+      in epigram--Lucknow doolie-wallahs--Their hymn of the
+      obvious--Meetings on the road--A motley of
+      races--Through a tropical forest--The Tista and
+      civilization                                           115-126
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
+
+  The Tibetans responsible for hostilities--Their version of
+      the Hot Springs affair--Treacherous attack at
+      Samando--Wall-building--The Red Idol Gorge action--A
+      stiff climb--The enemy outflanked--Impressed
+      peasants--First phase of the opposition--Bad
+      generalship--Lack of enterprise--Erratic shooting--All
+      quiet at Gyantse--Enemy occupy Karo la--A booby
+      trap--Colonel Brander's sortie--Frontal attack
+      repulsed--Captain Bethune killed--Failure of flanking
+      movement--A critical moment--Sikhs turn the
+      position--Flight and pursuit--Second phase of the
+      opposition--Advanced tactics--Danger of being cut
+      off--The attack on Kangma--Desperate gallantry of the
+      enemy--Patriots or fanatics?                           127-151
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GYANTSE (BY HENRY NEWMAN)
+
+  A happy valley--Devastated by war--Why the Jong was
+      evacuated--The lull before the storm--Tibetans
+      massing--The attack on the mission--A hot ten
+      minutes--Pyjamaed warriors--Wounded to the rescue--The
+      Gurkhas' rally--The camp bombarded--The labour of
+      defence work--Hadow's Maxim--Life during the
+      siege--Tibetans reinforced--They enfilade our
+      position--The taking of the 'Gurkha Post'--Terrible
+      carnage                                                152-169
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GYANTSE--_continued_
+
+  Attack on the postal riders--Brilliant exploit of the
+      Mounted Infantry--Communications threatened--Clearing
+      the villages--A narrow shave--Arrival of
+      reinforcements--The storming of
+      Palla--House-fighting--Capture of the post--A fantastic
+      display--Night attacks--Seven miles of front--Advance
+      of the relief column--The Tibetans cornered--Naini
+      monastery taken--Capture of Tsaden--Our losses--The
+      armistice--Tibetans refuse to surrender the Jong--A
+      bristling fortress--The attack at dawn--The
+      breach--Gallantry of Lieutenant Grant and his
+      Gurkhas--Capture of the Jong                           170-194
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT
+
+  A garden in the forest--A jeremiad on transport--The
+      servant question--Jung Bir--British
+      Bhutan--Kalimpong--'The Bhutia tat'--Father
+      Desgodins--An adventurous career--A lost
+      opportunity--Chinese duplicity--Phuntshog--New arms and
+      new friends for Tibet--A mysterious Lama--Dorjieff
+      again--The inscrutable Tibetan                         195-206
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TO THE GREAT RIVER
+
+  Failure of peace negociations--Opposition expected--Details
+      of force--March to the Karo la--Villages deserted--The
+      second Karo la action--The Gurkhas' climb--The Tibetan
+      rout--The Kham prisoners--Hopelessness of the Tibetans'
+      struggle--Their troops disheartened--Arrival at
+      Nagartse--Tedious delegates--The victory of a
+      personality--Brush with Tibetan cavalry--The last
+      shot--The Shapés despoiled--Modern rifles--Exaggerated
+      reports of Russian assistance--The Yamdok Tso--Dorje
+      Phagmo--Legends of the lake--The incubus of an
+      army--Why men travel--Wildfowl--Pehte--View from the
+      Khamba Pass--From the desert to Arcadia--The Tibetan of
+      the tablelands--The Tuna plateau--Homely scenes--A mood
+      of indolence--The course of the Tsangpo--The
+      Brahmaputra Irawaddy controversy--The projected Tsangpo
+      trip--Legendary geography--Lost opportunities          207-238
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY
+
+  The passage of the river--Major Bretherton drowned--The Kyi
+      Chu valley--Tropical heat--Atisa's tomb--Foraging in
+      holy places--First sight of the Potala--Hidden
+      Lhasa--Symbols of remonstrance--Prophecies of
+      invasion--And decay of Buddhism--Medieval
+      Tibet--Spiritual terrorism--Lamas' fears of
+      enlightenment--The last mystery unveiled--Arrival at
+      Lhasa--View from the Chagpo Ri--Entry into the
+      city--Apathy of the people--The Potala--Magnificence
+      and squalor--The secret of romance--A vanished
+      deity--'Thou shalt not kill'--Secret assassinations--A
+      marvellous disappearance--The Dalai Lama joins
+      Dorjieff--His personality and character--The verdict of
+      the Nepalese Resident--The voice without a soul--The
+      wisdom of his flight--A romantic picture--The place of
+      the dead                                               239-264
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES
+
+  Sullen monks--A Lama runs amok--The environs of Lhasa--The
+      Lingkhor--The Ragyabas--The cathedral--Service before
+      the Great Buddhas--The Lamas' chant--Vessels of
+      gold--'Hell'--White mice--The many-handed
+      Buddha--Silence and abstraction--The bazaar--Hats--The
+      Mongolians--Curio-hunting--The Ramo-ché--Sorcery--The
+      adventures of a soul--Lamaism and Roman
+      Catholicism--The decay of Buddhism--The three great
+      monasteries--Their political influence--Depung--An
+      ecclesiastical University--The 'impossible' Tibetan--An
+      ultimatum--Consternation at Depung--Temporizing and
+      evasion--An ugly mob--A political deadlock             265-285
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SETTLEMENT
+
+  An irresponsible administration--An insolent reply--Tibetan
+      haggling--Release of the Lachung men--Social relations
+      with the Tibetans--A guarded ultimatum--A diplomatic
+      triumph--The signing of the treaty--Colonel
+      Younghusband's speech--The terms--Political prisoners
+      liberated--Deposition of the Dalai Lama--The Tashe
+      Lama--Prospect of an Anglophile Pope--The practical
+      results of the expedition--Russia discredited--Why a
+      Resident should be left at Lhasa--China hesitates to
+      sign the Treaty--The 'vicious circle' again--Her
+      acquiescence not of vital importance--The attitude of
+      Tibet to Great Britain--Fear and respect the only
+      guarantee of future good conduct                       286-304
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  A COLD DAY IN TIBET                                     _frontispiece_
+
+  HEADQUARTERS OF THE MISSION AT LHASA                  _to face p._   6
+
+  CHORTEN                                                     "       12
+
+  PANORAMA OF A CONVENT                                       "       12
+
+  TUNA VILLAGE                                                "       20
+
+  CHINESE GENERAL MA                                          "       30
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO GAUTSA                                       "       30
+
+  ROCK SCULPTURES                                                     41
+
+  PRAYING-FLAGS AND MANI WALL                           _to face p._  54
+
+  OFFICERS' TENTS, MOUNTED INFANTRY CAMP, LINGMATHANG         "       54
+
+  SUBADAR SANGAT SINGH, 1ST MOUNTED INFANTRY                  "       60
+
+  WOUNDED KYANG                                               "       70
+
+  GOA, OR TIBETAN GAZELLE                                     "       70
+
+  THE TANG LA                                                 "       76
+
+  PHARI JONG                                                  "       76
+
+  MOUNTED INFANTRY PONIES, TUNA CAMP                          "       94
+
+  YAK IN EKKA                                                 "       94
+
+  THE DEPON'S LAST CONFERENCE WITH COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND _to face p._ 102
+
+  TIBETANS RETREATING FROM SANGARS                            "      106
+
+  TURNING TIBETANS OUT OF THE SANGARS ON THE HILLSIDE         "      106
+
+  DIAGRAMMATIC VIEW OF HOT SPRINGS ACTION                     "      110
+
+  THE TIBETAN DEAD                                            "      118
+
+  FIELD-HOSPITAL DOOLIE WITH TIBETAN BEARERS                  "      118
+
+  TIBETAN SOLDIERS                                            "      124
+
+  WOUNDED TIBETAN                                             "      130
+
+  WOUNDED TIBETAN IN BRITISH HOSPITAL                         "      130
+
+  PIONEERS DESTROYING KANGMA WALL                             "      142
+
+  GYANTSE JONG                                                "      154
+
+  GOLDEN-ROOFED TEMPLE, GYANTSE                               "      182
+
+  BUDDHAS IN PALKHOR CHOIDE                                   "      182
+
+  TSACHEN MONASTERY                                           "      198
+
+  GROUP OF SHAPÉS PARLEYING                                   "      198
+
+  SKETCH OF THE KARO LA                                              213
+
+  KHAM PRISONERS                                        _to face p._ 214
+
+  GURKHAS CLIMBING AT THE KARO LA                             "      214
+
+  PEHTÉ JONG                                                  "      222
+
+  GUBCHI JONG                                                 "      230
+
+  OLD CHAIN-BRIDGE AT CHAKSAM                                 "      236
+
+  CROSSING THE TSANGPO                                        "      236
+
+  THE POTALA                                                  "      244
+
+  ENTRY INTO LHASA                                            "      250
+
+  CORNER OF COURTYARD OF ASTROLOGER'S TEMPLE, NECHANG   _to face p._ 250
+
+  THE POTALA, WEST FRONT                                      "      260
+
+  MOUNTED INFANTRY GUARD AT THE POTALA                        "      260
+
+  METAL BOWLS OUTSIDE THE JOKHANG                             "      268
+
+  STREET SCENE IN LHASA                                       "      268
+
+  THE TSARUNG SHAPÉ                                           "      274
+
+  MONGOLIANS IN LHASA                                         "      274
+
+  THE TA LAMA                                                 "      286
+
+  SOLDIER OF THE AMBAN'S ESCORT                               "      286
+
+  COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND AND THE AMBAN AT THE RACES             "      290
+
+  THE TSARUNG SHAPÉ AND THE SECHUNG SHAPÉ LEAVING
+      LHALU HOUSE AFTER THE DURBAR                      _to face p._ 294
+
+  TIBETAN DRAMA PLAYED IN THE COURTYARD OF LHALU HOUSE        "      298
+
+
+
+
+THE UNVEILING OF LHASA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+The conduct of Great Britain in her relations with Tibet puts me in mind
+of the dilemma of a big boy at school who submits to the attacks of a
+precocious youngster rather than incur the imputation of 'bully.' At
+last the situation becomes intolerable, and the big boy, bully if you
+will, turns on the youth and administers the deserved thrashing. There
+is naturally a good deal of remonstrance from spectators who have not
+observed the byplay which led to the encounter. But sympathy must be
+sacrificed to the restitution of fitting and respectful relations.
+
+The aim of this record of an individual's impressions of the recent
+Tibetan expedition is to convey some idea of the life we led in Tibet,
+the scenes through which we passed, and the strange people we fought and
+conquered. We killed several thousand of these brave, ill-armed men; and
+as the story of the fighting is not always pleasant reading, I think it
+right before describing the punitive side of the expedition to make it
+quite clear that military operations were unavoidable--that we were
+drawn into the vortex of war against our will by the folly and obstinacy
+of the Tibetans.
+
+The briefest review of the rebuffs Great Britain has submitted to during
+the last twenty years will suffice to show that, so far from being to
+blame in adopting punitive measures, she is open to the charge of
+unpardonable weakness in allowing affairs to reach the crisis which made
+such punishment necessary.
+
+It must be remembered that Tibet has not always been closed to
+strangers. The history of European travellers in Lhasa forms a
+literature to itself. Until the end of the eighteenth century only
+physical obstacles stood in the way of an entry to the capital. Jesuits
+and Capuchins reached Lhasa, made long stays there, and were even
+encouraged by the Tibetan Government. The first[1] Europeans to visit
+the city and leave an authentic record of their journey were the Fathers
+Grueber and d'Orville, who penetrated Tibet from China in 1661 by the
+Sining route, and stayed in Lhasa two months. In 1715 the Jesuits
+Desideri and Freyre reached Lhasa; Desideri stayed there thirteen years.
+In 1719 arrived Horace de la Penna and the Capuchin Mission, who built
+a chapel and a hospice, made several converts, and were not finally
+expelled till 1740.[2] The Dutchman Van der Putte, first layman to
+penetrate to the capital, arrived in 1720, and stayed there some years.
+After this we have no record of a European reaching Lhasa until the
+adventurous journey in 1811 of Thomas Manning, the first and only
+Englishman to reach the city before this year. Manning arrived in the
+retinue of a Chinese General whom he had met at Phari Jong, and whose
+gratitude he had won for medical services. He remained in the capital
+four months, and during his stay he made the acquaintance of several
+Chinese and Tibetan officials, and was even presented to the Dalai Lama
+himself. The influence of his patron, however, was not strong enough to
+insure his safety in the city. He was warned that his life was
+endangered, and returned to India by the same way he came. In 1846 the
+Lazarist missionaries Huc and Gabet reached Lhasa in the disguise of
+Lamas after eighteen months' wanderings through China and Mongolia,
+during which they must have suffered as much from privations and
+hardships as any travellers who have survived to tell the tale. They
+were received kindly by the Amban and Regent, but permission to stay
+was firmly refused them on the grounds that they were there to subvert
+the religion of the State. Despite the attempts of several determined
+travellers, none of whom got within a hundred miles of Lhasa, the
+Lazarist fathers were the last Europeans to set foot in the city until
+Colonel Younghusband rode through the Pargo Kaling gate on August 4,
+1904.
+
+  [1] Friar Oderic of Portenone is supposed to have visited Lhasa in
+      1325, but the authenticity of this record is open to doubt.
+
+  [2] When in Lhasa I sought in vain for any trace of these buildings.
+      The most enlightened Tibetans are ignorant, or pretend to be so,
+      that Christian missionaries have resided in the city. In the
+      cathedral, however, we found a bell with the inscription, 'TE
+      DEUM LAUDAMUS,' which is probably a relic of the Capuchins.
+
+The records of these travellers to Lhasa, and of others who visited
+different parts of Tibet before the end of the eighteenth century, do
+not point to any serious political obstacles to the admission of
+strangers. Two centuries ago, Europeans might travel in remote parts of
+Asia with greater safety than is possible to-day. Suspicions have
+naturally increased with our encroachments, and the white man now
+inspires fear where he used only to awake interest.[3]
+
+  [3] Suspicion and jealousy of foreigners seems to have been the
+      guiding principle both of Tibetans and Chinese even in the
+      earlier history of the country. The attitude is well illustrated
+      by a letter written in 1774 by the Regent at Lhasa to the Teshu
+      Lama with reference to Bogle's mission: 'He had heard of two
+      Fringies being arrived in the Deb Raja's dominions, with a great
+      retinue of servants; that the Fringies were fond of war, and
+      after insinuating themselves into a country raised disturbances
+      and made themselves masters of it; that as no Fringies had ever
+      been admitted into Tibet, he advised the Lama to find some method
+      of sending them back, either on account of the violence of the
+      small-pox or on any other pretence.'
+
+The policy of strict exclusion in Tibet seems to have been synchronous
+with Chinese ascendancy. At the end of the eighteenth century the
+Nepalese invaded and overran the country. The Lamas turned to China for
+help, and a force of 70,000 men was sent to their assistance. The
+Chinese drove the Gurkhas over their frontier, and practically
+annihilated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu. From this date
+China has virtually or nominally ruled in Lhasa, and an important result
+of her intervention has been to sow distrust of the British. She
+represented that we had instigated the Nepalese invasion, and warned the
+Lamas that the only way to obviate our designs on Tibet was to avoid all
+communication with India, and keep the passes strictly closed to
+foreigners.
+
+Shortly before the Nepalese War, Warren Hastings had sent the two
+missions of Bogle and Turner to Shigatze. Bogle was cordially received
+by the Grand Teshu Lama, and an intimate friendship was established
+between the two men. On his return to India he reported that the only
+bar to a complete understanding with Tibet was the obstinacy of the
+Regent and the Chinese agents at Lhasa, who were inspired by Peking. An
+attempt was arranged to influence the Chinese Government in the matter,
+but both Bogle and the Teshu Lama died before it could be carried out.
+Ten years later Turner was despatched to Tibet, and received the same
+welcome as his predecessor. Everything pointed to the continuance of a
+steady and consistent policy by which the barrier of obstruction might
+have been broken down. But Warren Hastings was recalled in 1785, and
+Lord Cornwallis, the next Governor-General, took no steps to approach
+and conciliate the Tibetans. It was in 1792 that the Tibetan-Nepalese
+War broke out, which, owing to the misrepresentations of China,
+precluded any possibility of an understanding between India and Tibet.
+Such was the uncompromising spirit of the Lamas that, until Lord
+Dufferin sanctioned the commercial mission of Mr. Colman Macaulay in
+1886, no succeeding Viceroy after Warren Hastings thought it worth while
+to renew the attempt to enter into friendly relations with the country.
+
+The Macaulay Mission incident was the beginning of that weak and
+abortive policy which lost us the respect of the Tibetans, and led to
+the succession of affronts and indignities which made the recent
+expedition to Lhasa inevitable. The escort had already advanced into
+Sikkim, and Mr. Macaulay was about to join it, when orders were received
+from Government for its return. The withdrawal was a concession to the
+Chinese, with whom we were then engaged in the delimitation of the
+Burmese frontier. This display of weakness incited the Tibetans to such
+a pitch of vanity and insolence that they invaded our territory and
+established a military post at Lingtu, only seventy miles from
+Darjeeling.
+
+We allowed the invaders to remain in the protected State of Sikkim two
+years before we made any reprisal. In 1888, after several vain appeals
+to China to use her influence to withdraw the Tibetan troops, we
+reluctantly decided on a military expedition. The Tibetans were driven
+from their position, defeated in three separate engagements, and pursued
+over the frontier as far as Chumbi. We ought to have concluded a treaty
+with them on the spot, when we were in a position to enforce it, but we
+were afraid of offending the susceptibilities of China, whose suzerainty
+over Tibet we still recognised, though she had acknowledged her
+inability to restrain the Tibetans from invading our territory. At the
+conclusion of the campaign, in which the Tibetans showed no military
+instincts whatever, we returned to our post at Gnatong, on the Sikkim
+frontier.
+
+After two years of fruitless discussion, a convention was drawn up
+between Great Britain and China, by which Great Britain's exclusive
+control over the internal administration and foreign relations of Sikkim
+was recognised, the Sikkim-Tibet boundary was defined, and both Powers
+undertook to prevent acts of aggression from their respective sides of
+the frontier. The questions of pasturage, trade facilities, and the
+method in which official communications should be conducted between the
+Government of India and the authorities at Lhasa were deferred for
+future discussion. Nearly three more years passed before the trade
+regulations were drawn up in Darjeeling--in December, 1903. The
+negociations were characterized by the same shuffling and equivocation
+on the part of the Chinese, and the same weak-kneed policy of
+forbearance and conciliation on the part of the British. Treaty and
+regulations were alike impotent, and our concessions went so far that we
+exacted nothing as the fruit of our victory over the Tibetans--not even
+a fraction of the cost of the campaign.
+
+Our ignorance of the Tibetans, their Government, and their relations
+with China was at this time so profound that we took our cue from the
+Chinese, who always referred to the Lhasa authorities as 'the
+barbarians.' The Shata Shapé, the most influential of the four members
+of Council, attended the negociations on behalf of the Tibetans. He was
+officially ignored, and no one thought of asking him to attach his
+signature to the treaty. The omission was a blunder of far-reaching
+consequences. Had we realized that Chinese authority was practically
+non-existent in Lhasa, and that the temporal affairs of Tibet were
+mainly directed by the four Shapés and the Tsong-du (the very existence
+of which, by the way, was unknown to us), we might have secured a
+diplomatic agent in the Shata Shapé who would have proved invaluable to
+us in our future relations with the country. Unfortunately, during his
+stay in Darjeeling the Shapé's feelings were lacerated by ill-treatment
+as well as neglect. In an unfortunate encounter with British youth,
+which was said to have arisen from his jostling an English lady off the
+path, he was taken by the scruff of the neck and ducked in the public
+fountain. So he returned to Tibet with no love for the English, and
+after certain courteous overtures from the agents of 'another Power,'
+became a confirmed, though more or less accidental, Russophile. Though
+deposed,[4] he has at the present moment a large following among the
+monks of the Gaden monastery.
+
+  [4] The Shata Shapé and his three colleagues were deposed by the
+      Dalai Lama in October, 1903.
+
+In the regulations of 1893 it was stipulated that a trade mart should be
+established at Yatung, a small hamlet six miles beyond our frontier. The
+place is obviously unsuitable, situated as it is in a narrow pine-clad
+ravine, where one can throw a stone from cliff to cliff across the
+valley. No traders have ever resorted there, and the Tibetans have
+studiously boycotted the place. To show their contempt for the treaty,
+and their determination to ignore it, they built a wall a quarter of a
+mile beyond the Customs House, through which no Tibetan or British
+subject was allowed to pass, and, to nullify the object of the mart, a
+tax of 10 per cent. on Indian goods was levied at Phari. Every attempt
+was made by Sheng Tai, the late Amban, to induce the Tibetans to
+substitute Phari for Yatung as a trade mart. But, as an official report
+admits, 'it was found impossible to overcome their reluctance. Yatung
+was eventually accepted both by the Chinese and British Governments as
+the only alternative to breaking off the negociations altogether.' This
+confession of weakness appears to me abject enough to quote as typical
+of our attitude throughout. In deference to Tibetan wishes, we allowed
+nearly every clause of the treaty to be separately stultified.
+
+The Tibetans, as might be expected, met our forbearance by further
+rebuffs. Not content with evading their treaty obligations in respect to
+trade, they proceeded to overthrow our boundary pillars, violate grazing
+rights, and erect guard-houses at Giagong, in Sikkim territory. When
+called to question they repudiated the treaty, and said that it had
+never been shown them by the Amban. It had not been sealed or confirmed
+by any Tibetan representative, and they had no intention of observing
+it.
+
+Once more the 'solemn farce' was enacted of an appeal to China to use
+her influence with the Lhasa authorities. And it was only after repeated
+representations had been made by the Indian Government to the Secretary
+of State that the Home Government realized the seriousness of the
+situation, and the hopelessness of making any progress through the
+agency of China. 'We seem,' said Lord Curzon, 'in respect to our policy
+in Tibet, to be moving in a vicious circle. If we apply to Tibet we
+either receive no reply or are referred to the Chinese Resident; if we
+apply to the latter, he excuses his failure by his inability to put any
+pressure upon Tibet.' In the famous despatch of January 8, 1903, the
+Viceroy described the Chinese suzerainty as 'a political fiction,' only
+maintained because of its convenience to both parties. China no doubt is
+capable of sending sufficient troops to Lhasa to coerce the Tibetans.
+But it has suited her book to maintain the present elusive and anomalous
+relations with Tibet, which are a securer buttress to her western
+dependencies against encroachment than the strongest army corps. For
+many years we have been the butt of the Tibetans, and China their
+stalking-horse.
+
+The Tibetan attitude was clearly expressed by the Shigatze officials at
+Khamba Jong in September last year, when they openly boasted that 'where
+Chinese policy was in accordance with their own views they were ready
+enough to accept the Amban's advice; but if this advice ran counter in
+any respect to their national prejudices, the Chinese Emperor himself
+would be powerless to influence them.' China has on several occasions
+confessed her inability to coerce the Tibetans. She has proved herself
+unable to enforce the observance of treaties or even to restrain her
+subjects from invading our territory, and during the recent attempts at
+negociations she had to admit that her representative in Lhasa was
+officially ignored, and not even allowed transport to travel in the
+country. In the face of these facts her exceedingly shadowy suzerainty
+may be said to have entirely evaporated, and it is unreasonable to
+expect us to continue our relations with Tibet through the medium of
+Peking.
+
+It was not until nine years after the signing of the convention that we
+made any attempt to open direct communications with the Tibetans
+themselves. It is astonishing that we allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked
+so long. But this policy of drift and waiting is characteristic of our
+foreign relations all over the world. British Cabinets seem to believe
+that cure is better than prevention, and when faced by a dilemma have
+seldom been known to act on the initiative, or take any decided course
+until the very existence of their dependency is imperilled.
+
+In 1901 Lord Curzon was permitted to send a despatch to the Dalai Lama
+in which it was pointed out that his Government had consistently defied
+and ignored treaty rights; and in view of the continued occupation of
+British territory, the destruction of frontier pillars, and the
+restrictions imposed on Indian trade, we should be compelled to resort
+to more practical measures to enforce the observance of the treaty,
+should he remain obstinate in his refusal to enter into friendly
+relations. The letter was returned unopened, with the verbal excuse that
+the Chinese did not permit him to receive communications from any
+foreign Power. Yet so great was our reluctance to resort to military
+coercion that we might even at this point have let things drift, and
+submitted to the rebuffs of these impossible Tibetans, had not the
+Dalai Lama chosen this moment for publicly flaunting his relations with
+Russia.
+
+The second[5] Tibetan Mission reached St. Petersburg in June, 1901,
+carrying autograph letters and presents to the Czar from the Dalai Lama.
+Count Lamsdorff declared that the mission had no political significance
+whatever. We were asked to believe that these Lamas travelled many
+thousand miles to convey a letter that expressed the hope that the
+Russian Foreign Minister was in good health and prosperous, and informed
+him that the Dalai Lama was happy to be able to say that he himself
+enjoyed excellent health.
+
+  [5] A previous mission had been received by the Czar at Livadia in
+      October, 1900.
+
+It is possible that the mission to St. Petersburg was of a purely
+religious character, and that there was no secret understanding at the
+time between the Lhasa authorities and Russia. Yet the fact that the
+mission was despatched in direct contradiction to the national policy of
+isolation that had been respected for over a century, and at a time when
+the Tibetans were aware of impending British activity to exact
+fulfilment of the treaty obligations so long ignored by them, points to
+some secret influence working in Lhasa in favour of Russia, and opposed
+to British interests. The process of Russification that has been carried
+on with such marked success in Persia and Turkestan, Merv and Bokhara,
+was being applied in Tibet. It has long been known to our Intelligence
+Department that certain Buriat Lamas, subjects of the Czar, and educated
+in Russia, have been acting as intermediaries between Lhasa and St.
+Petersburg. The chief of these, one Dorjieff, headed the so-called
+religious mission of 1901, and has been employed more than once as the
+Dalai Lama's ambassador to St. Petersburg. Dorjieff is a man of
+fifty-eight, who has spent some twenty years of his life in Lhasa, and
+is known to be the right-hand adviser of the Dalai Lama. No doubt
+Dorjieff played on the fears of the Buddhist Pope until he really
+believed that Tibet was in danger of an invasion from India, in which
+eventuality the Czar, the great Pan-Buddhist Protector, would descend on
+the British and drive them back over the frontier. The Lamas of Tibet
+imagine that Russia is a Buddhist country, and this belief has been
+fostered by adventurers like Dorjieff, Tsibikoff, and others, who have
+inspired dreams of a consolidated Buddhist church under the spiritual
+control of the Dalai Lama and the military ægis of the Czar of All the
+Russias.
+
+These dreams, full of political menace to ourselves, have, I think, been
+dispelled by Lord Curzon's timely expedition to Lhasa. The presence of
+the British in the capital and the helplessness of Russia to lend any
+aid in such a crisis are facts convincing enough to stultify the effects
+of Russian intrigue in Buddhist Central Asia during the last
+half-century.
+
+The fact that the first Dalai Lama who has been allowed to reach
+maturity has plunged his country into war by intrigue with a foreign
+Power proves the astuteness of the cold-blooded policy of removing the
+infant Pope, and the investiture of power in the hands of a Regent
+inspired by Peking. It is believed that the present Dalai Lama was
+permitted to come of age in order to throw off the Chinese yoke. This
+aim has been secured, but it has involved other issues that the Lamas
+could not foresee.
+
+And here it must be observed that the Dalai Lama's inclination towards
+Russia does not represent any considerable national movement. The desire
+for a rapprochement was largely a matter of personal ambition inspired
+by that arch-intriguer Dorjieff, whose ascendancy over the Dalai Lama
+was proved beyond a doubt when the latter joined him in his flight to
+Mongolia on hearing the news of the British advance on Lhasa. Dorjieff
+had a certain amount of popularity with the priest population of the
+capital, and the monks of the three great monasteries, amongst whom he
+is known to have distributed largess royally. But the traditional policy
+of isolation is so inveterately ingrained in the Tibetan character that
+it is doubtful if he could have organized a popular party of any
+strength.
+
+It may be asked, then, What is, or was, the nature of the Russian menace
+in Tibet? It is true that a Russian invasion on the North-East frontier
+is out of the question. For to reach the Indian passes the Russians
+would have to traverse nearly 1,500 miles of almost uninhabited country,
+presenting difficulties as great as any we had to contend with during
+the recent campaign. But the establishment of Russian influence in Lhasa
+might mean military danger of another kind. It would be easy for her to
+stir up the Tibetans, spread disaffection among the Bhutanese, send
+secret agents into Nepal, and generally undermine our prestige. Her aim
+would be to create a diversion on the Tibet frontier at any time she
+might have designs on the North-West. The pioneers of the movement had
+begun their work. They were men of the usual type--astute, insidious, to
+be disavowed in case of premature discovery, or publicly flaunted when
+they had prepared any ground on which to stand.
+
+Our countermove--the Tibet Expedition--must have been a crushing and
+unexpected blow to Russia. For the first time in modern history Great
+Britain had taken a decisive, almost high-handed, step to obviate a
+danger that was far from imminent. We had all the best cards in our
+hands. Russia's designs in Lhasa became obvious at a time when we could
+point to open defiance on the part of the Tibetans, and provocation such
+as would have goaded any other European nation to a punitive expedition
+years before. We could go to Lhasa, apparently without a thought of
+Russia, and yet undo all the effects of her scheming there, and deal
+her prestige a blow that would be felt throughout the whole of Central
+Asia. Such was Lord Curzon's policy. It was adopted in a half-hearted
+way by the Home Government, and eventually forced on them by the conduct
+of the Tibetans themselves. Needless to say, the discovery of Russian
+designs was the real and prime cause of the despatch of the mission,
+while Tibet's violation of treaty rights and refusal to enter into any
+relations with us were convenient as ostensible motives. It cannot be
+denied that these grievances were valid enough to justify the strongest
+measures.
+
+In June, 1903, came the announcement of Colonel Younghusband's mission
+to Khamba Jong. I do not think that the Indian Government ever expected
+that the Tibetans would come to any agreement with us at Khamba Jong. It
+is to their credit that they waited patiently several months in order to
+give them every chance of settling things amicably. However, as might
+have been expected, the Commission was boycotted. Irresponsible
+delegates of inferior rank were sent by the Tibetans and Chinese, and
+the Lhasa delegates, after some fruitless parleyings, shut themselves up
+in the fort, and declined all intercourse, official or social, with the
+Commissioners.[6]
+
+  [6] Their attitude was thus summed up by Captain O'Connor, secretary
+      to the mission: 'We cannot accept letters; we cannot write
+      letters; we cannot let you into our zone; we cannot let you
+      travel; we cannot discuss matters, because this is not the proper
+      place; go back to Giogong and send away all your soldiers, and we
+      will come to an agreement' (Tibetan Blue-Book).
+
+At the end of August news came that the Tibetans were arming. Colonel
+Younghusband learnt that they had made up their minds to have no
+negociations with us _inside_ Tibet. They had decided to leave us alone
+at Khamba Jong, and to oppose us by force if we attempted to advance
+further. They believed themselves fully equal to the English, and far
+from our getting anything out of them, they thought that they would be
+able to force something out of us. This is not surprising when we
+consider the spirit of concession in which we had met them on previous
+occasions.
+
+At Khamba Jong the Commissioners were informed by Colonel Chao, the
+Chinese delegate, that the Tibetans were relying on Russian assistance.
+This was confirmed later at Guru by the Tibetan officials, who boasted
+that if they were defeated they would fall back on another Power.
+
+In September the Tibetans aggravated the situation by seizing and
+beating at Shigatze two British subjects of the Lachung Valley in
+Sikkim. These men were not restored to liberty until we had forced our
+way to Lhasa and demanded their liberation, twelve months afterwards.
+
+The mission remained in its ignominious position at Khamba Jong until
+its recall in November. Almost at the same time the expedition to
+Gyantse was announced.[7]
+
+  [7] The situation was thus eloquently summarized by the Government of
+      India in a despatch to Mr. Brodrick, November 5, 1903: 'It is not
+      possible that the Tibet Government should be allowed to ignore
+      its treaty obligations, thwart trade, encroach upon our
+      territory, destroy our boundary pillars, and refuse even to
+      receive our communications. Still less do we think that when an
+      amicable conference has been arranged for the settlement of these
+      difficulties we should acquiesce in our mission being boycotted
+      by the very persons who have been deputed to meet it, our
+      officers insulted, our subjects arrested and ill-used, and our
+      authority despised by a petty Power which only mistakes our
+      forbearance for weakness, and which thinks that by an attitude of
+      obstinate inertia it can once again compel us, as it has done in
+      the past, to desist from our intentions.'
+
+In the face of the gross and deliberate affront to which we had been
+subjected at Khamba Jong it was now, of course, impossible to withdraw
+from Tibetan territory until we had impressed on the Lamas the necessity
+of meeting us in a reasonable spirit. It was clear that the Tibetans
+meant fighting, and the escort had to be increased to 2,500 men. The
+patience of Government was at last exhausted, and it was decided that
+the mission was to proceed into Tibet, dictate terms to the Lamas, and,
+if necessary, enforce compliance. The advance to Gyantse was sanctioned
+in the first place. But it was quite expected that the obstinacy of the
+Tibetans would make it necessary to push on to Lhasa.
+
+Colonel Younghusband crossed the Jelap la into Tibet on December 13,
+meeting with no opposition. Phari Jong was reached on the 20th, and the
+fort surrendered without a shot being fired. Thence the mission
+proceeded on January 7 across the Tang Pass, and took up its quarters on
+the cold, wind-swept plateau of Tuna, at an elevation of 15,300 feet.
+Here it remained for three months, while preparations were being made
+for an advance in the spring. Four companies of the 23rd Pioneers, a
+machine-gun section of the Norfolk Regiment, and twenty Madras sappers,
+were left to garrison the place, and General Macdonald, with the
+remainder of the force, returned to Chumbi for winter quarters. Chumbi
+(10,060 feet) is well within the wood belt, but even here the
+thermometer falls to 15° below zero.
+
+A more miserable place to winter in than Tuna cannot be imagined. But
+for political reasons, it was inadvisable that the mission should spend
+the winter in the Chumbi Valley, which is not geographically a part of
+Tibet proper. A retrograde movement from Khamba Jong to Chumbi would be
+interpreted by the Tibetans as a sign of yielding, and strengthen them
+in their opinion that we had no serious intention of penetrating to
+Gyantse.
+
+With this brief account of the facts that led to the expedition I
+abandon politics for the present, and in the succeeding chapters will
+attempt to give a description of the Chumbi Valley, which, I believe,
+was untrodden by any European before Colonel Younghusband's arrival in
+December, 1903.
+
+I was in India when I received permission to join the force. I took the
+train to Darjeeling without losing a day, and rode into Chumbi in less
+than forty-eight hours, reaching the British camp on January 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OVER THE FRONTIER
+
+
+    CHUMBI,
+      _January 13._
+
+From Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles. These, as in the dominions of
+Namgay Doola's Raja, are mostly on end. The road crosses the Tibetan
+frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty miles to the north-east.
+From Observatory Hill in Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
+ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and north-west lie
+Kinchenjunga and the tremendous chain of mountains that embraces
+Everest. To the north-east stretches a lower line of dazzling rifts and
+spires, in which one can see a thin gray wedge, like a slice in a
+Christmas cake. That is the Jelap. Beyond it lies Tibet.
+
+There is a good military road from Siliguri, the base station in the
+plains to Rungpo, forty-eight miles along the Teesta Valley. By
+following the river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents to Kalimpong and
+Ari. The new route saves at least a day, and conveys one to Rungli,
+nearly seventy miles from the base, without compassing a single tedious
+incline. It has also the advantage of being practicable for
+bullock-carts and ekkas as far as Rungpo. After that the path is a
+6-foot mule-track, at its best a rough, dusty incline, at its worst a
+succession of broken rocks and frozen puddles, which give no foothold to
+transport animals. From Rungpo the road skirts the stream for sixteen
+miles to Rungli, along a fertile valley of some 2,000 feet, through
+rice-fields and orange-groves and peaceful villages, now the scene of
+military bustle and preparation. From Rungli it follows a winding
+mountain torrent, whose banks are sometimes sheer precipitous crags.
+Then it strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a ladder of stone
+steps over which no animal in the world can make more than a mile and a
+half an hour. From the valley to Gnatong is a climb of some 10,000 feet
+without a break. The scenery is most magnificent, and I doubt if it is
+possible to find anywhere in the same compass the characteristics of the
+different zones of vegetation--from tropical to temperate, from
+temperate to alpine--so beautifully exhibited.
+
+At ordinary seasons transport is easy, and one can take the road in
+comfort; but now every mule and pony in Sikkim and the Terai is employed
+on the lines of communication, and one has to pay 300 rupees for an
+animal of the most modest pretensions. It is reckoned eight days from
+Darjeeling to Chumbi, but, riding all day and most of the night, I
+completed the journey in two. Newspaper correspondents are proverbially
+in a hurry. To send the first wire from Chumbi I had to leave my kit
+behind, and ride with poshteen[8] and sleeping-bag tied to my saddle. I
+was racing another correspondent. At Rungpo I found that he was five
+hours ahead of me, but he rested on the road, and I had gained three
+hours on him before he left the next stage at Rora Thang. Here I learnt
+that he intended to camp at Lingtam, twelve miles further on, in a tent
+lent him by a transport officer. I made up my mind to wait outside
+Lingtam until it was dark, and then to steal a march on him unobserved.
+But I believed no one. Wayside reports were probably intended to deceive
+me, and no doubt my informant was his unconscious confederate.
+
+  [8] Sheepskin.
+
+Outside Rungli, six miles further on, I stopped at a little Bhutia's
+hut, where he had been resting. They told me he had gone on only half an
+hour before me. I loitered on the road, and passed Lingtam in the dark.
+The moon did not rise till three, and riding in the dark was exciting.
+At first the white dusty road showed clearly enough a few yards ahead,
+but after passing Lingtam it became a narrow path cut out of a
+thickly-wooded cliff above a torrent, a wall of rock on one side, a
+precipice on the other. Here the darkness was intense. A white stone a
+few yards ahead looked like the branch of a tree overhead. A dim
+shapeless object to the left might be a house, a rock, a
+bear--anything. Uphill and downhill could only be distinguished by the
+angle of the saddle. Every now and then a firefly lit up the white
+precipice an arm's-length to the right. Once when my pony stopped
+panting with exhaustion I struck a match and found that we had come to a
+sharp zigzag. Part of the revetment had fallen; there was a yard of
+broken path covered with fern and bracken, then a drop of some hundred
+feet to the torrent below. After that I led my beast for a mile until we
+came to a charcoal-burner's hut. Two or three Bhutias were sitting round
+a log fire, and I persuaded one to go in front of me with a lighted
+brand. So we came to Sedongchen, where I left my beast dead beat, rested
+a few hours, bought a good mule, and pressed on in the early morning by
+moonlight. The road to Gnatong lies through a magnificent forest of oak
+and chestnut. For five miles it is nothing but the ascent of stone steps
+I have described. Then the rhododendron zone is reached, and one passes
+through a forest of gnarled and twisted trunks, writhing and contorted
+as if they had been thrust there for some penance. The place suggested a
+scene from Dante's 'Inferno.' As I reached the saddle of Lingtu the moon
+was paling, and the eastern sky-line became a faint violet screen. In a
+few minutes Kinchenjunga and Kabru on the north-west caught the first
+rays of the sun, and were suffused with the delicate rosy glow of dawn.
+
+I reached Gnatong in time to breakfast with the 8th Gurkhas. The camp
+lies in a little cleft in the hills at an elevation of 12,200 feet. When
+I last visited the place I thought it one of the most desolate spots I
+had seen. My first impressions were a wilderness of gray stones and
+gray, uninhabited houses, felled tree-trunks denuded of bark, white and
+spectral on the hillside. There was no life, no children's voices or
+chattering women, no bazaar apparently, no dogs barking, not even a
+pariah to greet you. If there was a sound of life it was the bray of
+some discontented mule searching for stray blades of grass among the
+stones. There were some fifty houses nearly all smokeless and vacant.
+Some had been barracks at the time of the last Sikkim War, and of the
+soldiers who inhabited them fifteen still lay in Gnatong in a little
+gray cemetery, which was the first indication of the nearness of human
+life. The inscriptions over the graves were all dated 1888, 1889, or
+1890, and though but fourteen years had passed, many of them were barely
+decipherable. The houses were scattered about promiscuously, with no
+thought of neighbourliness or convenience, as though the people were
+living there under protest, which was very probably the case. But the
+place had its picturesque feature. You might mistake some of the houses
+for tumbledown Swiss châlets of the poorer sort were it not for the
+miniature fir-trees planted on the roofs, with their burdens of prayers
+hanging from the branches like parcels on a Christmas-tree.
+
+These were my impressions a year or two ago, but now Gnatong is all life
+and bustle. In the bazaar a convoy of 300 mules was being loaded. The
+place was crowded with Nepalese coolies and Tibetan drivers, picturesque
+in their woollen knee-boots of red and green patterns, with a white star
+at the foot, long russet cloaks bound tightly at the waist and bulging
+out with cooking-utensils and changes of dress, embroidered caps of
+every variety and description, as often as not tied to the head by a
+wisp of hair. In Rotten Row--the inscription of 1889 still remains--I
+met a subaltern with a pair of skates. He showed me to the mess-room,
+where I enjoyed a warm breakfast and a good deal of chaff about
+correspondents who 'were in such a devil of a hurry to get to a
+God-forsaken hole where there wasn't going to be the ghost of a show.'
+
+I left Gnatong early on a borrowed pony. A mile and a half from the camp
+the road crosses the Tuko Pass, and one descends again for another two
+miles to Kapup, a temporary transport stage. The path lies to the west
+of the Bidang Tso, a beautiful lake with a moraine at the north-west
+side. The mountains were strangely silent, and the only sound of wild
+life was the whistling of the red-billed choughs, the commonest of the
+_Corvidæ_ at these heights. They were flying round and round the lake in
+an unsettled manner, whistling querulously, as though in complaint at
+the intrusion of their solitude.
+
+I reached the Jelap soon after noon. No snow had fallen. The approach
+was over broken rock and shale. At the summit was a row of cairns, from
+which fluttered praying-flags and tattered bits of votive raiment.
+Behind us and on both sides was a thin mist, but in front my eyes
+explored a deep narrow valley bathed in sunshine. Here, then, was Tibet,
+the forbidden, the mysterious. In the distance all the land was that
+yellow and brick-dust colour I had often seen in pictures and thought
+exaggerated and unreal. Far to the north-east Chumulari (23,930 feet),
+with its magnificent white spire rising from the roof-like mass behind,
+looked like an immense cathedral of snow. Far below on a yellow hillside
+hung the Kanjut Lamasery above Rinchengong. In the valley beneath lay
+Chumbi and the road to Lhasa.
+
+There is a descent of over 4,000 feet in six miles from the summit of
+the Jelap. The valley is perfectly straight, without a bend, so that one
+can look down from the pass upon the Kanjut monastery on the hillside
+immediately above Yatung. The pass would afford an impregnable military
+position to a people with the rudiments of science and martial spirit. A
+few riflemen on the cliffs that command it might annihilate a column
+with perfect safety, and escape into Bhutan before any flanking movement
+could be made. Yet miles of straggling convoy are allowed to pass daily
+with the supplies that are necessary for the existence of the force
+ahead. The road to Phari Jong passes through two military walls. The
+first at Yatung, six miles below the pass, is a senseless obstruction,
+and any able-bodied Tommy with hobnailed boots might very easily kick it
+down. It has no block-houses, and would be useless against a flank
+attack. Before our advance to Chumbi the wall was inhabited by three
+Chinese officials, a dingpon, or Tibetan sergeant, and twenty Tibetan
+soldiers. It served as a barrier beyond which no British subject was
+allowed to pass. The second wall lies across the valley at Gob-sorg,
+four miles beyond our camp at Chumbi. It is roofed and loop-holed like
+the Yatung barrier, and is defended by block-houses. This fortification
+and every mile of valley between the Jelap and Gautsa might be held by a
+single company against an invading force. Yet there are not half a dozen
+Chinese or Tibetan soldiers in the valley. No opposition is expected
+this side of the Tang la, but nondescript troops armed with matchlocks
+and bows hover round the mission on the open plateau beyond. Our
+evacuation of Khamba Jong and occupation of Chumbi were so rapid and
+unexpected that it is thought the Tibetans had no time to bring troops
+into the valley; but to anyone who knows their strategical incompetence,
+no explanation is necessary.
+
+Yatung is reached by one of the worst sections of road on the march; one
+comes across a dead transport mule at almost every zigzag of the
+descent. For ten years the village has enjoyed the distinction of being
+the only place in Southern Tibet accessible to Europeans. Not that many
+Europeans avail themselves of its accessibility, for it is a dreary
+enough place to live in, shrouded as it is in cloud more than half the
+year round, and embedded in a valley so deep and narrow that in
+winter-time the sun has hardly risen above one cliff when it sinks
+behind another. The privilege of access to Yatung was the result of the
+agreement between Great Britain and China with regard to trade
+communications between India and Tibet drawn up in Darjeeling in 1893,
+subsequently to the Sikkim Convention. It was then stipulated that there
+should be a trade mart at Yatung to which British subjects should have
+free access, and that there should be special trade facilities between
+Sikkim and Tibet. It is reported that the Chinese Amban took good care
+that Great Britain should not benefit by these new regulations, for
+after signing the agreement which was to give the Indian tea-merchants a
+market in Tibet, he introduced new regulations the other side of the
+frontier, which prohibited the purchase of Indian tea. Whether the story
+is true or not, it is certainly characteristic of the evasion and
+duplicity which have brought about the present armed mission into Tibet.
+
+To-day, as one rides through the cobbled street of Yatung, the only
+visible effects of the Convention are the Chinese Customs House with its
+single European officer, and the residence of a lady missionary, or
+trader, as the exigencies of international diplomacy oblige her to term
+herself. The Customs House, which was opened on May 1, 1894, was first
+established with the object of estimating the trade between India and
+Tibet--traffic is not permitted by any other route than the Jelap--and
+with a view to taxation when the trade should make it worth while. It
+was stipulated that no duties should be levied for the period of five
+years. Up to the present no tariff has been imposed, and the only
+apparent use the Customs House serves is to collect statistics, and
+perhaps to remind Tibet of the shadowy suzerainty of China. The natives
+have boycotted the place, and refuse to trade there, and no European or
+native of India has thought it worth while to open a market. Phari is
+the real trade mart on the frontier, and Kalimpong, in British Bhutan,
+is the foreign trade mart. But the whole trade between India and Tibet
+is on such a small scale that it might be in the hands of a single
+merchant.
+
+The Customs House, the missionary house, and the houses of the clerks
+and servants of the Customs and of the headman, form a little block.
+Beyond it there is a quarter of a mile of barren stony ground, and then
+the wall with military pretensions. I rode through the gate
+unchallenged.
+
+At Rinchengong, a mile beyond the barrier, the Yatung stream flows into
+the Ammo Chu. The road follows the eastern bank of the river, passing
+through Cheuma and Old Chumbi, where it crosses the stream. After
+crossing the bridge, a mile of almost level ground takes one into Chumbi
+camp. I reached Chumbi on the evening of January 12, and was able to
+send the _Daily Mail_ the first cable from Tibet, having completed the
+journey from Darjeeling in two days' hard riding.
+
+The camp lies in a shallow basin in the hills, and is flanked by brown
+fir-clad hills which rise some 1,500 feet above the river-bed, and
+preclude a view of the mountains on all sides. The situation is by no
+means the best from the view of comfort, but strategic reasons make it
+necessary, for if the camp were pitched half a mile further up the
+valley, the gorge of the stream which debouches into the Ammo River to
+the north of Chumbi would give the Tibetans an opportunity of attacking
+us in the rear. Despite the protection of almost Arctic clothing, one
+shivers until the sun rises over the eastern hill at ten o'clock, and
+shivers again when it sinks behind the opposite one at three. Icy winds
+sweep the valley, and hurricanes of dust invade one's tent. Against this
+cold one clothes one's self in flannel vest and shirt, sweater,
+flannel-lined coat, poshteen or Cashmere sheepskin, wool-lined Gilgit
+boots, and fur or woollen cap with flaps meeting under the chin. The
+general effect is barbaric and picturesque. In after-days the trimness
+of a military club may recall the scene--officers clad in
+gold-embroidered poshteen, yellow boots, and fur caps, bearded like
+wild Kerghizes, and huddling round the camp fire in this black
+cauldron-like valley under the stars.
+
+Officers are settling down in Chumbi as comfortably as possible for
+winter quarters. Primitive dens have been dug out of the ground, walled
+up with boulders, and roofed in with green fir-branches. In some cases a
+natural rock affords a whole wall. The den where I am now writing is
+warmed by a cheerful pinewood blaze, a luxury after the _angeiti_ in
+one's tent. I write at an operating-table after a dinner of minal
+(pheasant) and yak's heart. A gramophone is dinning in my ears. It is
+destined, I hope, to resound in the palace of Potala, where the Dalai
+Lama and his suite may wonder what heathen ritual is accompanied by 'A
+jovial monk am I,' and 'Her golden hair was hanging down her back.'
+
+Both at home and in India one hears the Tibet Mission spoken of
+enviously as a picnic. There is an idea of an encampment in a smiling
+valley, and easy marches towards the mysterious city. In reality, there
+is plenty of hard and uninteresting work. The expedition is attended
+with all the discomforts of a campaign, and very little of the
+excitement. Colonel Younghusband is now at Tuna, a desolate hamlet on
+the Tibetan plateau, exposed to the coldest winds of Asia, where the
+thermometer falls to 25° below zero. Detachments of the escort are
+scattered along the line of communications in places of varying cold
+and discomfort, where they must wait until the necessary supplies have
+been carried through to Phari. It is not likely that Colonel
+Younghusband will be able to proceed to Gyantse before March. In the
+meanwhile, imagine the Pioneers and Gurkhas, too cold to wash or shave,
+shivering in a dirty Tibetan fort, half suffocated with smoke from a
+yak-dung fire. Then there is the transport officer shut up in some
+narrow valley of Sikkim, trying to make half a dozen out of three with
+his camp of sick beasts and sheaf of urgent telegrams calling for
+supplies. He hopes there will be 'a show,' and that he may be in it.
+Certainly if anyone deserves to go to Lhasa and get a medal for it, it
+is the supply and transport man. But he will be left behind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHUMBI VALLEY
+
+
+    CHUMBI,
+      _February, 1904._
+
+The Chumbi Valley is inhabited by the Tomos, who are said to be
+descendants of ancient cross-marriages between the Bhutanese and
+Lepchas. They only intermarry among themselves, and speak a language
+which would not be understood in other parts of Tibet. As no Tibetan
+proper is allowed to pass the Yatung barrier, the Tomos have the
+monopoly of the carrying trade between Phari and Kalimpong. They are
+voluntarily under the protection of the Tibetans, who treat them
+liberally, as the Lamas realize the danger of their geographical
+position as a buffer state, and are shrewd enough to recognise that any
+ill treatment or oppression would drive them to seek protection from the
+Bhutanese or British.
+
+The Tomos are merry people, hearty, and good-natured. They are
+wonderfully hardy and enduring. In the coldest winter months, when the
+thermometer is 20° below zero, they will camp out at night in the snow,
+forming a circle of their loads, and sleep contentedly inside with no
+tent or roofing. The women would be comely if it were not for the cutch
+that they smear over their faces. The practice is common to the Tibetans
+and Bhutanese, but no satisfactory reason has been found for it. The
+Jesuit Father, Johann Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
+custom to a religious whim:--'The women, out of a religious whim, never
+wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only
+causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and
+deformed.' A hundred and eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
+habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the Dalai Lama early in
+the seventeenth century. 'The women of Tibet in those days were much
+given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the Lamas to a degree to
+bring their holy order into a bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of
+the Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the women should never
+appear in public without smearing their faces with a black disfiguring
+paste. Huc recorded that though the order was still obeyed, the practice
+was observed without much benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or
+Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this
+unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu,
+that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes.
+
+The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive cap, with a red badge in
+the front, which harmonizes with their complexion--a coarse, brick red,
+of which the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously called
+pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness of a healthy outdoor life in a
+cold climate. A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque--at
+a hundred yards. They wrap themselves round and round with a thick
+woollen blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear on their feet
+high woollen boots with leather or rope soles. If it was not for their
+disfiguring toilet many of them would be handsome. The children are
+generally pretty, and I have seen one or two that were really beautiful.
+When we left a camp the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
+come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles, string, and cardboard
+boxes were treasured prizes. We threw these out of our cave, and the
+children scrambled for them, and even the women made dives at anything
+particularly tempting. My last impression of Lingmathang was a group of
+women giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates and
+advertisements in a number of the _Lady_, which somebody's _memsahib_
+had used for the packing of a ham.
+
+The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness, realize the
+hygienic value of their hot springs. There are resorts in the
+neighbourhood of Chumbi as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
+mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes. These healthy folk are not
+morbidly conscious of sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
+are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not hot enough, the Tomos
+bake large boulders in the ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the
+water to increase the temperature.
+
+Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They dry the leaves of the wild
+rhubarb, and mix them with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called
+_dopta_, and was the favourite blend of the country. Now hundreds of
+thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a
+lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a
+pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari.
+Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them,
+and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three
+appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
+strewn with the empty boxes.
+
+There is a considerable Chinese element in the Chumbi Valley--a frontier
+officer, with the local rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of
+the Customs House, and troops numbering from one to two hundred. These,
+of course, were not in evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
+The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives, but take to themselves
+women of the country, whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
+villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in the country after his
+term of office. Life at Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
+looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages. He is as unhappy as a
+Frenchman in Tonquin, cut off from all the diversions of social and
+intellectual life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me that he
+had brought his wife with him, and the poor lady had never left the
+house, but cried incessantly for China and civilization. Yet to the
+uninitiated the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang might have
+been taken from the far East and plumped down on the Indian frontier.
+There is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house, the same
+hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper over the lintels of the doors,
+and the same red and green abortions on the walls.
+
+Much has been written and duly contradicted about the fertility of the
+Chumbi Valley. If one does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
+12,000 feet, it must be admitted that the valley is, relatively
+speaking, fertile--that is to say, its produce is sufficient to support
+its three or four thousand inhabitants.
+
+The lower valley produces buckwheat, turnips, potatoes, radishes, and
+barley. The latter, the staple food of the Tibetans, has, when ground,
+an appetizing smell very like oatmeal. The upper valley is quite
+sterile, and produces nothing but barley, which does not ripen; it is
+gathered for fodder when green, and the straw is sold at high prices to
+the merchants who visit Phari from Tibet and Bhutan. This year the
+Tibetan merchants are afraid to come, and the commissariat benefits by
+a very large supply of fodder which ought to see them through the
+summer.
+
+The idea that the valley is unusually fertile probably arose from the
+well-to-do appearance of the natives of Rinchengong and Chumbi, and
+their almost palatial houses, which give evidence of a prosperity due to
+trade rather than agriculture.
+
+The hillsides around Chumbi produce wild strawberries, raspberries,
+currants, and cherries; but these are quite insipid in this sunless
+climate.
+
+The Chinese Custom's officer at Yatung tells me that the summer months,
+though not hot, are relaxing and enervating. The thermometer never rises
+above 70°. The rainfall does not average quite 50 inches; but almost
+daily at noon a mist creeps up from Bhutan, and a constant drizzle
+falls. In June, July, and August, 1901, there were only three days
+without rain.
+
+At Phari I met a venerable old gentleman who gave me some statistics.
+The old man, Katsak Kasi by name, was a Tibetan from the Kham province,
+acting at Phari as trade agent for the Bhutanese Government. His face
+was seared and parchment-like from long exposure to cold winds and rough
+weather. His features were comparatively aquiline--that is to say, they
+did not look as if they had been flattened out in youth. He wore a very
+large pair of green spectacles, with a gold bulb at each end and a red
+tassel in the middle, which gave him an air of wisdom and distinction.
+He answered my rather inquisitive questions with courtesy and
+decision, and yet with such a serious care for details that I felt quite
+sure his figures must be accurate.
+
+[Illustration: ROCK SCULPTURES.]
+
+If statistics were any gauge of the benefits Indian trade would derive
+from an open market with Tibet, the present mission, as far as
+commercial interests are concerned, would be wasted. According to Kasi's
+statistics, the cost of two dozen or thirty mules would balance the
+whole of the annual revenue on Indian imports into the country. The idea
+that duties are levied at the Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers is a mistake.
+The only Customs House is at Phari, where the Indian and Bhutanese
+trade-routes meet. The Customs are under the supervision of the two
+jongpens, who send the revenue to Lhasa twice a year.
+
+The annual income on imports from India, Kasi assured me, is only 6,000
+rupees, whereas the income on exports amounts to 20,000. Tibetan trade
+with India consists almost entirely of wool, yaks'-tails, and ponies.
+There is a tax of 2 rupees 8 annas on ponies, 1 rupee a maund on wool,
+and 1 rupee 8 annas a maund on yaks'-tails. Our imports into Tibet,
+according to Kasi's statistics, are practically nil. Some piece goods,
+iron vessels, and tobacco leaves find their way over the Jelap, but it
+is a common sight to see mules returning into Tibet with nothing but
+their drivers' cooking utensils and warm clothing.[9]
+
+  [9] The only articles imported to the value of £1,000 are cotton
+      goods, woollen cloths, metals, chinaware, coral, indigo, maize,
+      silk, fur, and tobacco.
+
+      The only exports to the value of £1,000 are musk, ponies, skins,
+      wool, and yaks'-tails.
+
+      Appended are the returns for the years 1895-1902:
+
+        Year.  Value of Articles  Value of Articles  Total Value of
+                 Imported into     Exported from     Imports and
+                    Tibet.            Tibet.           Exports.
+                     Rs.               Rs.                Rs.
+        1895       416,218           634,086          1,050,304
+        1896       561,395           781,269          1,342,664
+        1897       674,139           820,300          1,494,436
+        1898       718,475           817,851          1,536,326
+        1899       962,637           822,760          1,785,397
+        1900       730,502           710,012          1,440,514
+        1901       734,075           783,480          1,517,555
+        1902       761,837           805,338          1,567,075
+
+      _Customs House Returns, Yatung._
+
+At present no Indian tea passes Yatung. That none is sold at Phari
+confirms the rumour I mentioned that the Chinese Amban, after signing
+the trade regulations between India and Tibet in Darjeeling, 1893,
+crossed the frontier to introduce new laws, virtually annulling the
+regulations. Indian tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
+Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and treaty obligations.
+She has placed every obstacle in the way of Indian trade, and insulted
+our Commissioners; yet the despatch of the present mission with its
+armed escort has been called an act of aggression.
+
+When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be angry with him for helping
+us, he said they would certainly cut off his head if he remained in the
+fort after we had left. There is some foundation in travellers' stories
+about the punishment inflicted on the guards of the passes and other
+officials who fail to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
+towards Lhasa.
+
+Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when we entered the valley are
+still detained there, as far as I can gather, as hostages for the good
+behaviour of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does not fit the
+crime. The guards of a pass are punished for letting white men through,
+quite irrespective of the opposing odds.
+
+The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging, but the ordeal is so
+severe that it often proves fatal. I asked Kasi some questions about the
+magisterial powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
+remained in the fort some days after we occupied it. He told me that
+they could not pass capital sentence, but they might flog the prisoners,
+and if they died, nothing was said. Several victims have died of
+flogging at Phari.
+
+The natives in Darjeeling have a story of Tibetan methods, which have
+always seemed to me the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say, the
+criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he cannot tell whether it is
+night or day. Cobras and scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of
+venom are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness, for it is
+still enough, and seek or avoid as he has courage. Food is sometimes
+thrown in to tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his agony. I
+asked Kasi if there were any truth in the tale. He told me that there
+were no venomous snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a dark
+prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes died of scorpion bites; he
+added that only the worst offenders were punished in this way. The
+modified version of the story is gruesome enough.
+
+It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials to receive their pay in
+grain, it being understood that their position puts them in the way of
+obtaining the other necessaries of life, and perhaps a few of its
+luxuries. Kasi, being an important official, receives from the Bhutan
+Government forty maunds of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
+receives, in addition, a commission on the trade disputes that he
+decides in proportion to their importance. He is now an invaluable
+servant of the British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes round
+Phari are wakening into life. From the fort bastions one sees sometimes
+on the hills opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
+gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks coming from some blind
+valley which no one but a hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
+exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported from Bhutan and sold
+to the mutual gratification of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
+hired and employed on the line of communications.
+
+It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they hear of our good prices,
+will send supplies over the frontier to hasten our advance. But we must
+take care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good services. When I asked
+him how he stood with the Tibetan Government, he laid his hand in a
+significant manner across his throat.
+
+
+    LINGMATHANG,
+      _February._
+
+Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau of Tibet, the road to
+Lhasa winds through seven miles of pine forest, which recalls some of
+the most beautiful valleys of Switzerland.
+
+The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there is nothing but barrenness
+and desolation. The country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
+There are long strips of arable land on each side of the road, and
+villages every two or three miles. The fields are terraced and enclosed
+within stone walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built houses,
+with low, over-hanging eaves, and long wooden tiles, each weighed down
+with a gray boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg or
+Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags and _mani_-walls brightly
+painted with Buddhistic pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.
+
+There is no lack of colour. In the winter months a brier with large red
+berries and a low, foxy-brown thornbush, like a young osier in March,
+lend a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills the withered
+grass is yellow, and the blending of these quiet tints, russet, brown,
+and yellow, gives the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
+sombre enough.
+
+Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In springtime there is a
+profusion of colour. The valley is beautiful, beyond the beauty of the
+grandest Alpine scenery, carpeted underfoot with spring flowers, and
+ablaze overhead with flowering rhododendrons. To try to describe
+mountains and forests is a most unprofitable task; all the adjectives of
+scenic description are exhausted; the coinage has been too long debased.
+For my own part, it has been almost a pain to visit the most beautiful
+parts of the earth and to know that one's sensations are incommunicable,
+that it is impossible to make people believe and understand. To those
+who have not seen, scenery is either good, bad, or indifferent; there
+are no degrees. Ruskin, the greatest master of description, is most
+entertaining when he is telling us about the domestic circle at Herne
+Hill. But mountain scenery is of all the most difficult to describe. The
+sense of the Himalayas is intangible. There are elusive lights and
+shades, and sounds and whispers, and unfamiliar scents, and a thousand
+fleeting manifestations of the genius of the place that are impossible
+to arrest. Magnificent, majestic, splendid, are weak, colourless words
+that depict nothing. It is the poets who have described what they have
+not seen who have been most successful. Milton's hell is as real as any
+landscape of Byron's, and the country through which Childe Roland rode
+to the Dark Tower is more vivid and present to us than any of
+Wordsworth's Westmoreland tarns and valleys. So it is a poem of the
+imagination--'Kubla Khan'--that seems to me to breathe something of the
+spirit of the Yatung and Chumbi Valleys, only there is a little less of
+mystery and gloom here, and a little more of sunshine and brightness
+than in the dream poem. Instead of attempting to describe the
+valley--Paradise would be easier to describe--I will try to explain as
+logically as possible why it fascinated me more than any scenery I have
+seen.
+
+I had often wondered if there were any place in the East where flowers
+grow in the same profusion as in Europe--in England, or in Switzerland.
+The nearest approach I had seen was in the plateau of the Southern Shan
+States, at about 4,000 feet, where the flora is very homelike. But the
+ground is not _carpeted_; one could tread without crushing a blossom.
+Flowers are plentiful, too, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and
+on the hills on the Siamese side of the Tennasserim frontier, but I had
+seen nothing like a field of marsh-marigolds and cuckoo-flowers in May,
+or a meadow of buttercups and daisies, or a bank of primroses, or a wood
+carpeted with bluebells, or a hillside with heather, or an Alpine slope
+with gentians and ranunculus. I had been told that in Persia in
+springtime the valleys of the Shapur River and the Karun are covered
+profusely with lilies, also the forests of Manchuria in the
+neighbourhood of the Great White Mountain; but until I crossed the
+Jelapla and struck down the valley to Yatung I thought I would have to
+go West to see such things again. Never was such profusion. Besides the
+primulas[10]--I counted eight different kinds of them--and gentians and
+anemones and celandines and wood sorrel and wild strawberries and
+irises, there were the rhododendrons glowing like coals through the pine
+forest. As one descended the scenery became more fascinating; the valley
+narrowed, and the stream was more boisterous. Often the cliffs hung
+sheer over the water's edge; the rocks were coated with green and yellow
+moss, which formed a bed for the dwarf rhododendron bushes, now in full
+flower, white and crimson and cream, and every hue between a dark
+reddish brown and a light sulphury yellow--not here and there, but
+everywhere, jostling one another for nooks and crannies in the rock.[11]
+
+  [10] Between Gnatong and Gautsa, thirteen different species of
+      primulas are found. They are: _Primula Petiolaris_, _P. glabra_,
+      _P. Sapphirina_, _P. pusilia_, _P. Kingii_, _P. Elwesiana_, _P.
+      Capitata_, _P. Sikkimensis_, _P. Involucra_, _P. Denticulata_,
+      _P. Stuartii_, _P. Soldanelloides_, _P. Stirtonia_.
+
+  [11] The species are: _Rhododendron campanulatum_, purple flowers;
+      _R. Fulgens_, scarlet; _R. Hodgsonii_, rose-coloured; _R.
+      Anthopogon_, white; _R. Virgatum_, purple; _R. Nivale_, rose-red;
+      _R. Wightii_, yellow; _R. Falconeri_, cream-coloured; _R.
+      cinndbarinum_, brick-red ('The Gates of Tibet,' Appendix I., J.
+      A. H. Louis).
+
+These delicate flowers are very different from their dowdy cousin, the
+coarse red rhododendron of the English shrubbery. At a little distance
+they resemble more hothouse azaleas, and equal them in wealth of
+blossom.
+
+The great moss-grown rocks in the bed of the stream were covered with
+equal profusion. Looking behind, the snows crowned the pine-trees, and
+over them rested the blue sky. And here is the second reason--as I am
+determined to be logical in my preference--why I found the valley so
+fascinating. In contrasting the Himalayas with the Alps, there is always
+something that the former is without. Never the snows, and the water,
+and the greenery at the same time; if the greenery is at your feet, the
+snows are far distant; where the Himalayas gain in grandeur they lose in
+beauty. So I thought the wild valley of Lauterbrunnen, lying at the foot
+of the Jungfrau, the perfection of Alpine scenery until I saw the valley
+of Yatung, a pine-clad mountain glen, green as a hawthorn hedge in May,
+as brilliantly variegated as a beechwood copse in autumn, and
+culminating in the snowy peak that overhangs the Jelapla. The valley has
+besides an intangible fascination, indescribable because it is
+illogical. Certainly the light that played upon all these colours seemed
+to me softer than everyday sunshine; and the opening spring foliage of
+larch and birch and mountain ash seemed more delicate and varied than on
+common ground. Perhaps it was that I was approaching the forbidden land.
+But what irony, that this seductive valley should be the approach to
+the most bare and unsheltered country in Asia!
+
+Even now, in February, I can detect a few salmon-coloured leaf-buds,
+which remind me that the month of May will be a revelation to the
+mission force, when their veins are quickened by the unfamiliar warmth,
+and their eyes dazzled by this unexpected treasure which is now
+germinating in the brown earth.
+
+Four miles beyond Chumbi the road passes through the second military
+wall at the Chinese village of Gob-sorg. Riding through the quiet
+gateway beneath the grim, hideous figure of the goddess Dolma carved on
+the rock above, one feels a silent menace. One is part of more than a
+material invasion; one has passed the gate that has been closed against
+the profane for centuries; one has committed an irretrievable step.
+Goddess and barrier are symbols of Tibet's spiritual and material
+agencies of opposition. We have challenged and defied both. We have
+entered the arena now, and are to be drawn into the vortex of all that
+is most sacred and hidden, to struggle there with an implacable foe, who
+is protected by the elemental forces of nature.
+
+Inside the wall, above the road, stands the Chinese village of Gob-sorg.
+The Chinamen come out of their houses and stand on the revetment to
+watch us pass. They are as quiet and ugly as their gods. They gaze down
+on our convoys and modern contrivances with a silent contempt that
+implies a consciousness of immemorial superiority. Who can tell what
+they think or what they wish, these undivinable creatures? They love
+money, we know, and they love something else that we cannot know. It is
+not country, or race, or religion, but an inscrutable something that may
+be allied to these things, that induces a mental obstinacy, an
+unfathomable reserve which may conceal a wisdom beyond our philosophy or
+mere callousness and indifference. The thing is there, though it has no
+European name or definition. It has caused many curious and unexplained
+outbreaks in different parts of the world, and it is no doubt symbolized
+in their inexpressibly hideous flag. The element is non-conductive, and
+receives no current from progress, and it is therefore incommunicable to
+us who are wrapped in the pride of evolution. The question here and
+elsewhere is whether the Chinese love money more or this inscrutable
+dragon element. If it is money, their masks must have concealed a
+satisfaction at the prospect of the increased trade that follows our
+flag; if the dragon element, a grim hope that we might be cut off in the
+wilderness and annihilated by Asiatic hordes.
+
+Unlike the Chinese, the Tomos are unaffectedly glad to see us in the
+valley. The humblest peasant is the richer by our presence, and the
+landowners and traders are more prosperous than they have been for many
+years. Their uncompromising reception of us makes a withdrawal from the
+Chumbi Valley impossible, for the Tibetans would punish them
+relentlessly for the assistance they have given their enemies.
+
+A mile beyond Gob-sorg is the Tibetan village of Galing-ka, where the
+praying-flags are as thick as masts in a dockyard, and streams of paper
+prayers are hung across the valley to prevent the entrance of evil
+spirits. Chubby little children run out and salute one with a cry of
+'Backsheesh!' the first alien word in their infant vocabulary.
+
+A mile further a sudden turn in the valley brings one to a level
+plain--a phenomenally flat piece of ground where one can race two miles
+along the straight. No one passes it without remarking that it is the
+best site for a hill-station in Northern India. Where else can one find
+a racecourse, polo-ground, fishing, and shooting, and a rainfall that is
+little more than a third of that of Darjeeling? Three hundred feet above
+the stream on the west bank is a plateau, apparently intended for
+building sites. The plain in the valley was naturally designed for the
+training of mounted infantry, and is now, probably for the first time,
+being turned to its proper use.
+
+
+    LINGMATHANG,
+      _March 18._
+
+I have left the discomforts of Phari, and am camping now on the
+Lingmathang Plain. I am writing in a natural cave in the rock. The
+opening is walled in by a sangar of stones 5 feet high, from which
+pine-branches support a projecting roof. On fine days the space between
+the roof and wall is left open, and called the window; but when it
+snows, gunny-bags are let down as purdahs, and the den becomes very warm
+and comfortable. There is a natural hearth, a natural chimney-piece, and
+a natural chimney that draws excellently. The place is sheltered by high
+cliffs, and it is very pleasant to look out from this snugness on a
+wintry landscape, and ground covered deep with snow.
+
+Outside, seventy shaggy Tibetan ponies, rough and unshod, averaging 12·2
+hands, are tethered under the shelter of a rocky cliff. They are being
+trained according to the most approved methods of modern warfare. The
+Mounted Infantry Corps, mostly volunteers from the 23rd and 32nd
+Pioneers and 8th Gurkhas, are under the command of Captain Ottley of the
+23rd. The corps was raised at Gnatong in December, and though many of
+the men had not ridden before, after two months' training they cut a
+very respectable figure in the saddle. A few years ago a proposal was
+made to the military authorities that the Pioneers, like other
+regiments, should go in for a course of mounted infantry training. The
+reply caused much amusement at the time. The suggestion was not adopted,
+but orders were issued that 'every available opportunity should be taken
+of teaching the Pioneers to ride in carts.' A wag in the force naturally
+suggests that the new Ekka Corps, now running between Phari and Tuna,
+should be utilized to carry out the spirit of this order. Certainly on
+the road beyond the Tangla the ekkas would require some sitting.
+
+The present mission is the third 'show' on which the 23rd and 32nd have
+been together during the last nine years. In Chitral and Waziristan they
+fought side by side. It is no exaggeration to say that these regiments
+have been on active service three years out of five since they were
+raised in 1857. The original draft of the 32nd, it will be remembered,
+was the unarmed volunteer corps of Mazbi Sikhs, who offered themselves
+as an escort to the convoy from Lahore to Delhi during the siege. The
+Mazbis were the most lawless and refractory folk in the Punjab, and had
+long been the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi they were
+employed in the trenches, rushing in to fill up the places of the killed
+and wounded as fast as they fell. It will be remembered that they formed
+the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags to blow up the Cashmere
+Gate. A hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed during the siege.
+With this brilliant opening it is no wonder that they have been on
+active service almost continually since.
+
+A frontier campaign would be incomplete without the 32nd or 23rd. It was
+the 32nd who cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and carried the
+battery guns to the relief of Chitral. The 23rd Pioneers were also
+raised from the Mazbi Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
+history of the two regiments is very similar. The 23rd distinguished
+themselves in China, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and numerous frontier
+campaigns. One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with the Gordon
+Highlanders under Major (now Sir George) White, they captured the Afghan
+guns at Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments meet again as
+members of the same corps on the Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most
+cordial relations exist between the men, and one can hear them
+discussing old campaigns as they sit round their pinewood fires in the
+evenings. They and the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur fame)
+turn out together every morning for exercise on their diminutive steeds.
+They ride without saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
+horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at the jumps. The other
+day, when a Mazbi Sikh took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
+reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise riding in carts.'
+
+At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of sport of a desultory kind.
+The neighbouring forests are the home of that very rare and little-known
+animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal of the species to
+fall to a European gun was shot by Major Wallace Dunlop on the
+Lingmathang Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley wounded a
+buck which he was not able to follow up on account of a heavy fall of
+snow. Lately one or two shao--does in all cases--have come down to visit
+the plain. While we were breakfasting on the morning of the 16th, we
+heard a great deal of shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
+up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village dogs, had broken
+through the jungle on the hillside and emerged on the plain a hundred
+yards from our camp. We mounted at once, and Ottley deployed the mounted
+infantry, who were ready for parade, to head the beast from the hills.
+The shao jinked like a hare, and crossed and recrossed the stream
+several times, but the poor beast was exhausted, and, after twenty
+minutes' exciting chase, we surrounded it. Captain Ottley threw himself
+on the animal's neck and held it down until a sepoy arrived with ropes
+to bind its hind-legs. The chase was certainly a unique incident in the
+history of sport--a field of seventy in the Himalayas, a clear spurt in
+the open, no dogs, and the quarry the rarest zoological specimen in the
+world. The beast stood nearly 14 hands, and was remarkable for its long
+ears and elongated jaw. The sequel was sad. Besides the fright and
+exhaustion, the captured shao sustained an injury in the loin; it pined,
+barely nibbled at its food, and, after ten days, died.
+
+Sikkim stags are sometimes shot by native shikaris, and there is great
+rivalry among members of the mission force in buying their heads. They
+are shy, inaccessible beasts, and they are not met with beyond the wood
+limit.
+
+The shooting in the Chumbi Valley is interesting to anyone fond of
+natural history, though it is a little disappointing from the
+sportsman's point of view. When officers go out for a day's shooting,
+they think they have done well if they bring home a brace of pheasants.
+When the sappers and miners began to work on the road below Gautsa, the
+blood-pheasants used to come down to the stream to watch the operations,
+but now one sees very few game-birds in the valley. The minal is
+occasionally shot. The cock-bird, as all sportsmen know, is, with the
+exception of the Argus-eye, the most beautiful pheasant in the world.
+There is a lamasery in the neighbourhood, where the birds are almost
+tame. The monks who feed them think that they are inhabited by the
+spirits of the blest. Where the snow melts in the pine-forests and
+leaves soft patches and moist earth, you will find the blood-pheasant.
+When you disturb them they will run up the hillside and call
+vociferously from their new hiding-place, so that you may get another
+shot. Pheasant-shooting here is not sport; the birds seldom rise, and
+when they do it is almost impossible to get a shot at them in the thick
+jungle. One must shoot them running for the pot. Ten or a dozen is not a
+bad bag for one gun later in the year, when more snow has fallen.
+
+At a distance the blood-pheasant appears a dowdy bird. The hen is quite
+insignificant, but, on a closer acquaintance, the cock shows a delicate
+colour-scheme of mauve, pink, and green, which is quite different from
+the plumage of any other bird I have seen. The skins fetch a good price
+at home, as fishermen find them useful for making flies. A sportsman
+who has shot in the Yatung Valley regularly for four years tells me that
+the cock-bird of this species is very much more numerous than the hen.
+Another Chumbi pheasant is the tracopan, a smaller bird than the minal,
+and very beautifully marked. I have not heard of a tracopan being shot
+this season; the bird is not at all common anywhere on this side of the
+Himalayas.
+
+Snow-partridge sometimes come down to the Lingmathang hills; in the
+adjacent Kongbu Valley they are plentiful. These birds are gregarious,
+and are found among the large, loose boulders on the hill-tops. In
+appearance they are a cross between the British grouse and the
+red-legged partridge, having red feet and legs uncovered with feathers,
+and a red bill and chocolate breast. The feathers of the back and rump
+are white, with broad, defined bars of rich black.
+
+Another common bird is the snow-pigeon. Large flocks of them may be seen
+circling about the valley anywhere between Phari and Chumbi. Sometimes,
+when we are sitting in our cave after dinner, we hear the tweek of
+solitary snipe flying overhead, but we have never flushed any. Every
+morning before breakfast I stroll along the river bank with a gun, and
+often put up a stray duck. I have frequently seen goosanders on the
+river, but not more than two or three in a party. They never leave the
+Himalayas. The only migratory duck I have observed are the common teal
+and Brahminy or ruddy sheldrake, and these only in pairs. The latter,
+though despised on the plains, are quite edible up here. I discredit the
+statement that they feed on carrion, as I have never seen one near the
+carcasses of the dead transport animals that are only too plentiful in
+the valley just now. After comparing notes with other sportsmen, I
+conclude that the Ammo Chu Valley is not a regular route for migratory
+duck. The odd teal that I shot in February were probably loiterers that
+were not strong enough to join in the flight southwards.
+
+Near Lingmathang I shot the ibis bill (_Ibidorhynchus Struthersi_), a
+bird which is allied to the oyster catchers. This was the first Central
+Asian species I met.
+
+
+    GAUTSA,
+      _February._
+
+Gautsa, which lies five miles north of Lingmathang, nearly half-way
+between Chumbi and Phari, must be added to the map. A week or two ago
+the place was deserted and unnamed; it did not boast a single cowherd's
+hut. Now it is a busy camp, and likely to be a permanent halting-place
+on the road to Phari. The camp lies in a deep, moss-carpeted hollow,
+with no apparent egress. On three sides it is flanked by rocky cliffs,
+densely forested with pine and silver birch; on the fourth rises an
+abrupt wall of rock, which is suffused with a glow of amber light an
+hour before sunset. The Ammo Chu, which is here nothing but a 20-foot
+stream frozen over at night, bisects the camp. The valley is warm and
+sheltered, and escapes much of the bitter wind that never spares Chumbi.
+After dinner one prefers the open-air and a camp fire. Officers who have
+been up the line before turn into their tents regretfully, for they know
+that they are saying good-bye to comfort, and will not enjoy the genial
+warmth of a good fire again until they have crossed the bleak Tibetan
+tablelands and reached the sparsely-wooded Valley of Gyantse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHARI JONG
+
+
+    _February 15._
+
+Icy winds and suffocating smoke are not conducive to a literary style,
+though they sometimes inspire a rude eloquence that is quite unfit for
+publication. As I write we are huddling over the mess-room brazier--our
+youngest optimist would not call it a fire. Men drop in now and then
+from fatigue duty, and utter an incisive phrase that expresses the
+general feeling, while we who write for an enlightened public must
+sacrifice force for euphemism. A week at Phari dispels all illusions;
+only a bargee could adequately describe the place. Yet the elements,
+which 'feelingly persuade us' what we are, sometimes inspire us with the
+eloquence of discomfort.
+
+At Gautsa the air was scented with the fragrance of warm pine-trees, and
+there was no indication of winter save the ice on the Ammo Chu. The
+torrent roared boisterously beneath its frozen surface, and threw up
+little tentacles of frozen spray, which glistened fantastically in the
+sun. Three miles further up the stream the wood-belt ends abruptly;
+then, after another three miles, one passes the last stunted bush; after
+that there is nothing but brown earth and yellow withered grass.
+
+Five miles above Gautsa is Dotah, the most cheerless camp on the march.
+The wind blows through the gorge unceasingly, and penetrates to the
+bone. On the left bank of the stream is the frozen waterfall, which
+might be worshipped by the fanciful and superstitious as embodying the
+genius of the place, hard and resistless, a crystallized monument of the
+implacable spirit of Nature in these high places.
+
+At Kamparab, where we camped, two miles higher up the stream, the
+thermometer fell to 14° below zero. Close by is the meeting-place of the
+sources of the Ammo Chu. All the plain is undermined with the warrens of
+the long-haired marmots and voles, who sit on their thresholds like a
+thousand little spies, and curiously watch our approach, then dive down
+into their burrows to tell their wives of the strange bearded invaders.
+They are the despair of their rivals, the sappers and miners, who are
+trying to make a level road for the new light ekkas. One envies them
+their warmth and snugness as one rides against the bitter penetrating
+winds.
+
+Twelve miles from Gautsa a turn in the valley brings one into view of
+Phari Jong. At first sight it might be a huge isolated rock, but as one
+approaches the bastions and battlements become more distinct. Distances
+are deceptive in this rarefied air, and objects that one imagines to be
+quite close are sometimes found to be several miles distant.
+
+The fort is built on a natural mound in the plain. It is a huge rambling
+building six stories high, surrounded by a courtyard, where mules and
+ponies are stabled. As a military fortification Phari Jong is by no
+means contemptible. The walls are of massive stonework which would take
+heavy guns to demolish. The angles are protected from attacking parties
+by machicolated galleries, and three enormous bastions project from each
+flank. These are crumbling in places, and the Pioneers might destroy the
+bastion and breach the wall with a bag or two of guncotton. On the
+eastern side there is a square courtyard like an Arab caravanserai,
+where cattle are penned. The fortress would hold the whole Tibetan army,
+with provisions for a year. It was evacuated the night before we
+reconnoitred the valley.
+
+The interior of the Jong is a warren of stairs, landings, and dark
+cavernous rooms, which would take a whole day to explore. The walls are
+built of stone and mud, and coated with century-old smoke. There are no
+chimneys or adequate windows, and the filth is indescribable. When Phari
+was first occupied, eighty coolies were employed a whole week clearing
+away refuse. Judging by the accretion of dirt, a new-comer might class
+the building as medieval; but filth is no criterion of age, for
+everything left in the same place becomes quickly coated with grime an
+inch thick. The dust that invades one's tent at Chumbi is clean and
+wholesome compared to the Phari dirt, which is the filth of human
+habitation, the secretion of centuries of foul living. It falls from the
+roof on one's head, sticks to one's clothes as one brushes against the
+wall, and is blown up into one's eyes and throat from the floor.
+
+The fort is most insanitary, but a military occupation is necessary. The
+hacking coughs which are prevalent among officers and men are due to
+impurities of the air which affect the lungs. Cartloads of dirt are
+being scraped away every day, but gusts of wind from the lower stories
+blow up more dust, which penetrates every nook and cranny of the
+draughty rooms, so that there is a fresh layer by nightfall. To clear
+the lower stories and cellars would be a hopeless task; even now rooms
+are found in unexpected places which emit clouds of dust whenever the
+wind eddies round the basement.
+
+I explored the ground-floor with a lantern, and was completely lost in
+the maze of passages and dark chambers. When we first occupied the fort,
+they were filled with straw, gunpowder, and old arms. A hundred and
+forty maunds of inferior gunpowder was destroyed, and the arms now
+litter the courtyard. These the Tibetans themselves abandoned as
+rubbish. The rusty helmets, shields, and breastplates are made of the
+thinnest iron plates interlaced with leathern thongs, and would not
+stop an arrow. The old bell-mouthed matchlocks, with their wooden
+ground-rests, would be more dangerous to the Tibetan marksmen than the
+enemy. The slings and bows and arrows are reckoned obsolete even by
+these primitive warriors. Perhaps they attribute more efficacy to the
+praying-wheels which one encounters at every corner of the fort. The
+largest are in niches in the wall to left and right of the gateway; rows
+of smaller ones are attached to the banisters on the landings and to the
+battlements of the roof. The wheels are covered with grime--the grime of
+Lamas' hands. Dirt and religion are inseparable in Tibet. The Lamas
+themselves are the most filthy and malodorous folk I have met in the
+country. From this it must not be inferred that one class is more
+cleanly in its habits than another, for nobody ever thinks of washing.
+Soap is not included in the list of sundries that pass the Customs House
+at Yatung. If the Lamas are dirtier than the yak-herds and itinerant
+merchants it is because they lead an indoor life, whereas the pastoral
+folk are continually exposed to the purifying winds of the tablelands,
+which are the nearest equivalent in Tibet to a cold bath.
+
+I once read of a Tibetan saint, one of the pupils of Naropa, who was
+credited with a hundred miraculous gifts, one of which was that he could
+dive into the water like a fish. Wherein the miracle lay had often
+puzzled me, but when I met the Lamas of the Kanjut Gompa I understood
+at once that it was the holy man's contact with the water.
+
+Phari is eloquent of piety, as it is understood in Tibet. The better
+rooms are frescoed with Buddhistic paintings, and on the third floor is
+a library, now used as a hospital, where xylograph editions of the
+Lamaist scriptures and lives of the saints are pigeon-holed in lockers
+in the wall. The books are printed on thin oblong sheets of Chinese
+paper, enclosed in boards, and illuminated with quaint coloured
+tailpieces of holy men in devotional attitudes. Phari fort, with its
+casual blending of East and West, is full of incongruous effects, but
+the oddest and most pathetic incongruity is the chorten on the roof,
+from which, amidst praying-flags and pious offerings of coloured
+raiment, flutters the Union Jack.
+
+
+    _February 18._
+
+The troops are so busy making roads that they have very little time for
+amusements. The 8th Gurkhas have already constructed some eight miles of
+road on each side of Phari for the ekka transport. Companies of the 23rd
+Pioneers are repairing the road at Dotah, Chumbi, and Rinchengong. The
+32nd are working at Rinchengong, and the sappers and miners on the
+Nathula and at Gautsa.
+
+We have started football, and the Gurkhas have a very good idea of the
+game. One loses one's wind completely at this elevation after every
+spurt of twenty yards, but recovers it again in a wonderfully short
+time. Other amusements are sliding and tobogganing, which are a little
+disappointing to enthusiasts. The ice is lumpy and broken, and the
+streamlets that run down to the plain are so tortuous that fifty yards
+without a spill is considered a good run for a toboggan. The funniest
+sight is to see the Gurkha soldiers trying to drag the toboggan uphill,
+slipping and tumbling and sprawling on the ice, and immensely enjoying
+one another's discomfiture.
+
+To clear the dust from one's throat and shake off the depression caused
+by weeks of waiting in the same place, there is nothing like a day's
+shooting or exploring in the neighbourhood of Phari. I get up sometimes
+before daybreak, and spend the whole day reconnoitring with a small
+party of mounted infantry. Yesterday we crossed a pass which looked down
+into the Kongbu Valley--a likely camping-ground for the Tibetan troops.
+The valley is connected to the north with the Tuna plateau, and is
+almost as fertile in its lower stretches as Chumbi. A gray fortress
+hangs over the cliff on the western side of the valley, and above it
+tower the glaciers of Shudu-Tsenpa and the Gora Pass into Sikkim. On the
+eastern side, at a creditable distance from the fort, we could see the
+Kongbu nunnery, which looked from where we stood like an old Roman
+viaduct. The nuns, I was told, are rarely celibate; they shave the head
+and wear no ornaments.
+
+Riding back we saw some burrhel on the opposite hills, too far off to
+make a successful stalk possible. The valley is full of them, and a week
+later some officers from Phari on a yak-collecting expedition got
+several good heads. The Tibetan gazelle, or goa (_Gazella
+hirticaudata_), is very common on the Phari plateau, and we bagged two
+that afternoon. When the force first occupied the Jong, they were so
+tame that a sportsman could walk up to within 100 yards of a herd, and
+it was not an uncommon thing for three buck to fall to the same gun in a
+morning. Now one has to manoeuvre a great deal to get within 300 yards
+of them.
+
+Sportsmen who have travelled in other parts of Tibet say the goa are
+very shy and inaccessible. Perhaps their comparative tameness near Phari
+may be accounted for by the fact that the old trade route crosses the
+plateau, and they have never been molested by the itinerant merchants
+and carriers. Gazelle meat is excellent. It has been a great resource
+for the garrison. No epicure could wish for anything better.
+
+Another unfamiliar beast that one meets in the neighbourhood of Phari is
+the kyang, or Tibetan wild ass (_Equus hemionus_), one or two of which
+have been shot for specimens. The kyang is more like a zebra than a
+horse or donkey. Its flesh, I believe, is scorned even by
+camp-followers. Hare are fairly plentiful, but they are quite
+flavourless. A huge solitary gray wolf (_Canis laniger_) was shot the
+other day, the only one of its kind I have seen. Occasionally one puts
+up a fox. The Tibetan species has a very fine brush that fetches a fancy
+price in the bazaar. At present there is too much ice on the plain to
+hunt them, but they ought to give good sport in the spring.
+
+It was dark when we rode into the Jong. After a long day in the saddle,
+dinner is good, even though it is of yak's flesh, and it is good to sit
+in front of a fire even though the smoke chokes you. I went so far as to
+pity the cave-dwellers at Chumbi. Phari is certainly very much colder,
+but it has its diversions and interests. There is still some shooting to
+be had, and the place has a quaint old-world individuality of its own,
+which seasons the monotony of life to a contemplative man. One is on the
+borderland, and one has a Micawber-like feeling that something may turn
+up. After dinner there is bridge, which fleets the time considerably,
+but at Chumbi there were no diversions of any kind--nothing but dull,
+blank, uninterrupted monotony.
+
+
+    _February 20._
+
+For two days half a blizzard has been blowing, and expeditions have been
+impossible. Everything one eats and drinks has the same taste of argol
+smoke. At breakfast this morning we had to put our _chapatties_ in our
+pockets to keep them clean, and kept our meat covered with a soup-plate,
+making surreptitious dives at it with a fork. After a few seconds'
+exposure it was covered with grime. Sausages and bully beef, which had
+just been boiled, were found to be frozen inside. The smoke in the
+mess-room was suffocating. So to bed, wrapped in sheepskins and a
+sleeping-bag. Under these depressing conditions I have been reading the
+narratives of Bogle and Manning, old English worthies who have left on
+record the most vivid impressions of the dirt and cold and misery of
+Phari.
+
+It is ninety years since Thomas Manning passed through Phari on his way
+to Lhasa. Previously to his visit we only know of two Englishmen who
+have set foot in Phari--Bogle in 1774, and Turner in 1783, both
+emissaries of Warren Hastings. Manning's journal is mostly taken up with
+complaints of his Chinese servant, who seems to have gained some
+mysterious ascendancy over him, and to have exercised it most
+unhandsomely. As a traveller Manning had a genius for missing effects;
+it is characteristic of him that he spent sixteen days at Phari, yet
+except for a casual footnote, evidently inserted in his journal after
+his return, he makes no mention of the Jong. Were it not for Bogle's
+account of thirty years before, we might conclude that the building was
+not then in existence.
+
+On October 21, 1811, Manning writes in his diary: 'We arrived at Phari
+Jong. Frost. Frost also two days before. I was lodged in a strange
+place, but so were the natives.' On the 27th he summarized his
+impressions of Phari:--'Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke, misery, but good
+mutton.'
+
+Manning's journal is expressive, if monosyllabic. He was of the class
+of subjective travellers, who visit the ends of the earth to record
+their own personal discomforts. Sensitive, neurotic, ever on the
+look-out for slights, he could not have been a happy vagabond. A dozen
+lines record the impressions of his first week at Phari. He was cheated;
+he was treated civilly; he slighted the magistrates, mistaking them for
+idle fellows; he was turned out of his room to make way for Chinese
+soldiers; he quarrelled with his servant. A single extract portrays the
+man to the life, as if he were sitting dejectedly by his yak-dung fire
+at this hour brooding over his wrongs:--
+
+"The Chinaman was cross again." Says I, "Was that a bird at the
+magistrate's that flapped so loud?" Answer: "What signifies whether it
+was a bird or not?" Where he sat I thought he might see; and I was
+curious to know if such large birds frequented the _building_. These are
+the answers I get. He is always discontented and grumbling, and takes no
+trouble off my hands. Being younger, and, like all Asiatics, able to
+stoop and crouch without pain or difficulty, he might assist me in many
+things without trouble to himself. A younger brother or any English
+young gentleman would in his place of course lay the cloth, and do other
+little services when I am tired; but he does not seem to have much of
+the generous about him, nor does he in any way serve me, or behave to me
+with any show of affection or goodwill: consequently I grow no more
+attached to him than the first day I saw him. I could not have thought
+it possible for me to have lived so long with anyone without either
+disliking him or caring sixpence for him. He has good qualities, too.
+The strangeness of his situation may partly excuse him. (I am more
+attached to my guide, with all his faults, who has been with me but a
+few days.) My guide has behaved so damnably ill since I wrote that, that
+I wish it had not come into my mind.'
+
+I give the extract at length, not only as an illuminating portrait of
+Manning, but as an incidental proof that he visited the Jong, and that
+it was very much the same building then as it is to-day. But had it not
+been for the flapping of the bird which occasioned the quarrel with his
+Chinese servant, Manning would have left Phari without a reference to
+the wonderful old fortress which is the most romantic feature on the
+road from India to Gyantse. Appended to the journal is this footnote to
+the word _building_, which I have italicized in the extract: 'The
+building is immensely large, six or more stories high, a sort of
+fortress. At a distance it appears to be all Phari Jong. Indeed, most of
+it consists of miserable galleries and holes.'
+
+Members of the mission force who have visited Phari will no doubt
+attribute Manning's evident ill-humour and depression during his stay
+there to the environments of the place, which have not changed much in
+the last ninety years. But his spirits improved as he continued his
+journey to Gyantse and Lhasa, and he reveals himself the kindly,
+eccentric, and affectionate soul who was the friend and intimate of
+Charles Lamb.
+
+Bogle arrived at Phari on October 23, 1774. He and Turner and Manning
+all entered Tibet through Bhutan. 'As we advanced,' he wrote in his
+journal, 'we came in sight of the castle of Phari Jong, which cuts a
+good figure from without. It rises into several towers with the
+balconies, and, having few windows, has the look of strength; it is
+surrounded by the town.' The only other reference he makes to the Jong
+shows us that the fortress was in bad repair so long ago as 1774. 'The
+two Lhasa officers who have the government of Phari Jong sent me some
+butter, tea, etc., the day after my arrival; and letting me know that
+they expected a visit from me, I went. The inside of the castle did not
+answer the notion I had formed of it. The stairs are ladders worn to the
+bone, and the rooms are little better than garrets.'
+
+The origin of the fort is unknown. Some of the inhabitants of Phari say
+that it was built more than a hundred years ago, when the Nepalese were
+overrunning Sikkim. But this is obviously incorrect, as the
+Tibetan-Nepalese War, in which the Chinese drove the Gurkhas out of
+Tibet, and defeated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu, took
+place in 1788-1792, whereas Bogle's description of the Jong was written
+fourteen years earlier. A more general impression is that centuries ago
+orders came from Lhasa to collect stones on the hillsides, and the
+building was constructed by forced labour in a few months. That is a
+tale of endurance and suffering that might very likely be passed from
+father to son for generations.
+
+Bogle's description of the town might have been written by an officer of
+the garrison to-day, only he wrote from the inmate's point of view. He
+noticed the houses 'so huddled together that one may chance to overlook
+them,' and the flat roofs covered with bundles of straw. He knocked his
+head against the low ceilings, and ran against the pillars that
+supported the beams. 'In the middle of the roof,' he wrote, 'is a hole
+to let out smoke, which, however, departs not without making the whole
+room as black as a chimney. The opening serves also to let in the light;
+the doors are full of holes and crevices, through which the women and
+children keep peeping.' Needless to say nothing has changed in the last
+hundred and thirty years, unless it is that the women are bolder. I
+looked down from the roof this morning on Phari town, lying like a
+rabbit-warren beneath the fort. All one can see from the battlement are
+the flat roofs of low black houses, from which smoke issues in dense
+fumes. The roofs are stacked with straw, and connected by a web of
+coloured praying-flags running from house to house, and sometimes over
+the narrow alleys that serve as streets. Enormous fat ravens perch on
+the wall, and innumerable flocks of twittering sparrows. For warmth's
+sake most of the rooms are underground, and in these subterranean dens
+Tibetans, black as coal-heavers, huddle together with yaks and mules.
+Tibetan women, equally dirty, go about, their faces smeared and blotched
+with caoutchouc, wearing a red, hoop-like head-dress, ornamented with
+alternate turquoises and ruby-coloured stones.
+
+In the fort the first thing one meets of a morning is a troop of these
+grimy sirens, climbing the stairs, burdened with buckets of chopped ice
+and sacks of yak-dung, the two necessaries of life. The Tibetan coolie
+women are merry folk; they laugh and chatter over their work all day
+long, and do not in the least resist the familiarities of the Gurkha
+soldiers. Sometimes as they pass one they giggle coyly, and put out the
+tongue, which is their way of showing respect to those in high places;
+but when one hears their laughter echoing down the stairs it is
+difficult to believe that it is not intended for saucy impudence. Their
+merriment sounds unnatural in all this filth and cold and discomfort.
+Certainly if Bogle returned to Phari he would find the women very much
+bolder, though, I am afraid, not any cleaner. Could he see the
+Englishmen in Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.
+
+Often in civilized places I shall think of the group at Phari in the
+mess-room after dinner--a group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a
+blackened, smut-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from head to foot,
+bearded like wild men of the woods, and sitting round a yak-dung fire,
+drinking rum. After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might qualify
+for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one day in Piccadilly one may
+encounter a half-remembered face, and something familiar in walk or gait
+may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in 'Jimmy's,' memories of
+argol-smoke and frozen moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune
+or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was once dreamed of among the
+unattainable luxuries of life.
+
+
+    _March 26-28._
+
+Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong. It seems impossible,
+unnatural, that we are going on. After a week or two the place becomes
+part of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there. It is difficult
+to imagine life anywhere else. One feels as if one could never again be
+cold or dirty, or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of that gray
+fortress with its strange unknown history, standing alone in the
+desolate plain. For my own part, speaking figuratively--and unfigurative
+language is impotent on an occasion like this--the place will leave an
+indelible black streak--very black indeed--on a kaleidoscopic past.
+There can be no faint impressions in one's memories of Phari Jong. The
+dirt and smoke and dust are elemental, and the cold is the cold of the
+Lamas' frigid hell.
+
+All the while I was in Phari I forgot the mystery of Tibet. I have felt
+it elsewhere, but in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable folk
+who had lived in the rooms where we slept, and fled in the night, were
+content with their smut-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and
+chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these murky environments
+any spiritual instincts could survive to inspire the religious
+frescoings on the wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of
+designs is significant and symbolical. One's first impression is that
+these allegories and metaphysical abstractions must have been
+meaningless to the inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot
+dissociate the artistic expression of religious feeling from cleanliness
+and refinement, or at least pious care. One feels that they must be the
+relics of a decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but in
+ignorant superstition, like other fetishes all over the world. Yet this
+feeling of scepticism is not so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At
+first one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely animal and
+sensual, and to attribute their religious observances to the fear of
+demons who will punish the most trivial omission in ritual.
+
+Next one begins to wonder if they really believe in the efficacy of
+mechanical prayer, if they take the trouble to square their conscience
+with their inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to be
+absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there may come a suspicion that
+the better classes, though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma
+and definite convictions about things spiritual and natural that are
+not easily upset. Perhaps before we turn our backs on the mystery of
+Tibet we will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross materialists
+and philistines--we who are always groping and grasping after the
+particular, while they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.
+
+After all, devious and unscrupulous as their policy may have been, the
+Tibetans have had one definite aim in view for centuries--the
+preservation of their Church and State by the exclusion of all foreign
+and heretical influences. When we know that the Mongol cannot conceive
+of the separation of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is only
+natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual or otherwise, to a
+foreign Court should introduce the first elements of dissolution in a
+system of Government that has held the country intact for centuries. And
+let it be remarked that Great Britain is not responsible for this
+deviation in a hitherto inveterate policy.
+
+But to return to Phari. My last impression of the place as I passed out
+of its narrow alleys was a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of
+yak-dung over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel, and muttering
+the sacred formula that was to release him from all rebirth in this
+suffering world. The wish seemed natural enough.
+
+It was a bright, clear morning when we turned our backs on the old fort
+and started once more on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we
+passed the miserable little village of Chuggya, which is apparently
+inhabited by ravens and sparrows, and a diminutive mountain-finch that
+looks like a half-starved robin. A mile to the right before entering the
+village is the monastery of the Red Lamas, which was the lodging-place
+of the Bhutanese Envoy during his stay at Phari. The building, which is
+a landmark for miles, is stone-built, and coated over with red earth,
+which gives it the appearance of brick. Its overhanging gables,
+mullioned windows without glass, that look like dominoes in the
+distance, the pendent bells, and the gay decorations of Chinese paper,
+look quaint and mystical, and are in keeping with the sacred character
+of the place. Bogle stopped here on October 27, 1774, and drank tea with
+the Abbot. It is very improbable that any other white man has set foot
+in the monastery since, until the other day, when some of the garrison
+paid it a visit and took photographs of the interior. The Lamas were a
+little deprecatory, but evidently amused. I did not expect them to be so
+tolerant of intrusion, and their clamour for backsheesh on our departure
+dispelled one more illusion.
+
+At Chuggya we were at the very foot of Chumulari (23,930 feet), which
+seems to rise sheer from the plain. The western flank is an abrupt wall
+of rock, but, as far as one can see, the eastern side is a gradual
+ascent of snow, which would present no difficulties to the trained
+mountaineer. One could ride up to 17,000 feet, and start the climb from
+a base 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Chumulari is the most sacred
+mountain in Tibet, and it is usual for devout Buddhists to stop and
+offer a sacrifice as they pass. Bogle gives a detailed account of the
+service, the rites of which are very similar to some I witnessed at
+Galingka on the Tibetan New Year, February 16.
+
+'Here we halted,' he wrote in his journal, 'and the servants gathering
+together a parcel of dried cow-dung, one of them struck fire with his
+tinder-box and lighted it. When the fire was well kindled, Parma took
+out a book of prayers, one brought a copper cup, another filled it with
+a kind of fermented liquor out of a new-killed sheep's paunch, mixing in
+some rice and flour; and after throwing some dried herbs and flour into
+the flame, they began their rites. Parma acted as chaplain. He chanted
+the prayers in a loud voice, the others accompanying him, and every now
+and then the little cup was emptied towards the rock, about eight or ten
+of these libations being poured forth. The ceremony was finished by
+placing upon the heap of stones the little ensign which my fond
+imagination had before offered up to my own vanity.'
+
+Most of the flags and banners one sees to-day on the chortens and roofs
+of houses, and cairns on the mountain-tops, must be planted with some
+such inaugural ceremony.
+
+Facing Chumulari on the west, and apparently only a few miles distant,
+are the two Sikkim peaks of Powhunri (23,210 feet) and Shudu-Tsenpa
+(22,960 feet). From Chuggya the Tangla is reached by a succession of
+gradual rises and depressions. The pass is not impressive, like the
+Jelap, as a passage won through a great natural barrier. One might cross
+it without noticing the summit, were it not for the customary cairns and
+praying-flags which the Lamas raise in all high places.
+
+From a slight rise on the east of the pass one can look down across the
+plateau on Tuna, an irregular black line like a caterpillar, dotted with
+white spots, which glasses reveal to be tents. The Bamtso lake lies
+shimmering to the east beneath brown and yellow hills. At noon objects
+dance elusively in the mirage. Distances are deceptive. Yaks grazing are
+like black Bedouin tents. Here, then, is the forbidden land. The
+approach is as it should be. One's eyes explore the road to Lhasa dimly
+through a haze. One would not have it laid out with the precision of a
+diagram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
+
+
+To write of any completed phase of the expedition at this stage, when I
+have carried my readers only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity
+that requires an apology. My excuse is that to all transport officers,
+and everyone who was in touch with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will
+be remembered as the very backbone of resistance, the most implacable
+barriers to our advance.
+
+The expedition was essentially a transport 'show.' It is true that the
+Tibetans proved themselves brave enemies, but their acquired military
+resources are insignificant when compared with the obstacles Nature has
+planted in the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the passes, the
+severity of the climate, the sterility of the mountains and tablelands,
+make the interior of the country almost inaccessible to an invading
+army. That we went through these obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was
+a matter of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to many members of
+the expeditionary force.
+
+To appreciate the difficulties the mission force had to contend with,
+one must first realize the extraordinary changes of climate that are
+experienced in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna. Choose the coldest day
+in the year at Kew Gardens, expose yourself freely to the wind, and then
+spend five minutes in the tropical house, and you may gather some idea
+of the sensation of sleeping in the Rungpo Valley the night after
+crossing the Jelapla.
+
+When I first made the journey in early January, even the Rungpo Valley
+was chilly, and the vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the
+change very keenly in March, when I made a hurried rush into Darjeeling
+for equipment and supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the
+pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was warm and sunny in the
+daytime, in places where there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were
+beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw, migratory duck were coming
+up the valley in twos and threes from the plains of India--even a few
+vultures had arrived to fatten on the carcasses of the dead transport
+animals. The morning after leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at
+13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale and rock. When I
+crossed the Jelapla half a hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet
+of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take advantage of every
+protuberance in the rock to prevent myself from being blown over the
+_khud_. The road was impassable for mules and ponies. The cold was
+numbing. The next evening, in a valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was
+suffering from the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and vegetation
+is equally striking--from glaciers and moraines to tropical forests
+brilliant with the scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet I
+had not seen an insect of any kind for two months, but in the Sikkim
+valleys the most gorgeous butterflies were abundant, and the rest-house
+at Rungpo was invested by a plague of flies. In the hot weather the
+climate of the Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most stations
+in the plains of India. The valleys are close and shut in, and the heat
+is intensified by the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders. In
+the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious. The Supply and
+Transport Corps, who were left behind at stages like Rungpo through the
+hot weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time on the whole than the
+half-frozen troops at the front, and they were left out of all the fun.
+
+Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the severity of climate,
+and the scarcity of fodder and fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend
+with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest,
+foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
+precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst
+fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
+with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred
+buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven
+camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died
+by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
+was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally
+purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they
+reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected;
+the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no
+precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and
+at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were massed on
+the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after
+much patient care, the disease was stamped out.
+
+Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted
+struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
+the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superstitious
+natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
+As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were
+attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left
+the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in
+climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the
+Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds
+from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female
+yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases,
+the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The
+epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
+fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried
+off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven
+through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous
+mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were
+formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.
+Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high
+altitudes, where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless corps. The
+few survivors were exterminated by pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January
+23, the 3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437; two months
+afterwards all but 70 had died. On March 21, 80 exhausted beasts
+straggled into Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and 2nd Yak
+Corps, which originally numbered 2,300 heads. The officers, who, bearded
+and weather-beaten, deserted by many of their followers, after months of
+wandering, reached our camp with the remnants of the corps, told a story
+of hardship and endurance that would provide a theme for an epic.
+
+The epic of the yaks does not comprise the whole tale of disaster.
+Rinderpest carried off 77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps
+was segregated for two months with foot and mouth disease. Amongst other
+casualties there were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony corps, and
+the Tibet pony corps raised locally. The animals were hastily mobilized
+and incompletely equipped, overworked and underfed. Cheap and inferior
+saddlery was issued, which gave the animals sore backs within a week.
+The transport officer was in a constant dilemma. He had to overwork his
+animals or delay the provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently
+needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no rest, but worked till they
+dropped. Of the original draft of mules that were employed on the line
+to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per cent. died. It is no good trying to blink
+the fact that the expedition was unpopular, and that at the start many
+economical shifts were attempted which proved much more expensive in the
+end. Our party system is to blame. The Opposition must be appeased,
+expenses kept down, and the business is entered into half-heartedly. In
+the usual case a few companies are grudgingly sent to the front, and
+then, when something like a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps
+at the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade follows, and
+Government wakes to the necessity of grappling with the situation
+seriously.
+
+But to return to the spot where the evil effects of the system were
+felt, and not merely girded at. To replace and supplement the local
+drafts of animals that were dying, trained Government mule corps were
+sent up from the plains, properly equipped and under experienced
+officers. These did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in Lhasa on
+August 3 in as good condition as one could wish. Of all transport
+animals, the mule is the hardiest and most enduring. He does not
+complain when he is overloaded, but will go on all day, and when he
+drops there is no doubt that he has had enough. Nine times out of ten
+when he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent to extremes of
+heat and cold. On the road from Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules
+fell over a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally submerged.
+Their drivers could not pull them out, and, to solve the dilemma, went
+on and reported them dead. The next day an officer found them and
+extricated them alive. They had been exposed to 46° of frost. They still
+survive.
+
+Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in good condition, unless it
+is the Balti and Ladaki coolie. Several hundred of these hardy
+mountaineers were imported from the North-West frontier to work on the
+most dangerous and difficult sections of the road. They can bear cold
+and fatigue and exposure better than any transport animal on the line,
+and they are surer-footed. Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but
+were afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are excellent workers
+at high altitudes, and sing cheerily as they toil up the mountains with
+their loads. I have seen them throw down their packs when they reached
+the summit of a pass, make a rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer
+lustily like school-boys. But the coolies were not all equally
+satisfactory. Those indented from the Nepal durbar were practically an
+impressed gang. Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm clothing did
+not seem to reconcile them to hard work, and after a month or two they
+became discontented and refractory. Their officers, however, were men of
+tact and decision, and they were able to prevent what might have been a
+serious mutiny. The discontented ones were gradually replaced by Baltis,
+Ladakis, and Garwhalis, and the coolies became the most reliable
+transport corps on the line.
+
+Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression current at the time,
+was got into working order, and a system was gradually developed by
+which the right animal, man, or conveyance was working in the right
+place, and supplies were sent through at a pace that was very creditable
+considering the country traversed.
+
+From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a distance of sixty miles,
+the ascent in the road is scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a
+few contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this section of the
+line was worked by bullock-carts. Government carts are built to carry 11
+maunds (880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs with 15 or 16
+maunds. As the carrying power of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is
+only 2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport in a mountainous
+country, where there can be no road for vehicles, is nearly five times
+as difficult and complicated as in the plains. And this is without
+making any allowance for the inevitable mortality among transport
+animals at high elevations, or taking into account the inevitable
+congestion on mountain-paths, often blocked by snow, carried away by the
+rains, and always too narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.
+
+In the beginning of March, when the line was in its best working order,
+from 1,500 to 2,000 maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of these, only
+400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the rest was stored at Gantok or
+consumed on the road. Later, when the line was extended to Gyantse, not
+more than 100 maunds a day reached the front.
+
+In the first advance on Gyantse, our column was practically launched
+into the unknown. As far as we knew, no local food or forage could be
+obtained. It was too early in the season for the spring pasturage. We
+could not live on the country. The ever-lengthening line of
+communication behind us was an artery, the severing of which would be
+fatal to our advance.
+
+One can best realize the difficulties grappled with by imagining the
+extreme case of an army entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it
+must be remembered, can only carry its own food for ten days. That is
+to say, in a country where there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can
+make at the most nine marches. On the ninth day beasts and drivers will
+have consumed all the supplies taken with them. Supposing on the tenth
+day no supply-base has been reached, the convoy is stranded, and can
+neither advance nor retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary
+convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed nothing to the
+advance of the army. Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding,
+guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still await transport at the
+base.
+
+Fortunately, the country between our frontier and Lhasa is not all
+desert. Yet it is barren enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with
+such short preparation, we were able to push through troops to Gyantse
+in April, when there was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in Lhasa
+in August with a force of more than 4,000 fighting men and followers.
+
+Before the second advance to Gyantse the spring crops had begun to
+appear. Without them we could not have advanced. All other local produce
+on the road was exhausted. That is to say, for 160 miles, with the
+important exception of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our own
+supplies. The mules carried their own grain, and no more. Gyantse once
+reached, the Tibetan Government granaries and stores from the
+monasteries produced enough to carry us on. But besides the transport
+mules, there were 100 Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200
+mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers' mounts, to be fed,
+and these carried nothing--contributed nothing to the stomach of the
+army.
+
+How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an
+army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal
+was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two
+possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and
+impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not
+require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and
+fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that
+providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.
+
+The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from
+the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab on
+the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400
+pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth
+to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved
+the situation.
+
+The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu
+Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.
+
+The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the
+transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes
+nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of grass, tamarisk, and
+tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and
+wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy
+disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation.
+The red and white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the Tibetans hang
+about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and
+frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.
+
+If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced
+to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in
+their passage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did
+better. Yet I have often passed the Lieutenant in command of the corps
+lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning.
+Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of
+spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in
+adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think
+it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.
+
+The final advance from Gyantse to Lhasa was a comparatively easy matter.
+Crops were plentiful, and large supplies of grain were obtained from the
+monasteries and jongs on the road. We found, contrary to anticipation,
+that the produce in this part of Tibet was much greater than the
+consumption. In many places we found stores that would last a village
+three or four years. Our transport animals lived on the country. We
+arrived at Lhasa with 2,600 mules and 400 coolies. The yak and donkey
+corps were left at the river for convoy work. It would have been
+impossible to have pushed through in the winter.
+
+All the produce we consumed on the road was paid for. In this way the
+expense of the army's keep fell on the Lhasa Government, who had to pay
+the indemnity, and our presence in the country was not directly, at any
+rate, a burden on the agricultural population of the villages through
+which we passed.
+
+Looking back on the splendid work accomplished by the transport, it is
+difficult to select any special phase more memorable than another. The
+complete success of the organization and the endurance and grit
+displayed by officers and men are equally admirable. I could cite the
+coolness of a single officer in a mob of armed and mutinous coolies,
+when the compelling will of one man and a few blows straight from the
+shoulder kept the discontented harnessed to their work and quelled a
+revolt; or the case of another who drove his diseased yaks over the snow
+passes into Chumbi, and after two days' rest started with a fresh corps
+on ten months of the most tedious labour the mind of man can imagine,
+rising every day before daybreak in an almost Arctic cold, traversing
+the same featureless tablelands, and camping out at night cheerfully in
+the open plain with his escort of thirty rifles. There was always the
+chance of a night attack, but no other excitement to break the eternal
+monotony. But it was all in the day's work, and the subaltern took it
+like a picnic. Another supreme test of endurance in man and beast were
+the convoys between Chumbi and Tuna in the early part of the year, which
+for hardships endured remind me of Skobeleff's dash through the Balkans
+on Adrianople. Only our labours were protracted, Skobeleff's the
+struggle of a few days. Even in mid-March a convoy of the 12th Mule
+Corps, escorted by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, were overtaken by
+a blizzard on their march between Phari and Tuna, and camped in two feet
+of snow with the thermometer 18° below zero. A driving hurricane made it
+impossible to light a fire or cook food. The officers were reduced to
+frozen bully beef and neat spirits, while the sepoys went without food
+for thirty-six hours. The fodder for the mules was buried deep in snow.
+The frozen flakes blowing through the tents cut like a knife. While the
+detachment was crossing a stream, the mules fell through the ice, and
+were only extricated with great difficulty. The drivers arrived at Tuna
+frozen to the waist. Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten,
+and thirty men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had
+to be carried in on mules. On the same day there were seventy cases of
+snow-blindness among the 8th Gurkhas.
+
+Until late in April all the plain was intersected by frozen streams.
+Blankets were stripped from the mules to make a pathway for them over
+the ice. Often they went without water at night, and at mid-day, when
+the surface of the ice was melted, their thirst was so great that many
+died from overdrinking.
+
+Had the Tibetans attacked us in January, they would have taken us at a
+great disadvantage. The bolts of our rifles jammed with frozen oil. Oil
+froze in the Maxims, and threw them out of gear. More often than not the
+mounted infantry found the butts of their rifles frozen in the buckets,
+and had to dismount and use both hands to extricate them.
+
+I think these men who took the convoys through to Tuna; the 23rd, who
+wintered there and supplied most of the escort; and the 8th Gurkhas, who
+cut a road in the frost-bound plain, may be said to have broken the back
+of the resistance to our advance. They were the pioneers, and the troops
+who followed in spring and summer little realized what they owed to
+them.
+
+The great difficulties we experienced in pushing through supplies to
+Tuna, which is less than 150 miles from our base railway-station at
+Siliguri, show the absurdity of the idea of a Russian advance on Lhasa.
+The nearest Russian outpost is over 1,000 miles distant, and the country
+to be traversed is even more barren and inhospitable than on our
+frontier.
+
+Up to the present the route to Chumbi has been viâ Siliguri and the
+Jelap and Nathu Passes, but the natural outlet of the valley is by the
+Ammo Chu, which flows through Bhutan into the Dooars, where it becomes
+the Torsa. The Bengal-Dooars Railway now extends to Madhari Hat, fifteen
+miles from the point where the Torsa crosses the frontier, whence it is
+only forty-eight miles as the crow flies to Rinchengong in the Chumbi
+Valley. When the projected Ammo Chu cart-road is completed, all the
+difficulty of carrying stores into Chumbi will be obviated. Engineers
+are already engaged on the first trace, and the road will be in working
+order within a few months. It avoids all snow passes, and nowhere
+reaches an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. The direct route will
+shorten the journey to Chumbi by several days, bring Lhasa within a
+month's journey of Calcutta, and considerably improve trade facilities
+between Tibet and India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
+
+
+The village of Tuna, which lies at the foot of bare yellow hills,
+consists of a few deserted houses. The place is used mainly as a
+halting-stage by the Tibetans. The country around is sterile and
+unproductive, and wood is a luxury that must be carried from a distance
+of nearly fifty miles.
+
+It was in these dismal surroundings that Colonel Younghusband's mission
+spent the months of January, February, and March. The small garrison
+suffered all the discomforts of Phari. The dirt and grime of the squalid
+little houses became so depressing that they pitched their tents in an
+open courtyard, preferring the numbing cold to the filth of the Tibetan
+hovels. Many of the sepoys fell victims to frost-bite and pneumonia, and
+nearly every case of pneumonia proved fatal, the patient dying of
+suffocation owing to the rarefied air.
+
+Colonel Younghusband had not been at Tuna many days before it became
+clear that there could be no hope of a peaceful solution. The Tibetans
+began to gather in large numbers at Guru, eight miles to the east, on
+the road to Lhasa. The Depon, or Lhasa General, whom Colonel
+Younghusband met on two occasions, repeated that he was only empowered
+to treat on condition that we withdrew to Yatung. Messages were sent
+from the Tibetan camp to Tuna almost daily asking us to retire, and
+negociations again came to a deadlock. After a month the tone of the
+Tibetans became minatory. They threatened to invest our camp, and an
+attack was expected on March 1, the Tibetan New Year. The Lamas,
+however, thought better of it. They held a Commination Service instead,
+and cursed us solemnly for five days, hoping, no doubt, that the British
+force would dwindle away by the act of God. Nobody was 'one penny the
+worse.'
+
+Though we made no progress with the Tibetans during this time, Colonel
+Younghusband utilized the halt at Tuna in cementing a friendship with
+Bhutan. The neutrality of the Bhutanese in the case of a war with Tibet
+was a matter of the utmost importance. Were these people unfriendly or
+disposed to throw in their lot with their co-religionists, the Tibetans,
+our line of communications would be exposed to a flank attack along the
+whole of the Tuna Plain, which is conterminous with the Bhutan frontier,
+as well as a rear attack anywhere in the Chumbi Valley as far south as
+Rinchengong. The Bhutanese are men of splendid physique, brave, warlike,
+and given to pillage. Their hostility would have involved the despatch
+of a second force, as large as that sent to Tibet, and might have
+landed us, if unprepared, in a serious reverse. The complete success of
+Colonel Younghusband's diplomacy was a great relief to the Indian
+Government, who were waiting with some anxiety to see what attitude the
+Bhutanese would adopt. Having secured from them assurances of their good
+will, Colonel Younghusband put their friendship to immediate test by
+broaching the subject of the Ammo Chu route to Chumbi through Bhutanese
+territory. Very little time was lost before the concession was obtained
+from the Tongsa Penlop, ruler of Bhutan, who himself accompanied the
+mission as far as Lhasa in the character of mediator between the Dalai
+Lama and the British Government. The importance of the Ammo Chu route in
+our future relations with Tibet I have emphasized elsewhere.
+
+I doubt if ever an advance was more welcome to waiting troops than that
+which led to the engagement at the Hot Springs.
+
+For months, let it be remembered, we had been marking time. When a move
+had to be made to escort a convoy, it was along narrow mountain-paths,
+where the troops had to march in single file. There was no possibility
+of an attack this side of Phari. The ground covered was familiar and
+monotonous. One felt cooped in, and was thoroughly bored and tired of
+the delay, so that when General Macdonald marched out of Phari with his
+little army in three columns, a feeling of exhilaration communicated
+itself to the troops.
+
+Here was elbow-room at last, and an open plain, where all the army corps
+of Europe might manoeuvre. At Tuna, on the evening of the 29th, it was
+given out in orders that a reconnaissance in force was to be made the
+next morning, and two companies of the 32nd Pioneers would be left at
+Guru. The Tibetan camp at the Hot Springs lay right across our line of
+march, and the hill that flanked it was lined with their sangars. They
+must either fight or retire. Most of us thought that the Tibetans would
+fade away in the mysterious manner they have, and build another futile
+wall further on. The extraordinary affair that followed must be a unique
+event in military history.
+
+The morning of the 30th was bitterly cold. An icy wind was blowing, and
+snow was lying on the ground. I put on my thick sheepskin for the first
+time for two months, and I owe my life to it.
+
+About an hour after leaving Tuna, two or three Tibetan messengers rode
+out from their camp to interview Colonel Younghusband. They got down
+from their ponies and began chattering in a very excited manner, like a
+flock of frightened parrots. It was evident to us, not understanding the
+language, that they were entreating us to go back, and the constant
+reference to Yatung told us that they were repeating the message that
+had been sent into the Tuna camp almost daily during the past few
+months--that if we retired to Yatung the Dalai Lama would send an
+accredited envoy to treat with us. Being met with the usual answer,
+they mounted dejectedly and rode off at a gallop to their camp.
+
+Soon after they had disappeared another group of horsemen were seen
+riding towards us. These proved to be the Lhasa Depon, accompanied by an
+influential Lama and a small escort armed with modern rifles. The rifles
+were naturally inspected with great interest. They were of different
+patterns--Martini-Henri, Lee-Metford, Snider--but the clumsily-painted
+stocks alone were enough to show that they were shoddy weapons of native
+manufacture. They left no mark on our troops.
+
+According to Tibetan custom, a rug was spread on the ground for the
+interview between Colonel Younghusband and the Lhasa Depon, who
+conferred sitting down. Captain O'Connor, the secretary of the mission,
+interpreted. The Lhasa Depon repeated the entreaty of the messengers,
+and said that there would be trouble if we proceeded. Colonel
+Younghusband's reply was terse and to the point.
+
+'Tell him,' he said to Captain O'Connor, 'that we have been negociating
+with Tibet for fifteen years; that I myself have been waiting for eight
+months to meet responsible representatives from Lhasa, and that the
+mission is now going on to Gyantse. Tell him that we have no wish to
+fight, and that he would be well advised if he ordered his soldiers to
+retire. Should they remain blocking our path, I will ask General
+Macdonald to remove them.'
+
+The Lhasa Depon was greatly perturbed. He said that he had no wish to
+fight, and would try and stop his men firing upon us. But before he left
+he again tried to induce Colonel Younghusband to turn back. Then he rode
+away to join his men. What orders he gave them will never be known.
+
+I do not think the Tibetans ever believed in our serious intention to
+advance. No doubt they attributed our evacuation of Khamba Jong and our
+long delay in Chumbi to weakness and vacillation. And our forbearance
+since the negociations of 1890 must have lent itself to the same
+interpretation.
+
+As we advanced we could see the Tibetans running up the hill to the left
+to occupy the sangars. To turn their position, General Macdonald
+deployed the 8th Gurkhas to the crest of the ridge; at the same time the
+Pioneers, the Maxim detachment of the Norfolks, and Mountain Battery
+were deployed on the right until the Tibetan position was surrounded.
+
+The manoeuvre was completely successful. The Tibetans on the hill,
+finding themselves outflanked by the Gurkhas, ran down to the cover of
+the wall by the main camp, and the whole mob was encircled by our
+troops.
+
+It was on this occasion that the Sikhs and Gurkhas displayed that
+coolness and discipline which won them a European reputation. They had
+orders not to fire unless they were fired upon, and they walked right
+up to the walls of the sangars until the muzzles and prongs of the
+Tibetan matchlocks were almost touching their chests. The Tibetans
+stared at our men for a moment across the wall, and then turned and
+shambled down sulkily to join their comrades in the redan.
+
+No one dreamed of the sanguinary action that was impending. I
+dismounted, and hastily scribbled a despatch on my saddle to the effect
+that the Tibetan position had been taken without a shot being fired. The
+mounted orderly who carried the despatch bore a similar message from the
+mission to the Foreign Office. Then the disarming began. The Tibetans
+were told that if they gave up their arms they would be allowed to go
+off unmolested. But they did not wish to give up their arms. It was a
+ridiculous position, Sikh and Mongol swaying backwards and forwards as
+they wrestled for the possession of swords and matchlocks. Perhaps the
+humour of it made one careless of the underlying danger. Accounts differ
+as to how this wrestling match developed into war, how, to the delight
+of the troops, the toy show became the 'real thing.' Of one thing I am
+certain, that a rush was made in the south-east corner before a shot was
+fired. If there had been any firing, I would not have been wandering
+about by the Tibetan flank without a revolver in my hand. As it was, my
+revolver was buried in the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket under my
+poshteen.
+
+I have no excuse for this folly except a misplaced contempt for Tibetan
+arms and courage--a contempt which accounted for our only serious
+casualty in the affair of 1888.[12] Also I think there was in the margin
+of my consciousness a feeling that one individual by an act of rashness
+might make himself responsible for the lives of hundreds. Hemmed in as
+the Tibetans were, no one gave them credit for the spirit they showed,
+or imagined that they would have the folly to resist. But we had to deal
+with the most ignorant and benighted people on earth, most of whom must
+have thought our magazine rifles and Maxims as harmless as their own
+obsolete matchlocks, and believed that they bore charms by which they
+were immune from death.
+
+  [12] When Colonel Bromhead pursued a Tibetan unarmed. Called upon to
+      surrender, the Tibetan turned on Colonel Bromhead, cut off his
+      right arm, and badly mutilated the left.
+
+The attack on the south-east corner was so sudden that the first man was
+on me before I had time to draw my revolver.[13] He came at me with his
+sword lifted in both hands over his head. He had a clear run of ten
+yards, and if I had not ducked and caught him by the knees he must have
+smashed my skull open. I threw him, and he dragged me to the ground.
+Trying to rise, I was struck on the temple by a second swordsman, and
+the blade glanced off my skull. I received the rest of my wounds, save
+one or two, on my hands--as I lay on my face I used them to protect my
+head. After a time the blows ceased; my assailants were all shot down or
+had fled. I lay absolutely still for a while until I thought it safe to
+raise my head. Then I looked round, and, seeing no Tibetans near in an
+erect position, I got up and walked out of the ring between the rifles
+of the Sikhs. The firing line had been formed in the meantime on a mound
+about thirty yards behind me, and I had been exposed to the bullets of
+our own men from two sides, as well as the promiscuous fire of the
+Tibetans.
+
+  [13] The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs affair were
+      inaccurate as to the manner in which I was wounded, and also
+      Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only European anywhere near me
+      at the time. Major Dunlop shot his own man, but at such close
+      quarters that the Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his
+      rifle and cut off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald
+      and Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers,
+      were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined
+      house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.
+
+The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more fatal for their stand--a
+bluff hill to the north, a marsh and stream on the east, and to the west
+a stone wall built across the path, which they had to scale in their
+attempted assault on General Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got
+over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground, packed so thickly with
+seething humanity that the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in
+offered little danger to their own men.
+
+The Lhasa General must have fired off his revolver after I was struck
+down. I cannot credit the rumour that his action was a signal for a
+general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed themselves to be herded
+together as a ruse to get us at close quarters. To begin with, the
+demand that they should give up their arms, and the assurance that they
+might go off unmolested, must have been quite unexpected by them, and I
+doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack at close quarters.
+
+My own impression is that the shot was the act of a desperate man,
+ignorant and regardless of what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his
+army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot having been fired, must
+have meant ruin to him, and probably death. When we reached Gyantse we
+heard that his property had been confiscated from his family on account
+of his failure to prevent our advance.
+
+The Depon was a man of fine presence and bearing. I only saw him once,
+in his last interview with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot dissociate
+from him a personal courage and a pride that must have rankled at the
+indignity of his position. Probably he knew that his shot was suicidal.
+
+The action has been described as one of extreme folly. But what was left
+him if he lived except shame and humiliation? And what Englishman with
+the same prospect to face, caught in this dark eddy of circumstance,
+would not have done the same thing? He could only fire, and let his men
+take their chance, God help them!
+
+And the rabble? They have been called treacherous. Why, I don't know.
+They were mostly impressed peasants. They did not wish to give up their
+arms. Why should they? They knew nothing of the awful odds against them.
+They were being hustled by white men who did not draw knives or fire
+guns. Amid that babel of 1,500 men, many of them may not have heard the
+command; they may not have believed that their lives would have been
+spared.
+
+Looking back on the affair with all the sanity of experience, nothing is
+more natural than what happened. It was folly and suicide, no doubt; but
+it was human nature. They were not going to give in without having a
+fling. I hope I shall not be considered a pro-Tibetan when I say that I
+admire their gallantry and dash.
+
+As my wounds were being dressed I peered over the mound at the rout.
+They were walking away! Why, in the name of all their Bodhisats and
+Munis, did they not run? There was cover behind a bend in the hill a few
+hundred yards distant, and they were exposed to a devastating hail of
+bullets from the Maxims and rifles, that seemed to mow down every third
+or fourth man. Yet they walked!
+
+It was the most extraordinary procession I have ever seen. My friends
+have tried to explain the phenomenon as due to obstinacy or ignorance,
+or Spartan contempt for life. But I think I have the solution. They
+were bewildered. The impossible had happened.
+
+Prayers, and charms, and mantras, and the holiest of their holy men, had
+failed them. I believe they were obsessed with that one thought. They
+walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned in their
+gods.
+
+After the last of the retiring Tibetans had disappeared round the corner
+of the Guru road, the 8th Gurkhas descended from the low range of hills
+on the right of the position, and crossed the Guru Plain in extended
+order with the 2nd Mounted Infantry on their extreme left. Orders were
+then received by Major Row, commanding the detachment, to take the left
+of the two houses which were situated under the hills at the further
+side of the plain. This movement was carried out in conjunction with the
+mounted infantry. The advance was covered by the 7-pounder guns of the
+Gurkhas under Captain Luke, R.A. The attacking force advanced in
+extended order by a series of small rushes. Cover was scanty, but the
+Tibetans, though firing vigorously, fired high, and there were no
+casualties. At last the force reached the outer wall of the house, and
+regained breath under cover of it. A few men of the Gurkhas then climbed
+on to the roof and descended into the house, making prisoners of the
+inmates, who numbered forty or fifty. Shortly afterwards the door, which
+was strongly barricaded, was broken in, and the remainder of the force
+entered the house.
+
+During the advance a number of the Tibetans attempted to escape on mules
+and ponies, but the greater number of these were followed up and killed.
+The Tibetan casualties were at least 700.
+
+Perhaps no British victory has been greeted with less enthusiasm than
+the action at the Hot Springs. Certainly the officers, who did their
+duty so thoroughly, had no heart in the business at all. After the first
+futile rush the Tibetans made no further resistance. There was no more
+fighting, only the slaughter of helpless men.
+
+It is easy to criticise after the event, but it seems to me that the
+only way to have avoided the lamentable affair at the Hot Springs would
+have been to have drawn up more troops round the redan, and, when the
+Tibetans were hemmed in with the cliff in their rear, to have given them
+at least twenty minutes to lay down their arms. In the interval the
+situation might have been made clear to everyone. If after the
+time-limit they still hesitated, two shots might have brought them to
+reason. Then, if they were mad enough to decide on resistance, their
+suicide would be on their own heads. But to send two dozen sepoys into
+that sullen mob to take away their arms was to invite disaster. Given
+the same circumstances, and any mob in the world of men, women, or
+children, civilized or savage, and there would be found at least one
+rash spirit to explode the mine and set a spark to a general
+conflagration.
+
+It was thought at the time that the lesson would save much future
+bloodshed. But the Tibetan is so stubborn and convinced of his
+self-sufficiency that it took many lessons to teach him the disparity
+between his armed rabble and the resources of the British Raj. In the
+light of after-events it is clear that we could have made no progress
+without inflicting terrible punishment. The slaughter at Guru only
+forestalled the inevitable. We were drawn into the vortex of war by the
+Tibetans' own folly. There was no hope of their regarding the British as
+a formidable Power, and a force to be reckoned with, until we had killed
+several thousand of their men.
+
+After the action the Tibetan wounded were brought into Tuna, and an
+abandoned dwelling-house was fitted up as a hospital. An empty cowshed
+outside served as an operating-theatre. The patients showed
+extraordinary hardihood and stoicism. After the Dzama Tang engagement
+many of the wounded came in riding on yaks from a distance of fifty or
+sixty miles. They were consistently cheerful, and always ready to
+appreciate a joke. One man, who lost both legs, said: 'In my next battle
+I must be a hero, as I cannot run away.' Some of the wounded were
+terribly mutilated by shell. Two men who were shot through the brain,
+and two who were shot through the lungs, survived. For two days
+Lieutenant Davys, Indian Medical Service, was operating nearly all day.
+I think the Tibetans were really impressed with our humanity, and looked
+upon Davys as some incarnation of a medicine Buddha. They never
+hesitated to undergo operations, did not flinch at pain, and took
+chloroform without fear. Their recuperative power was marvellous. Of the
+168 who were received in hospital, only 20 died; 148 were sent to their
+homes on hired yaks cured. Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna
+left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months after the action I found the Tibetans still lying where
+they fell. One shot through the shoulder in retreat had spun as he fell
+facing our rifles. Another tore at the grass with futile fingers through
+which a delicate pink primula was now blossoming. Shrunk arms and shanks
+looked hideously dwarfish. By the stream the bodies lay in heaps with
+parched skin, like mummies, rusty brown. A knot of coarse black hair,
+detached from a skull, was circling round in an eddy of wind. Everything
+had been stripped from the corpses save here and there a wisp of cloth,
+looking more grim than the nakedness it covered, or round the neck some
+inexpensive charm, which no one had thought worth taking for its occult
+powers. Nature, more kindly, had strewn round them beautiful spring
+flowers--primulas, buttercups, potentils. The stream 'bubbled oilily,'
+and in the ruined house bees were swarming.
+
+Ten miles beyond the Springs an officer was watering his horse in the
+Bamtso Lake. The beast swung round trembling, with eyes astare. Among
+the weeds lay the last victim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A HUMAN MISCELLANY
+
+
+The Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses like a row of
+cormorants, and watched the doolie pass underneath. At a little distance
+it was hard to distinguish the children, so motionless were they, from
+the squat praying-flags wrapped in black skin and projecting from the
+parapets of the roof. The very babes were impassive and inscrutable.
+Beside them perched ravens of an ebony blackness, sleek and well
+groomed, and so consequential that they seemed the most human element of
+the group.
+
+My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with a woman on the roof who wore
+a huge red hoop in her hair, which was matted and touzled like a
+negress's. A child behind was searching it, with apparent success. The
+woman asked a question, and the bearers jerked out a few guttural
+monosyllables, which she received with indifference. She was not visibly
+elated when she heard that the doolie contained the first victim of the
+Tibetan arms. I should like to have heard her views on the political
+situation and the question of a settlement. Some of her relatives,
+perhaps, were killed in the mêlée at the Hot Springs. Others who had
+been taken prisoners might be enlisted in the new doolie corps, and
+receiving an unexpected wage; others, perhaps, were wounded and being
+treated in our hospitals with all the skill and resources of modern
+science; or they were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or setting
+booby-traps for them, and lying in wait behind sangars to snipe them in
+the Red Idol Gorge.
+
+The bearers started again; the hot sun and the continued exertion made
+them stink intolerably. Every now and then they put down the doolie, and
+began discussing their loot--ear-rings and charms, rough turquoises and
+ruby-coloured stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and wounded. For
+the moment I was tired of Tibet.
+
+I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted with the country. I had
+been allured across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of the snows. I
+had escaped the Avernus of the plains, and I might have been content,
+but there was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an upper story,
+but I must climb on to the roof. Every morning the Sun-god threw open
+the magnificent portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and spires, black
+cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga--
+
+    'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work
+      Of subtlest jewellery.'
+
+One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace was clear and cloudless,
+but about its base hung little clouds of snow-dust, as though the
+Olympians had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen in the tracks
+of their chariots. All this was seen over galvanized iron roofs. The
+Sun-god had thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch and toss
+on the steps. While I was so engrossed I looked up. Columns of white
+cloud were rising to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft of
+sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid flash, a dazzle of
+jewel-work, and the portals closed. I was covered with bashfulness and
+shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some excuse to my companion,
+said I had an engagement, went straight to my rooms, and packed.
+
+But while the aroma of my carriers insulted the pure air, and their
+chatter over their tawdry spoil profaned the silent precincts of
+Chumulari, their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment
+of that earlier visit. I remembered sitting on a hillside near a
+lamasery, which was surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses.
+Outside the temple a priest was operating on a yak for vaccine. He had
+bored a large hole in the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his
+forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A hideous yellow trickle
+beneath indicated that the poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd
+of admiring little boys and girls looked on with relish. The smell of
+the poor yak was distressing, but the smell of the Lama was worse. I
+turned away in disgust--turned my back contentedly and without regret on
+the mysterious land and the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment,
+if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise with a dozen outriders
+and implored me to come, I would not have visited him, not for a
+thousand yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my eyes; the spirit
+of unrest died within me. I had a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white
+linen, fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed men.
+
+And here again I was returning very slowly to civilization; but I was
+coming back with half an army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his
+throne--or if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do what? I wondered
+if the gentlemen sitting snugly in Downing Street had any idea.
+
+At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and there were no doolie-bearers.
+The Darjeeling dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where they were
+most wanted, as the trained army doolie corps are plainsmen, who can
+barely breathe, much less work, at these high elevations. At last we
+secured some Bhutias who were returning to the front.
+
+The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though not in the capacity of
+bearer. These men regarded the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece
+of baggage that had to be conveyed from one camp to another, no matter
+how. Of the art of their craft they knew nothing, but they battled with
+the elements so stoutly that one forgave them their awkwardness. They
+carried me along mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find no
+foothold, through snow so deep and clogging that with all their toil
+they could make barely half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once
+from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick head-covering might
+have been fatal. Often they dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of
+a precipice, in places where one perspired with fright; they collided
+quite unnecessarily with stones and rocks; but they got through, and
+that was the main point. Men who have carried a doolie over a difficult
+mountain-pass (14,350 feet), slipping and stumbling through snow and ice
+in the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of the great Raj which
+they serve.
+
+On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the absence of trained
+doolie-bearers, I met a human miscellany that I am not likely to forget.
+Eight miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong, whence there is a
+continual descent to the plains of India. The neighbouring hills and
+valleys had been searched for men; high wages were offered, and at last
+from some remote village in Sikkim came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in
+appearance, and of uncouth speech, who understood no civilized tongue.
+They had never seen a doolie, but in default of better they were
+employed. It was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and the
+profession was unpopular. I was their 'first job.' I settled myself
+comfortably, all unconscious of my impending fate. They started off with
+a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air, caught it on their
+shoulders, and played cup and ball with the contents until they were
+tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was
+small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had
+neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the _khud_. My
+orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they
+would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army
+regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew,
+he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten
+miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a
+hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.
+
+There is a certain Mongol smell which is the most unpleasant human odour
+I know. It is common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans, but it is
+found in its purest essence in these low-country, cross-bred Lepchas,
+who were my close companions for two days. When we reached the heat of
+the valley, they jumped into the stream and bathed, but they emerged
+more unsavoury than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule. At the
+next village they got drunk, after which they developed an amazing
+surefootedness, and carried me in without mishap.
+
+After two days with my Lepchas we reached Rungli (2,000 feet), whence
+the road to the plains is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to a
+Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.
+
+'He writes all about our soldiers and the fighting in Tibet,' he said.
+'It all goes home to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at home
+are reading what he says an hour or two after he has given _khubber_ to
+the office here.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and if things are well the
+people in England will be very glad; and if we are ill and die, and
+there is too much cold, they will be very sorry.'
+
+The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere and sympathetic. If an
+Englishman had said the same thing, he would have been thought
+half-witted, but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes as if they
+were epigrams.
+
+The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point that it called up a little
+picture in my mind of the London Underground and a liveried official
+dealing out _Daily Mails_ to crowds of inquirers anxious for news of
+Tibet. Only the sun blazed overhead and the stream made music at our
+feet.
+
+I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned to the inevitable
+jolting, and expecting another promiscuous collection of humanity to do
+duty as _kahars_. But, to my great joy, I found twelve Lucknow
+doolie-wallahs waiting by the veranda, lithe and erect, and part of a
+drilled corps. Drill discipline is good, but in the art of their trade
+these men needed no teaching. For centuries their ancestors had carried
+palanquins in the plains, bearing Rajas and ladies of high estate,
+perhaps even the Great Mogul himself. The running step to their strange
+rhythmic chants must be an instinct to them. That morning I knew my
+troubles were at an end. They started off with steps of velvet,
+improvising as they went a kind of plaintive song like an intoned
+litany.
+
+The leading man chanted a dimeter line, generally with an iambus in the
+first foot; but when the road was difficult or the ascent toilsome, the
+metre became trochaic, in accordance with the best traditions of
+classical poetry. The hind-men responded with a sing-song trochaic
+dimeter which sounded like a long-drawn-out monosyllable. They never
+initiated anything. It was not custom; it had never been done. The laws
+of Nature are not so immutable as the ritual of a Hindu guild.
+
+We sped on smoothly for eight miles, and when I asked the _kahars_ if
+they were tired, they said they would not rest, as relays were waiting
+on the road. All the way they chanted their hymn of the obvious:--
+
+    'Mountains are steep;
+          _Chorus_: Yes, they are.
+    The road is narrow;
+          Yes, it is.
+    The sahib is wounded;
+          That is so.
+    With many wounds;
+          They are many.
+    The road goes down;
+          Yes, it does.
+    Now we are hurrying;
+          Yes, we are.'
+
+Here they ran swiftly till the next rise in the hill.
+
+Waiting in the shade for relays, I heard two Englishmen meet on the
+road. One had evidently been attached, and was going down to join his
+regiment; the other was coming up on special service. I caught fragments
+of our crisp expressive argot.
+
+_Officer going down_ (_apparently disillusioned_): 'Oh, it's the same
+old bald-headed maidan we usually muddle into.'
+
+_Officer coming up_: '... Up above Phari ideal country for native
+cavalry, isn't it?... A few men with lances prodding those fellows in
+the back would soon put the fear of God into them. Why don't they send
+up the --th Light Cavalry?'
+
+_Officer going down_: 'They've Walers, and you can't feed 'em, and the
+--th are all Jats. They're no good; can't do without a devil of a lot of
+milk. They want bucketsful of it. Well, bye-bye; you'll soon get fed up
+with it.'
+
+The doolie was hitched up, and the _kahars_ resumed their chant:
+
+    'A sahib goes up;
+          Yes, he does.
+    A sahib goes down;
+          That is so.'
+
+The heat and the monotonous cadence induced drowsiness, and one fell to
+thinking of this odd motley of men, all of one genus, descended from the
+anthropoid ape, and exhibiting various phases of evolution--the
+primitive Lepcha, advanced little further than his domestic dog; the
+Tibetan _kahar_ caught in the wheel of civilization, and forming part of
+the mechanism used to bring his own people into line; the Lucknow
+doolie-bearer and the Jemadar Sahib, products of a hoary civilization
+that have escaped complexity and nerves; and lord of all these, by
+virtue of his race, the most evolved, the English subaltern. All these
+folk are brought together because the people on the other side of the
+hills will insist on being obsolete anachronisms, who have been asleep
+for hundreds of years while we have been developing the sense of our
+duty towards our neighbour. They must come into line; it is the will of
+the most evolved.
+
+The next day I was carried for miles through a tropical forest. The damp
+earth sweated in the sun after last night's thunder-storm, and the
+vegetation seemed to grow visibly in the steaming moisture. Gorgeous
+butterflies, the epicures of a season, came out to indulge a love of
+sunshine and suck nectar from all this profusion. Overhead, birds
+shrieked and whistled and beat metal, and did everything but sing. The
+cicadas raised a deafening din in praise of their Maker, seeming to
+think, in their natural egoism, that He had made the forest, oak, and
+gossamer for their sakes. We were not a thousand feet above the sea.
+Thousands of feet above us, where we were camping a day or two ago, our
+troops were marching through snow.
+
+The next morning we crossed the Tista River, and the road led up through
+sal forests to a tea-garden at 3,500 feet. Here we entered the most
+perfect climate in the world, and I enjoyed genial hospitality and a
+foretaste of civilization: a bed, sheets, a warm bath, clean linen,
+fruit, sparkling soda, a roomy veranda with easy-chairs, and outside
+roses and trellis-work, and a garden bright with orchids and
+wild-turmeric and a profusion of semi-tropical and English flowers--all
+the things which the spoilt children of civilization take as a matter of
+course, because they have never slept under the stars, or known what it
+is to be hungry and cold, or exhausted by struggling against the forces
+of untamed Nature.
+
+At noon next day, in the cantonments at Jelapahar, an officer saw a
+strange sight--a field-hospital doolie with the red cross, and twelve
+_kahars_, Lucknow men, whose plaintive chant must have recalled old days
+on the North-West frontier. Behind on a mule rode a British orderly of
+the King's Own Scottish Borderers, bearded and weather-stained, and
+without a trace of the spick-and-spanness of cantonments. I saw the
+officer's face lighten; he became visibly excited; he could not restrain
+himself--he swung round, rode after my orderly, and began to question
+him without shame. Here was civilization longing for the wilderness, and
+over there, beyond the mist, under that snow-clad peak, were men in the
+wilderness longing for civilization.
+
+A cloud swept down and obscured the Jelap, as if the chapter were
+closed. But it is not. That implacable barrier must be crossed again,
+and then, when we have won the most secret places of the earth, we may
+cry with Burton and his Arabs, 'Voyaging is victory!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
+
+
+The intention of the Tibetans at the Hot Springs has not been made
+clear. They say that their orders were to oppose our advance, but to
+avoid a battle, just as our orders were to take away their arms, if
+possible, without firing a shot. The muddle that ensued lends itself to
+several interpretations, and the Tibetans ascribe their loss to British
+treachery. They say that we ordered them to destroy the fuses of their
+matchlocks, and then fired on them. This story was taken to Lhasa, with
+the result that the new levies from the capital were not deterred by the
+terrible punishment inflicted on their comrades. Orders were given to
+oppose us on the road to Gyantse, and an armed force, which included
+many of the fugitives from Guru, gathered about Kangma.
+
+The peace delegates always averred that we fired the first shot at Guru.
+But even if we give the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt, and admit
+that the action grew out of the natural excitement of two forces
+struggling for arms, both of whom were originally anxious to avoid a
+conflict, there is still no doubt that the responsibility of continuing
+the hostilities lies with the Tibetans.
+
+On the morning of April 7 ten scouts of the 2nd Mounted Infantry, under
+Captain Peterson, found the Tibetans occupying the village of Samando,
+seventeen miles beyond Kalatso. As our men had orders not to fire or
+provoke an attack, they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one of
+the Tibetans to come out and parley. They said they would send for a
+man, and invited us to come nearer. When we had ridden up to within a
+hundred yards of the village, they opened a heavy fire on us with their
+matchlocks. Our scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards, and
+took cover behind stones. Not a man or pony was hit. Before retiring,
+the mounted infantry fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who were lining
+the roofs of two large houses and a wall that connected them, their
+heads only appearing above the low turf parapets. Twice the Tibetans
+sent off a mounted man for reinforcements, but our shooting was so good
+that each time the horse returned riderless. The next morning we found
+the village unoccupied, and discovered six dead left on the roofs, most
+of whom were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had penetrated the two
+feet of turf and killed the man behind. Putting aside the question of
+Guru, the Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility directed
+against the mission.
+
+After Samando there was no longer any doubt that the Tibetans intended
+to oppose our advance. On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a wall
+built across the valley and up the hills just this side of Kangma, which
+they reported as occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late to
+attack that night, we formed camp. The next morning we found the wall
+evacuated, and the villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired to
+the gorge below. This habit of building formidable barriers across a
+valley, stretching from crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a
+well-known trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built in the
+night and abandoned the next morning. One would imagine that, after
+toiling all night to make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
+their wall if they intended to make a stand anywhere. But they do not
+grudge the labour. Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
+Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot resist placing one on
+the top of the other. So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
+studded with these monuments of wasted labour, erected to propitiate the
+genii of the place, or from mere force of habit to while away an idle
+hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this practice of strengthening
+and abandoning positions more than anything else which gained the
+Tibetans the reputation of cowardice, which they have since shown to be
+totally undeserved.
+
+On April 8, owing to the delay in reconnoitring the wall, we made only
+about eight miles, and camped. The next morning we had marched about
+two miles, when we found the high ridge on the left flank occupied by
+the enemy, and the mounted infantry reported them in the gorge beyond.
+Two companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Major Row were sent up to the
+hill on the left to turn the enemy's right flank, and the mountain
+battery (No. 7) came into action on the right at over 3,000 yards. The
+enemy kept up a continuous but ineffectual fire from the ridge, none of
+their jingal bullets falling anywhere near us. The Gurkhas had a very
+difficult climb. The hill was quite 2,000 feet above the valley; the
+lower and a good deal of the other slopes were of coarse sand mixed with
+shale, and the rest nothing but slippery rock. The summit of the hill
+was approached by a number of step-like shale terraces covered with
+snow. When only a short way up, a snowstorm came on and obscured the
+Gurkhas from view. The cold was intense, and the troops in the valley
+began to collect the sparse brushwood, and made fires to keep themselves
+warm.
+
+On account of the nature of the hillside and the high altitude, the
+progress of the Gurkhas was very slow, and it took them nearly three
+hours to reach the ridge held by the enemy. When about two-thirds of the
+way up, they came under fire from the ridge, but all the shots went
+high. The jingals carried well over them at about 1,200 yards. The enemy
+also sent a detachment to meet them on the top, but these did not fire
+long, and retired as the Gurkhas advanced. When the 8th reached the
+summit, the Tibetans were in full flight down the opposite slope, which
+was also snow-covered. Thirty were shot down in the rout, and fifty-four
+who were hiding in the caves were made prisoners.
+
+In the meanwhile the battery had been making very good practice at 3,000
+yards. Seven men were found dead on the summit, and four wounded,
+evidently by their fire.
+
+But to return to the main action in the gorge. The Tibetans held a very
+strong position among some loose boulders on the right, two miles beyond
+the gully which the Gurkhas had ascended to make their flank attack. The
+rocks extended from the bluff cliff to the path which skirted the
+stream. No one could ask for better cover; it was most difficult to
+distinguish the drab-coated Tibetans who lay concealed there. To attack
+this strong position General Macdonald sent Captain Bethune with one
+company of the 32nd Pioneers, placing Lieutenant Cook with his Maxim on
+a mound at 500 yards to cover Bethune's advance. Bethune led a frontal
+attack. The Tibetans fired wildly until the Sikhs were within eighty
+yards, and then fled up the valley. Not a single man of the 32nd was hit
+during the attack, though one sepoy was wounded in the pursuit by a
+bullet in the hand from a man who lay concealed behind a rock within a
+few yards of him. While the 32nd were dislodging the Tibetans from the
+path and the rocks above it, the mounted infantry galloped through them
+to reconnoitre ahead and cut off the fugitives in the valley. They also
+came through the enemy's fire at very close quarters without a casualty.
+On emerging from the gorge the mounted infantry discovered that the
+ridge the Tibetans had held was shaped like the letter S, so that by
+doubling back along an almost parallel valley they were able to
+intercept the enemy whom the Gurkhas had driven down the cliffs. The
+unfortunate Tibetans were now hemmed in between two fires, and hardly a
+man of them escaped.
+
+The Tibetan casualties, as returned at the time, were much exaggerated.
+The killed amounted to 100, and, on the principle that the proportion of
+wounded must be at least two to one, it was estimated that their losses
+were 300. But, as a matter of fact, the wounded could not have numbered
+more than two dozen.
+
+The prisoners taken by the Gurkhas on the top of the ridge turned out to
+be impressed peasants, who had been compelled to fight us by the Lamas.
+They were not soldiers by inclination or instinct, and I believe their
+greatest fear was that they might be released and driven on to fight us
+again.
+
+The action at the Red Idol Gorge may be regarded as the end of the first
+phase of the Tibetan opposition. We reached Gyantse on April 11, and the
+fort was surrendered without resistance. Nothing had occurred on the
+march up to disturb our estimate of the enemy. Since the campaign of
+1888 no one had given the Tibetans any credit for martial instincts, and
+until the Karo la action and the attack on Gyantse they certainly
+displayed none. It would be hard to exaggerate the strategical
+difficulties of the country through which we had to pass. The progress
+of the mission and its escort under similar conditions would have been
+impossible on the North-West frontier or in any country inhabited by a
+people with the rudiments of sense or spirit. The difficulties of
+transport were so great that the escort had to be cut down to the finest
+possible figure. There were barely enough men for pickets, and many of
+the ordinary precautions of field manoeuvres were out of the question.
+But the Tibetan failed to realize his opportunities. He avoided the
+narrow forest-clad ravines of Sikkim and Chumbi, and made his first
+stand on the open plateau at Guru. Fortunately for us, he never learnt
+what transport means to a civilized army. A bag of barley-meal, some
+weighty degchies, and a massive copper teapot slung over the saddle are
+all he needs; evening may produce a sheep or a yak. His movements are
+not hampered by supplies. If the importance of the transport question
+had ever entered his head, he would have avoided the Tuna camp, with its
+Maxims and mounted infantry, and made a dash upon the line of
+communications. A band of hardy mountaineers in their own country might
+very easily surprise and annihilate an ill-guarded convoy in a narrow
+valley thickly forested and flanked by steep hills. To furtively cut an
+artery in your enemy's arm and let out the blood is just as effective as
+to knock him on the head from in front. But in this first phase of the
+operations the Tibetans showed no strategy; they were badly led, badly
+armed, and apparently devoid of all soldier-like qualities. Only on one
+or two occasions they displayed a desperate and fatal courage, and this
+new aspect of their character was the first indication that we might
+have to revise the views we had formed sixteen years ago of an enemy who
+has seemed to us since a unique exception to the rule that a hardy
+mountain people are never deficient in courage and the instinct of
+self-defence.
+
+The most extraordinary aspect of the fighting up to our arrival at
+Gyantse was that we had only one casualty from a gunshot wound--the Sikh
+who was shot in the hand at the Dzama Tang affair by a Tibetan whose
+jezail was almost touching him. Yet at the Hot Springs the Tibetans
+fired off their matchlocks and rifles into the thick of us, and at Guru
+an hour afterwards the Gurkhas walked right up to a house held by the
+enemy, under heavy fire, and took it without a casualty. The mounted
+infantry were exposed to a volley at Samando at 100 yards, and again in
+the Red Idol Gorge they rode through the enemy's fire at an even
+shorter range. In the same action the 32nd made a frontal attack on a
+strong position which was held until they were within eighty yards, and
+not a man was hit. No wonder we had a contempt for the Tibetan arms.
+Their matchlocks, weapons of the rudest description, must have been as
+dangerous to their own marksmen as to the enemy; their artillery fire,
+to judge by our one experience of it at Dzama Tang, was harmless and
+erratic; and their modern Lhasa-made rifles had not left a mark on our
+men. The Tibetans' only chance seemed to be a rush at close quarters,
+but they had not proved themselves competent swordsmen. My own
+individual case was sufficient to show that they were bunglers. Besides
+the twelve wounds I received at the Hot Springs, I found seven
+sword-cuts on my poshteen, none of which were driven home. During the
+whole campaign we had only one death from sword-wounds.
+
+Arrived at Gyantse, we settled down with some sense of security. A
+bazaar was held outside the camp. The people seemed friendly, and
+brought in large quantities of supplies. Colonel Younghusband, in a
+despatch to the Foreign Office, reported that with the surrender of
+Gyantse Fort on April 12 resistance in that part of Tibet was ended. A
+letter was received from the Amban stating that he would certainly reach
+Gyantse within the next three weeks, and that competent and trustworthy
+Tibetan representatives would accompany him. The Lhasa officials, it
+was said, were in a state of panic, and had begged the Amban to visit
+the British camp and effect a settlement.
+
+On April 20 General Macdonald's staff, with the 10-pounder guns, three
+companies of the 23rd Pioneers, and one and a half companies of the 8th
+Gurkhas, returned to Chumbi to relieve the strain on the transport and
+strengthen the line of communications. Gyantse Jong was evacuated, and
+we occupied a position in a group of houses, as we thought, well out of
+range of fire from the fort.
+
+Everything was quiet until the end of April, when we heard that the
+Tibetans were occupying a wall in some strength near the Karo la,
+forty-two miles from Gyantse, on the road to Lhasa. Colonel Brander, of
+the 32nd Pioneers, who was left in command at Gyantse, sent a small
+party of mounted infantry and pioneers to reconnoitre the position. They
+discovered 2,000 of the enemy behind a strong loopholed wall stretching
+across the valley, a distance of nearly 600 yards. As the party explored
+the ravine they had a narrow escape from a booby-trap, a formidable
+device of Tibetan warfare, which was only employed against our troops on
+this occasion. An artificial avalanche of rocks and stones is so
+cunningly contrived that the removal of one stone sends the whole engine
+of destruction thundering down the hillside. Luckily, the Tibetans did
+not wait for our main body, but loosed the machine on an advance guard
+of mounted infantry, who were in extended order and able to take shelter
+behind rocks.
+
+On the return of the reconnaissance Colonel Brander decided to attack,
+as he considered the gathering threatened the safety of the mission. The
+Karo Pass is an important strategical position, lying as it does at the
+junction of the two roads to India, one of which leads to Kangma, the
+other to Gyantse. A strong force holding the pass might at any moment
+pour troops down the valley to Kangma, cut us off in the rear, and
+destroy our line of communications. When Colonel Brander led his small
+force to take the pass, it was not with the object of clearing the road
+to Lhasa. The measure was purely defensive: the action was undertaken to
+keep the road open for convoys and reinforcements, and to protect
+isolated posts on the line. The force with the mission was still an
+'escort,' and so far its operations had been confined to dispersing the
+armed levies that blocked the road.
+
+On May 3 Colonel Brander left Gyantse with his column of 400 rifles,
+comprising three companies of the 32nd Pioneers, under Captains Bethune
+and Cullen and Lieutenant Hodgson; one company of the 8th, under Major
+Row and Lieutenant Coleridge, with two 7-pounder guns; the Maxim
+detachment of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow; and forty-five of
+the 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley. On the first day the
+column marched eighteen miles, and halted at Gobshi. On the second day
+they reached Ralung, eleven miles further, and on the third marched up
+the pass and encamped on an open spot about two miles from where the
+Tibetans had built their wall. A reconnaissance that afternoon estimated
+the enemy at 2,000, and they were holding the strongest position on the
+road to Lhasa. They had built a wall the whole length of a narrow spur
+and up the hill on the other side of the stream, and in addition held
+detached sangars high up the steep hills, and well thrown forward. Their
+flanks rested on very high and nearly precipitous rocks. It was only
+possible to climb the ridge on our right from a mile behind, and on the
+left from nearly three-quarters of a mile. Colonel Brander at first
+considered the practicability of delaying the attack on the main wall
+until the Gurkhas had completed their flanking movements, cleared the
+Tibetans out of the sangars that enfiladed our advance in the valley,
+and reached a position on the hills beyond the wall, whence they could
+fire into the enemy's rear. But the cliffs were so sheer that the ascent
+was deemed impracticable, and the next morning it was decided to make a
+frontal attack without waiting for the Gurkhas to turn the flank. No one
+for a moment thought it could be done.
+
+The troops marched out of camp at ten o'clock. One company of the 32nd
+Pioneers, under Captain Cullen, was detailed to attack on the right,
+and a second company, under Captain Bethune, to follow the river-bed,
+where they were under cover of the high bank until within 400 yards of
+the wall, and then rush the centre of the position. The 1st Mounted
+Infantry, under Captain Ottley, were to follow this company along the
+valley. The guns, Maxims, and one company of the 32nd in reserve,
+occupied a small plateau in the centre. Half a company of the 8th
+Gurkhas were left behind to guard the camp. A second half-company, under
+Major Row, were sent along the hillside on the left to attack the
+enemy's extreme right sangar, but their progress over the shifting shale
+slopes and jagged rocks was so slow that the front attack did not wait
+for them.
+
+The fire from the wall was very heavy, and the advance of Cullen's and
+Bethune's companies was checked. Bethune sent half a company back, and
+signalled to the mounted infantry to retire. Then, compelled by some
+fatal impulse, he changed his mind, and with half a company left the
+cover of the river-bed and rushed out into the open within forty yards
+of the main wall, exposed to a withering fire from three sides. His
+half-company held back, and Bethune fell shot through the head with only
+four men by his side--a bugler, a store-office babu, and two devoted
+Sikhs. What the clerk was doing there no one knows, but evidently the
+soldier in the man had smouldered in suppression among the office files
+and triumphed splendidly. It was a gallant reckless charge against
+uncounted odds. Poor Bethune had learnt to despise the Tibetans' fire,
+and his contempt was not unnatural. On the march to Gyantse the enemy
+might have been firing blank cartridges for all the effect they had left
+on our men. At Dzama Tang Bethune had made a frontal attack on a strong
+position, and carried it without losing a man. Against a similar rabble
+it might have been possible to rush the wall with his handful of Sikhs,
+but these new Kham levies who held the Karo la were a very different
+type of soldier.
+
+The frontal attack was a terrible mistake, as was shown four hours
+afterwards, when the enemy were driven from their position without
+further loss to ourselves by a flanking movement on the right.
+
+At twelve o'clock Major Row, after a laborious climb, reached a point on
+a hillside level with the sangars, which were strongly held on a narrow
+ledge 200 yards in front of him. Here he sent up a section of his men
+under cover of projecting rocks to get above the sangars and fire down
+into them. In the meanwhile some of the enemy scrambled on to the rocks
+above, and began throwing down boulders at the Gurkhas, but these either
+broke up or fell harmless on the shale slopes above. After waiting an
+hour, Major Row went back himself and found his section checked half-way
+by the stone-throwing and shots from above; they had tried another way,
+but found it impracticable.
+
+Keeping a few men back to fire on any stone-throwers who showed
+themselves, Row dribbled his men across the difficult place, and in half
+an hour reached the rocky ledge above the sangars and looked right down
+on the enemy. At the first few shots from the Gurkhas they began to
+bolt, and, coming into the fire of the men below, who now rushed
+forward, nearly every man--forty in all--was killed. One or two who
+escaped the fire found their flight cut off by a precipice, and in an
+abandonment of terror hurled themselves down on the rocks below. After
+clearing the sangar, the Gurkhas had only to surmount the natural
+difficulties of the rocky and steep hill; for though the enemy fired on
+them from the wall, their shooting was most erratic. When at last they
+reached a small spur that overlooked the Tibetan main position, they
+found, to their disgust, that each man was protected from their fire by
+a high stone traverse, on the right-hand of which he lay secure, and
+fired through loopholes barely a foot from the ground.
+
+The Gurkhas had accomplished a most difficult mountaineering feat under
+a heavy fire; they had turned the enemy out of their sangars, and after
+four hours' climbing they had scaled the heights everyone thought
+inaccessible. But their further progress was barred by a sheer cliff;
+they had reached a cul-de-sac. Looking up from the valley, it appeared
+that the spot where they stood commanded the enemy's position, but we
+had not reckoned on the traverses. This amazing advance in the enemy's
+defensive tactics had rendered their position unassailable from the
+left, and made the Gurkhas' flanking movement a splendid failure.
+
+It was now two o'clock, and, except for the capture of the enemy's right
+sangars, we had done nothing to weaken their opposition. The frontal and
+flanking attacks had failed. Bethune was killed, and seventeen men. Our
+guns had made no impression on their wall. Looking down from the spur
+which overlooked the Tibetan camp and the valley beyond, the Gurkhas
+could see a large reinforcement of at least 500 men coming up to join
+the enemy. The situation was critical. In four hours we had done
+nothing, and we knew that if we could not take the place by dusk we
+would have to abandon the attack or attempt to rush the camp at night.
+That would have been a desperate undertaking--400 men against 3,000, a
+rush at close quarters with the bayonet, in which the superiority of our
+modern rifles would be greatly discounted.
+
+Matters were at this crisis, when we saw the Tibetans running out of
+their extreme left sangars. At twelve o'clock, when the front attack had
+failed and the left attack was apparently making no progress, fifteen
+men of the 32nd who were held in reserve were sent up the hill on the
+right. They had reached a point above the enemy's left forward sangar,
+and were firing into it with great effect. Twice the Tibetans rushed
+out, and, coming under a heavy Maxim fire, bolted back again. The third
+time they fled in a mass, and the Maxims mowed down about thirty. The
+capture of the sangars was a signal for a general stampede. From the
+position they had won the Sikhs could enfilade the main wall itself. The
+Tibetans only waited a few shots; then they turned and fled in three
+huge bodies down the valley. Thus the fifteen Sikhs on the right saved
+the situation. The tension had been great. In no other action during the
+campaign, if we except Palla, did the success of our arms stand so long
+in doubt. Had we failed to take the wall by daylight, Colonel Brander's
+column would have been in a most precarious position. We could not
+afford to retire, and a night attack could only have been pushed home
+with heavy loss.
+
+Directly the flight began, the 1st Mounted Infantry--forty-two men,
+under Captain Ottley--rode up to the wall. They were ten minutes making
+a breach. Then they poured into the valley and harassed the flying
+masses, riding on their flanks and pursuing them for ten miles to within
+sight of the Yamdok Tso. It showed extraordinary courage on the part of
+this little band of Masbis and Gurkhas that they did not hesitate to
+hurl themselves on the flanks of this enormous body of men, like
+terriers on the heels of a flock of cattle, though they had had
+experience of their stubborn resistance the whole day long, and rode
+through the bodies of their fallen comrades. Not a man drew rein. The
+Tibetans were caught in a trap. The hills that sloped down to the valley
+afforded them little cover. Their fate was only a question of time and
+ammunition. The mounted infantry returned at night with only three
+casualties, having killed over 300 men.
+
+The sortie to the Karo la was one of the most brilliant episodes of the
+campaign. We risked more then than on any other occasion. But the safety
+of the mission and many isolated posts on the line was imperilled by
+this large force at the cross-roads, which might have increased until it
+had doubled or trebled if we had not gone out to disperse it. A weak
+commander might have faltered and weighed the odds, but Colonel Brander
+saw that it was a moment to strike, and struck home. His action was
+criticised at the time as too adventurous. But the sortie is one of the
+many instances that our interests are best cared for by men who are
+beyond the telegraph-poles, and can act on their own initiative without
+reference to Government offices in Simla.
+
+As the column advanced to the Karo la, a message was received that the
+mission camp at Gyantse had been attacked in the early morning of the
+5th, and that Major Murray's men--150 odd rifles--had not only beaten
+the enemy off, but had made three sorties from different points and
+killed 200.
+
+With the action at the Karo la and the attack on the mission at Gyantse
+began the second phase of the operations, during which we were
+practically besieged in our own camp, and for nine weeks compelled to
+act on the defensive. The courage of the Tibetans was now proved beyond
+a doubt. The new levies from Kham and Shigatze were composed of very
+different men from those we herded like sheep at Guru. They were also
+better armed than our previous assailants, and many of them knew how to
+shoot. At the same time they were better led. The primitive ideas of
+strategy hitherto displayed by the Tibetans gave place to more advanced
+tactics. The usual story got wind that the Tibetans were being led by
+trained Russian Buriats. But there was no truth in it. The altered
+conditions of the campaign, as we may call it, after it became necessary
+to begin active operations, were due to the force of circumstances--the
+arrival of stouter levies from the east, the great numerical superiority
+of the enemy, and their strongly fortified positions.
+
+The operations at Gyantse are fully dealt with in another chapter, and I
+will conclude this account of the opposition to our advance with a
+description of the attack on the Kangma post, the only attempt on the
+part of the enemy to cut off our line of communications. Its complete
+failure seems to have deterred the Tibetans from subsequent ventures of
+the kind.
+
+From Ralung, ten miles this side of the Karo la, two roads branch off to
+India. The road leading to Kangma is the shortest route; the other road
+makes a détour of thirty miles to include Gyantse. Ralung lies at the
+apex of the triangle, as shown in this rough diagram. Gyantse and Kangma
+form the two base angles.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If it had been possible, a strong post would have been left at the Karo
+la after the action of May 6. But our small force was barely sufficient
+to garrison Gyantse, and we had to leave the alternative approach to
+Kangma unguarded. An attack was expected there; the post was strongly
+fortified, and garrisoned by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, under
+Captain Pearson.
+
+The attack, which was made on June 7, was unexpectedly dramatic. We have
+learnt that the Tibetan has courage, but in other respects he is still
+an unknown quantity. In motive and action he is as mysterious and
+unaccountable as his paradoxical associations would lead us to imagine.
+In dealing with the Tibetans one must expect the unexpected. They will
+try to achieve the impossible, and shut their eyes to the obvious. They
+have a genius for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Their élan,
+their dogged courage, their undoubted heroism, their occasional
+acuteness, their more general imbecile folly and vacillation and
+inability to grasp a situation, make it impossible to say what they will
+do in any given circumstances. A few dozen men will hurl themselves
+against hopeless odds, and die to a man fighting desperately; a handful
+of impressed peasants will devote themselves to death in the defence of
+a village, like the old Roman patriots. At other times they will forsake
+a strongly sangared position at the first shot, and thousands will prowl
+round a camp at night, shouting grotesquely, but too timid to make a
+determined attack on a vastly outnumbered enemy.
+
+The uncertainty of the enemy may be accounted for to some extent by the
+fact that we are not often opposed by the same levies, which would imply
+that theirs is greatly the courage of ignorance. Yet in the face of the
+fighting at Palla, Naini, and Gyantse Jong, this is evidently no fair
+estimate of the Tibetan spirit. The men who stood in the breach at
+Gyantse in that hell of shrapnel and Maxim and rifle fire, and dropped
+down stones on our Gurkhas as they climbed the wall, met death
+knowingly, and were unterrified by the resources of modern science in
+war, the magic, the demons, the unseen, unimagined messengers of death.
+
+But the men who attacked the Kangma post, what parallel in history have
+we for these? They came by night many miles over steep mountain cliffs
+and rocky ravines, perhaps silently, with determined purpose, weighing
+the odds; or, as I like to think, boastfully, with song and jest,
+saying, 'We will steal in upon these English at dawn before they wake,
+and slay them in their beds. Then we will hold the fort, and kill all
+who come near.'
+
+They came in the gray before dawn, and hid in a gully beside our camp.
+At five the reveillé sounded and the sentry left the bastions. Then they
+sprang up and rushed, sword in hand, their rifles slung behind their
+backs, to the wall. The whole attack was directed on the south-east
+front, an unscalable wall of solid masonry, with bastions at each corner
+four feet thick and ten feet high. They directed their attack on the
+bastions, the only point on that side they could scramble over. They
+knew nothing of the fort and its tracing. Perhaps they had expected to
+find us encamped in tents on the open ground. But from the shallow
+nullah where they lay concealed, not 200 yards distant, and watched our
+sentry, they could survey the uncompromising front which they had set
+themselves to attack with the naked sword. They had no artillery or
+guncotton or materials for a siege, but they hoped to scale the wall and
+annihilate the garrison that held it. They had come from Lhasa to take
+Kangma, and they were not going to turn back. They came on undismayed,
+like men flushed with victory. The sepoys said they must be drunk or
+drugged. They rushed to the bottom of the wall, tore out stones, and
+flung them up at our sepoys; they leapt up to seize the muzzles of our
+rifles, and scrambled to gain a foothold and lift themselves on to the
+parapet; they fell bullet-pierced, and some turned savagely on the wall
+again. It was only a question of time, of minutes, and the cool
+mechanical fire of the 23rd Pioneers would have dropped every man. One
+hundred and six bodies were left under the wall, and sixty more were
+killed in the pursuit. Never was there such a hopeless, helpless
+struggle, such desperate and ineffectual gallantry.
+
+Almost before it was light the yak corps with their small escort of
+thirty rifles of the 2nd Gurkhas were starting on the road to Kalatso.
+They had passed the hiding-place of the Tibetans without noticing the
+500 men in rusty-coloured cloaks breathing quietly among the brown
+stones. Then the Tibetans made their charge, just as the transport had
+passed, and a party of them made for the yaks. Two Tibetan drivers in
+our service stood directly in their path. 'Who are you?' cried one of
+the enemy. 'Only yak-drivers,' was the frightened answer. 'Then, take
+that,' the Tibetan said, slashing at his arm with no intent to kill. The
+Gurkha escort took up a position behind a sangar and opened fire--all
+save one man, who stood by his yak and refused to come under cover,
+despite the shouts and warnings of his comrades. He killed several, but
+fell himself, hacked to pieces with swords. The Tibetans were driven
+off, and joined the rout from the fort. The whole affair lasted less
+than ten minutes.
+
+Our casualties were: the isolated Gurkha killed, two men in the fort
+wounded by stones, and three of the 2nd Gurkhas severely wounded--two by
+sword-cuts, one by a bullet in the neck.
+
+But what was the flame that smouldered in these men and lighted them to
+action? They might have been Paladins or Crusaders. But the Buddhists
+are not fanatics. They do not stake eternity on a single existence. They
+have no Mahdis or Juggernaut cars. The Tibetans, we are told, are not
+patriots. Politicians say that they want us in their country, that they
+are priest-ridden, and hate and fear their Lamas. What, then, drove them
+on? It was certainly not fear. No people on earth have shown a greater
+contempt for death. Their Lamas were with them until the final assault.
+Twenty shaven polls were found hiding in the nullah down which the
+Tibetans had crept in the dark, and were immediately despatched. What
+promises and cajoleries and threats the holy men used no one will ever
+know. But whatever the alternative, their simple followers preferred
+death.
+
+The second phase of the operations, in which we had to act on the
+defensive in Gyantse, and the beginning of the third phase, which saw
+the arrival of reinforcements and the collapse of the Tibetan
+opposition, are described by an eye-witness in the next two chapters.
+During the whole of these operations I was invalided in Darjeeling,
+owing to a second operation which had to be performed on my amputation
+wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GYANTSE
+
+[BY HENRY NEWMAN]
+
+
+Gyantse Plain lies at the intersection of four great valleys running
+almost at right angles to one another. In the north-eastern corner there
+emerge two gigantic ridges of sandstone. On one is built the jong, and
+on the other the monastery. The town fringes the base of the jong, and
+creeps into the hollow between the two ridges. The plain, about six
+miles by ten, is cultivated almost to the last inch, if we except a few
+stony patches here and there. There are, I believe, thirty-three
+villages in the plain. These are built in the midst of groves of poplar
+and willow. At one time, no doubt, the waters from the four valleys
+united to form a lake. Now they have found an outlet, and flow
+peacefully down Shigatze way. High up on the cold mountains one sees the
+cold bleached walls of the Seven Monasteries, some of them perched on
+almost inaccessible cliffs, whence they look sternly down on the warmth
+and prosperity below.
+
+For centuries the Gyantse folk had lived self-contained and happy,
+practising their simple arts of agriculture, and but dimly aware of any
+world outside their own. Then one day there marched into their midst a
+column of British troops--white-faced Englishmen, dark, lithe Gurkhas,
+great, solemn, bearded Sikhs--and it was borne in upon the wondering
+Gyantse men that beyond their frontiers there existed great nations--so
+great, indeed, that they ventured to dispute on equal terms with the
+awful personage who ruled from Lhasa. It is true that from time to time
+there must have passed through Gyantse rumours of war on the distant
+frontier. The armies that we defeated at Guru and in the Red Idol Gorge
+had camped at Gyantse on their way to and fro. Gyantse saw and wondered
+at the haste of Lhasa despatch-riders. But I question whether any
+Gyantse man realized that events, great and shattering in his world,
+were impending when the British column rounded the corner of Naini
+Valley.
+
+At first we were received without hostility, or even suspicion. The
+ruined jong, uninhabited save for a few droning Lamas, was surrendered
+as soon as we asked for it. A clump of buildings in a large grove near
+the river was rented without demur--though at a price--to the
+Commission. And when the country-people found that there was a sale for
+their produce, they flocked to the camp to sell. The entry of the
+British troops made no difference to the peace of Gyantse till the
+Lamas of Lhasa embarked on the fatal policy of levying more troops in
+Lhasa, Shigatze, and far-away Kham, and sending them down to fight. Then
+there entered the peaceful valley all the horrors of war--dead and
+maimed men in the streets and houses, burning villages, death and
+destruction of all kinds. Gyantse Plain and the town became scenes of
+desolation. To the British army in India war, unfortunately, is nothing
+new, but one can imagine what an upheaval this business of which I am
+about to write meant to people who for generations had lived in peace.
+
+The incidents connected with the arrival of the mission with its escort
+at Gyantse need not be described in detail. On the day of arrival we
+camped in the midst of some fallow fields about two miles from the jong.
+The same afternoon a Chinese official, who called himself 'General' Ma,
+came into camp with the news that the jong was unoccupied, and that the
+local Tibetans did not propose to offer any resistance. The next morning
+we took quiet possession of the jong, placing two companies of Pioneers
+in garrison. The General with a small escort visited the monastery
+behind the fort, and was received with friendliness by the venerable
+Abbot. Neither the villagers nor the towns-people showed any signs of
+resentment at our presence. The Jongpen actively interested himself in
+the question of procuring an official residence for Colonel Younghusband
+and the members of the mission. There were reports of the Dalai Lama's
+representatives coming in haste to treat. Altogether the outlook was so
+promising that nobody was surprised when, after a stay of a week,
+General Macdonald, bearing in mind the difficulty of procuring supplies
+for the whole force, announced his intention of returning to Chumbi with
+the larger portion of the escort, leaving a sufficient guard with the
+mission.
+
+The guard left behind consisted of four companies of the 32nd Pioneers,
+under Colonel Brander; four companies of the 8th Gurkhas, under Major
+Row; the 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley; and the machine-gun
+section of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow. Mention should also be
+made of the two 7-pounder mountain-guns attached to the 8th Gurkhas,
+under the command of Captain Luke.
+
+Before the General left for Chumbi he decided to evacuate the jong. The
+grounds on which this decision was come to were that the whole place was
+in a ruinous and dangerous condition, the surroundings were insanitary,
+there was only one building fit for human habitation, the water-supply
+was bad and deficient, and there seemed to be no prospect of further
+hostilities. Besides, from the military point of view there was some
+risk in splitting up the small guard to be left behind between the jong
+and the mission post. However, the precaution was taken of further
+dismantling the jong. The gateways and such portions as seemed capable
+of lending themselves to defence were blown up.
+
+The house, or, rather, group of houses, rented by Colonel Younghusband
+for the mission was situated about 100 yards from a well-made stone
+bridge over the river. A beautiful grove, mostly of willow, extended
+behind the post along the banks of the river to a distance of about 500
+yards. The jong lay about 1,800 yards to the right front. There were two
+houses in the intervening space, built amongst fields of iris and
+barley. Small groups of trees were dotted here and there. Altogether,
+the post was located in a spot as pleasant as one could hope to find in
+Tibet.
+
+For some days before the General left, all the troops were engaged in
+putting the post in a state of defence. It was found that the force to
+be left behind could be easily located within the perimeter of a wall
+built round the group of houses. There was no room, however, for 200
+mules and their drivers, needed for convoy purposes. These were placed
+in a kind of hornwork thrown out to the right front.
+
+After the departure of the General we resigned ourselves to what we
+conceived would be a monotonous stay at Gyantse of two or three months,
+pending the signing of the treaty. The people continued to be perfectly
+friendly. A market was established outside the post, to which
+practically the whole bazaar from Gyantse town was removed. We were able
+to buy in the market, very cheap, the famous Gyantse carpets, for which
+enormous prices are demanded at Darjeeling and elsewhere in India.
+Unarmed officers wandered freely about Gyantse town, and the monks of
+Palkhor Choide, the monastery behind the fort, willingly conducted
+parties over the most sacred spots. They even readily sold some of the
+images before the altars, and the silk screens which shrouded the forms
+of the gigantic Buddhas. I mention these facts about the carpets and
+images because, when hereafter they adorned Simla and Darjeeling
+drawing-rooms, unkind people began to say that British officers had
+wantonly looted Palkhor Choide, one of the most famous monasteries in
+Tibet.
+
+A little shooting was to be had, and officers wandered about the plain,
+gun in hand, bringing home mountain-hare--a queer little beast with a
+blue rump--duck, and pigeon. Occasionally an excursion up one of the
+side valleys would result in the shooting of a burhel or of a Tibetan
+gazelle. The country-people met with were all perfectly friendly.
+
+Another feature of those first few peaceful days at Gyantse was the
+eagerness with which the Tibetans availed themselves of the skilled
+medical attendance with the mission. At first only one or two men
+wounded at the Red Idol Gorge were brought in, but the skill of Captain
+Walton, Indian Medical Service, soon began to be noised abroad, and
+every morning the little outdoor dispensary was crowded with sufferers
+of all kinds.
+
+But during the last week in May reports began to reach Colonel
+Younghusband that, so far from attempting to enter into negociations,
+the Lhasa Government was levying an army in Kham, and that already five
+or six hundred men were camped on the other side of the Karo la, and
+were busily engaged in building a wall. Lieutenant Hodgson with a small
+force was sent to reconnoitre. He came back with the news that the wall
+was already built, stretching from one side of the valley to the other,
+and that there were several thousand well-armed men behind it. Both
+Colonel Younghusband and Colonel Brander considered it highly necessary
+that this gathering should be immediately dispersed, for it is a
+principle in Indian frontier warfare to strike quickly at any tribal
+assembly, in order to prevent it growing into dangerous proportions. The
+possibly exciting effect the force on the Karo la might have on the
+inhabitants of Gyantse had particularly to be considered. Accordingly,
+on May 3 Colonel Brander led the major portion of the Gyantse garrison
+towards the Karo la, leaving behind as a guard to the post two companies
+of Gurkhas, a company of the 32nd Pioneers, and a few mounted infantry,
+all under the command of Major Murray.
+
+I accompanied the Karo la column, and must rely on hearsay as to my
+facts with regard to the attack on the mission. We heard about the
+attack the night before Colonel Brander drove the Tibetans from their
+wall on the Karo la, after a long fight which altered all our previous
+conceptions of the fighting qualities of the Tibetans. The courage shown
+by the enemy naturally excited apprehension about the safety of the
+mission. Colonel Brander did not stay to rest his troops after their day
+of arduous fighting, but began his return march next morning, arriving
+at Gyantse on the 9th.
+
+The column had been warned that it was likely to be fired on from the
+jong if it entered camp by the direct Lhasa road. Accordingly, we
+marched in by a circuitous route, moving in under cover of the grove
+previously mentioned. The Maxims and guns came into action at the edge
+of the grove to cover the baggage. But, though numbers of Tibetans were
+seen on the walls of the jong, not a shot was fired.
+
+We then learnt the story of the attack on the post. It appears that the
+day after Colonel Brander left for the Karo la (May 3) certain wounded
+and sick Tibetans that we had been attending informed the mission that
+about 1,000 armed men had come down towards Gyantse from Shigatze, and
+were building a wall about twelve miles away. It was added that they
+might possibly attack the post if they got to know that the garrison had
+been largely depleted. This news seemed to be worth inquiring into, and,
+accordingly, next day Major Murray sent some mounted infantry to
+reconnoitre up the Shigatze road. The latter returned with the
+information that they had gone up the valley some seven or eight miles,
+but had found no signs of any enemy.
+
+The very next morning the post was attacked at dawn. It appears that the
+Shigatze force, about 1,000 strong, was really engaged in building a
+wall twelve miles away. Hearing that very few troops were guarding the
+mission, its commander--who, I hear, was none other than Khomba Bombu,
+the very man who arrested Sven Hedin's dash to Lhasa--determined to make
+a sudden attack on the post. He marched his men during the night, and
+about an hour before sunrise had them crouching behind trees and inside
+ditches all round the post.
+
+The attack was sudden and simultaneous. A Gurkha sentry had just time to
+fire off his rifle before the Tibetans rushed to our walls and had their
+muskets through our loopholes. The enemy did not for the moment attempt
+to scale, but contented themselves with firing into the post through the
+loopholes they had taken. This delay proved fatal to their plans, for it
+gave the small garrison time to rise and arm. The brunt of the Tibetan
+fire was directed on the courtyard of the house where the tents of the
+members of the mission were pitched. Major Murray, who had rushed out of
+bed half clad, first directed his attention to this spot. The Sikhs,
+emerging from their tents with bandolier and rifle, in extraordinary
+costumes, were directed towards the loopholes. Some were sent on the
+roof of the mission-house, whence they could enfilade the attackers.
+Elsewhere various junior officers had taken command. Captain Luke, who,
+owing to sickness, had not gone on with the Karo la column, took charge
+of the Gurkhas on the south and west fronts. Lieutenant Franklin, the
+medical officer of the 8th Gurkhas, rallied Gurkhas and Pioneers to the
+loopholes on the east and north. Lieutenant Lynch, the treasure-chest
+officer, who had a guard of about twenty Gurkhas, took his men to the
+main gate to the south. There were at this time in hospital about a
+dozen Sikhs, who had been badly burnt in a lamentable gunpowder
+explosion a few days previously. These men, bandaged and crippled as
+they were, rose from their couches, made their painful way to the tops
+of the houses, and fired into the enemy below. About a dozen Tibetans
+had just begun to scramble over the wall by the time the defenders had
+manned the whole position, which was now not only held by fighting men,
+but by various members of the mission, including Colonel Younghusband,
+who had emerged with revolvers and sporting guns. A few of the enemy got
+inside the defences, and were immediately shot down.
+
+Our fire was so heavy and so well directed that it is supposed that not
+more than ten minutes elapsed from the time the first shot was fired to
+the time the enemy began to withdraw. The withdrawal, however, was only
+to the shelter of trees and ditches a few hundred yards away, whence a
+long but almost harmless fusillade was kept up on the post. After about
+twenty minutes of this firing, Major Murray determined on a rally.
+Lieutenant Lynch with his treasure guard dashed out from the south gate.
+Some five-and-twenty Tibetans were discovered hiding in a small refuse
+hut about fifteen yards from the gate. The furious Gurkhas rushed in
+upon them and killed them all, and then dashed on through the long
+grove, clearing the enemy in front of them. Returning along the banks of
+the river, the same party discovered another body of Tibetans hiding
+under the arches of the bridge. Twenty or thirty were shot down, and
+about fifteen made prisoners. Similar success attended a rally from the
+north-east gate made by Major Murray and Lieutenant Franklin. The enemy
+fled howling from their hiding-places towards the town and jong as soon
+as they saw our men issue. They were pursued almost to the very walls of
+the fort. Indeed, but for the fringe of houses and narrow streets at the
+base of the jong, Major Murray would have gone on. The Tibetans,
+however, turned as soon as they reached the shelter of walls, and it
+would have been madness to attack five or six hundred determined men in
+a maze of alleys and passages with only a weak company. Major Murray
+accordingly made his way back to the post, picking up a dozen prisoners
+_en route_.
+
+In this affair our casualties only amounted to five wounded and two
+killed. One hundred and forty dead of the enemy were counted outside
+the camp.
+
+During the course of the day Major Murray sent a flag of truce to the
+jong with an intimation to the effect that the Tibetans could come out
+and bury their dead without fear of molestation. The reply was that we
+could bury the dead ourselves without fear of molestation. As it was
+impossible to leave all the bodies in the vicinity of the camp, a heavy
+and disagreeable task was thrown on the garrison.
+
+Towards sundown the enemy in the jong began to fire into the camp, and
+our troops became aware of the unpleasant fact that the Tibetans
+possessed jingals, which could easily range from 1,800 to 2,000 yards.
+It was also realized that the jong entirely dominated the post; that our
+walls and stockades, protection enough against a direct assault from the
+plain, were no protection against bullets dropped from a height. So for
+the next four days, pending the return of the Karo la column, the little
+garrison toiled unceasingly at improving the defences. Traverses were
+built, the walls raised in height, the gates strengthened. It was
+discovered that the Tibetan fire was heaviest when we attempted to
+return it by sniping at figures seen on the jong. Accordingly, pending
+the completion of the traverses and other new protective works, Major
+Murray forbade any return fire.
+
+Such was the position of affairs when the Karo la column returned. One
+of Colonel Brander's first acts, after his weary troops had rested for
+an hour or two, was to turn the Maxim on the groups who could be seen
+wandering about the jong. They quickly disappeared under cover, but only
+to man their jingals. Then began the bombardment of the post, which we
+had to endure for nearly seven weeks.
+
+This is the place to speak of the bombardment generally, for it would be
+tedious to recapitulate in the form of a diary incidents which, however
+exciting at the time, now seem remarkable only for their monotony. It
+may be said at once that the bombardment was singularly ineffective.
+From first to last only fifteen men in the post were hit. Of these
+twelve were either killed or died of the wound. Of course, I exclude the
+casualties in the fighting, of which I will presently speak, outside the
+post. But the futility of the bombardment must not be entirely put down
+to bad marksmanship on the part of the Tibetans. That our losses were
+not heavier is largely due to the fact that the garrison laboured
+daily--and at first at night also--in erecting protecting walls and
+traverses. Practically every tent had a traverse built in front of it.
+It was found that the hornwork in which the mules were located came
+particularly under fire of the jong. This was pulled down one dark
+night, and the mules transferred to a fresh enclosure at the back of the
+post. Strong parapets of sand-bags were built on the roofs of the
+houses. Every window facing the jong was securely blocked with mud
+bricks. It will be realized how considerable was the labour involved in
+building the traverses when it is remembered that the jong looked down
+into the post. The majority of the walls had to be considerably higher
+than the tents themselves. They were mostly built of stakes cut from the
+grove, with two feet of earth rammed in between. After the first week or
+so the enemy brought to bear on the post several brass cannon, throwing
+balls weighing four or five pounds, and travelling with a velocity which
+enabled them to penetrate our traverses--when they struck them, for the
+majority of shots from the cannon whistled harmlessly over our heads.
+
+Practically, we did not return the fire from the jong. All that was done
+in this direction was to place one of Lieutenant Hadow's Maxims on the
+roof of the house occupied by the mission, and thence to snipe during
+the daylight hours at any warriors who showed themselves above the walls
+of the jong. Hadow was very patient and persistent with his gun, and
+quickly made it clear to the Tibetans that, if we were obliged to keep
+under cover, so were they. But our fire from the post was probably as
+ineffective as that of the enemy from the jong, for the Tibetans build
+walls with extraordinary rapidity. Working mostly at night in order to
+avoid the malignant Maxim, the enemy within a few days almost altered
+the face of the jong. New walls, traverses, and covered ways seemed to
+spring up with the rapidity of mushrooms.
+
+Our life during the siege, if so the bombardment can be called, was
+hardly as unpleasant as people might imagine. To begin with, we were
+never short of food--that is to say, of Tibetan barley and meat. The
+commissariat stock of tea--a necessity in Tibet--also never gave out.
+From time to time also convoys and parcel-posts with little luxuries
+came through. Again, the longest period for which we were without a
+letter-post was eight days. Socially, the relations of the officers with
+one another and with the members of the Commission were most harmonious.
+I make a point of mentioning this fact, because all those who have had
+any experience of sieges, or of similar conditions where small
+communities are shut up together in circumstances of hardship and
+danger, know how apt the temper is to get on edge, how often small
+differences are likely to give rise to bitter animosities. But we had in
+the Gyantse garrison men of such vast experience and geniality as
+Colonel Brander, of such high culture and attainment as Colonel
+Younghusband, Captain O'Connor, and Mr. Perceval Landon--the
+correspondent of _The Times_; men whose spirits never failed, and who
+found humour in everything, such as Major Row, Captain Luke, Captain
+Coleridge, Lieutenant Franklin. Amongst the besieged was Colonel
+Waddell, I.M.S., an Orientalist and Sinologist of European fame. Hence,
+in some of its aspects the Gyantse siege was almost a delightful
+episode. In the later days, when all the outpost fighting occurred, our
+spirits were somewhat damped, for we had to mourn brave men killed and
+sympathize with others dangerously wounded.
+
+Of course, one of the first questions for consideration when the Karo la
+column returned to Gyantse was whether the enemy could or could not be
+turned out of the jong. To make a frontal attack on the frowning face
+overlooking the post would have been foolhardy, but Colonel Brander
+decided to make a reconnaissance to a monastery on the high hills to our
+right, whence the jong itself could be overlooked. A subsidiary reason
+for visiting this monastery was that it was known to have afforded
+shelter to a number of those who had fled from the attack on the post.
+The hill was climbed with every military precaution, but only a few old
+monks were found in occupation of the buildings. More disappointing was
+the fact that an examination through telescopes of the rear of the jong
+showed that the Tibetans had been also building indefatigably there. A
+strong loopholed wall ran zigzagging up the side of the rock. It was
+clear that nothing could be done till the General returned from Chumbi
+with more troops and guns.
+
+For more than two weeks our rear remained absolutely open. The post,
+carried by mounted infantry, came in and went out regularly. Two large
+convoys reached us unopposed. The only danger lay in the fact that
+people seen entering or leaving the post came under a heavy fire from
+the jong. To minimize risks, departures from the post were always made
+before dawn.
+
+During the two weeks streams of men could be seen entering the jong from
+both the Shigatze and Lhasa roads. Emboldened by numbers, and also by
+our non-aggressive attitude, the enemy began to cast about for means of
+taking the post. One of the first steps taken by the Tibetan General in
+pursuance of this policy was to occupy during the night a small house
+surrounded by trees, lying to our left front, almost midway between the
+jong and the post. On the morning of the 18th bullets from a new
+direction were whizzing in amongst us, and partly enfilading our
+traverses. This was not to be tolerated, and the same night arrangements
+were made for the capture of the position.
+
+Five companies stole out during the hours of darkness and surrounded the
+house. The rush, delivered at dawn, was left to the Gurkhas. But the
+entrance was found blocked with stones, and the enemy was thoroughly
+awake by the time the Gurkhas were under the wall. Luckily, the
+loopholes were not so constructed as to allow the Tibetans to fire their
+jingals down upon our men, who had only to bear the brunt of showers of
+stones thrown upon them from the roof. The shower was well directed
+enough to bruise a good many Gurkhas. Three officers were struck--
+Major Murray, Lieutenant Lynch, and Lieutenant Franklin, I.M.S. Whilst
+the Gurkhas were striving to effect an entrance, the Pioneer companies
+deployed on the flanks came under a heavy fire from the jong. We had
+three men hit. One fell on a bit of very exposed ground, and was
+gallantly dragged under cover by Colonel Brander and Captain Minogue,
+Staff officer.
+
+It was soon evident that the Gurkhas would never get in without
+explosives. Accordingly, Lieutenant Gurdon, 32nd Pioneers, was sent to
+join them with a box of guncotton. Gurdon speedily blew a hole through
+the wall, and the Gurkhas dashed in yelling. The Tibetans on the roof
+could easily at this time have jumped off and escaped towards the jong.
+But they chose a braver part. They slid down into the middle of the
+courtyard, and, drawing their swords, awaited the Gurkha onset. I must
+not describe the pitiful struggle that followed. The Tibetans--about
+fifty in number--herded themselves together as if to meet a bayonet
+charge, but our troops, rushing through the door, extended themselves
+along the edges of the courtyard, and emptied their magazines into the
+mob. Within a minute all the fifty were either dead or mortally wounded.
+
+The house was hereafter held by a company of Gurkhas all through the
+bombardment, and proved a great thorn in the side of the enemy; for the
+Gurkhas often used to sally out at night and ambuscade parties of men
+and convoys on the Shigatze road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GYANTSE--_continued_
+
+[BY HENRY NEWMAN]
+
+
+On the afternoon of the day on which the house was taken we were
+provided with a new excitement--continuous firing was heard to the rear
+of the post about a mile away. Captain Ottley galloped out with his
+mounted infantry, and was only just in time to save a party of his men
+who were coming up from Kangma with the letter-bags. These Sikhs--eight
+in number--were riding along the edge of the river, when they were met
+by a fusillade from a number of the enemy concealed amongst sedges on
+the opposite bank. Before the Sikhs could take cover, one man was
+killed, three wounded, and seven out of the eight horses shot down. The
+remaining men showed rare courage. They carried their wounded comrades
+under cover of a ditch, untied and brought to the same place the
+letter-bags, and then lay down and returned the fire of the enemy. The
+Tibetans, however, were beginning to creep round, and the ammunition of
+the Sikhs was running low, when Captain Ottley dashed up to the rescue.
+Without waiting to consider how many of the enemy might be hiding in the
+sedge, Ottley took his twenty men splashing through the river. Nearly
+300 Tibetans bolted out in all directions like rabbits from a cover. The
+mounted infantry, shooting and smiting, chased them to the very edge of
+the plain. On reaching hilly ground the enemy, who must have lost about
+fifty of their number, began to turn, having doubtless realized that
+they were running before a handful of men. At the same time shots were
+fired from villages, previously thought unoccupied, on Ottley's left,
+and a body of matchlock men were seen running up to reinforce from a
+large village on the Lhasa road. Under these conditions it would have
+been madness to continue the fight, and Ottley cleverly and skilfully
+withdrew without having lost a single man. In the meanwhile a company of
+Pioneers had brought in the men wounded in the attack on the postal
+riders.
+
+This affair was even more significant than the occupation by the enemy
+of the position taken by the Gurkhas in the early morning. It showed
+that the Tibetan General had at last conceived a plan for cutting off
+our line of communications. This was a rude shock. It implied that the
+enemy had received reinforcements which were to be utilized for
+offensive warfare of the kind most to be feared by an invader. We knew
+that so long as our ammunition lasted there was absolutely no danger of
+the post being captured. But an enemy on the lines would certainly
+cause the greatest annoyance to, and might even cut off, our convoys. As
+it would be very difficult to get messages through, apprehensions as to
+our safety would be excited in the outer world. Further, General
+Macdonald's arrangements for the relief of the mission would have to be
+considerably modified if he were obliged to fight his way through to us.
+
+With the same prompt decision that marked his action with regard to the
+gathering on the Karo la, Colonel Brander determined on the very next
+day to clear the villages found occupied by the mounted infantry. As far
+as could be discovered, the villages were five in number, all on the
+right bank of the river, and occupying a position which could be roughly
+outlined as an equilateral triangle. Captain Ottley was sent round to
+the rear of the villages to cut off the retreat of the enemy; Captain
+Luke took his two mountain-guns, under cover of the right bank of the
+river, to a position whence he could support the infantry attack, if
+necessary, by shell fire. Two companies of Pioneers with one in reserve
+were sent forward to the attack.
+
+The first objective was two villages forming the base of the triangle of
+which I have spoken. The troops advanced cautiously, widely extended,
+but both villages were found deserted. They were set on fire. Then
+Captain Hodgson with a company went forward to the village forming the
+apex of the triangle. He came under a flanking fire from the villages
+on the left, and had one man severely wounded. The houses in front
+seemed to be unoccupied, and our right might have been swung round to
+face this fire; but Colonel Brander was determined to do the work
+thoroughly, and Hodgson was directed to move on and burn the village
+ahead of him before changing front. The troops accordingly took no
+notice of the flanking fire, and moved on till they were under the walls
+of the two houses of which the village was composed.
+
+Suddenly fire was opened on our soldiers from the upper windows of the
+two houses. All the doors were found blocked with bricks and stones. Two
+Sikhs dropped, and for the moment it seemed as if we would lose heavily.
+But Lieutenant Gurdon with half a dozen men rushed up with a box of
+explosives, and blew a breach in the wall. Two of the party helping to
+lay the fuse were killed by shots fired from a loophole a few feet
+above. Captain Hodgson was the first man through the breach. He was
+confronted by a swordsman, who cut hard just as Hodgson fired his
+revolver. The man fell dead, but Hodgson received a severe wound on the
+wrist. But this was the only man who stood after the explosion. About
+thirty others in the village rushed to the roofs of the houses, jumped
+off, and fled to the left. They came, however, under a very heavy fire
+as they were running away, and the majority dropped.
+
+Preparations were now made for taking the remaining village. This was
+protected by a high loopholed embankment, which sheltered about five or
+six hundred of the enemy. The Pioneers had just extended, and were
+advancing, when someone who happened to be looking at the jong through
+his glasses suddenly uttered a loud exclamation. Turning round, we all
+saw a dense stream of men, several thousands in number, forming up at
+the base of the rock, evidently with the intention of rushing the
+mission post whilst the majority of the garrison and the guns were
+engaged elsewhere. Colonel Brander immediately gave the order for the
+whole force to retire into the post at the double. The withdrawal was
+effected before the Tibetans made their contemplated rush, but we all
+felt that it was rather a narrow shave.
+
+Troops were to have gone out again the next day to clear the village we
+had left untaken, but the mounted infantry reconnoitring in the morning
+reported that the enemy had fled, and that the lines of communication
+were again clear.
+
+On the succeeding day a large convoy and reinforcements under Major
+Peterson, 32nd Pioneers, came safely through. The additional troops
+included a section of No. 7 (British) Mountain Battery, under Captain
+Easton; one and a half companies of Sappers and Miners, under Captain
+Shepherd and Lieutenant Garstin; and another company of the 32nd
+Pioneers. Major Peterson reported that his convoy had come under a
+heavy fire from the village and monastery of Naini. This monastery lies
+about seven miles from Gyantse in an opening of the valley just before
+the road turns into Gyantse Plain. It holds about 5,000 monks. When the
+column first passed by it, the monks were extremely friendly, bringing
+out presents of butter and eggs, and readily selling flour and meat. The
+monastery is surrounded by a wall thirty feet high, and at least ten
+feet thick. The buildings inside are also solidly built of stone.
+Altogether the position was a very difficult one to tackle, but Colonel
+Brander, following his usual policy, decided that the enemy must be
+turned out of it at all costs. Accordingly, on the 24th a column, which
+included Captain Easton's two guns, marched out to Naini. But the
+monastery and the group of buildings outside it were found absolutely
+deserted. The walls were far too heavy and strong to be destroyed by a
+small force, which had to return before nightfall, but Captain Shepherd
+blew up the four towers at the corners and a portion of the hall in
+which the Buddhas were enthroned.
+
+The 27th provided a new excitement. About 1,000 yards to the right of
+the post stood what was known as the Palla House, the residence of a
+Tibetan nobleman of great wealth. The building consisted of a large
+double-storied house, surrounded by a series of smaller buildings, each
+within a courtyard of its own. During the night the Tibetans in the jong
+built a covered way extending about half the distance between the jong
+and Palla. In the morning the latter place was seen to be swarming with
+men, busily occupied in erecting defences, making loopholes, and
+generally engaged in work of a menacing character. The enemy could less
+be tolerated in Palla than in the Gurkha outpost, for fire from the
+former would have taken us absolutely in the flank, and the garrison was
+not strong enough to provide the labour necessary for building an
+entirely new series of traverses.
+
+That very night Colonel Brander detailed the troops that were to take
+Palla by assault at dawn. The storming-party was composed of three
+companies of the 32nd under Major Peterson, assisted by the Sappers and
+Miners with explosives under Captain Shepherd. Our four mountain-guns,
+the 7-pounders under Captain Luke, and the 10-pounders under Captain
+Easton, escorted by a company of Gurkhas, were detailed to occupy a
+position on a ridge which overlooked Palla. The troops fell in at two in
+the morning. The night was pitch-dark, but with such care were the
+operations conducted that the troops had made a long détour, and got
+into their respective positions before dawn, without an alarm being
+raised.
+
+Daylight was just breaking when Captain Shepherd crept up to the wall of
+the house on the extreme left, where it was believed the majority of the
+enemy were located, and laid his explosives. A tremendous explosion
+followed, the whole side of the house falling in. A minute afterwards,
+and Palla was alarmed and firing furiously all round, and even up in the
+air. The jong also awoke, and from that time till the village was
+finally ours poured a continuous storm of bullets into Palla, regardless
+whether friend or foe was hit. Our guns on the ridge did their best to
+quiet the jong, but without much effect. Against Tibetan walls, provided
+as they are with head cover, our experience showed shrapnel to be almost
+entirely useless.
+
+A company of Pioneers followed Captain Shepherd into the breach he had
+made. But they found themselves only in a small courtyard, with no means
+of entering the rest of the village, except over or through high walls
+lined by the enemy. All that could be done was to blow in another
+breach. The preparations for doing this were attended with a good deal
+of danger. Of three men who attempted to rush across the courtyard, two
+were killed and the third mortally wounded. However, by creeping along
+under cover of the wall, Captain Shepherd and Lieutenant Garstin were
+able to lay the guncotton and light the fuse for another explosion. They
+were fired at from a distance of a few yards, but escaped being hit by a
+miracle. But the second explosion only led into another courtyard, from
+which there was also no exit. There was the same fire to be faced from
+the next house whilst the needful preparations were being made for
+making a third breach.
+
+During the time Shepherd with his gallant lieutenants and equally
+gallant sepoys was working his way in from the left, the companies of
+Pioneers lining ditches and banks outside Palla were exposed to a
+persistent fire from about a hundred of the enemy inside the big
+two-storied house mentioned above. The men in this house--all Kham
+warriors--seemed to be filled with an extraordinary fury. Many exposed
+themselves boldly at the windows, calling to our men to come on. A dozen
+or so even climbed to the roof of the house, and danced about thereon in
+what seemed frantic derision. There was a Maxim on the ridge with the
+mountain-guns, the fire from which put an end to the fantastic display.
+Our rifle fire, however, seemed totally unable to check the Tibetan
+warriors in the loopholed windows. They kept up a fusillade which made a
+rush impossible. Major Peterson finally, with great daring, led a few
+men into the dwelling on the extreme right. The escalade was managed by
+means of a ruined tree which projected from the wall. But Peterson, like
+Shepherd, found himself in a courtyard with high walls which baffled
+further progress.
+
+The fight now began to drag. Hours passed without any signal incident.
+The Tibetans were greatly elated at the failure of our troops to make
+progress. They shouted and yelled, and were encouraged by answering
+cheers from the jong. Then about mid-day the jong Commandant conceived
+the idea of reinforcing Palla. A dozen men mounted on black mules,
+followed by about fifty infantry, suddenly dashed out from the
+half-completed covered way mentioned above, and made for the village.
+This party was absolutely annihilated. As soon as it emerged from the
+covered way it came under the fire, not only of the troops round the
+village and on the hill, but of the Maxim on the roof of the
+mission-house. In three minutes every single man and mule was down,
+except one animal with a broken leg, gazing disconsolately at the body
+of its master.
+
+This disaster evidently shook the Tibetans in Palla. Their fire
+slackened. Captain Luke on the ridge was then directed to put some
+common shell into the roof of the double-storied house. He dropped the
+shells exactly where they were wanted, and so disconcerted the enemy
+that Shepherd was able to resume his preparations for making a way into
+the Tibetan stronghold. But he still had to face an awkward fire, and
+the three further breaches he made were attended by the loss of several
+men, including Lieutenant Garstin, shot through the head. But the last
+explosion led our troops into the big house. Tibetan resistance then
+practically ceased. About twenty or thirty men made an attempt to get
+away to the jong, but the majority were shot down before they could
+reach the covered way.
+
+In this affair our total casualties were twenty-three. In addition to
+Lieutenant Garstin, we had seven men killed. The wounded included
+Captain O'Connor, R.A., secretary to the mission, and Lieutenant
+Mitchell, 32nd Pioneers. The enemy must have lost quite 250 in killed
+and wounded. The position at Palla was too important to be abandoned,
+and for the rest of the bombardment it was held by a company of Sikhs.
+In order to provide free communication both day and night, Captain
+Shepherd, with his usual energy, dug a covered way from the post to the
+village.
+
+The fight at Palla was the last affair of any importance in which the
+garrison was engaged pending the arrival of the relieving force. The
+Tibetans had received such a shock that in future they confined
+themselves practically to the defensive, if we except five half-hearted
+night attacks which were never anywhere near being pushed home. There
+were no more attempts to interrupt our lines of communication, though
+later on Naini was again occupied as part of the Tibetan scheme for
+resisting General Macdonald's advance. The jong Commandant devoted his
+energies chiefly to strengthening his already strong position.
+
+The night attacks were all very similar in character, and may be summed
+up and dismissed in a paragraph. Generally about midnight, bands of
+Tibetans would issue from the jong and take up their position about four
+or five hundred yards from the post. Then they would shout wildly, and
+fire off their matchlocks and Martini rifles. The troops would
+immediately rush to their loopholes, clad in impossible garments, and
+wait shivering in the cold, finger on trigger, for the rush that never
+came. After shouting and firing for about an hour, the Tibetans would
+retire to the jong and our troops creep back to their beds. On no
+occasion did the enemy come close enough to be seen in the dark. We
+never fired a single shot from the post. Twice, however, the Gurkha
+outpost and the Sikhs at Palla were enabled to get in a few volleys at
+Tibetans as they slunk past. During the night attacks the jong remained
+silent, except on one occasion, when there was so much firing from the
+Gurkha outpost that the enemy thought we were about to make a
+counter-attack. Every jingal, musket, and rifle in the jong was then
+loosed off in any and every direction. We even heard firing in the rear
+of the monastery. Although no one was hit in this wild fire, the volume
+of it was ominously indicative of the strength in which the jong was
+held.
+
+But even more ominous against the day when our troops should be called
+upon to take the jong were the defensive preparations mentioned above.
+Nearly every morning we found that during the night the enemy had built
+up a new wall or covered way somewhere on the jong or about the village
+that fringed the base of the rock. When the fortress was fortified as
+strongly as Tibetan wit could devise, the jong Commandant began to
+fortify and place in a position of defence the villages and monasteries
+on his right and left. It was calculated that, from the small monastery
+perched on the hills to his left to Tsechen Monastery on a ridge to his
+right, the Tibetan General had occupied and fortified a position with
+nearly seven miles of front.
+
+Whilst the Tibetans were engaged in making these preparations, our
+garrison was busy collecting forage for the enormous number of animals
+coming up with the relief column. Our rear being absolutely open, small
+parties with mules were able to collect quantities of hay from villages
+within a radius of seven miles behind us. It was the fire opened on
+these parties when they attempted to push to the right or left of the
+jong which first revealed to us the full extent of the defensive
+position occupied by the enemy.
+
+On June 6 Colonel Younghusband left the post with a returning convoy, in
+order to confer with the General at Chumbi. This convoy was attacked
+whilst halting at the entrenched post at Kangma. The enemy in this
+instance came down from the Karo la, and it is for this reason that I do
+not include the Kangma attack amongst the operations at and around
+Gyantse.
+
+It was not till June 15 that we got definite news of the approaching
+advance of the relief column. Reinforcements had come up to Chumbi from
+India in the interval, and the General was accompanied by the 2nd
+Mounted Infantry under Captain Peterson, No. 7 British Mountain Battery
+under Major Fuller, a section of No. 30 Native Mountain Battery under
+Captain Marindin, four companies of the Royal Fusiliers under Colonel
+Cooper, four companies of the 40th Pathans under Colonel Burn, five
+companies of the 23rd Pioneers under Colonel Hogge, and the two
+remaining companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Colonel Kerr, together with
+the usual medical and other details.
+
+The force arrived at Kangma on June 23. On the 25th a party of mounted
+infantry from Gyantse met Captain Peterson's mounted infantry
+reconnoitring at the monastery of Naini, previously mentioned. Whilst
+greetings were being exchanged a sudden fire was opened on our men from
+the monastery, which the enemy had apparently occupied and fortified
+during the night. The position was apparently held in strength, and the
+mounted infantry had no other course except to retire to their
+respective camps. Captain Peterson had one man mortally wounded.
+
+On the evening of the 26th the sentries at the mission post saw about
+twenty mounted men, followed by two or three hundred infantry, issue
+from the rear of the jong and creep up the hills on our left in the
+direction of Naini. It was evident that a determined effort was to be
+made at the monastery to check the advance of the relief column, which
+was expected at Gyantse next day. Colonel Brander came to the conclusion
+that he had found an opportunity for catching the Tibetans in a trap.
+He determined to send out a force which would block the retreat of the
+enemy when they retired before the advance of the relief column.
+Accordingly, before dawn four companies of Pioneers, four guns, and the
+Maxim gun left the post, and ascended the hills overlooking the
+monastery. Captain Ottley's mounted infantry were directed to close the
+road leading directly from Gyantse to the monastery.
+
+Colonel Brander's forces were in position some hours before the mounted
+infantry of the relief column appeared in sight. It was discovered that
+the enemy not only held the monastery, but some ruined towers on the
+hill above, and a cluster of one-storied dwellings in a grove below.
+Captain Peterson with his mounted infantry appeared in front of the
+monastery at eleven o'clock. He had with him a company of the 40th
+Pathans, and his orders were to clear the monastery with this small
+force, if the enemy made no signs of a stubborn resistance. Otherwise he
+was to await the arrival of more troops with the mountain-guns.
+
+Peterson delivered his attack from the left, having dismounted his
+troopers, who, together with the 40th Pathans, were soon very hotly
+engaged. The troops came under a heavy fire both from the monastery and
+from a ruined tower above it, but advanced most gallantly. When under
+the walls of the monastery, they were checked for some time by the
+difficulty of finding a way in. In the meanwhile, hearing the heavy
+firing, the General and his Staff, followed by Major Fuller's battery
+and the rest of the 40th, had hastened up. The battery came into action
+against the tower, and the 40th rushed up in support of their comrades.
+Colonel Brander's guns and Maxim on the top of the hill were also
+brought into play. For nearly an hour a furious cannonade and fusillade
+raged. Then the Pathans and Peterson's troopers, circling round the
+walls of the monastery, found a ramp up which they could climb. They
+swarmed up, and were quickly inside the building. But the Tibetans had
+realized that their retreat was cut off, and, instead of making a clean
+bolt for it, only retired slowly from room to room and passage to
+passage. Two companies of the 23rd were sent up to assist in clearing
+the monastery. It proved a perfect warren of dark cells and rooms. The
+Tibetan resistance lasted for over two hours. Bands of desperate
+swordsmen were found in knots under trap-doors and behind sharp
+turnings. They would not surrender, and had to be killed by rifle shots
+fired at a distance of a few feet.
+
+While the monastery was being cleared, another fight had developed in
+the cluster of dwellings outside it to the right. From this spot Tibetan
+riflemen were enfilading our troops held in reserve. The remaining
+companies of the 23rd were sent to clear away the enemy. They took three
+houses, but could not effect an entrance into the fourth, which was very
+strongly barricaded. Lieutenant Turnbull, walking up to a window with a
+section, had three men hit in a few seconds. One man fell directly under
+the window. Turnbull carried him into safety in the most gallant
+fashion. Then the General ordered up the guns, which fired into the
+house at a range of a few hundred yards. But not till it was riddled
+with great gaping holes made by common shell did the fire from the house
+cease.
+
+At about three o'clock the Tibetan resistance had completely died away,
+and the column resumed its march towards Gyantse, which was not reached
+till dark. But as the transport was making its slow way past Naini,
+about half a dozen Tibetans who had remained in hiding in the monastery
+and village opened fire on it. The Gurkha rearguard had a troublesome
+task in clearing these men out, and lost one man killed.
+
+In this affair at Naini our casualties were six killed and nine wounded,
+including Major Lye, 23rd Pioneers, who received a severe sword-cut in
+the hand.
+
+The General's camp was pitched about a mile from the mission post, well
+out of range of the jong, though our troops whilst crossing the river
+came under fire from some of the bigger jingals. The next day was one of
+rest, which the troops badly needed after their long march from Chumbi.
+The Tibetans in the jong also refrained from firing. On the 29th the
+General began the operations intended to culminate in the capture of the
+jong. His objective was Tsechen Monastery, on the extreme left. But
+before the monastery could be attacked, some twelve fortified villages
+between it and the river had to be cleared. It proved a difficult task,
+not so much on account of the resistance offered by the enemy--for after
+a few idle shots the Tibetans quickly retired on the monastery--as
+because of the nature of the ground that had to be traversed. The whole
+country was a network of deep irrigation channels and water-cuts, in the
+fording and crossing of which the troops got wet to the skin. However,
+by four in the afternoon all the villages had been cleared, and the
+Fusiliers were lying in a long grove under the right front of the
+monastery.
+
+It was then discovered that not only was Tsechen very strongly held, but
+that masses of the enemy were lying behind the rocks on the top of the
+ridge, on the summit of which there was a ruined tower, also held by
+fifty or sixty men. The General sent two companies of Gurkhas to scale
+the ridge from the left, whilst the 40th Pathans were ordered to make a
+direct assault on the monastery. A hundred mounted infantry made their
+way to the rear to cut off the retreat of the enemy. Fuller and Marindin
+with their guns covered the advance of the infantry. Four Maxims were
+also brought into action. Our guns made splendid practice on the top of
+the ridge, and time and again we could see the enemy bolting from cover.
+But with magnificent bravery they would return to oppose the advance of
+the Gurkhas creeping round their flank. The guns had presently to cease
+fire to enable the Gurkhas to get nearer. A series of desperate little
+fights then took place on the top of the ridge, the Tibetans slinging
+and throwing stones when they found they could not load their muskets
+quickly enough. But as the Gurkhas would not be stopped, the Tibetans
+had to move. In the meanwhile the Pathans worked through the monastery
+below, only meeting with small resistance from a band of men in one
+house. The Tibetans fled in a mass over the right edge of the ridge into
+the jaws of the mounted infantry lying in wait below. Slaughter
+followed.
+
+It was now quite dark, and the troops made their way back to camp. Next
+morning a party went up to Tsechen, found it entirely deserted, and set
+fire to it. The taking of the monastery cost us the lives of Captain
+Craster, 40th Pathans, and two sepoys. Our wounded numbered ten,
+including Captains Bliss and Humphreys, 8th Gurkhas.
+
+On July 1 the General intended assaulting the jong, but in the interval
+the jong Commandant sent in a flag of truce. He prayed for an armistice
+pending the arrival of three delegates who were posting down from Lhasa
+with instructions to make peace. As Colonel Younghusband had been
+directed to lose no opportunity of bringing affairs to an end at
+Gyantse, the armistice was granted, and two days afterwards the
+delegates, all Lamas, were received in open durbar in a large room in
+the mission post. Colonel Younghusband, after having satisfied himself
+that the delegates possessed proper credentials, made them a speech. He
+reviewed the history of the mission, pointing out that we had only come
+to Gyantse because of the obstinacy and evasion of the Tibetan
+officials, who could easily have treated with us at Khamba Jong and
+again at Tuna, had they cared to. We were perfectly willing to come to
+terms here, and it rested with the peace delegates whether we went on to
+Lhasa or not. Younghusband then informed the delegates that he was
+prepared to open negociations on the next day. The delegates were due at
+eleven next morning, but they did not put in an appearance till three.
+They were then told that as a preliminary they must surrender the jong
+by noon on the succeeding day. They demurred a great deal, but the
+Commissioner was quite firm, and they went away downcast, with the
+assurance that if the jong was not surrendered we should take it by
+force. Younghusband, however, added that after the capture of the fort
+he was perfectly willing to open negociations again.
+
+Next day, shortly after noon, a signal gun was fired to indicate that
+the armistice was at an end, and the General forthwith began his
+preparations to storm the formidable hill fortress. The Tibetans had
+taken advantage of the armistice to build more walls and sangars. No one
+could look at the bristling jong without realizing how difficult was
+the task before our troops, and without anxiety as to the outcome of the
+assault in killed and wounded. But we all knew that the jong had to be
+taken, whatever the cost.
+
+Operations began in the afternoon, the General making a demonstration
+against the left face of the jong and Palkhor Choide Monastery. Fuller's
+battery took up a position about 1,600 yards from the jong. Five
+companies of infantry were extended on either flank. Both the jong and
+monastery opened fire on our troops, and we had one man mortally
+wounded. The General's intention, however, was only to deceive the
+Tibetans into thinking that we intended to assault from that side. As
+soon as dusk fell, the troops were withdrawn and preparations made for
+the real assault.
+
+The south-eastern face of the rock on which the jong is built is most
+precipitous, yet this was exactly the face which the General decided to
+storm. His reasons, I imagine, were that the fringe of houses at the
+base of the rock was thinnest on this side, and that the very
+multiplicity of sangars and walls that the enemy had built prevented
+their having the open field of fire necessary to stop a rush. Moreover,
+down the middle of the rock ran a deep fissure or cleft, which was
+commanded, the General noticed, by no tower or loopholed wall. At two
+points, however, the Tibetans had built walls across the fissure. The
+first of these the General believed could be breached by our artillery.
+Our troops through that could work their way round to either flank, and
+so into the heart of the jong.
+
+The plan of operations was very simple. Before dawn three columns were
+to rush the fringe of houses at the base. Then was to follow a storm of
+artillery fire directed on all the salient points of the jong, after
+which our guns were to make a breach in the lower wall across the cleft
+up which the storming-party was later on to climb.
+
+The action turned out exactly as was planned, with the exception that
+the fighting lasted much longer than was expected, for the Tibetans made
+a heroic resistance. The troops were astir shortly after midnight. The
+night was very dark, and the necessary deployment of the three columns
+took some hours. However, an hour before dawn the troops had begun their
+cautious advance, the General and his Staff taking up their position at
+Palla. The alarm was not given till our leading files were within twenty
+yards of the fringe of houses at the base of the rock. The storm of fire
+which then burst from the jong was an alarming indication of the
+strength in which it was held. The heavy jingals were all directed on
+Palla, and the General and his Staff had many narrow escapes. As on the
+previous occasion when the jong bombarded us at night, there were
+moments when every building in it seemed outlined in flame.
+
+Of the three columns, only that on the extreme left, Gurkhas under
+Major Murray, was able to get in at once. The other two columns were for
+the time being checked, so bullet-swept was the open space they had to
+cross. From time to time small parties of two or three dashed across in
+the dark, and gained the shelter of the walls of the houses in front.
+There were barely twenty men and half a dozen officers across when
+Captain Shepherd blew in the walls of the house most strongly held. The
+storming-party came under a most heavy fire from the jong above. Among
+those hit was Lieutenant Gurdon, of the 32nd. He was shot through the
+head, and died almost immediately. The breach made by Shepherd was the
+point to which most of the men of the centre and right columns made, but
+their progress became very slow when daylight appeared and the Tibetans
+could see what they were firing at. It was not till nearly nine o'clock
+that the whole fringe of houses at the base of the front face of the
+rock was in our possession.
+
+Then followed several hours of cannonading and small-arms fire. The
+position the troops had now won was commanded almost absolutely from the
+jong. It was found impossible to return the Tibetan fire from the roofs
+of the houses we had occupied without exposing the troops in an
+unnecessary degree, but loopholes were hastily made in the walls of the
+rooms below, and the 40th Pathans were sent into a garden on the extreme
+right, where some cover was to be had. Colonel Campbell, commanding the
+first line, was able to show the enemy that our marksmen were still in a
+position to pick off such Tibetans as were rash enough to unduly expose
+themselves. In the meanwhile, Luke's guns on the extreme right, Fuller's
+battery at Palla, and Marindin's guns at the Gurkha outpost threw a
+stream of shrapnel on all parts of the jong.
+
+But it was not till four o'clock in the afternoon that the General
+decided that the time had come to make the breach aforementioned. The
+reserve companies of Gurkhas and Fusiliers were sent across from Palla
+in the face of very heavy jingal and rifle fire, and took cover in the
+houses we had occupied. In the meanwhile Fuller was directed to make the
+breach. So magnificent was the shooting made by his guns that a dozen
+rounds of common shell, planted one below the other, had made a hole
+large enough for active men to clamber through. The enemy quickly saw
+the purport of the breach. Dozens of men could be distinctly seen
+hurrying to the wall above it.
+
+Then the Gurkhas and Fusiliers began their perilous ascent. The nimble
+Gurkhas, led by Lieutenant Grant, soon outpaced the Fusiliers, and in
+ten brief minutes forty or fifty of them were crouching under the
+breach. The Tibetans, finding their fire could not stop us, tore great
+stones from the walls and rolled them down the cleft. Dozens of men were
+hit and bruised. Presently Grant was through the breach, followed by
+fifteen or twenty flushed and shouting men. The breach won, the only
+thought of the enemy was flight. They made their way by the back of the
+jong into the monastery. By six o'clock every building in the great
+fortress was in our possession.
+
+Our casualties in this affair were forty-three--Lieutenant Gurdon and
+seven men killed, and twelve officers, including the gallant Grant, and
+twenty-three men wounded. These casualties exclude a number of men cut
+and bruised with stones.
+
+Next morning the monastery was found deserted. It was reported that the
+bulk of the enemy had fled to Dongtse, about ten miles up the Shigatze
+road. A column was sent thither, but found the place empty, except for a
+very humble and submissive monk.
+
+On the 14th, having waited for over a week in the hope of the peace
+delegates putting in an appearance, the force started on its march to
+Lhasa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT
+
+
+    ARI, SIKKIM,
+      _June 24._
+
+I write in an old forest rest-house on the borders of British Bhutan.
+
+The place is quiet and pastoral; climbing roses overhang the roof and
+invade the bedrooms; martins have built their nests in the eaves;
+cuckoos are calling among the chestnuts down the hill. Outside is a
+flower-garden, gay with geraniums and petunias and familiar English
+plants that have overrun their straggling borders and scattered
+themselves in the narrow plot of grass that fringes the forest. Some
+Government officer must have planted them years ago, and left them to
+fight it out with Nature and the caretaker.
+
+The forest has encroached, and it is hard to say where Nature's hand or
+Art's begins and ends. Beside a rose-bush there has sprung up the solid
+pink club of the wild ginger, and from a bed of amaryllis a giant arum
+raises itself four feet in its dappled, snake-like sheath. Gardens have
+most charm in spots like this, where their mingled trimness and neglect
+contrast with the insolent unconcern of an encroaching forest.
+
+At Ari I am fifty miles from Darjeeling, on the road to Lhasa.
+
+On June 21 I set my face to Lhasa for the second time. I took another
+route to Chumbi, viâ Kalimpong and Pedong in British Bhutan. The road is
+no further, but it compasses some arduous ascents. On the other hand it
+avoids the low, malarious valleys of Sikkim, where the path is
+constantly carried away by slips. There is less chance of a block, and
+one is above the cholera zone. The Jelap route, which I strike
+to-morrow, is closed, owing to cholera and land-slips, so that I shall
+not touch the line of communications until within a few miles of Chumbi,
+in which time my wound will have had a week longer to heal before I risk
+a medical examination and the chance of being sent back. The relief
+column is due at Gyantse in a few days; it depends on the length of the
+operations there whether I catch the advance to Lhasa.
+
+Through avoiding the Nathu-la route to Chumbi I had to arrange my own
+transport. In Darjeeling my coolies bolted without putting a pack on
+their backs. More were secured; these disappeared in the night at
+Kalimpong without waiting to be paid. Pack-ponies were hired to replace
+them, but these are now in a state of collapse. Arguing, and haggling,
+and hectoring, and blarneying, and persuading are wearisome at all
+times, but more especially in these close steamy valleys, where it is
+too much trouble to lift an eyelid, and the air induces an almost
+immoral state of lassitude, in which one is tempted to dole out silver
+indifferently to anyone who has it in his power to oil the wheels of
+life. I could fill a whole chapter with a jeremiad on transport, but it
+is enough to indicate, to those who go about in vehicles, that there are
+men on the road to Tibet now who would beggar themselves and their
+families for generations for a macadamized highway and two hansom cabs
+to carry them and their belongings smoothly to Lhasa. Before I reached
+Kalimpong I wished I had never left the 'radius.' No one should embark
+on Asiatic travel who is not thoroughly out of harmony with
+civilization.
+
+The servant question is another difficulty. No native bearer wishes to
+join the field force. Why should he? He has to cook and pack and do the
+work of three men; he has to make long, exhausting marches; he is
+exposed to hunger, cold, and fatigue; he may be under fire every day;
+and he knows that if he falls into the hands of the Tibetans, like the
+unfortunate servants of Captain Parr at Gyantse, he will be brutally
+murdered and cut up into mincemeat. In return for which he is fed and
+clothed, and earns ten rupees more a month than he would in the security
+of his own home. After several unsuccessful trials, I have found one
+Jung Bir, a Nepali bearer, who is attached to me because I forget
+sometimes to ask for my bazaar account, and do not object to his being
+occasionally drunk. In Tibet the poor fellow will have little chance of
+drinking.
+
+My first man lost his nerve altogether, and, when told to work, could
+only whine out that his father and mother were not with him. My next
+applicant was an opium-eater, prematurely bent and aged, with the dazed
+look of a toad that has been incarcerated for ages in a rock, and is at
+last restored to light and the world by the blow of a mason's hammer. He
+wanted money to buy more dreams, and for this he was willing to expose
+his poor old body to hardships that would have killed him in a month.
+Jung Bir was a Gurkha and more martial. His first care on being engaged
+was to buy a long and heavy chopper--'for making mince,' he said; but I
+knew it was for the Tibetans.
+
+To reach Ari one has to descend twice, crossing the Teesta at 700 feet,
+and the Russett Chu at 1,500 feet. These valleys are hotter than the
+plains of India. The streams run east and west, and the cliffs on both
+sides catch the heat of the early morning sun and hold it all day. The
+closeness, the refraction from the rocks, and the evaporation of the
+water, make the atmosphere almost suffocating, and one feels the heat
+the more intensely by the change from the bracing air above. Crossing
+the Teesta, one enters British Bhutan, a strip of land of less than 300
+square miles on the left bank of the river. It was ceded to us with
+other territories by the treaty of 1865; or, in plain words, it was
+annexed by us as a punishment for the outrage on Sir Ashley Eden, the
+British Envoy, who was captured and grossly insulted by the Bhutanese at
+Punakha in the previous year. The Bhutanese were as arrogant, exclusive,
+and impossible to deal with, in those days, as the Tibetans are to-day.
+Yet they have been brought into line, and are now our friends. Why
+should not the Tibetans, who are of the same stock, yield themselves to
+enlightenment? Their evolution would be no stranger.
+
+Nine miles above the Teesta bridge is Kalimpong, the capital of British
+Bhutan, and virtually the foreign mart for what trade passes out of
+Tibet. The Tomos of the Chumbi Valley, who have the monopoly of the
+carrying, do not go further south than this. At Kalimpong I found a
+horse-dealer with a good selection of 'Bhutia tats.' These excellent
+little beasts are now well known to be as strong and plucky a breed of
+mountain ponies as can be found anywhere. I discovered that their fame
+is not merely modern when I came across what must be the first reference
+to them in history in the narrative of Master Ralph Fitch, England's
+pioneer to India. 'These northern merchants,' says Fitch, speaking of
+the Bhutia, 'report that in their countrie they haue very good horses,
+but they be litle.' The Bhutias themselves, equally ubiquitous in the
+Sikkim Himalayas, but not equally indispensable, Fitch describes to the
+letter. At Kalimpong I found them dirty, lazy, good-natured, independent
+rascals, possessed, apparently, of wealth beyond their deserts, for hard
+work is as alien to their character as straight dealing. Even the
+drovers will pay a coolie good wages to cut grass for them rather than
+walk a mile downhill to fetch it themselves.
+
+The main street of Kalimpong is laid out in the correct boulevard style,
+with young trees protected by tubs and iron railings. It is dominated by
+the church of the Scotch Mission, whose steeple is a landmark for miles.
+The place seems to be overrun with the healthiest-looking English
+children I have seen anywhere, whose parents are given over to very
+practical good works.
+
+I took the Bhutan route chiefly to avoid running the gauntlet of the
+medicals; but another inducement was the prospect of meeting Father
+Desgodins, a French Roman Catholic, Vicar Apostolic of the Roman
+Catholic Mission to Western Tibet, who, after fifty years' intimacy with
+various Mongol types, is probably better acquainted with the Tibetans
+than any other living European.
+
+I met Father Desgodins at Pedong. The rest-house here looks over the
+valley to his symmetrical French presbytery and chapel, perched on the
+hillside amid waving maize-fields, whose spring verdure is the greenest
+in the world. Scattered over the fields are thatched Lamas' houses and
+low-storied gompas, with overhanging eaves and praying-flags--'horses
+of the wind,' as the Tibetans picturesquely call them, imagining that
+the prayers inscribed on them are carried to the good god, whoever he
+may be, who watches their particular fold and fends off intruding
+spirits as well as material invaders.
+
+Behind the presbytery are terraced rice-fields, irrigated by perennial
+streams, and bordered by thick artemisia scrub, which in the hot sun,
+after rain, sends out an aromatic scent, never to be dissociated in
+travellers' dreams and reveries from these great southern slopes of the
+Himalayas.
+
+Père Desgodins is an erect old gentleman with quiet, steely gray eyes
+and a tawny beard now turning gray. He is known to few Englishmen, but
+his adventurous travels in Tibet and his devoted, strenuous life are
+known throughout Europe.
+
+He was sent out from France to the Tibet Mission shortly after the
+murder of Krick and Bourry by the Mishmis. Failing to enter Tibet from
+the south through Sikkim, he made preparations for an entry by Ladak.
+His journey was arrested by the Indian Mutiny, when he was one of the
+besieged at Agra. He afterwards penetrated Western Tibet as far as
+Khanam, but was recalled to the Chinese side, where he spent twenty-two
+perilous and adventurous years in the establishment of the mission at
+Batang and Bonga. The mission was burnt down and the settlement expelled
+by the Lamas. In 1888 Father Desgodins was sent to Pedong, his present
+post, as Pro-vicar of the Mission to Western Tibet.
+
+With regard to the present situation in Tibet, Father Desgodins
+expressed astonishment at our policy of folded arms.
+
+'You have missed the occasion,' he said; 'you should have made your
+treaty with the Tibetans themselves in 1888. You could have forced them
+to treat then, when they were unprepared for a military invasion. You
+should have said to them'--here Père Desgodins took out his watch--'"It
+is now one o'clock. Sign that treaty by five, or we advance to-morrow."
+What could they have done? Now you are too late. They have been
+preparing for this for the last fifteen years.'
+
+Father Desgodins was right. It is the old story of ill-advised
+conciliation and forbearance. We were afraid of the bugbear of China.
+The British Government says to her victim after the chastisement:
+'You've had your lesson. Now run off and be good.' And the spoilt child
+of arrested civilization runs off with his tongue in his cheek and
+learns to make new arms and friends. The British Government in the
+meantime sleeps in smug complacency, and Exeter Hall is appeased.
+
+'But why did you not treat with the Tibetans themselves?' Père Desgodins
+asked. 'China!'--here he made an expressive gesture--'I have known China
+for fifty years. She is not your friend.' Of course it is to the
+interest of China to keep the tea monopoly, and to close the market to
+British India. Travellers on the Chinese borders are given passports and
+promises of assistance, but the natives of the districts they traverse
+are ordered to turn them back and place every obstacle in their way.
+Nobody knows this better than Father Desgodins. China's policy is the
+same with nations as with individuals. She will always profess
+willingness to help, but protest that her subjects are unmanageable and
+out of hand. Why, then, deal with China at all? We can only answer that
+she had more authority in Lhasa in 1888. Moreover, we were more afraid
+of offending her susceptibilities. But that bubble has burst.
+
+Others who hold different views from Père Desgodins say that this very
+unruliness of her vassal ought to make China welcome our intervention in
+Tibet, if we engage to respect her claims there when we have subdued the
+Lamas. This policy might certainly point a temporary way out of the
+muddle, whereby we could save our face and be rid of the Tibet incubus
+for perhaps a year. But the plan of leaving things to the suzerain Power
+has been tried too often.
+
+As I rode down the Pedong street from the presbytery someone called me
+by name, and a little, smiling, gnome-like man stepped out of a
+whitewashed office. It was Phuntshog, a Tibetan friend whom I had known
+six years previously on the North-East frontier. I dismounted,
+expecting entertainment.
+
+The office was bare of furniture save a new writing-table and two
+chairs, but heaped round the walls were piles of cast steel and iron
+plates and files and pipes for bellows. Phuntshog explained that he was
+frontier trade examiner, and that the steel had been purchased in
+Calcutta by a Lama last year, and was confiscated on the frontier as
+contraband. It was material for an armoury. The spoilt child was making
+new arms, like the schoolboy who exercises his muscle to avenge himself
+after a beating.
+
+'Do you get much of this sort of thing?' I asked.
+
+'Not now,' he said; 'they have given up trying to get it through this
+way.'
+
+A few years ago eight Mohammedans, experts in rifle manufacture, had
+been decoyed from a Calcutta factory to Lhasa. Two had died there, and
+one I traced at Yatung. His wife had not been allowed to pass the
+barrier, but he was given a Tibetan helpmate. The wife lived some months
+at Yatung, and used to receive large instalments from her husband; once,
+I was told, as much as Rs. 1,400. But he never came back. The Tibetans
+have learned to make rifles for themselves now. Phuntshog had a story
+about another suspicious character, a mysterious Lama who arrived in
+Darjeeling in 1901 from Calcutta with 5,000 alms bowls for Tibet, which
+he said he had purchased in Germany. The man was detained in Darjeeling
+five months under police espionage, and finally sent back to Calcutta.
+
+Our Intelligence Department on this frontier is more alert than it used
+to be. Dorjieff, Phuntshog told me, had been to Darjeeling twice, and
+stayed in a trader's house at Kalimpong several days. He wore the dress
+of a Lama. The ostensible object of his journey was to visit the sacred
+Chorten at Khatmandu and the shrines of Benares. He visited these, and
+was known to spend some time in Calcutta. On the occasion of the mission
+to St. Petersburg Dorjieff and his colleagues entered India through
+Nepal, took train to Bombay, and shipped thence to Odessa. The discovery
+of the Lamas' visit to India was almost simultaneous with their
+departure from Bombay.
+
+Phuntshog is not an admirer of our Tibetan policy. We ought to have laid
+ourselves out, he said, to influence the Lamas by secret agents, as
+Russia did. There was no chance of a compromise now; they would fight to
+the death. Phuntshog said much more which I suspected was inspired by
+the daily newspapers, so I questioned him as to the feelings of the
+natives of the district.
+
+'The feeling of patriotism is extinct,' he said; and he looked at his
+stomach, showing that he spoke the truth. 'We Tibetan British subjects
+are fed well and paid well by your Government. We want nothing more. My
+family are here. Now I have no trade to examine.' His eyes slowly
+surveyed the room, glanced over his office table, with its pen and ink
+and blank paper, lit on the 150 maunds of cast-steel, and finally rested
+on two volumes by his elbow.
+
+'Do you read much?' I asked.
+
+'Sometimes,' he said. 'I have learnt a good deal from these books.'
+
+They were the Holy Bible and Miss Braddon's 'Dead Men's Shoes.'
+
+'Phuntshog,' I said, 'you are a psychological enigma. Your mind is like
+that cast-iron huddled in the corner there, bought in an enlightened
+Western city and destined for your benighted Lhasa, but stuck halfway.
+Only it was going the other way. You don't understand? Neither do I.'
+
+And here at Ari, as I look across the valley of the Russett Chu to
+Pedong, and hear the vesper bell, I cannot help thinking of that strange
+conflict of minds--the devotee who, seeing further than most men, has
+cared nothing for the things of this incarnation, and Phuntshog, the
+strange hybrid product of restless Western energies, stirring and
+muddying the shallows of the Eastern mind. Or are they depths?
+
+Who knows? I know nothing, only that these men are inscrutable, and one
+cannot see into their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TO THE GREAT RIVER
+
+
+I reached Gyantse on July 12. The advance to Lhasa began on the 14th. As
+might be expected from the tone of the delegates, peace negociations
+fell through. The Lhasa Government seemed to be chaotic and conveniently
+inaccessible. The Dalai Lama remained a great impersonality, and the
+four Shapés or Councillors disclaimed all responsibility. The Tsong-du,
+or National Assembly, who virtually governed the country, had sent us no
+communication. The delegates' attitude of _non possumus_ was not
+assumed. Though these men were the highest officials in Tibet, they
+could not guarantee that any settlement they might make with us would be
+faithfully observed. There seemed no hope of a solution to the deadlock
+except by absolute militarism. If the Tibetans had fought so stubbornly
+at Gyantse, what fanaticism might we not expect at Lhasa! Most of us
+thought that we could only reach the capital through the most awful
+carnage. We pictured the 40,000 monks of Lhasa hurling themselves
+defiantly on our camp. We saw them mown down by Maxims, lanes of dead.
+A hopeless struggle, and an ugly page in military history. Still, we
+must go on; there was no help for it. The blood of these people was on
+their own heads.
+
+We left Gyantse on the 14th, and plunged into the unknown towards Lhasa,
+which we had reason to believe lay in some hidden valley 150 miles to
+the north, beyond the unexplored basin of the Tsangpo. Every position on
+the road was held. The Karo la had been enormously strengthened, and was
+occupied by 2,000 men. The enemy's cavalry, which we had never seen,
+were at Nagartse Jong. Gubshi, a dilapidated fort, only nineteen miles
+on the road, was held by several hundred. The Tibetans intended to
+dispute the passage of the Brahmaputra, and there were other strong
+positions where the path skirted the Kyi-chu for miles beneath
+overhanging rocks, which were carefully prepared for booby-traps. We had
+to launch ourselves into this intensely hostile region and compel some
+people--we did not know whom--to attach their signatures and seals to a
+certain parchment which was to bind them to good behaviour in the
+future, and a recognition of obligations they had hitherto disavowed.
+
+Our force consisted of eight companies of the 8th Gurkhas, five
+companies of the 32nd Pioneers, four companies of the 40th Pathans, four
+companies of the Royal Fusiliers, two companies of Mounted Infantry,
+No. 30 British Mountain Battery, a section of No. 7 Native Mountain
+Battery, 1st Madras Sappers and Miners, machine-gun section of the
+Norfolks, and details.[14] The 23rd Pioneers, to their disgust, were
+left to garrison Gyantse. The transport included mule, yak, donkey, and
+coolie corps.
+
+  [14] Companies of Pathans and Gurkhas were left to garrison Ralung,
+      Nagartse, Pehte, Chaksam, and Toilung Bridge.
+
+The first three marches to Ralung were a repetition of the country
+between Kalatso and Gyantse--in the valley a strip of irrigated land,
+green and gold, with alternate barley and mustard fields between
+hillsides bare and verdureless save for tufts of larkspur, astragalus,
+and scattered yellow poppies. To Gyantse one descends 2,000 feet from a
+country entirely barren of trees to a valley of occasional willow and
+poplar groves; while from Gyantse, as one ascends, the clusters of trees
+become fewer, until one reaches the treeless zone again at Ralung
+(15,000 feet). The last grove is at Gubchi.
+
+I quote some notes of the march from my diary:
+
+'_July 14._--The villages by the roadside are deserted save for old
+women and barking dogs. The Tibetans came down from the Karo la and
+impressed the villagers. Many have fled into the hills, and are hiding
+among the rocks and caves. Our pickets fired on some to-night. Seeing
+their heads bobbing up and down among the rocks, they thought they were
+surrounded. Many of the fugitives were women. Luckily, none were hit.
+They were brought into camp whimpering and salaaming, and became
+embarrassingly grateful when it was made clear to them that they were
+not to be tortured or killed, but set free. They were called back,
+however, to give information about grain, and thought their last hour
+had come.'
+
+'_July 16._--All the houses between Gubchi and Ralung are decorated with
+diagonal blue, red, and white stripes, characteristic of the Ning-ma
+sect of Buddhists. They remind me of the walls of Damascus after the
+visit of the German Emperor. Heavy rain falls every day. Last night we
+camped in a wet mustard-field. It is impossible to keep our bedding
+dry.'
+
+From Ralung the valley widens out, and the country becomes more bleak.
+We enter a plateau frequented by gazelle. Cultivation ceases. The ascent
+to the Karo Pass is very gradual. The path takes a sudden turn to the
+east through a narrow gorge.
+
+On the 17th we camped under the Karo la in the snow range of Noijin Kang
+Sang, at an elevation of 1,000 feet above Mont Blanc. The pass was free
+of snow, but a magnificent glacier descended within 500 feet of the
+camp. We lay within four miles of the enemy's position. Most of us
+expected heavy fighting the next morning, as we knew the Tibetans had
+been strengthening their defences at the Karo la for some days. Volleys
+were fired on our scouts on the 16th and 17th. The old wall had been
+extended east and west until it ended in vertical cliffs just beneath
+the snow-line. A second barrier had been built further on, and sangars
+constructed on every prominent point to meet flank attacks. The wall
+itself was massively strong, and it was approached by a steep cliff, up
+which it was impossible to make a sustained charge, as the rarefied air
+at this elevation (16,600 feet) leaves one breathless after the
+slightest exertion. The Karo la was the strongest position on the road
+to Lhasa. If the Tibetans intended to make another stand, here was their
+chance.
+
+In the messes there was much discussion as to the seriousness of the
+opposition we were likely to meet with. The flanking parties had a long
+and difficult climb before them that would take them some hours, and the
+general feeling was that we should be lucky if we got the transport
+through by noon. But when one of us suggested that the Tibetans might
+fail to come up to the scratch, and abandon the position without firing
+a shot, we laughed at him; but his conjecture was very near the mark.
+
+At 7 a.m. the troops forming the line of advance moved into position.
+The disposition of the enemy's sangars made a turning movement extremely
+difficult, but a frontal attack on the wall, if stubbornly resisted,
+could not be carried without severe loss. General Macdonald sent
+flanking parties of the 8th Gurkhas on both sides of the valley to scale
+the heights and turn the Tibetan position, and despatched the Royal
+Fusiliers along the centre of the valley to attack the wall when the
+opposition had been weakened.
+
+Stretched on a grassy knoll on the left, enjoying the sunshine and the
+smell of the warm turf, we civilians watched the whole affair with our
+glasses. It might have been a picnic on the Surrey downs if it were not
+for the tap-tap of the Maxim, like a distant woodpecker, in the valley,
+and the occasional report of the 10-pounders by our side, which made the
+valleys and cliffs reverberate like thunder.
+
+The Tibetans' ruse was to open fire from the wall directly our troops
+came into view, and then evacuate the position. They thus delayed the
+pursuit while we were waiting for the scaling-party to ascend the
+heights.
+
+At nine o'clock the Gurkhas on the left signalled that no enemy were to
+be seen. At the same time Colonel Cooper, of the Royal Fusiliers,
+heliographed that the wall was unoccupied and the Tibetans in full
+retreat. The mounted infantry were at once called up for the pursuit.
+Meanwhile one or two jingals and some Tibetan marksmen kept up an
+intermittent fire on the right flanking party from clefts in the
+overhanging cliffs. A battery replied with shrapnel, covering our
+advance. These pickets on the left stayed behind and engaged our right
+flanking party until eleven o'clock. To turn the position the Gurkhas
+climbed a parallel ridge, and were for a long time under fire of their
+jingals. The last part of the ascent was along the edge of a glacier,
+and then on to the shoulder of the ridge by steps which the Gurkhas cut
+in the ice with their _kukris_, helping one another up with the butts of
+their rifles. They carried rope scaling-ladders, but these were for the
+descent. At 11.30 Major Murray and his two companies of Gurkhas appeared
+on the heights, and possession was taken of the pass. The ridge that the
+Tibetans had held was apparently deserted, but every now and then a man
+was seen crouching in a cave or behind a rock, and was shot down. One
+Kham man shot a Gurkha who was looking into the cave where he was
+hiding. He then ran out and held up his thumbs, expecting quarter. He
+was rightly cut down with _kukris_. The dying Gurkha's comrades rushed
+the cave, and drove six more over the precipice without using steel or
+powder. They fell sheer 300 feet. Another Gurkha cut off a Tibetan's
+head with his own sword. On several occasions they hesitated to soil
+their _kukris_ when they could despatch their victims in any other way.
+
+[Illustration: KARO LA]
+
+On a further ridge, a heart-breaking ascent of shale and boulders, we
+saw two or three hundred Tibetans ascending into the clouds. We had
+marked them at the beginning of the action, before we knew that the wall
+was unoccupied. Even then it was clear that the men were fugitives, and
+had no thought of holding the place. We could see them hours afterwards,
+with our glasses, crouching under the cliffs. We turned shrapnel and
+Maxims on them; the hillsides began to move. Then a company of Pathans
+was sent up, and despatched over forty. It was at this point I saw an
+act of heroism which quite changed my estimate of these men. A group of
+four were running up a cliff, under fire from the Pathans at a distance
+of about 500 yards. One was hit, and his comrade stayed behind to carry
+him. The two unimpeded Tibetans made their escape, but the rescuer could
+only shamble along with difficulty. He and his wounded comrade were both
+shot down.
+
+The 18th was a disappointing day to our soldiers. But the action was of
+great interest, owing to the altitude in which our flanking parties had
+to operate. There is a saying on the Indian frontier: 'There is a hill;
+send up a Gurkha.' These sturdy little men are splendid mountaineers,
+and will climb up the face of a rock while the enemy are rolling down
+stones on them as coolly as they will rush a wall under heavy fire on
+the flat. Their arduous climb took three and a half hours, and was a
+real mountaineering feat. The cave fighting, in which they had three
+casualties, took place at 19,000 feet, and this is probably the highest
+elevation at which an action has been fought in history.
+
+A few of the Tibetans fled by the highroad, along which the mounted
+infantry pursued, killing twenty and taking ten prisoners. I asked a
+native officer how he decided whom to spare or kill, and he said he
+killed the men who ran, and spared those who came towards him. The
+destiny that preserved the lives of our ten Kham prisoners when nearly
+the whole of the levy perished reminded me in its capriciousness of
+Caliban's whim in Setebos:
+
+    'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
+    Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'
+
+These Kham men were in our mounted infantry camp until the release of
+the prisoners in Lhasa, and made themselves useful in many ways--loading
+mules, carrying us over streams, fetching wood and water, and fodder for
+our horses. They were fed and cared for, and probably never fared better
+in their lives. When they had nothing to do, they would sit down in a
+circle and discuss things resignedly--the English, no doubt, and their
+ways, and their own distant country. Sometimes they would ask to go
+home; their mothers and wives did not know if they were alive or dead.
+But we had no guarantee that they would not fight us again. Now they
+knew the disparity of their arms they might shrink from further
+resistance, yet there was every chance that the Lamas would compel them
+to fight. They became quite popular in the camp, these wild, long-haired
+men, they were so good-humoured, gentle in manner, and ready to help.
+
+I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle was so hopeless. They
+were brave and simple, and none of us bore the slightest vindictiveness
+against them. Here was all the brutality of war, and none of the glory
+and incentive. These men were of the same race as the people I had been
+living amongst at Darjeeling--cheerful, jolly fellows--and I had seen
+their crops ruined, their houses burnt and shelled, the dead lying about
+the thresholds of what were their homes, and all for no fault of their
+own--only because their leaders were politically impossible, which, of
+course, the poor fellows did not know, and there was no one to tell
+them. They thought our advance an act of unprovoked aggression, and they
+were fighting for their homes.
+
+Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning to put the fear of
+God into them. We never saw a Tibetan within five miles who did not
+carry a huge white flag. The second action at the Karo la was the end of
+the Tibetan resistance. The fall of Gyantse Jong, which they thought
+unassailable, seems to have broken their spirit altogether. At the Karo
+la they had evidently no serious intention of holding the position, but
+fought like men driven to the front against their will, with no
+confidence or heart in the business at all. The friendly Bhutanese told
+us that the Tibetans would not stand where they had once been defeated,
+and that levies who had once faced us were not easily brought into the
+field again. These were casual generalizations, no doubt, but they
+contained a great deal of truth. The Kham men who opposed us at the
+first Karo la action, the Shigatze men who attacked the mission in May,
+and the force from Lhasa who hurled themselves on Kangma, were all new
+levies. Many of our prisoners protested very strongly against being
+released, fearing to be exposed again to our bullets and their own
+Lamas.
+
+On the 18th we reached Nagartse Jong, and found the Shapés awaiting us.
+They met us in the same impracticable spirit. We were not to occupy the
+jong, and they were not empowered to treat with us unless we returned to
+Gyantse. It was a repetition of Khamba Jong and Tuna. In the afternoon a
+durbar was held in Colonel Younghusband's tent, when the Tibetans showed
+themselves appallingly futile and childish. They did not seem to realize
+that we were in a position to dictate terms, and Colonel Younghusband
+had to repeat that it was now too late for any compromise, and the
+settlement must be completed at Lhasa.
+
+From Nagartse we held interviews with these tedious delegates at almost
+every camp. They exhausted everyone's patience except the
+Commissioner's. For days they did not yield a point, and refused even
+to discuss terms unless we returned to Gyantse. But their protests
+became more urgent as we went on, their tone less minatory. It was not
+until we were within fifty miles of Lhasa that the Tibetan Government
+deigned to enter into communication with the mission. At Tamalung
+Colonel Younghusband received the first communication from the National
+Assembly; at Chaksam arrived the first missive the British Government
+had ever received from the Dalai Lama. During the delay at the ferry the
+councillors practically threw themselves on Colonel Younghusband's
+mercy. They said that their lives would be forfeited if we proceeded,
+and dwelt on the severe punishment they might incur if they failed to
+conclude negociations satisfactorily. But Colonel Younghusband was equal
+to every emergency. It would be impossible to find another man in the
+British Empire with a personality so calculated to impress the Tibetans.
+He sat through every durbar a monument of patience and inflexibility,
+impassive as one of their own Buddhas. Priests and councillors found
+that appeals to his mercy were hopeless. He, too, had orders from his
+King to go to Lhasa; if he faltered, _his_ life also was at stake;
+decapitation would await _him_ on his return. That was the impression he
+purposely gave them. It curtailed palaver. How in the name of all their
+Buddhas were they to stop such a man?
+
+The whole progress of negociations put me in mind of the coercion of
+very naughty children. The Lamas tried every guile to reduce his
+demands. They would be cajoling him now if he had not given them an
+ultimatum, and if they had not learnt by six weeks' contact and
+intercourse with the man that shuffling was hopeless, that he never made
+a promise that was not fulfilled, or a threat that was not executed. The
+Tibetan treaty was the victory of a personality, the triumph of an
+impression on the least impressionable people in the world. But I
+anticipate.
+
+While the Shapés were holding Colonel Younghusband in conference at
+Nagartse, their cavalry were escorting a large convoy on the road to
+Lhasa. Our mounted infantry came upon them six miles beyond Nagartse,
+and as they were rounding them up the Tibetans foolishly fired on them.
+We captured eighty riding and baggage ponies and mules and fourteen
+prisoners, and killed several. They made no stand, though they were well
+armed with a medley of modern rifles and well mounted. This was actually
+the last shot fired on our side. The delegates had been full of
+assurances that the country was clear of the enemy, hoping that the
+convoy would get well away while they delayed us with fruitless protests
+and reiterated demands to go back. While they were palavering in the
+tent, they looked out and saw the Pathans go past with their rich yellow
+silks and personal baggage looted in the brush with the cavalry. Their
+consternation was amusing, and the situation had its element of humour.
+A servant rushed to the door of the tent and delivered the whole tale of
+woe. A mounted infantry officer arrived and explained that our scouts
+had been fired on. After this, of course, there was no talk of anything
+except the restitution of the loot. The Shapés deserved to lose their
+kit. I do not remember what was arranged, but if any readers of this
+record see a gorgeous yellow cloak of silk and brocade at a fancy-dress
+ball in London, I advise them to ask its history.
+
+This last encounter with the Tibetans is especially interesting, as they
+were the best-armed body of men we had met. The weapons we captured
+included a Winchester rifle, several Lhasa-made Martinis, a bolt rifle
+of an old Austrian pattern, an English-made muzzle-loading rifle, a
+12-bore breech-loading shot-gun, some Eley's ammunition, and an English
+gun-case. The reports of Russian arms found in Tibet have been very much
+exaggerated. During the whole campaign we did not come across more than
+thirty Russian Government rifles, and these were weapons that must have
+drifted into Tibet from Mongolia, just as rifles of British pattern
+found their way over the Indian frontier into Lhasa. Also it must be
+remembered that the weapons locally made in Lhasa were of British
+pattern, and manufactured by experts decoyed from a British factory.
+Had these men been Russian subjects, we should have regarded their
+presence in Lhasa as an unquestionable proof of Muscovite assistance.
+Jealousy and suspicion make nations wilfully blind. Russia fully
+believes that we are giving underhand assistance to the Japanese, and
+many Englishmen, who are unbiassed in other questions, are ready to
+believe, without the slightest proof, that Russia has been supplying
+Tibet with arms and generals. We had been informed that large quantities
+of Russian rifles had been introduced into the country, and it was
+rumoured that the Tibetans were reserving these for the defence of Lhasa
+itself. But it is hardly credible that they should have sent levies
+against us armed with their obsolete matchlocks when they were well
+supplied with weapons of a modern pattern. Russian intrigue was active
+in Lhasa, but it had not gone so far as open armament.
+
+At Nagartse we came across the great Yamdok or Palti Lake, along the
+shores of which winds the road to Lhasa. Nagartse Jong is a striking old
+keep, built on a bluff promontory of hill stretching out towards the
+blue waters of the lake. In the distance we saw the crag-perched
+monastery of Samding, where lives the mysterious Dorje Phagmo, the
+incarnation of the goddess Tara.
+
+The wild mountain scenery of the Yamdok Tso, the most romantic in Tibet,
+has naturally inspired many legends. When Samding was threatened by the
+Dzungarian invaders early in the eighteenth century, Dorje Phagmo
+miraculously converted herself and all her attendant monks and nuns into
+pigs. Serung Dandub, the Dzungarian chief, finding the monastery
+deserted, said that he would not loot a place guarded only by swine,
+whereupon Dorje Phagmo again metamorphosed herself and her satellites.
+The terrified invaders prostrated themselves in awe before the goddess,
+and presented the monastery with the most priceless gifts. Similarly,
+the Abbot of Pehte saved the fortress and town from another band of
+invaders by giving the lake the appearance of green pasturelands, into
+which the Dzungarians galloped and were engulfed. I quote these tales,
+which have been mentioned in nearly every book on Tibet, as typical of
+the country. Doubtless similar legends will be current in a few years
+about the British to account for the sparing of Samding, Nagartse, and
+Pehte Jong.
+
+Special courtesy was shown the monks and nuns of Samding, in recognition
+of the hospitality afforded Sarat Chandra Dass by the last incarnation
+of Dorje Phagmo, who entertained the Bengali traveller, and saw that he
+was attended to and cared for through a serious illness. A letter was
+sent Dorje Phagmo, asking if she would receive three British officers,
+including the antiquary of the expedition. But the present incarnation,
+a girl of six or seven years, was invisible, and the convent was
+reported to be bare of ornament and singularly disappointing. There
+were no pigs.
+
+If only one were without the incubus of an army, a month in the Noijin
+Kang Sang country and the Yamdok Plain would be a delightful experience.
+But when one is accompanying a column one loses more than half the
+pleasure of travel. One has to get up at a fixed hour--generally
+uncomfortably early--breakfast, and pack and load one's mules and see
+them started in their allotted place in the line, ride in a crowd all
+day, often at a snail's pace, and halt at a fixed place. Shooting is
+forbidden on the line of march. When alone one can wander about with a
+gun, pitch camp where one likes, make short or long marches as one
+likes, shoot or fish or loiter for days in the same place. The spirit
+which impels one to travel in wild places is an impulse, conscious or
+unconscious, to be free of laws and restraints, to escape conventions
+and social obligations, to temporarily throw one's self back into an
+obsolete phase of existence, amidst surroundings which bear little mark
+of the arbitrary meddling of man. It is not a high ideal, but men often
+deceive themselves when they think they make expeditions in order to add
+to science, and forsake the comforts of life, and endure hunger, cold,
+fatigue and loneliness, to discover in exactly what parallel of unknown
+country a river rises or bends to some particular point of the compass.
+How many travellers are there who would spend the same time in an
+office poring over maps or statistics for the sake of geography or any
+other science? We like to have a convenient excuse, and make a virtue
+out of a hobby or an instinct. But why not own up that one travels for
+the glamour of the thing? In previous wanderings my experience had
+always been to leave a base with several different objectives in view,
+and to take the route that proved most alluring when met by a choice of
+roads--some old deserted city or ruined shrine, some lake or marshland
+haunted by wild-fowl that have never heard the crack of a gun, or a
+strip of desert where one must calculate how to get across with just
+sufficient supplies and no margin. I like to drift to the magnet of
+great watersheds, lofty mountain passes, frontiers where one emerges
+among people entirely different in habit and belief from folk the other
+side, but equally convinced that they are the only enlightened people on
+earth. Often in India I had dreamed of the great inland waters of Tibet
+and Mongolia, the haunts of myriads of duck and geese--Yamdok Tso,
+Tengri Nor, Issik Kul, names of romance to the wild-fowler, to be
+breathed with reverence and awe. I envied the great flights of mallard
+and pochard winging northward in March and April to the unknown; and
+here at last I was camping by the Yamdok Tso itself--with an army.
+
+Yet I have digressed to grumble at the only means by which a sight of
+these hidden waters was possible. When we passed in July, there were no
+wild-fowl on the lake except the bar-headed geese and Brahminy duck. The
+ruddy sheldrake, or Brahminy, is found all over Tibet, and will be
+associated with the memory of nearly every march and camping-ground. It
+is distinctly a Buddhist bird. From it is derived the title of the
+established Church of the Lamas, the Abbots of which wear robes of ruddy
+sheldrake colour, Gelug-pa.[15] In Burmah the Brahminy is sacred to
+Buddhism as a symbol of devotion and fidelity, and it was figured on
+Asoka's pillars in the same emblematical character.[16] The Brahminy is
+generally found in pairs, and when one is shot the other will often
+hover round till it falls a victim to conjugal love. In India the bird
+is considered inedible, but we were glad of it in Tibet, and discovered
+no trace of fishy flavour.
+
+  [15] Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet,' p. 200.
+
+  [16] _Ibid._, p. 409.
+
+Early in April, when we passed the Bam Tso and Kala Tso we found the
+lakes frequented by nearly all the common migratory Indian duck; and
+again, on our return large flights came in. But during the summer months
+nothing remained except the geese and sheldrake and the goosander, which
+is resident in Tibet and the Himalayas. I take it that no respectable
+duck spends the summer south of the Tengri Nor. At Lhasa, mallard, teal,
+gadwall, and white-eyed pochard were coming in from the north as we
+were leaving in the latter half of September, and followed us down to
+the plains. They make shorter flights than I imagined, and longer stays
+at their fashionable Central Asian watering-places.
+
+We marched three days along the banks of the Yamdok Tso, and halted a
+day at Nagartse. Duck were not plentiful on the lake. Black-headed gulls
+and redshanks were common. The fields of blue borage by the villages
+were an exquisite sight. On the 22nd we reached Pehte. The jong, a
+medieval fortress, stands out on the lake like Chillon, only it is more
+crumbling and dilapidated. The courtyards are neglected and overgrown
+with nettles. Soldiers, villagers, both men and women, had run away to
+the hills with their flocks and valuables. Only an old man and two boys
+were left in charge of the chapel and the fort. The hide fishing-boats
+were sunk, or carried over to the other side. On July 24 we left the
+lake near the village of Tamalung, and ascended the ridge on our left to
+the Khamba Pass, 1,200 feet above the lake level. A sudden turn in the
+path brought us to the saddle, and we looked down on the great river
+that has been guarded from European eyes for nearly a century. In the
+heart of Tibet we had found Arcadia--not a detached oasis, but a
+continuous strip of verdure, where the Tsangpo cleaves the bleak hills
+and desert tablelands from west to east.
+
+All the valley was covered with green and yellow cornfields, with
+scattered homesteads surrounded by clusters of trees, not dwarfish and
+stunted in the struggle for existence, but stately and spreading--trees
+that would grace the valley of the Thames or Severn.
+
+We had come through the desert to Arcady. When we left Phari, months and
+months before, and crossed the Tang la, we entered the desert.
+
+Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time does not boast a blade
+of grass. Within a mile there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and
+sapless, which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and wild asses, beasts
+that from the beginning have chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans,
+who people the same waste, are content with spare diet so long as they
+are left alone.
+
+Every Tibetan of the tableland is a hermit by choice, or some strange
+hereditary instinct has impelled him to accept Nature's most niggard
+gifts as his birthright, so that he toils a lifetime to win by his own
+labour and in scanty measure the necessaries which Nature deals lavishly
+elsewhere, herding his yaks on the waste lands, tilling the unproductive
+soil for his meagre crop of barley, and searching the hillsides for
+yak-dung for fuel to warm his stone hut and cook his meal of flour.
+
+Yet north and south of him, barely a week's journey, are warm, fertile
+valleys, luxuriant crops, unstinted woodlands, where Mongols like
+himself accept Nature's largess philosophically as the most natural
+thing in the world.
+
+It seems as if some special and economical law of Providence, such a law
+as makes at least one man see beauty in every type of woman, even the
+most unlovely, had ordained it, so that no corner of the earth, not even
+the Sahara, Tadmor, Tuna, or Guru, should lack men who devote themselves
+blindly and without question to live there, and care for what one might
+think God Himself had forgotten and overlooked.
+
+These men--Bedouin, Tibetans, and the like--enjoy one thing, for which
+they forego most things that men crave for, and that is freedom. They do
+not possess the gifts that cause strife, and divisions, and law-making,
+and political parties, and changes of Government. They have too little
+to share. Their country is invaded only at intervals of centuries. On
+these occasions they fight bravely, as their one inheritance is at
+stake. But they are bigoted and benighted; they have not kept time with
+evolution, and so they are defeated. The conservatism, the
+exclusiveness, that has kept them free so long has shut the door to
+'progress,' which, if they were enlightened and introspective, they
+would recognise as a pestilence that has infected one half of the world
+at the expense of the other, making both unhappy and discontented.
+
+The Tuna Plain is like the Palmyra Desert at the point where one comes
+within view of the snows of Lebanon. It is not monotonous; there is too
+much play of light and shade for that. Everywhere the sun shines, the
+mirage dances; the white calcined plain becomes a flock of frightened
+sheep hurrying down the wind; the stunted sedge by the lakeside leaps up
+like a squadron in ambush and sweeps rapidly along without ever
+approaching nearer. Sometimes a herd of wild asses is mingled in the
+dance, grotesquely magnified; stones and nettles become walls and men.
+All the country is elusive and unreal.
+
+A few miles beyond Guru the road skirts the Bamtso Lake, which must once
+have filled the whole valley. Now the waters have receded, as the
+process of desiccation is going on which has entirely changed the
+geographical features of Central Asia, and caused the disappearance of
+great expanses of water like the Koko Nor, and the dwindling of lakes
+and river from Khotan to Gobi. The Roof of the World is becoming less
+and less inhabitable.
+
+From the desert to Arcady is not a long journey, but armies travel
+slowly. After months of waiting and delay we reached the promised land.
+It was all suddenly unfolded to our view when we stood on the Khamba la.
+Below us was a purely pastoral landscape. Beyond lay hills even more
+barren and verdureless than those we had crossed. But every mile or so
+green fan-shaped valleys, irrigated by clear streams, interrupted the
+barrenness, opening out into the main valley east and west with perfect
+symmetry. To the north-east flowed the Kyi Chu, the valley in which
+Lhasa lay screened, only fifty-six miles distant.
+
+To the south of the pass lay the great Yamdok Lake, wild and beautiful,
+its channels twining into the dark interstices of the hills--valleys of
+mystery and gloom, where no white man has ever trod. Lights and shadows
+fell caressingly on the lake and hills. At one moment a peak was ebony
+black, at another--as the heavy clouds passed from over it, and the
+sun's rays illumined it through a thin mist--golden as a field of
+buttercups. Often at sunset the grassy cones of the hills glow like
+gilded pagodas, and the Tibetans, I am told, call these sunlit plots the
+'golden ground.'
+
+In bright sunlight the lake is a deep turquoise blue, but at evening
+time transient lights and shades fleet over it with the moving clouds,
+light forget-me-not, deep purple, the azure of a butterfly's wing--then
+all is swept away, immersed in gloom, before the dark, menacing
+storm-clouds.
+
+On the 25th I crossed the river with the 1st Mounted Infantry and 40th
+Pathans. My tent is pitched on the roof of a rambling two-storied house,
+under the shade of a great walnut-tree. Crops, waist-deep, grow up to
+the walls--barley, wheat, beans, and peas. On the roof are garden
+flowers in pots, hollyhocks, and marigolds. The cornfields are bright
+with English wild-flowers--dandelions, buttercups, astragalus, and a
+purple Michaelmas daisy.
+
+There is no village, but farmhouses are dotted about the valley, and
+groves of trees--walnut and peach, and poplar and willow--enclosed
+within stone walls. Wild birds that are almost tame are nesting in the
+trees--black and white magpies, crested hoopoes, and turtle-doves. The
+groves are irrigated like the fields, and carpeted with flowers.
+Homelike butterflies frequent them, and honey-bees.
+
+Everything is homelike. There is no mystery in the valley, except its
+access, or, rather, its inaccessibility. We have come to it through snow
+passes, over barren, rocky wildernesses; we have won it with toil and
+suffering, through frost and rain and snow and blistering sun.
+
+And now that we had found Arcady, I would have stayed there. Lhasa was
+only four marches distant, but to me, in that mood of almost immoral
+indolence, it seemed that this strip of verdure, with its happy pastoral
+scenes, was the most impassable barrier that Nature had planted in our
+path. Like the Tibetans, she menaced and threatened us at first, then
+she turned to us with smiles and cajoleries, entreating us to stay, and
+her seduction was harder to resist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To trace the course of the Tsangpo River from Tibet to its outlet into
+Assam has been the goal of travellers for over a century. Here is one
+of the few unknown tracts of the world, where no white man has ever
+penetrated. Until quite recently there was a hot controversy among
+geographers as to whether the Tsangpo was the main feeder of the
+Brahmaputra or reappeared in Burmah as the Irawaddy. All attempts to
+explore the river from India have proved fruitless, owing to the intense
+hostility of the Abor and Passi Minyang tribes, who oppose all intrusion
+with their poisoned arrows and stakes, sharp and formidable as spears,
+cunningly set in the ground to entrap invaders; while the vigilance of
+the Lamas has made it impossible for any European to get within 150
+miles of the Tsangpo Valley from Tibet. It was not until 1882 that all
+doubt as to the identity of the Tsangpo and Brahmaputra was set aside by
+the survey of the native explorer A. K. And the course of the
+Brahmaputra, or Dihong, as it is called in Northern Assam, was never
+thoroughly investigated until the explorations of Mr. Needham, the
+Political Officer at Sadiya, and his trained Gurkhas, who penetrated
+northwards as far as Gina, a village half a day's journey beyond Passi
+Ghat, and only about seventy miles south of the point reached by A. K.
+from Tibet.
+
+The return of the British expedition from Tibet was evidently the
+opportunity of a century for the investigation of this unexplored
+country. We had gained the hitherto inaccessible base, and were
+provided with supplies and transport on the spot; we had no opposition
+to expect from the Tibetans, who were naturally eager to help us out of
+the country by whatever road we chose, and had promised to send
+officials with us to their frontier at Gyala Sendong, who would forage
+for us and try to impress the villagers into our service. The hostile
+tribes beyond the frontier were not so likely to resist an expedition
+moving south to their homes after a successful campaign as a force
+entering their country from our Indian frontier. In the latter case they
+would naturally be more suspicious of designs on their independence. The
+distance from Lhasa to Assam was variously estimated from 500 to 700
+miles. I think the calculations were influenced, perhaps unconsciously,
+by sympathy with, or aversion from, the enterprise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Shapés, it is true, though they promised to help us if we were
+determined on it, advised us emphatically not to go by the Tsangpo
+route. They said that the natives of their own outlying provinces were
+bandits and cut-throats, practically independent of the Lhasa
+Government, while the savages beyond the frontier were dangerous people
+who obeyed no laws. The Shapés' notions as to the course of the river
+were most vague. When questioned, they said there was a legend that it
+disappeared into a hole in the earth. The country near its mouth was
+inhabited by savages, who went about unclothed, and fed on monkeys and
+reptiles. It was rumoured that they were horned like animals, and that
+mothers did not know their own children. But this they could not vouch
+for.
+
+It was believed that tracks of a kind existed from village to village
+all along the route, but these, of course, after a time would become
+impracticable for pack transport. The mules would have to be abandoned,
+and sent back to Gyantse by our guides, or presented to the Tibetan
+officials who accompanied us. Then we were to proceed by forced marches
+through the jungle, with coolie transport if obtainable; if not, each
+man was to carry rice for a few days. The distance from the Tibet
+frontier to Sadiya is not great, and the unexplored country is reckoned
+not to be more than seven stages. The force would bivouac, and, if their
+advance were resisted, would confine themselves solely to defensive
+tactics. In case of opposition, the greatest difficulty would be the
+care of the wounded, as each invalid would need four carriers. Thus, a
+few casualties would reduce enormously the fighting strength of the
+escort.
+
+But opposition was unlikely. Mr. Needham, who has made the tribes of the
+Dihong Valley the study of a lifetime, and succeeded to some extent in
+gaining their confidence, considered the chances of resistance small. He
+would, he said, send messages to the tribes that the force coming
+through their country from the north were his friends, that they had
+been engaged in a punitive expedition against the Lamas (whom the Abors
+detested), that they were returning home by the shortest route to Assam,
+and had no designs on the territory they traversed. It was proposed that
+Mr. Needham should go up the river as far as possible and furnish the
+party with supplies.
+
+All arrangements had been made for the exploring-party, which was to
+leave the main force at Chaksam Ferry, and was expected to arrive in
+Sadiya almost simultaneously with the winding up of the expedition at
+Siliguri. Captain Ryder, R.E., was to command the party, and his escort
+was to be made up of the 8th Gurkhas, who had long experience of the
+Assam frontier tribes, and were the best men who could be chosen for the
+work. Officers were selected, supply and transport details arranged,
+everything was in readiness, when at the last moment, only a day or two
+before the party was to start, a message was received from Simla
+refusing to sanction the expedition. Colonel Younghusband was entirely
+in favour of it, but the military authorities had a clean slate; they
+had come through so far without a single disaster, and it seemed that no
+scientific or geographical considerations could have any weight with
+them in their determination to take no risks. Of course there were
+risks, and always must be in enterprises of the kind; but I think the
+circumstances of the moment reduced them to a minimum, and that the
+results to be obtained from the projected expedition should have
+entirely outweighed them.
+
+In European scientific circles much was expected of the Tibetan
+expedition. But it has added very little to science. The surveys that
+were made have done little more than modify the previous investigations
+of native surveyors.[17]
+
+  [17] The only expedition sanctioned is that which is now exploring
+      the little-known trade route between Gyantse and Gartok, where a
+      mart has been opened to us by the recent Tibetan treaty. The
+      party consists of Captain Ryder, R.E., in command, Captain Wood,
+      R.E., Lieutenant Bailey, of the 32nd Pioneers, and six picked men
+      of the 8th Gurkhas. They follow the main feeder of the Tsangpo
+      nearly 500 miles, then strike into the high lacustrine tableland
+      of Western Tibet, passing the great Mansarowar Lake to Gartok;
+      thence over the Indus watershed, and down the Sutlej Valley to
+      Simla, where they are expected about the end of January. The
+      party will be able to collect useful information about the trade
+      resources of the country; but the route has already been mapped
+      by Nain Singh, the Indian surveyor, and the geographical results
+      of the expedition will be small compared with what would have
+      been derived from the projected Tengri Nor and Brahmaputra trips.
+
+An expedition to the mountains bordering the Tengri Nor, only nine days
+north of Lhasa, would have linked all the unknown country north of the
+Tsang po with the tracts explored by Sven Hedin, and left the map
+without a hiatus in four degrees of longitude from Cape Comorin to the
+Arctic Ocean. But military considerations were paramount.
+
+For myself, the abandonment of the expedition was a great
+disappointment. I had counted on it as early as February, and had made
+all preparations to join it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY
+
+
+The passage of the river was difficult and dangerous. If we had had to
+depend on the four Berthon boats we took with us, the crossing might
+have taken weeks. But the good fortune that attended the expedition
+throughout did not fail us. At Chaksam we found the Tibetans had left
+behind their two great ferry-boats, quaint old barges with horses' heads
+at the prow, capacious enough to hold a hundred men. The Tibetan
+ferrymen worked for us cheerfully. A number of hide boats were also
+discovered. The transport mules were swum over, and the whole force was
+across in less than a week.
+
+But the river took its toll most tragically. The current is swift and
+boisterous; the eddies and whirlpools are dangerously uncertain. Two
+Berthon boats, bound together into a raft, capsized, and Major
+Bretherton, chief supply and transport officer, and two Gurkhas were
+drowned. It seemed as if the genius of the river, offended at our
+intrusion, had claimed its price and carried off the most valuable life
+in the force. It was Major Bretherton's foresight more than anything
+that enabled us to reach Lhasa. His loss was calamitous.
+
+We left our camp at the ferry on July 31, and started for Lhasa, which
+was only forty-three miles distant. It was difficult to believe that in
+three days we would be looking on the Potala.
+
+The Kyi Chu, the holy river of Lhasa, flows into the Tsangpo at Chushul,
+three miles below Chaksam ferry, where our troops crossed. The river is
+almost as broad as the Thames at Greenwich, and the stream is swift and
+clear. The valley is cultivated in places, but long stretches are bare
+and rocky. Sand-dunes, overgrown with artemisia scrub, extend to the
+margin of cultivation, leaving a well-defined line between the green
+cornfields and the barren sand. The crops were ripening at the time of
+our advance, and promised a plentiful harvest.
+
+For many miles the road is cut out of a precipitous cliff above the
+river. A few hundred men could have destroyed it in an afternoon, and
+delayed our advance for another week. Newly-built sangars at the
+entrance of the gorge showed that the Tibetans had intended to hold it.
+But they left the valley in a disorganized state the day we reached the
+Tsangpo. Had they fortified the position, they might have made it
+stronger than the Karo la.
+
+The heat of the valley was almost tropical. Summer by the Kyi Chu River
+is very different from one's first conceptions of Tibet. To escape the
+heat, I used to write my diary in the shade of gardens and willow
+groves. Hoopoes, magpies, and huge black ravens became inquisitive and
+confidential. I have a pile of little black notebooks I scribbled over
+in their society, dirty and torn and soiled with pressed flowers. For a
+picture of the valley I will go to these. One's freshest impressions are
+the best, and truer than reminiscences.
+
+
+    NETHANG.
+
+In the most fertile part of the Kyi Chu Valley, where the fields are
+intersected in all directions by clear-running streams bordered with
+flowers, in a grove of poplars where doves were singing all day long, I
+found Atisa's tomb.
+
+It was built in a large, plain, barn-like building, clean and
+sweet-smelling as a granary, and innocent of ornament outside and in. It
+was the only clean and simple place devoted to religion I had seen in
+Tibet.
+
+In every house and monastery we entered on the road there were gilded
+images, tawdry paintings, demons and she-devils, garish frescoes on the
+wall, hideous grinning devil-masks, all the Lama's spurious apparatus of
+terrorism.
+
+These were the outward symbols of demonolatry and superstition invented
+by scheming priests as the fabric of their sacerdotalism. But this was
+the resting-place of the Reformer, the true son of Buddha, who came
+over the Himalayas to preach a religion of love and mercy.
+
+I entered the building out of the glare of the sun, expecting nothing
+but the usual monsters and abortions--just as one is dragged into a
+church in some tourist-ridden land, where, if only for the sake of
+peace, one must cast an apathetic eye at the lions of the country. But
+as the tomb gradually assumed shape in the dim light, I knew that there
+was someone here, a priest or a community, who understood Atisa, who
+knew what he would have wished his last resting-place to be; or perhaps
+the good old monk had left a will or spoken a plain word that had been
+handed down and remembered these thousand years, and was now, no doubt,
+regarded as an eccentric's whim, that there must be no gods or demons by
+his tomb, nothing abnormal, no pretentiousness of any kind. If his
+teaching had lived, how simple and honest and different Tibet would be
+to-day!
+
+The tomb was not beautiful--a large square plinth, supporting layers of
+gradually decreasing circumference and forming steps two feet in height,
+the last a platform on which was based a substantial vat-like structure
+with no ornament or inscription except a thin line of black pencilled
+saints. By climbing up the layers of masonry I found a pair of slant
+eyes gazing at nothing and hidden by a curve in the stone from gazers
+below. This was the only painting on the tomb.
+
+Never in the thousand years since the good monk was laid to rest at
+Nethang had a white man entered this shrine. To-day the courtyard was
+crowded with mules and drivers; Hindus and Pathans in British uniform:
+they were ransacking the place for corn. A transport officer was
+shouting:
+
+'How many bags have you, babu?'
+
+'A hundred and seven, sir.'
+
+'Remember, if anyone loots, he will get fifty _beynt_' (stripes with the
+cat-o'-nine-tails).
+
+Then he turned to me.
+
+'What the devil is that old thief doing over there?' he said, and nodded
+at a man with archæological interests, who was peering about in a dark
+corner by the tomb. 'There is nothing more here.'
+
+'He is examining Atisa's tomb.'
+
+'And who the devil is Atisa?'
+
+And who is he? Merely a name to a few dry-as-dust pedants. Everything
+human he did is forgotten. The faintest ripple remains to-day from that
+stone cast into the stagnant waters so many years ago. A few monks drone
+away their days in a monastery close by. In the courtyard there is a
+border of hollyhocks and snapdragon and asters. Here the unsavoury
+guardians of Atisa's tomb watch me as I write, and wonder what on earth
+I am doing among them, and what spell or mantra I am inscribing in the
+little black book that shuts so tightly with a clasp.
+
+
+    TOILUNG.
+
+To-morrow we reach Lhasa.
+
+A few hours ago we caught the first glimpse of the Potala Palace, a
+golden dome standing out on a bluff rock in the centre of the valley.
+The city is not seen from afar perched on a hill like the great
+monasteries and jongs of the country. It is literally 'hidden.' A rocky
+promontory projects from the bleak hills to the south like a screen,
+hiding Lhasa, as if Nature conspired in its seclusion. Here at a
+distance of seven miles we can see the Potala and the Lamas' Medical
+College.
+
+Trees and undulating ground shut out the view of the actual city until
+one is within a mile of it.
+
+To-morrow we camp outside. It is nearly a hundred years since Thomas
+Manning, the only Englishman (until to-day) who ever saw Lhasa, preceded
+us. Our journey has not been easy, but we have come in spite of
+everything.
+
+The Lamas have opposed us with all their material and spiritual
+resources. They have fought us with medieval weapons and a medley of
+modern firearms. They have held Commination Services, recited mantras,
+and cursed us solemnly for days. Yet we have come on.
+
+They have sent delegates and messengers of every rank to threaten and
+entreat and plead with us--emissaries of increasing importance as we
+have drawn nearer their capital, until the Dalai Lama despatched his own
+Grand Chamberlain and Grand Secretary, and, greater than these, the Ta
+Lama and Yutok Shapé, members of the ruling Council of Five, whose
+sacred persons had never before been seen by European eyes. To-morrow
+the Amban himself comes to meet Colonel Younghusband. The Dalai Lama has
+sent him a letter sealed with his own seal.
+
+Every stretch of road from the frontier to Lhasa has had its symbol of
+remonstrance. Cairns and chortens, and _mani_ walls and praying-flags,
+demons painted on the rock, writings on the wall, white stones piled
+upon black, have emitted their ray of protest and malevolence in vain.
+
+The Lamas knew we must come. Hundreds of years ago a Buddhist saint
+wrote it in his book of prophecies, Ma-ong Lung-Ten, which may be bought
+to-day in the Lhasa book-shops. He predicted that Tibet would be invaded
+and conquered by the Philings (Europeans), when all of the true religion
+would go to Chang Shambula, the Northern Paradise, and Buddhism would
+become extinct in the country.
+
+And now the Lamas believe that the prophecy will be fulfilled by our
+entry into Lhasa, and that their religion will decay before foreign
+influence. The Dalai Lama, they say, will die, not by violence or
+sickness, but by some spiritual visitation. His spirit will seek some
+other incarnation, when he can no longer benefit his people or secure
+his country, so long sacred to Buddhists, from the contamination of
+foreign intrusion.
+
+The Tibetans are not the savages they are depicted. They are civilized,
+if medieval. The country is governed on the feudal system. The monks are
+the overlords, the peasantry their serfs. The poor are not oppressed.
+They and the small tenant farmers work ungrudgingly for their spiritual
+masters, to whom they owe a blind devotion. They are not discontented,
+though they give more than a tithe of their small income to the Church.
+It must be remembered that every family contributes at least one member
+to the priesthood, so that, when we are inclined to abuse the monks for
+consuming the greater part of the country's produce, we should remember
+that the laymen are not the victims of class prejudice, the plebeians
+groaning under the burden of the patricians, so much as the servants of
+a community chosen from among themselves, and with whom they are
+connected by family ties.
+
+No doubt the Lamas employ spiritual terrorism to maintain their
+influence and preserve the temporal government in their hands; and when
+they speak of their religion being injured by our intrusion, they are
+thinking, no doubt, of another unveiling of mysteries, the dreaded age
+of materialism and reason, when little by little their ignorant serfs
+will be brought into contact with the facts of life, and begin to
+question the justness of the relations that have existed between
+themselves and their rulers for centuries. But at present the people
+are medieval, not only in their system of government and their religion,
+their inquisition, their witchcraft, their incantations, their ordeals
+by fire and boiling oil, but in every aspect of their daily life.
+
+I question if ever in the history of the world there has been another
+occasion when bigotry and darkness have been exposed with such
+abruptness to the inroad of science, when a barrier of ignorance created
+by jealousy and fear as a screen between two peoples living side by side
+has been demolished so suddenly to admit the light of an advanced
+civilization.
+
+The Tibetans, no doubt, will benefit, and many abuses will be swept
+away. Yet there will always be people who will hanker after the medieval
+and romantic, who will say: 'We men are children. Why could we not have
+been content that there was one mystery not unveiled, one country of an
+ancient arrested civilization, and an established Church where men are
+still guided by sorcery and incantations, and direct their mundane
+affairs with one eye on a grotesque spirit world, which is the most real
+thing in their lives--a land of topsy-turvy and inverted proportions,
+where men spend half their lives mumbling unintelligible mantras and
+turning mechanical prayers, and when dead are cut up into mincemeat and
+thrown to the dogs and vultures?'
+
+To-morrow, when we enter Lhasa, we will have unveiled the last mystery
+the of the East. There are no more forbidden cities which men have not
+mapped and photographed. Our children will laugh at modern travellers'
+tales. They will have to turn again to Gulliver and Haroun al Raschid.
+And they will soon tire of these. For now that there are no real
+mysteries, no unknown land of dreams, where there may still be genii and
+mahatmas and bottle-imps, that kind of literature will be tolerated no
+longer. Children will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned,
+and there will be no sale for fairy-stories any more.
+
+But we ourselves are children. Why could we not have left at least one
+city out of bounds?
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 3._
+
+We reached Lhasa to-day, after a march of seven miles, and camped
+outside the city. As we approached, the road became an embankment across
+a marsh. Butterflies and dragon-flies were hovering among the rushes,
+clematis grew in the stonework by the roadside, cows were grazing in the
+rich pastureland, redshanks were calling, a flight of teal passed
+overhead; the whole scene was most homelike, save for the bare scarred
+cliffs that jealously preclude a distant view of the city.
+
+Some of us climbed the Chagpo Ri and looked down on the city. Lhasa lay
+a mile in front of us, a mass of huddled roofs and trees, dominated by
+the golden dome of the Jokhang Cathedral.
+
+It must be the most hidden city on earth. The Chagpo Ri rises bluffly
+from the river-bank like a huge rock. Between it and the Potala hill
+there is a narrow gap not more than thirty yards wide. Over this is
+built the Pargo Kaling, a typical Tibetan chorten, through which is the
+main gateway into Lhasa. The city has no walls, but beyond the Potala,
+to complete the screen, stretches a great embankment of sand right
+across the valley to the hills on the north.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 4._
+
+An epoch in the world's history was marked to-day when Colonel
+Younghusband entered the city to return the visit of the Chinese Amban.
+He was accompanied by all the members of the mission, the war
+correspondents, and an escort of two companies of the Royal Fusiliers
+and the 2nd Mounted Infantry. Half a company of mounted infantry, two
+guns, a detachment of sappers, and four companies of infantry were held
+ready to support the escort if necessary.
+
+In front of us marched and rode the Amban's escort--his bodyguard,
+dressed in short loose coats of French gray, embroidered in black, with
+various emblems; pikemen clad in bright red with black embroidery and
+black pugarees; soldiers with pikes and scythes and three-pronged
+spears, on all of which hung red banners with devices embroidered in
+black.
+
+We found the city squalid and filthy beyond description, undrained and
+unpaved. Not a single house looked clean or cared for. The streets after
+rain are nothing but pools of stagnant water frequented by pigs and dogs
+searching for refuse. Even the Jokhang appeared mean and squalid at
+close quarters, whence its golden roofs were invisible. There was
+nothing picturesque except the marigolds and hollyhocks in pots and the
+doves and singing-birds in wicker cages.
+
+The few Tibetans we met in the street were strangely incurious. A baker
+kneading dough glanced at us casually, and went on kneading. A woman
+weaving barely looked up from her work.
+
+The streets were almost deserted, perhaps by order of the authorities to
+prevent an outbreak. But as we returned small crowds had gathered in the
+doorways, women were peering through windows, but no one followed or
+took more than a listless interest in us. The monks looked on sullenly.
+But in most faces one read only indifference and apathy. One might think
+the entry of a foreign army into Lhasa and the presence of English
+Political Officers in gold-laced uniform and beaver hats were everyday
+events.
+
+The only building in Lhasa that is at all imposing is the Potala.
+
+It would be misleading to say that the palace dominated the city, as a
+comparison would be implied--a picture conveyed of one building standing
+out signally among others. This is not the case.
+
+The Potala is superbly detached. It is not a palace on a hill, but a
+hill that is also a palace. Its massive walls, its terraces and bastions
+stretch upwards from the plain to the crest, as if the great bluff rock
+were merely a foundation-stone planted there at the divinity's nod. The
+divinity dwells in the palace, and underneath, at the distance of a
+furlong or two, humanity is huddled abjectly in squalid smut-begrimed
+houses. The proportion is that which exists between God and man.
+
+If one approached within a league of Lhasa, saw the glittering domes of
+the Potala, and turned back without entering the precincts, one might
+still imagine it an enchanted city, shining with turquoise and gold. But
+having entered, the illusion is lost. One might think devout Buddhists
+had excluded strangers in order to preserve the myth of the city's
+beauty and mystery and wealth, or that the place was consciously
+neglected and defaced so as to offer no allurements to heretics, just
+as the repulsive women one meets in the streets smear themselves over
+with grease and cutch to make themselves even more hideous than Nature
+ordained.
+
+The place has not changed since Manning visited it ninety years ago, and
+wrote:--'There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing, in its appearance.
+The habitations are begrimed with smut and dirt. The avenues are full of
+dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide that lie about in
+profusion, and emit a charnel-house smell; others limping and looking
+livid; others ulcerated; others starved and dying, and pecked at by
+ravens; some dead and preyed upon. In short, everything seems mean and
+gloomy, and excites the idea of something unreal.' That is the Lhasa of
+to-day. Probably it was the same centuries ago.
+
+Above all this squalor the Potala towers superbly. Its golden roofs,
+shining in the sun like tongues of fire, are a landmark for miles, and
+must inspire awe and veneration in the hearts of pilgrims coming from
+the desert parts of Tibet, Kashmir, and Mongolia to visit the sacred
+city that Buddha has blessed.
+
+The secret of romance is remoteness, whether in time or space. If we
+could be thrown back to the days of Agincourt we should be enchanted at
+first, but after a week should vote everything commonplace and dull.
+Falstaff, the beery lout, would be an impossible companion, and Prince
+Hal a tiresome young cub who wanted a good dressing-down. In travel,
+too, as one approaches the goal, and the country becomes gradually
+familiar, the husk of romance falls off. Childe Roland must have been
+sadly disappointed in the Dark Tower; filth and familiarity very soon
+destroyed the romance of Lhasa.
+
+But romance still clings to the Potala. It is still remote. Like Imray,
+its sacred inmate has achieved the impossible. Divinity or no, he has at
+least the divine power of vanishing. In the material West, as we like to
+call it, we know how hard it is for the humblest subject to disappear,
+in spite of the confused hub of traffic and intricate network of
+communications. Yet here in Lhasa, a city of dreamy repose, a King has
+escaped, been spirited into the air, and nobody is any the wiser.
+
+When we paraded the city yesterday, we made a complete circuit of the
+Potala. There was no one, not even the humblest follower, so
+unimaginative that he did not look up from time to time at the frowning
+cliff and thousand sightless windows that concealed the unknown. Those
+hidden corridors and passages have been for centuries, and are, perhaps,
+at this very moment, the scenes of unnatural piety and crime.
+
+Within the precincts of Lhasa the taking of life in any form is
+sacrilege. Buddha's first law was, 'Thou shalt not kill'; and life is
+held so sacred by his devout followers that they are careful not to
+kill the smallest insect. Yet this palace, where dwells the divine
+incarnation of the Bodhisat, the head of the Buddhist Church, must have
+witnessed more murders and instigations to crime than the most
+blood-stained castle of medieval Europe.
+
+Since the assumption of temporal power by the fifth Grand Lama in the
+middle of the seventeenth century, the whole history of the Tibetan
+hierarchy has been a record of bloodshed and intrigue. The fifth Grand
+Lama, the first to receive the title of Dalai, was a most unscrupulous
+ruler, who secured the temporal power by inciting the Mongols to invade
+Tibet, and received as his reward the kingship. He then established his
+claim to the godhead by tampering with Buddhist history and writ. The
+sixth incarnation was executed by the Chinese on account of his
+profligacy. The seventh was deposed by the Chinese as privy to the
+murder of the regent. After the death of the eighth, of whom I can learn
+nothing, it would seem that the tables were turned: the regents
+systematically murdered their charge, and the crime of the seventh Dalai
+Lama was visited upon four successive incarnations. The ninth, tenth,
+eleventh, and twelfth all died prematurely, assassinated, it is
+believed, by their regents.
+
+There are no legends of malmsey-butts, secret smotherings, and hired
+assassins. The children disappeared; they were absorbed into the
+Universal Essence; they were literally too good to live. Their regents
+and protectors, monks only less sacred than themselves, provided that
+the spirit in its yearning for the next state should not be long
+detained in its mortal husk. No questions were asked. How could the
+devout trace the comings and goings of the divine Avalokita, the Lord of
+Mercy and Judgment, who ordains into what heaven or hell, demon, god,
+hero, mollusc, or ape, their spirits must enter, according to their
+sins?
+
+So, when we reached Lhasa the other day, and heard that the thirteenth
+incarnation had fled, no one was surprised. Yet the wonder remains. A
+great Prince, a god to thousands of men, has been removed from his
+palace and capital, no one knows whither or when. A ruler has
+disappeared who travels with every appanage of state, inspiring awe in
+his prostrate servants, whose movements, one would think, were watched
+and talked about more than any Sovereign's on earth. Yet fear, or
+loyalty, or ignorance keeps every subject tongue-tied.
+
+We have spies and informers everywhere, and there are men in Lhasa who
+would do much to please the new conquerors of Tibet. There are also
+witless men, who have eyes and ears, but, it seems, no tongues.
+
+But so far neither avarice nor witlessness has betrayed anything. For
+all we know, the Dalai Lama may be still in his palace in some hidden
+chamber in the rock, or maybe he has never left his customary
+apartments, and still performs his daily offices in the Potala,
+confident that there at least his sanctity is inviolable by unbelievers.
+
+The British Tommy in the meanwhile parades the streets as indifferently
+as if they were the New Cut or Lambeth Palace Road. He looks up at the
+Potala, and says: 'The old bloke's done a bunk. Wish we'd got 'im; we
+might get 'ome then.'
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August --._
+
+We had been in Lhasa nearly three weeks before we could discover where
+the Dalai Lama had fled. We know now that he left his palace secretly in
+the night, and took the northern road to Mongolia. The Buriat, Dorjieff
+met him at Nagchuka, on the verge of the great desert that separates
+inhabited Tibet from Mongolia, 100 miles from Lhasa. On the 20th the
+Amban told us that he had already left Nagchuka twelve days, and was
+pushing on across the desert to the frontier.
+
+I have been trying to find out something about the private life and
+character of the Grand Lama. But asking questions here is fruitless; one
+can learn nothing intimate. And this is just what one might expect. The
+man continues a bogie, a riddle, undivinable, impersonal, remote. The
+people know nothing. They have bowed before the throne as men come out
+of the dark into a blinding light. Scrutiny in their view would be vain
+and blasphemous. The Abbots, too, will reveal nothing; they will not and
+dare not. When Colonel Younghusband put the question direct to a head
+Lama in open durbar, 'Have you news of the Dalai Lama? Do you know where
+he is?' the monk looked slowly to left and right, and answered, 'I know
+nothing.' 'The ruler of your country leaves his palace and capital, and
+you know nothing?' the Commissioner asked. 'Nothing,' answered the monk,
+shuffling his feet, but without changing colour.
+
+From various sources, which differ surprisingly little, I have a fairly
+clear picture of the man's face and figure. He is thick-set, about five
+feet nine inches in height, with a heavy square jaw, nose remarkably
+long and straight for a Tibetan, eyebrows pronounced and turning upwards
+in a phenomenal manner--probably trained so, to make his appearance more
+forbidding--face pockmarked, general expression resolute and sinister.
+He goes out very little, and is rarely seen by the people, except on his
+annual visit to Depung, and during his migrations between the Summer
+Palace and the Potala. He was at the Summer Palace when the messenger
+brought the news that our advance was inevitable, but he went to the
+Potala to put his house in order before projecting himself into the
+unknown.
+
+His face is the index of his character. He is a man of strong
+personality, impetuous, despotic, and intolerant of advice in State
+affairs. He is constantly deposing his Ministers, and has estranged from
+himself a large section of the upper classes, both ecclesiastical and
+official, owing to his wayward and headstrong disposition. As a child he
+was so precociously acute and resolute that he survived his regent, and
+so upset the traditional policy of murder, being the only one out of the
+last five incarnations to reach his majority. Since he took the
+government of the country into his own hands he has reduced the Chinese
+suzerainty to a mere shadow, and, with fatal results to himself,
+consistently insulted and defied the British. His inclination to a
+rapprochement with Russia is not shared by his Ministers.
+
+The only glimpse I have had into the man himself was reflected in a
+conversation with the Nepalese Resident, a podgy little man, very ugly
+and good-natured, with the manners of a French comedian and a face
+generally expanded in a broad grin. He shook with laughter when I asked
+him if he knew the Dalai Lama, and the idea was really intensely funny,
+this mercurial, irreverent little man hobnobbing with the divine. 'I
+have seen him,' he said, and exploded again. 'But what does he do all
+day?' I asked. The Resident puckered up his brow, aping abstraction, and
+began to wave his hand in the air solemnly with a slow circular
+movement, mumbling '_Om man Padme om_' to the revolutions of an
+imaginary praying-wheel. He was immensely pleased with the effort and
+the effect it produced on a sepoy orderly. 'But has he no interests or
+amusements?' I asked. The Resident could think of none. But he told me a
+story to illustrate the dulness of the man, for whom he evidently had no
+reverence. On his return from his last visit to India, the Maharaja of
+Nepal had given him a phonograph to present to the Priest-King. The
+impious toy was introduced to the Holy of Holies, and the Dalai Lama
+walked round it uneasily as it emitted the strains of English band
+music, and raucously repeated an indelicate Bhutanese song. After
+sitting a long while in deep thought, he rose and said he could not live
+with this voice without a soul; it must leave his palace at once. The
+rejected phonograph found a home with the Chinese Amban, to whom it was
+presented with due ceremonial the same day. 'The Lama is _gumar_,' the
+Resident said, using a Hindustani word which may be translated,
+according to our charity, by anything between 'boorish' and
+'unenlightened.' I was glad to meet a man in this city of evasiveness
+whose views were positive, and who was eager to communicate them.
+Through him I tracked the shadow, as it were, of this impersonality, and
+found that to many strangers in Lhasa, and perhaps to a few Lhasans
+themselves, the divinity was all clay, a palpable fraud, a pompous and
+puritanical dullard masquerading as a god.
+
+For my own part, I think the oracle that counselled his flight wiser
+than the statesmen who object that it was a political mistake. He has
+lost his prestige, they say. But imagine him dragged into durbar as a
+signatory, gazed at by profane eyes, the subject of a few days' gossip
+and comment, then sunk into commonplace, stripped of his mystery like
+this city of Lhasa, through which we now saunter familiarly, wondering
+when we shall start again for the _wilds_.
+
+To escape this ordeal he has fled, and to us, at least, his flight has
+deepened the mystery that envelops him, and added to his dignity and
+remoteness; to thousands of mystical dreamers it has preserved the
+effulgence of his godhead unsoiled by contact with the profane world.
+
+From our camp here the Potala draws the eye like a magnet. There is
+nothing but sky and marsh and bleak hill and palace. When we look out of
+our tents in the morning, the sun is striking the golden roof like a
+beacon light to the faithful. Nearly every day in August this year has
+opened fine and closed with storm-clouds gathering from the west,
+through which the sun shines, bathing the eastern valley in a soft,
+pearly light. The western horizon is dark and lowering, the eastern
+peaceful and serene. In this division of darkness and light the Potala
+stands out like a haven, not flaming now, but faintly luminous with a
+restful mystic light, soothing enough to rob Buddhist metaphysics of its
+pessimism and induce a mood, even in unbelievers, in which one is
+content to merge the individual and become absorbed in the universal
+spirit of Nature.
+
+No wonder that, when one looks for mystery in Lhasa, one's thoughts
+dwell solely on the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwelling on
+the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It plunges us into
+medievalism. To my mind, there is no picture so romantic and engrossing
+in modern history as that exodus, when the spiritual head of the
+Buddhist Church, the temporal ruler of six millions, stole out of his
+palace by night and was borne away in his palanquin, no one knows on
+what errand or with what impotent rage in his heart. The flight was
+really secret. No one but his immediate confidants and retainers, not
+even the Amban himself, knew that he had gone. I can imagine the awed
+attendants, the burying of treasure, the locking and sealing of chests,
+faint lights flickering in the passages, hurried footsteps in the
+corridors, dogs barking intermittently at this unwonted bustle--I feel
+sure the Priest-King kicked one as he stepped on the terrace for the
+last time. Then the procession by moonlight up the narrow valley to the
+north, where the roar of the stream would drown the footsteps of the
+palanquin-bearers.
+
+A month afterwards I followed on his track, and stood on the Phembu Pass
+twelve miles north of Lhasa, whence one looks down on the huge belt of
+mountains that lie between the Brahmaputra and the desert, so packed
+and huddled that their crests look like one continuous undulating plain
+stretching to the horizon. Looking across the valley, I could see the
+northern road to Mongolia winding up a feeder of the Phembu Chu. They
+passed along here and over the next range, and across range after range,
+until they reached the two conical snow-peaks that stand out of the
+plain beside Tengri Nor, a hundred miles to the north. For days they
+skirted the great lake, and then, as if they feared the Nemesis of our
+offended Raj could pursue them to the end of the earth, broke into the
+desert, across which they must be hurrying now toward the great mountain
+chain of Burkhan Buddha, on the southern limits of Mongolia.
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 19._
+
+The Tibetans are the strangest people on earth. To-day I discovered how
+they dispose of their dead.
+
+To hold life sacred and benefit the creatures are the laws of Buddha,
+which they are supposed to obey most scrupulously. And as they think
+they may be reborn in any shape of mammal, bird, or fish, they are kind
+to living things.
+
+During the morning service the Lamas repeat a prayer for the minute
+insects which they have swallowed inadvertently in their meat and drink,
+and the formula insures the rebirth of these microbes in heaven.
+Sometimes, when a Lama's life is despaired of, the monks will ransom a
+yak or a bullock from the shambles, and keep him a pensioner in their
+monastery, praying the good Buddha to spare the sick man's life for the
+life ransomed. Yet they eat meat freely, all save the Gelug-pa, or
+Reformed Church, and square their conscience with their appetite by the
+pretext that the sin rests with the outcast assassin, the public
+butcher, who will be born in the next incarnation as some tantalized
+spirit or agonized demon. That, however, is his own affair.
+
+But it is when a Tibetan dies that his charity to the creatures becomes
+really practical. Then, by his own tacit consent when living, his body
+is given as a feast to the dogs and vultures. This is no casual or
+careless gift to avoid the trouble of burial or cremation. All creatures
+who have a taste for these things are invited to the ceremony, and the
+corpse is carved to their liking by an expert, who devotes his life to
+the practice.
+
+When a Tibetan dies he is left three days in his chamber, and a slit is
+made in his skull to let his soul pass out. Then he is rolled into a
+ball, wrapped in a sack, or silk if he is rich, packed into a jar or
+basket, and carried along to the music of conch shells to the ceremonial
+stone. Here a Lama takes the corpse out of its vessel and wrappings, and
+lays it face downwards on a large flat slab, and the pensioners prowl or
+hop round, waiting for their dole. They are quite tame. The Lamas stand
+a little way apart, and see that strict etiquette is observed during
+the entertainment. The carver begins at the ankle, and cuts upwards,
+throwing little strips of flesh to the guests; the bones he throws to a
+second attendant, who pounds them up with a heavy stone.
+
+I passed the place to-day as I rode in from a reconnaissance. The slab
+lies a stone's-throw to the left of the great northern road to Tengri
+Nor and Mongolia, about two miles from the city.
+
+A group of stolid vultures, too demoralized to range in search of
+carrion, stood motionless on a rock above, waiting the next dispenser of
+charity.
+
+A few ravens hopped about sadly; they, too, were evidently pauperized.
+One magpie was prying round in suspicious proximity, and dogs conscious
+of shame slunk about without a bark in them, and nosed the ground
+diligently. They are always there, waiting.
+
+There was hardly a stain on the slab, so quick and eager are the
+applicants for charity. Only a few rags lay around, too poor to be
+carried away.
+
+I have not seen the ceremony, and I have no mind to. My companion this
+morning, a hardened young subaltern who was fighting nearly every day in
+April, May, and June, and has seen more bloodshed than most veterans,
+saw just as much as I have described. He then felt very ill, dug his
+spurs into his horse, and rode away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES
+
+
+By the first week in September I had visited all the most important
+temples and monasteries in Lhasa. We generally went in parties of four
+and five, and a company of Sikhs or Pathans was left in the courtyard in
+case of accidents. We were well armed, as the monks were sullen, though
+I do not think they were capable of any desperate fanaticism. If they
+had had the abandon of dervishes, they might have rushed our camp long
+before. They missed their chance at Gyantse, when a night attack pushed
+home by overwhelming numbers could have wiped out our little garrison.
+In Lhasa there was the one case of the Lama who ran amuck outside the
+camp with the coat of mail and huge paladin's sword concealed beneath
+his cloak, a medieval figure who thrashed the air with his brand like a
+flail in sheer lust of blood. He was hanged medievally the next day
+within sight of Lhasa. Since then the exploit has not been repeated, but
+no one leaves the perimeter unarmed.
+
+I have written of the squalor of the Lhasa streets. The environs of the
+city are beautiful enough--willow groves intersected by clear-running
+streams, walled-in parks with palaces and fish-ponds, marshes where the
+wild-duck flaunt their security, and ripe barley-fields stretching away
+to the hills. In September the trees were wearing their autumn tints,
+the willows were mostly a sulphury yellow, and in the pools beneath the
+red-stalked _polygonum_ and burnished dock-leaf glowed in brilliant
+contrast. Just before dusk there was generally a storm in the valley,
+which only occasionally reached the city; but the breeze stirred the
+poplars, and the silver under the leaves glistened brightly against the
+background of clouds. Often a rainbow hung over the Potala like a
+nimbus.
+
+On the Lingkhor, or circular road, which winds round Lhasa, we saw
+pilgrims and devotees moving slowly along in prayer, always keeping the
+Potala on their right hand. The road is only used for devotion. One
+meets decrepit old women and men, halting and limping and slowly
+revolving their prayer-wheels and mumbling charms. I never saw a healthy
+yokel or robust Lama performing this rite. Nor did I see the pilgrims
+whom one reads of as circumambulating the city on their knees by a
+series of prostrations, bowing their heads in the dust and mud. All the
+devotees are poor and ragged, and many blind. It seems that the people
+of Lhasa do not begin to think of the next incarnation until they have
+nothing left in this.
+
+When one leaves the broad avenues between the walls of the groves and
+pleasure-gardens, and enters the city, one's senses are offended by
+everything that is unsightly and unclean. Pigs and pariah dogs are
+nosing about in black oozy mud. The houses are solid but dirty. It is
+hard to believe that they are whitewashed every year.
+
+Close to the western entrance are the huts of the Ragyabas, beggars,
+outcasts, and scavengers, who cut up the dead. The outer walls of their
+houses are built of yak-horns.
+
+Some of the houses had banks of turf built up outside the doors, with
+borders of English flowers. The dwellings are mostly two or three
+storied. Bird-cages hang from the windows.
+
+The outside of the cathedral is not at all imposing. From the streets
+one cannot see the golden roof, but only high blank walls, and at the
+entrance a forest of dingy pillars beside a massive door. The door is
+thrown open by a sullen monk, and a huge courtyard is revealed with more
+dingy pillars that were once red. The entire wall is covered with
+paintings of Buddhist myth and symbolism. The colours are subdued and
+pleasing. In the centre of the yard are masses of hollyhocks, marigolds,
+nasturtiums, and stocks. Beside the flower-borders is a pyramidical
+structure in which are burnt the leaves of juniper and pine for
+sacrifice.
+
+The cloisters are two-storied; on the upper floor the monks have their
+cells. Looking up, one can see hundreds of them gazing at us with
+interest over the banisters. The upper story, as in every temple in
+Tibet, is coated with a dark red substance which looks like rough paint,
+but is really sacred earth, pasted on to evenly-clipped brushwood so as
+to seem like a continuation of the masonry. On the face of the wall are
+emblems in gilt, Buddhist symbols, like our Prince of Wales's feathers,
+sun and crescent moon, and various other devices. A heavy curtain of
+yak-hair hangs above the entrance-gate. On the roof are large cylinders
+draped in yak-hair cloth topped by a crescent or a spear. Every
+monastery and jong, and most houses in Tibet, are ornamented with these.
+When one first sees them in the distance they look like men walking on
+the roof.
+
+Generally one ascends steps from the outer courtyard to the temple, but
+in the Jokhang the floors are level. We enter the main temple by a dark
+passage. The great doorway that opens into the street has been closed
+behind us, but we leave a company of Pathans in the outer yard, as the
+monks are sullen. Our party of four is armed with revolvers.
+
+Service is being held before the great Buddhas as we enter, and a
+thunderous harmony like an organ-peal breaks the interval for
+meditation. The Abbot, who is in the centre, leans forward from his
+chair and takes a bundle of peacock-feathers from a vase by his side. As
+he points it to the earth there is a clashing of cymbals, a beating of
+drums, and a blowing of trumpets and conch shells.
+
+Then the music dies away like the reverberation of cannon in the hills.
+The Abbot begins the chant, and the monks, facing each other like
+singing-men in a choir, repeat the litany. They have extraordinary deep,
+devotional voices, at once unnatural and impressive. The deepest bass of
+the West does not approach it, and their sense of time is perfect.
+
+The voice of the thousand monks is like the drone of some subterranean
+monster, musically plaintive--the wail of the Earth God praying for
+release to the God of the Skies.
+
+The chant sounds like the endless repetition of the same formula; the
+monks sway to it rhythmically. The temple would be dark if it were not
+for the flickering of many thousands of votive candles and butter lamps.
+Rows upon rows of them are placed before every shrine.
+
+In an inner temple we found the three great images of the Buddhist
+trinity--the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. The images were
+greater than life-size, and set with jewels from foot to crown. As in
+the cloisters of an English cathedral, there were little side-chapels,
+which held sacred relics and shrines.
+
+There were lamps of gold, and solid golden bowls set on altars, and
+embossed salvers of copper and bronze.
+
+A hanging grille of chainwork protected the precincts from sacrilege,
+and an extended hand, bloody and menacing, was stretched from the wall,
+terrible enough when suddenly revealed in that dim light to paralyze and
+strike to earth with fright any profane thief who would dare to enter.
+
+In the upper story we found a place which we called 'Hell,' where some
+Lamas were worshipping the demon protectress of the Grand Lama. The
+music here was harsh and barbaric. There were displayed on the pillars
+and walls every freak of diabolical invention in the shape of scrolls
+and devil-masks. The obscene object of this worship was huddled in a
+corner--a dwarfish abortion, hideous and malignant enough for such
+rites.
+
+All about the Lamas' feet ran little white mice searching for grain.
+They are fed daily, and are scrupulously reverenced, as in their frail
+white bodies the souls of the previous guardians of the shrine are
+believed to be reincarnated.
+
+In another temple we found the Lamas holding service in worship of the
+many-handed Buddha, Avalokitesvara. The picture of the god hung from
+pillars by the altar. The chief Lamas were wearing peaked caps
+picturesquely coloured with subdued blue and gold, and vestments of the
+same hue. The lesser Lamas were bare-headed, and their hair was cropped.
+
+When we first entered, an acolyte was pouring tea out of a massive
+copper pot with a turquoise on the spout. Each monk received his tea in
+a wooden bowl, and poured in barley-flour to make a paste.
+
+During this interval no one spoke or whispered. The footsteps of the
+acolytes were noiseless. Only the younger ones looked up at us
+self-consciously as we watched them from a latticed window in the
+corridor above.
+
+Centuries ago this service was ordained, and the intervals appointed to
+further the pursuit of truth through silence and abstraction. The monks
+sat there quiet as stone. They had seen us, but they were seemingly
+oblivious.
+
+One wondered, were they pursuing truth or were they petrified by ritual
+and routine? Did they regard us as immaterial reflexes, unsubstantial
+and illusory, passing shadows of the world cast upon them by an
+instant's illusion, to pass away again into the unreal, while they were
+absorbed in the contemplation of changeless and universal truths? Or
+were we noted as food for gossip and criticism when their self-imposed
+ordeal was done?
+
+The reek of the candles was almost suffocating. 'Thank God I am not a
+Lama!' said a subaltern by my side. An Afridi Subadar let the butt of
+his rifle clank from his boot to the pavement.
+
+At these calls to sanity we clattered out of this unholy atmosphere of
+dreams as if by an unquestioned impulse into the bright sunshine
+outside.
+
+In the bazaar there is a gay crowd. The streets are thronged by as
+good-natured a mob as I have met anywhere. Sullenness and distrust have
+vanished. Officers and men, Tommies, Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Pathans, are
+stared at and criticised good-humouredly, and their accoutrements
+fingered and examined. It is a bright and interesting crowd, full of
+colour. In a corner of the square a street singer with a guitar and
+dancing children attracts a small crowd. His voice is a rich baritone,
+and he yodels like the Tyrolese. The crowd is parted by a Shapé riding
+past in gorgeous yellow silks and brocades, followed by a mounted
+retinue whose head-gear would be the despair of an operatic hatter. They
+wear red lamp-shades, yellow motor-caps, exaggerated Gainsboroughs,
+inverted cooking-pots, coal-scuttles, and medieval helmets. And among
+this topsy-turvy, which does not seem out of place in Lhasa, the most
+eccentrically-hatted man is the Bhutanese Tongsa Penlop, who parades the
+streets in an English gray felt hat.
+
+The Mongolian caravan has arrived in Lhasa, after crossing a thousand
+miles of desert and mountain tracks. The merchants and drivers saunter
+about the streets, trying not to look too rustic. But they are easily
+recognisable--tall, sinewy men, very independent in gait, with faces
+burnt a dark brick red by exposure to the wind and sun. I saw one of
+their splendidly robust women, clad in a sheepskin cloak girdled at the
+waist, bending over a cloth stall, and fingering samples as if shopping
+were the natural business of her life.
+
+On fine days the wares are spread on the cobbles of the street, and the
+coloured cloth and china make a pretty show against the background of
+garden flowers. At the doors of the shops stand pale Nuwaris, whose
+ancestors from Nepal settled in Lhasa generations ago. They wear a flat
+brown cap, and a dull russet robe darker than that of the Lamas. The
+Cashmiri shopkeepers are turbaned, and wear a cloak of butcher's blue.
+They and the Nuwaris and the Chinese seem to monopolize the trade of the
+city.
+
+British officers haunt the bazaars searching for curios, but with very
+little success. Lhasa has no artistic industries; nearly all the
+knick-knacks come from India and China. Cloisonné ware is rare and
+expensive, as one has to pay for the 1,800 miles of transport from
+Peking. Religious objects are not sold. Turquoises are plentiful, but
+coarse and inferior. Hundreds of paste imitations have been bought.
+There is a certain sale for amulets, rings, bells, and ornaments for the
+hair, but these and the brass and copper work can be bought for half the
+price in the Darjeeling bazaar. The few relics we have found of the West
+must have histories. In the cathedral there was a bell with the
+inscription 'Te Deum laudamus,' probably a relic of the Capuchins. In
+the purlieus of the city we found a bicycle without tyres, and a
+sausage-machine made in Birmingham.
+
+With the exception of the cathedral, most of the temples and monasteries
+are on the outskirts of the city. There is a sameness about these places
+of worship that would make description tedious. Only the Ramo-ché and
+Moru temples, which are solely devoted to sorcery, are different. Here
+one sees the other soul-side of the people.
+
+The Ramo-ché is as dark and dingy as a vault. On each side of the
+doorway are three gigantic tutelary demons. In the vestibule is a
+collection of bows, arrows, chain-armour, stag-horns, stuffed animals,
+scrolls, masks, skulls, and all the paraphernalia of devil-worship. On
+the left is a dark recess where drums are being beaten by an unseen
+choir.
+
+A Lama stands, chalice in hand, before a deep aperture cut in the wall
+like a buttery hatch, and illumined by dim, flickering candles, which
+reveal a malignant female fiend. As a second priest pours holy water
+into a chalice, the Lama raises it solemnly again and again, muttering
+spells to propitiate the fury.
+
+In the hall there are neither ornaments, gods, hanging canopies, nor
+scrolls, as in the other temples. There is neither congregation nor
+priests. The walls are apparently black and unpainted, but here and
+there a lamp reveals a Gorgon's head, a fiend's eye, a square inch or
+two of pigment that time has not obscured.
+
+The place is immemorially old. There are huge vessels of carved metal
+and stone, embossed, like the roof, with griffins and skulls, which
+probably date back to before the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet,
+and are survivals of the old Bon religion. There is nothing bright here
+in colour or sound, nothing vivid or animated.
+
+Stricken men and women come to remove a curse, vindictive ones to
+inflict one, bereaved ones to pay the initiated to watch the adventures
+of the soul in purgatory and guide it on its passage to the new birth,
+while demons and furies are lurking to snatch it with fiery claws and
+drag it to hell.
+
+All these beings must be appeased by magic rites. So in the Ramo-ché
+there is no rapture of music, no communion with Buddha, no beatitudes,
+only solitary priests standing before the shrines and mumbling
+incantations, dismal groups of two or three seated Buddha-fashion on the
+floor, and casting spells to exercise a deciding influence, as they
+hope, in the continual warfare which is being waged between the tutelary
+and malignant deities for the prize of a soul.
+
+In the chancel of the temple, behind the altar, is a massive pile of
+masonry stretching from floor to roof, under which, as folk believe, an
+abysmal chasm leads down to hell. Round this there is a dark and narrow
+passage which pilgrims circumambulate. The floor and walls are as
+slippery as ice, worn by centuries of pious feet and groping hands. One
+old woman in some urgent need is drifting round and round abstractedly.
+
+Elsewhere one might linger in the place fascinated, but here in Lhasa
+one moves among mysteries casually; for one cannot wonder, in this
+isolated land where the elements are so aggressive, among these deserts
+and wildernesses, heaped mountain chains, and impenetrable barriers of
+snow, that the children of the soil believe that earth, air, and water
+are peopled by demons who are struggling passionately over the destinies
+of man.
+
+I will not describe any more of the Lhasa temples. One shrine is very
+like another, and details would be tedious. Personally, I do not care
+for systematic sightseeing, even in Lhasa, but prefer to loiter about
+the streets and bazaars, and the gardens outside the city, watch the
+people, and enjoy the atmosphere of the place. The religion of Tibet is
+picturesque enough in an unwholesome way, but to inquire how the layers
+of superstition became added to the true faith, and trace the growth of
+these spurious accretions, I leave to archæologists. Perhaps one reader
+in a hundred will be interested to know that a temple was built by the
+illustrious Konjo, daughter of the Emperor Tai-Tsung and wife of King
+Srong-btsan-gombo, but I think the other ninety and nine will be
+devoutly thankful if I omit to mention it.
+
+Yet one cannot leave the subject of the Lhasa monasteries without
+remarking on the striking resemblance between Tibetan Lamaism and the
+Romish Church. The resemblance cannot be accidental. The burning of
+candles before altars, the sprinkling of holy water, the chanting of
+hymns in alternation, the giving alms and saying Masses for the dead,
+must have their origin in the West. We know that for many centuries
+large Christian communities have existed in Western China near the
+Tibetan frontier, and several Roman Catholic missionaries have
+penetrated to Lhasa and other parts of Tibet during the last three
+centuries. As early as 1641 the Jesuit Father Grueber visited Lhasa, and
+recorded that the Lamas wore caps and mitres, that they used rosaries,
+bells, and censers, and observed the practice of confession, penance,
+and absolution. Besides these points common to Roman Catholicism, he
+noticed the monastic and conventual system, the tonsure, the vows of
+poverty, chastity, and obedience, the doctrine of incarnation and the
+Trinity, and the belief in purgatory and paradise.[18]
+
+  [18] It is interesting to compare Grueber's account with the journal
+      of Father Rubruquis, who travelled in Mongolia in the thirteenth
+      century. In 1253 he wrote of the Lamas:
+
+      'All their priests had their heads shaven quite over, and they are
+      clad in saffron-coloured garments. Being once shaven, they lead an
+      unmarried life from that time forward, and they live a hundred or
+      two of them in one cloister.... They have with them also,
+      whithersoever they go, a certain string, with a hundred or two
+      hundred nutshells thereupon, much like our beads which we carry
+      about with us; and they do always mutter these words, "Om mani
+      pectavi (om mani padme hom)"--"God, Thou knowest," as one of them
+      expounded it to me; and so often do they expect a reward at God's
+      hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance of God.... I
+      made a visit to their idol temple, and found certain priests
+      sitting in the outward portico, and those which I saw seemed, by
+      their shaven beards, as if they had been our countrymen; they wore
+      certain ornaments upon their heads like mitres made of paper.'
+
+We occasionally saw a monk with the refined ascetic face of a Roman
+Cardinal. Te Rinpoche, the acting regent, was an example. One or two
+looked as if they might be humane and benevolent--men who might make one
+accept the gentle old Lama in 'Kim' as a not impossible fiction; but
+most of them appeared to me to be gross and sottish. I must confess that
+during the protracted negociations at Lhasa I had little sympathy with
+the Lamas. It is a mistake to think that they keep their country closed
+out of any religious scruple. Buddhism in its purest form is not
+exclusive or fanatical. Sakya Muni preached a missionary religion. He
+was Christlike in his universal love and his desire to benefit all
+living creatures. But Buddhism in Tibet has become more and more
+degenerate, and the Lamaist Church is now little better than a political
+mechanism whose chief function is the uncompromising exclusion of
+foreigners. The Lamas know that intercourse with other nations must
+destroy their influence with the people.
+
+And Tibet is really ruled by the Lamas. Outside Lhasa are the three
+great monasteries of Depung, Sera, and Gaden, whose Abbots, backed by a
+following of nearly 30,000 armed and bigoted monks, maintain a
+preponderating influence in the national assembly.[19] These men wield a
+greater influence than the four Shapés or the Dalai Lama himself, and
+practically dictate the policy of the country.
+
+  [19] 'It may be asked how the monastic influence is brought to bear
+      on a Government in which three out of the four principal
+      Ministers (Shapé) are laymen. The fact seems to be that lying
+      behind the Tak Lama, the Shapés, and all the machinery of the
+      Tibetan Government, as we have hitherto been acquainted with it,
+      there is an institution called the "Tsong-du-chembo," or
+      "Tsong-dugze-tsom," which may reasonably be compared with what we
+      call a "National Assembly," or, as the word implies, "Great
+      Assembly." It is constituted of the Kenpas or Abbots of the three
+      great monasteries, representatives from the four lings or small
+      monasteries actually in Lhasa city, and from all the other
+      monasteries in the province of U; and besides this, all the
+      officials of the Government are present--laymen and ecclesiastics
+      alike--to the number of several hundreds.'--Captain O'Connor's
+      Diary at Khamba Jong (Tibetan Blue-Book, 1904).
+
+The three great monasteries are of ancient foundation, and intimately
+associated with the history of the country. They are, in fact,
+ecclesiastical Universities,[20] and resemble in many ways our
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Universities are divided into
+colleges. Each has its own Abbot, or Master, and disciplinary staff. The
+undergraduates, or candidates for ordination, must attend lectures and
+chapels, and pass examinations in set books, which they must learn from
+cover to cover before they can take their degree. Failure in
+examination, as well as breaches in discipline and manners, are punished
+by flogging. Corporal punishment is also dealt out to the unfortunate
+tutors, who are held responsible for their pupils' omissions. If a
+candidate repeatedly fails to pass his examination, he is expelled from
+the University, and can only enter again on payment of increased fees.
+The three leading Universities are empowered to confer degrees which
+correspond to our Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity. The monks live in
+rooms in quadrangles, and have separate messing clubs, but meet for
+general worship in the cathedral. If their code is strictly observed,
+which I very much doubt, prayers and tedious religious observances must
+take up nearly their whole day. But the Lamas are adept casuists, and
+generally manage to evade the most irksome laws of their scriptures.
+
+  [20] I have derived most of my information regarding the discipline
+      and constitution of Depung from 'Lamaism in Tibet,' by Colonel
+      Augustine Waddell, who accompanied the expedition as Archæologist
+      and Principal Medical Officer.
+
+Soon after our arrival in Lhasa we had occasion to visit Depung, which
+is probably the largest monastery in the world. It stands in a natural
+amphitheatre in the hillside two miles from the city, a huge collection
+of temples and monastic buildings, larger, and certainly more imposing,
+than most towns in Tibet.
+
+The University was founded in 1414, during the reign of the first Grand
+Lama of the Reformed Church. It is divided into four colleges, and
+contains nearly 8,000 monks, amongst whom there is a large Mongolian
+community. The fourth Grand Lama, a Mongolian, is buried within the
+precincts. The fifth and greatest Dalai Lama, who built the Potala and
+was the first to combine the temporal and spiritual power, was an Abbot
+of Depung. The reigning Dalai Lama visits Depung annually, and a palace
+in the university is reserved for his use. The Abbot, of course, is a
+man of very great political influence.
+
+All these facts I have collected to show that the monks have some reason
+to be proud of their monastery as the first in Tibet. One may forgive
+them a little pride in its historic distinctions. Even in our own alma
+mater we meet the best of men who seem to gather importance from old
+traditions and association with a long roll of distinguished names.
+What, then, can we expect of this Tibetan community, the most
+conservative in a country that has prided itself for centuries on its
+bigotry and isolation--men who are ignorant of science, literature,
+history, politics, everything, in fact, except their own narrow
+priestcraft and confused metaphysics? We call the Tibetan 'impossible.'
+His whole education teaches him to be so, and the more educated he is
+the more 'impossible' he becomes.
+
+Imagine, then, the consternation at Depung when a body of armed men rode
+up to the monastery and demanded supplies. We had refrained from
+entering the monasteries of Lhasa and its neighbourhood at the request
+of the Abbots and Shapés, but only on condition that the monks should
+bring in supplies, which were to be paid for at a liberal rate. The
+Abbots failed to keep their promise, supplies were not forthcoming, and
+it became necessary to resort to strong measures. An officer was sent to
+the gate with an escort of three men and a letter saying that if the
+provisions were not handed over within an hour we would break into the
+monastery and take them, if necessary, by force. The messengers were met
+by a crowd of excited Lamas, who refused to accept the letter, waved
+them away, and rolled stones towards them menacingly, as an intimation
+that they were prepared to fight. As the messengers rode away the tocsin
+was heard, warning the villagers, women and children, who were gathered
+outside with market produce, to depart.
+
+General Macdonald with a strong force of British and native troops drew
+up within 1,300 yards of the monastery, guns were trained on Depung, the
+infantry were deployed, and we waited the expiration of the period of
+grace intimated in the letter. An hour passed by, and it seemed as if
+military operations were inevitable, when groups of monks came out with
+a white flag, carrying baskets of eggs and a complimentary scarf.
+
+Even in the face of this military display they began to temporize. They
+bowed and chattered and protested in their usual futile manner, and
+condescended so far as to say they would talk the matter over if we
+retired at once, and send the supplies to our camp the next day, if they
+came to a satisfactory decision. The Lamas are trained to wrangle and
+dispute and defer and vacillate.[21] They seem to think that speech was
+made only to evade conclusions. The curt ultimatum was repeated, and the
+deputation was removed gently by two impassive sepoys, still chattering
+like a flock of magpies.
+
+  [21] The highest degree which is conferred on the Lamas by their
+      Universities is the Rabs-jam-pa (verbally overflowing
+      endlessly).--Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet.'
+
+In the meanwhile we sat and waited and smoked our pipes, and wondered if
+there were going to be another Guru. It seemed the most difficult thing
+in the world to save these poor fools from the effects of their
+obstinate folly. The time-limit had nearly expired, the two batteries
+were advanced 300 yards, the gunners took their sights again, and
+trained the 10-pounders on the very centre of the monastery.
+
+There were only five minutes more, and we were stirred, according to our
+natures, by pity or exasperation or the swift primitive instinct for the
+dramatic, which sweeps away the humanities, and leaves one to the
+conflict of elemental passions.
+
+At last a thin line of red-robed monks was seen to issue from the gate
+and descend the hill, each carrying a bag of supplies. The crisis was
+over, and we were spared the necessity of inflicting a cruel
+punishment. I waited to see the procession, a group of sullen
+ecclesiastics, who had never bowed or submitted to external influence in
+their lives, carrying on their backs their unwilling contribution to the
+support of the first foreign army that had ever intruded on their
+seclusion. It must have been the most humiliating day in the history of
+Depung.
+
+It must be admitted that it was not a moment when the monks looked their
+best. Yet I could not help comparing their appearance with that of the
+simple honest-looking peasantry. Many of them looked sottish and
+degraded; other faces showed cruelty and cunning; their brows were
+contracted as if by perpetual scheming; some were almost simian in
+appearance, and looked as if they could not harbour a thought that was
+not animal or sensual. They waddled in their walk, and their right arms,
+exposed from the shoulder, looked soft and flabby, as if they had never
+done an honest day's work in their life.
+
+One man had the face of an inquisitor--round, beady eyes, puffed cheeks,
+and thin, tightly-shut mouth.
+
+How they hated us! If one of us fell into their hands secretly, I have
+no doubt they would rack him limb from limb, or cut him into small
+pieces with a knife.
+
+The Depung incident shows how difficult it was to make any headway with
+the Tibetans without recourse to arms. We were present in the city to
+insist on compliance with our demands. But an amicable settlement seemed
+hopeless, and we could not stay in Lhasa indefinitely. What if these
+monks were to say, 'You may stay here if you like. We will not molest
+you, but we refuse to accept your terms'? We could only retire or train
+our guns on the Potala. Retreat was, of course, impossible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SETTLEMENT
+
+
+The political deadlock continued until within a week of the signing of
+the treaty.
+
+For a long time no responsible delegates were forthcoming. The Shapés,
+who were weak men and tools of the fugitive Dalai Lama, protested that
+any treaty they might make with us would result in their disgrace. If,
+on the other hand, they made no treaty, and we were compelled to occupy
+the Potala, or take some other step offensive to the hierarchy, their
+ruin would be equally certain. Ruin, in fact, faced them in any case.
+
+The highest officials in Tibet visited Colonel Younghusband, expressed
+their eagerness to see differences amicably settled, and, when asked to
+arrange the simplest matter, said they were afraid to take on themselves
+the responsibility. And this was not merely astute evasiveness. It was
+really a fact that there was no one in Lhasa who dared commit himself by
+an action or assurance of any kind.
+
+Yet there existed some kind of irresponsible disorganized machine of
+administration which sometimes arrived at a decision about matters of
+the moment. The National Assembly was sufficiently of one mind to depose
+and imprison the Ta Lama, the ecclesiastical member of Council. His
+disgrace was due to his failure to persuade us to return to Gyantse.
+
+The National Assembly held long sessions daily, and after more than a
+week of discussion they began to realize that there was at least one aim
+that was common to them all--that the English should be induced to leave
+Lhasa. They then appointed accredited delegates, whose decisions, they
+said, would be entirely binding on the Dalai Lama, should he come back.
+The Dalai Lama had left his seal with Te Rinpoche, the acting regent,
+but with no authority to use it.
+
+The terms of the treaty were disclosed to the Amban, who communicated
+them to the Tsong-du. The Tsong-du submitted the draft of their reply to
+the Amban before it was presented to Colonel Younghusband. The first
+reply of the Assembly to our demands ought to be preserved as a historic
+epitome of national character. The indemnity, they said, ought to be
+paid by us, and not by them. We had invaded their territory, and spoiled
+their monasteries and lands, and should bear the cost. The question of
+trade marts they were obstinately opposed to; but, provided we carried
+out the other terms of the treaty to their satisfaction, they would
+consider the advisability of conceding us a market at Rinchengong, a
+mile and a half beyond the present one at Yatung. They would not be
+prepared, however, to make this concession unless we undertook to pay
+for what we purchased on the spot, to respect their women, and to
+refrain from looting. Road-making they could not allow, as the blasting
+and upheaval of soil offended their gods and brought trouble on the
+neighbourhood. The telegraph-wire was against their customs, and
+objectionable on religious grounds. With regard to foreign relations,
+they had never had any dealings with an outside race, and they intended
+to preserve this policy so long as they were not compelled to seek
+protection from another Power.
+
+The tone of the reply indicates the attitude of the Tibetans. Obstinacy
+could go no further. The document, however, was not forwarded officially
+to the Commissioner, but returned to the Assembly by the Amban as too
+impertinent for transmission. The Amban explained to Colonel
+Younghusband that the Tibetans regarded the negociations in the light of
+a huckster's bargain. They did not realize that we were in a position to
+enforce terms, and that our demands were unconditional, but thought that
+by opening negociations in an unconciliatory manner, and asking for more
+than they expected, they might be able to effect a compromise and escape
+the full exaction of the penalty.
+
+The first concession on the part of the Tibetans was the release of the
+two Lachung men, natives of Sikkim and British subjects, who had been
+captured and beaten at Tashilunpo in July, 1903, while the Commission
+was waiting at Khamba Jong. Their liberation was one of the terms of the
+treaty. Colonel Younghusband made the release the occasion of an
+impressive durbar, in which he addressed a solemn warning to the
+Tibetans on the sanctity of the British subject. The imprisonment of the
+two men from Sikkim, he said, was the most serious offence of which the
+Tibetans had been guilty. It was largely on that account that the Indian
+Government had decided to advance to Gyantse. The prisoners were brought
+straight from the dungeon to the audience-hall. They had been
+incarcerated in a dark underground cell for more than a year, and they
+knew nothing of the arrival of the English in Lhasa until the morning
+when Colonel Younghusband told them they were free by the command of the
+King-Emperor. I shall never forget the scene--the bewilderment and
+delight of the prisoners, their drawn, blanched features, and the sullen
+acquiescence of the Tibetans, who learnt for the first time the meaning
+of the old Roman boast, 'Civis Romanus sum.'
+
+On August 20 Colonel Younghusband received through the Amban the second
+reply to our demands. The tone of the delegates was still impossible,
+though slightly modified and more reasonable. Several durbars followed,
+but they did not advance the negociations. Instead of discussing matters
+vital to the settlement, the Tibetan representatives would arrive with
+all the formalities and ceremonial of durbar to beg us not to cut grass
+in a particular field, or to request the return of the empty grain-bags
+to the monasteries. The Amban said that he had met with nothing but
+shuffling from the 'barbarians' during his term of office. They were
+'dark and cunning adepts at prevarication, children in the conduct of
+affairs.'
+
+The counsellors, however, began to show signs of wavering. They were
+evidently eager to come to terms, though they still hoped to reduce our
+demands, and tried to persuade the Commissioner to agree to conditions
+proposed by themselves.
+
+Throughout this rather trying time our social relations with the
+Tibetans were of a thoroughly friendly character. The Shapés and one or
+two of the leading monks attended race-meetings and gymkanas, put their
+money on the totalizator, and seemed to enjoy their day out. When their
+ponies ran in the visitors' race, the members of Council temporarily
+forgot their stiffness, waddled to the rails to see the finish, and were
+genuinely excited. They were entertained at lunch and tea by Colonel
+Younghusband, and were invited to a Tibetan theatrical performance given
+in the courtyard of the Lhalu house, which became the headquarters of
+the mission. On these occasions they were genial and friendly, and
+appreciated our hospitality.
+
+The humbler folk apparently bore us no vindictiveness, and showed no
+signs of resenting our presence in the city. Merchants and storekeepers
+profited by the exaggerated prices we paid for everything we bought.
+Trade in Lhasa was never brisker. The poor were never so liberally
+treated. One day a merry crowd of them were collected on the plain
+outside the city, and largess was distributed to more than 11,000. Every
+babe in arms within a day's march of Lhasa was brought to the spot, and
+received its dole of a tanka (5d.).
+
+I think the Tibetans were genuinely impressed with our humanity during
+this time, and when, on the eve of our departure, the benign and
+venerable Te Rinpoche held his hands over General Macdonald in
+benediction, and solemnly blessed him for his clemency and moderation in
+sparing the monasteries and people, no one doubted his thankfulness was
+sincere. The golden Buddha he presented to the General was the highest
+pledge of esteem a Buddhist priest could bestow.
+
+When, on September 1, the Tibetans, after nearly a month's palaver, had
+accepted only two of the terms of the treaty,[22] Colonel Younghusband
+decided that the time had come for a guarded ultimatum. He told the
+delegates that, if the terms were not accepted in full within a week, he
+would consult General Macdonald as to what measures it would be
+necessary to take to enforce compliance. Their submission was complete,
+and immediate.
+
+  [22] The liberation of the Lachung men and the destruction of the
+      Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers.
+
+Colonel Younghusband had achieved a diplomatic triumph of the highest
+order. If the ultimatum had been given three weeks, or even a fortnight,
+earlier, I believe the Tibetans would have resisted. When we reached
+Lhasa on August 3, the Nepalese Resident said that 10,000 armed monks
+had been ready to oppose us if we had decided to quarter ourselves
+inside the city, and they had only dispersed when the Shapés who rode
+out to meet us at Toilung returned with assurances that we were going to
+camp outside. At one time it seemed impossible to make any progress with
+negociations without further recourse to arms. But patience and
+diplomacy conquered. We had shown the Tibetans we could reach Lhasa and
+yet respect their religion, and left an impression that our strength was
+tempered with humanity.
+
+The treaty was signed in the Potala on August 7, in the Dalai Lama's
+throne-room. The Tibetan signatories were the acting regent, who affixed
+the seal of the Dalai Lama; the four Shapés; the Abbots of the three
+great monasteries, Depung, Sera, and Gaden; and a representative of the
+National Assembly. The Amban was not empowered to sign, as he awaited
+'formal sanction' from Peking. Lest the treaty should be afterwards
+disavowed through a revolution in Government, the signatories included
+representatives of every organ of administration in Lhasa.
+
+On the afternoon of the 7th our troops lined the causeway on the west
+front of the Potala. Towards the summit the rough and broken road became
+an ascent of slippery steps, where one had to walk crabwise to prevent
+falling, and plant one's feet on the crevices of the age-worn
+flagstones, where grass and dock-leaves gave one a securer foothold.
+Then through the gateway and along a maze of slippery passages, dark as
+Tartarus, but illumined dimly by flickering butter lamps held by aged
+monks, impassive and inscrutable. In the audience-chamber Colonel
+Younghusband, General Macdonald, and the Chinese Amban sat beneath the
+throne of the Dalai Lama. On either side of them were the British
+Political Officer and Tibetan signatories. In another corner were the
+Tongsa Penlop of Bhutan and his lusty big-boned men, and the dapper
+little Nepalese Resident, wreathed in smiles. British officers sat round
+forming a circle. Behind them stood groups of Tommies, Sikhs, Gurkhas,
+and Pathans. In the centre the treaty, a voluminous scroll, was laid on
+a table, the cloth of which was a Union Jack.
+
+When the terms had been read in Tibetan, the signatories stepped forward
+and attached their seals to the three parallel columns written in
+English, Tibetan, and Chinese. They showed no trace of sullenness and
+displeasure. The regent smiled as he added his name.
+
+After the signing Colonel Younghusband addressed the Tibetans:
+
+'The convention has been signed. We are now at peace, and the
+misunderstandings of the past are over. The bases have been laid for
+mutual good relations in the future.
+
+'In the convention the British Government have been careful to avoid
+interfering in the smallest degree with your religion. They have annexed
+no part of your territory, have made no attempt to interfere in your
+internal affairs, and have fully recognised the continued suzerainty of
+the Chinese Government. They have merely sought to insure--
+
+'1. That you shall abide by the treaty made by the Amban in 1890.
+
+'2. That trade relations between India and Tibet, which are no less
+advantageous to you than to us, should be established as they have been
+with every other part of the Chinese Empire, and with every other
+country in the world except Tibet.
+
+'3. That British representatives should be treated with respect in
+future.
+
+'4. That you should not depart from your traditional policy in regard to
+political relations with other countries.
+
+'The treaty which has now been made I promise you on behalf of the
+British Government we will rigidly observe, but I also warn you that we
+will as rigidly enforce it. Any infringement of it will be severely
+punished in the end, and any obstruction of trade, any disrespect or
+injury to British subjects, will be noticed and reparation exacted.
+
+'We treat you well when you come to India. We do not take a single rupee
+in Customs duties from your merchants. We allow any of you to travel and
+reside wherever you will in India. We preserve the ancient buildings of
+the Buddhist faith, and we expect that when we come to Tibet we shall be
+treated with no less consideration and respect than we show you in
+India.
+
+'You have found us bad enemies when you have not observed your treaty
+obligations and shown disrespect to the British Raj. You will find us
+equally good friends if you keep the treaty and show us civility.
+
+'I hope that the peace which has at this moment been established between
+us will last for ever, and that we may never again be forced to treat
+you as enemies.
+
+'As the first token of peace I will ask General Macdonald to release all
+prisoners of war. I expect that you on your part will set at liberty all
+those who have been imprisoned on account of dealings with us.'
+
+At the conclusion of the speech, which was interpreted to the Tibetans
+sentence by sentence, and again in Chinese, the Shapés expressed their
+intention to observe the treaty faithfully.[23]
+
+  [23] The following is a draft of the terms as communicated by _The
+      Times_ Correspondent at Peking. The terms have not yet been
+      disclosed in their final form, but I understand that Dr.
+      Morrison's summary contains the gist of them:
+
+      '1. Tibetans to re-erect boundary-stones at the Tibet frontier.
+
+      '2. Tibetans to establish marts at Gyangtse, Yatung, Gartok, and
+      facilitate trade with India.
+
+      '3. Tibet to appoint a responsible official to confer with the
+      British officials regarding the alteration of any objectionable
+      features of the treaty of 1893.
+
+      '4. No further Customs duties to be levied upon merchandise after
+      the tariff shall have been agreed upon by Great Britain and the
+      Tibetans.
+
+      '5. No Customs stations to be established on the route between the
+      Indian frontier and the three marts mentioned above, where
+      officials shall be appointed to facilitate diplomatic and
+      commercial intercourse.
+
+      '6. Tibet to pay an indemnity of £500,000 in three annual
+      instalments, the first to be paid on January 1, 1906.
+
+      '7. British troops to occupy the Chumbi Valley for three years, or
+      until such time as the trading posts are satisfactorily
+      established and the indemnity liquidated in full.
+
+      '8. All forts between the Indian frontier on routes traversed by
+      merchants from the interior of Tibet to be demolished.
+
+      '9. Without the consent of Great Britain no Tibetan territory
+      shall be sold, leased, or mortgaged to any foreign Power
+      whatsoever; no foreign Power whatsoever shall be permitted to
+      concern itself with the administration of the government of Tibet,
+      or any other affairs therewith connected; no foreign Power shall
+      be permitted to send either official or non-official persons to
+      Tibet--no matter in what pursuit they may be engaged--to assist in
+      the conduct of Tibetan affairs; no foreign Power shall be
+      permitted to construct roads or railways or erect telegraphs or
+      open mines anywhere in Tibet.
+
+      'In the event of Great Britain's consenting to another Power
+      constructing roads or railways, opening mines, or erecting
+      telegraphs, Great Britain will make a full examination on her own
+      account for carrying out the arrangements proposed. No real
+      property or land containing minerals or precious metals in Tibet
+      shall be mortgaged, exchanged, leased, or sold to any foreign
+      Power.
+
+      '10. Of the two versions of the treaty, the English text to be
+      regarded as operative.'
+
+      The ninth clause, which precludes Russian interference and
+      consequent absorption, is of course the most vital article of the
+      treaty.
+
+The next day in durbar a scene was enacted which reminded one of a play
+before the curtain falls, when the characters are called on the stage
+and apprised of their changed fortunes, and everything ends happily.
+Among the mutual pledges and concessions and evidences of goodwill that
+followed we secured the release of the political captives who had been
+imprisoned on account of assistance rendered British subjects. An old
+man and his son were brought into the hall looking utterly bowed and
+broken. The old man's chains had been removed from his limbs that
+morning for the first time in twenty years, and he came in blinking at
+the unaccustomed light like a blind man miraculously restored to sight.
+He had been the steward of the Phalla estate near Dongste; his offence
+was hospitality shown to Sarat Chandra Das in 1884. An old monk of Sera
+was released next. He was so weak that he had to be supported into the
+room. His offence was that he had been the teacher of Kawa Guchi, the
+Japanese traveller who visited Lhasa in the disguise of a Chinese
+pilgrim. We who looked on these sad relics of humanity felt that their
+restitution to liberty was in itself sufficient to justify our advance
+to Lhasa.
+
+On August 14 the Amban posted in the streets of Lhasa a proclamation
+that the Dalai Lama was deposed by the authority of the Chinese Emperor,
+owing to the desertion of his trust at a national crisis. Temporal power
+was vested in the hands of the National Assembly and the regent, while
+the spiritual power was transferred to Panchen Rinpoche, the Grand Lama
+of Tashilunpo, who is venerated by Buddhists as the incarnation of
+Amitabha, and held as sacred as the Dalai Lama himself. The Tashe Lama,
+as he is called in Europe, has always been more accessible than the
+Dalai Lama. It was to the Tashe Lama that Warren Hastings despatched the
+missions of Bogle and Turner, and the intimate friendship that grew up
+between George Bogle and the reigning incarnation is perhaps the only
+instance of such a tie existing between an Englishman and a Tibetan. The
+officials of the Tsang province, where the Tashe Lama resides, are not
+so bigoted as the Lhasa oligarchy. It was a minister of the Tashe Lama
+who invited Sarat Chandra Das to Shigatze, learnt the Roman characters
+from him, and sat for hours listening to his talk about languages and
+scientific developments. The exile of this man, and the execution of the
+Abbot of Dongste, who was drowned in the Tsangpo, for hospitality shown
+to the Bengali explorer, are the most recent marks of the difference in
+attitude between the Lhasans and the people of Tsang.
+
+The present incarnation has not shown himself bitterly anti-foreign.
+During the operations in Tibet he remained as neutral and inactive as
+safety permitted, and it is not impossible that the hope of Mr. Ular may
+be realized, and an Anglophile Buddhist Pope established at Shigatze.
+Herein lies a possible simplification of the Tibetan problem, which has
+already lost some of its complexity by the flight of the Dalai Lama to
+Urga.
+
+In estimating the practical results of the Tibet Expedition, we should
+not attach too much importance to the exact observance of the terms of
+the treaty. Trade marts and roads, and telegraph-wires, and open
+communications are important issues, but they were never our main
+objective. What was really necessary was to make the Tibetans understand
+that they could not afford to trifle with us. The existence of a
+truculent race on our borders who imagined that they were beyond the
+reach of our displeasure was a source of great political danger. We
+went to Tibet to revolutionize the whole policy of the Lhasa oligarchy
+towards the Indian Government.
+
+The practical results of the mission are these: The removal of a ruler
+who threatened our security and prestige on the North-East frontier by
+overtures to a foreign Power; the demonstration to the Tibetans that
+this Power is unable to support them in their policy of defiance to
+Great Britain, and that their capital is not inaccessible to British
+troops.
+
+We have been to Lhasa once, and if necessary we can go there again. The
+knowledge of this is the most effectual leverage we could have in
+removing future obstruction. In dealing with people like the Tibetans,
+the only sure basis of respect is fear. They have flouted us for nearly
+twenty years because they have not believed in our power to punish their
+defiance. Out of this contempt grew the Russian menace, to remove which
+was the real object of the Tibet Expedition. Have we removed it? Our
+verdict on the success or failure of Lord Curzon's Tibetan policy
+should, I think, depend on the answer to this question.
+
+There can be no doubt that the despatch of British troops to Lhasa has
+shown the Tibetans that Russia is a broken reed, her agents utterly
+unreliable, and her friendship nothing but a hollow pretence. The
+British expedition has not only frustrated her designs in Tibet: it has
+made clear to the whole of Central Asia the insincerity of her pose as
+the Protector of the Buddhist Church.
+
+But the Tibetans are not an impressionable people. Their conduct after
+the campaign of 1888 shows us that they forget easily. To make the
+results of the recent expedition permanent, Lord Curzon's original
+policy should be carried out in full, and a Resident with troops left in
+Lhasa. It will be objected that this forward policy is too fraught with
+possibilities of political trouble, and too costly to be worth the end
+in view. But half-measures are generally more expensive and more
+dangerous in the long-run than a bold policy consistently carried out.
+
+We have left a trade agent at Gyantse with an escort of fifty men, as
+well as four or five companies at Chumbi and Phari Jong, at distances of
+100 and 130 miles. But no vigilance at Gyantse can keep the Indian
+Government informed of Russian or Chinese intrigue in Lhasa. Lhasa is
+Tibet, and there alone can we watch the ever-shifting pantomime of
+Tibetan politics and the manoeuvres of foreign Powers. If we are not
+to lose the ground we have gained, the foreign relations of Tibet must
+stand under British surveillance.
+
+But putting aside the question of vigilance, our prestige requires that
+there should be a British Resident in Lhasa. That we have left an
+officer at Gyantse, and none at Lhasa, will be interpreted by the
+Tibetans as a sign of weakness.
+
+Then, again, diplomatic relations with Tibet can only continue a farce
+while we are ignorant of the political situation in Lhasa. Influences in
+the capital grow and decay with remarkable rapidity. The Lamas are
+adepts in intrigue. When we left Lhasa, the best-informed of our
+political officers could not hazard a guess as to what party would be in
+power in a month's time, whether the Dalai Lama would come back, or in
+what manner his deposition would affect our future relations with the
+country. We only knew that our departure from Lhasa was likely to be the
+signal for a conflict of political factions that would involve a state
+of confusion. The Dalai Lama still commanded the loyalty of a large body
+of monks. Sera Monastery was known to support him, while Gaden, though
+it contained a party who favoured the deposed Shata Shapé, numbered many
+adherents to his cause. The only political figure who had no following
+or influence of any kind was the unfortunate Amban.[24] Whatever party
+gains the upper hand, the position of the Chinese Amban is not enviable.
+
+  [24] The Amban or Chinese Resident in Lhasa is in the same position
+      as a British Resident in the Court of a protected chief in India.
+      Of late years, however, the Amban's authority has been little
+      more than nominal.
+
+At the moment of writing China has not signed the treaty; she may do so
+yet, but her signature is not of vital importance. The Tibetans will
+decide for themselves whether it is safe to provoke our hostility. If
+they decide to defy us, then of course trouble may arise from their
+refusing to recognise the treaty of 1904 on the pretext that it was not
+signed by the Amban.
+
+It will be remembered that after the campaign of 1888 the convention we
+drew up in Calcutta was signed by China, and afterwards repudiated by
+Tibet. For many years the Tibetans have ignored China's suzerainty, and
+refused to be bound by a convention drawn up by her in their behalf; but
+now the plea of suzerainty is convenient, they may use it as a pretext
+to escape their new obligations.
+
+It is even possible that the Amban advised the Tibetan delegates in
+Lhasa to agree to any terms we asked, if they wanted to be rid of us, as
+any treaty we might make with them would be invalid without the
+acquiescence of China. Thus the 'vicious circle' revolves, and a more
+admirable political device from the Chino-Tibetan point of view cannot
+be conceived.
+
+But the permanence of the new conditions in Tibet does not depend on
+China. If the Tibetans think they are still able to flout us, they will
+do so, and one pretext will serve as well as another. But if they have
+learnt that our displeasure is dangerous they will take care not to
+provoke it again.
+
+The success or failure of the recent expedition depends on the
+impression we have left on the Tibetans. If that impression is to be
+lasting, we must see that our interests are well guarded in Lhasa, or in
+a few months we may lose the ground we gained, with what cost and danger
+to ourselves only those who took part in the expedition can understand.
+
+THE END
+
+BILLING AND SONS LIMITED, GUILDFORD.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following modifications have been made to the text.
+
+ Contents, Chapter XII: 'Kalimpang' replaced with 'Kalimpong'.
+    British Bhutan--Kalimpong--'The Bhutia tat'
+
+ Page 46: The comma after 'services' replaced with a period.
+    for his good services. When I asked him how he stood with
+        the Tibetan Government
+
+ Page 248: 'the of' replaced with 'of the'.
+    mystery of the East.
+
+ Page 277: 'a' replaced with 'as'.
+    As early as 1641
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unveiling of Lhasa
+
+Author: Edmund Candler
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2010 [EBook #33359]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNVEILING OF LHASA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Asad Razzaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="notebox">
+<p>Transcriber's Notes:</p>
+
+<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as
+in the original.</p>
+
+<p>A few typographical errors have been corrected. They are
+shown in the text with <ins class="corr" title=
+"like this">mouse-hover popups</ins>. Position your mouse over
+the word to see the correction.</p>
+
+<p>A complete list of changes <a href="#TN">follows</a> the
+text.</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="frontis"></a><a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img src="images/frontiss.jpg" alt="Frontispiece." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />A Cold Day in Tibet.</span>
+</div>
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii">&nbsp;</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><span id="title">THE UNVEILING
+OF LHASA</span>
+
+<span id="by">BY</span>
+
+<span id="author">EDMUND CANDLER</span></h1>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Author of 'A Vagabond in Asia'</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON<br />
+EDWARD ARNOLD<br />
+Publisher to H.M. India Office<br />
+41 &amp; 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.<br />
+1905<br />
+[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv">&nbsp;</a></span><br /></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v">&nbsp;</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><small>THESE PAGES,<br />
+WRITTEN MOSTLY IN THE DRY COLD WIND OF TIBET,<br />
+OFTEN WHEN INK WAS FROZEN AND ONE'S HAND TOO NUMBED<br />
+TO FEEL A PEN, ARE DEDICATED TO</small><br />
+<br />
+COLONEL HOGGE, C.B.,<br />
+<br />
+<small>AND</small><br />
+<br />
+THE OFFICERS OF THE 23<span class="smcap">rd</span> SIKH PIONEERS,<br />
+<small>WHOSE GENIAL SOCIETY IS ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT<br />
+MEMORIES OF A RIGOROUS CAMPAIGN.</small>
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi">&nbsp;</a></span></p>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="chapter" id="preface">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>The recent expedition to Lhasa was full of interest,
+not only on account of the political issues involved
+and the physical difficulties overcome, but owing
+to the many dramatic incidents which attended the
+Mission's progress. It was my good fortune to
+witness nearly all these stirring events, and I have
+written the following narrative of what I saw in
+the hope that a continuous story of the affair may
+interest readers who have hitherto been able to
+form an idea of it only from the telegrams in the
+daily Press. The greater part of the book was
+written on the spot, while the impressions of events
+and scenery were still fresh. Owing to wounds I
+was not present at the bombardment and relief of
+Gyantse, but this phase of the operations is dealt
+with by Mr. Henry Newman, <i>Reuter's</i> correspondent,
+who was an eye-witness. I am especially
+indebted to him for his account, which was written
+in Lhasa, and occupied many mornings that might
+have been devoted to well-earned rest.</p>
+
+<p>My thanks are also due to the Proprietors of the
+<i>Daily Mail</i> for permission to use material of which
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+they hold the copyright; and I am indebted to the
+Editors of the <i>Graphic</i> and <i>Black and White</i> for
+allowing me to reproduce certain photographs by
+Lieutenant Bailey.</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations are from sketches by Lieutenant
+Rybot, and photographs by Lieutenants Bailey,
+Bethell, and Lewis, to whom I owe my cordial
+thanks.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r2">EDMUND CANDLER.</span></p>
+<p class="ind1"><span class="smcap">London</span>,<br />
+<i>January, 1905</i>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="contents"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents.">
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="pgno" colspan="2"><small><small>PAGES</small></small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">A retrospect&mdash;Early visitors to Lhasa&mdash;The Jesuits&mdash;The
+Capuchins&mdash;Van der Putte&mdash;Thomas Manning&mdash;The
+Lazarist fathers&mdash;Policy of exclusion due to Chinese
+influence&mdash;The Nepalese invasion&mdash;Bogle and Turner&mdash;The
+Macaulay Mission&mdash;Tibetans invade Indian
+territory&mdash;The expedition of 1888&mdash;The convention
+with China&mdash;British blundering&mdash;Our treatment of
+the Shata Shapé&mdash;The Yatung trade mart&mdash;Tibetans
+repudiate the convention&mdash;Fiction of the Chinese
+suzerainty&mdash;A policy of drift&mdash;Tibetan Mission to the
+Czar&mdash;Dorjieff and his intrigues&mdash;The Dalai Lama and
+Russian designs&mdash;Our great countermove&mdash;Boycotted
+at Khamba Jong&mdash;The advance sanctioned&mdash;Winter
+quarters at Tuna</td><td class="pgno">1-21</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">OVER THE FRONTIER</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">From the base to Gnatong&mdash;A race to Chumbi&mdash;A
+perilous night ride&mdash;Forest scenery&mdash;Gnatong
+three years ago and now&mdash;Gnatong in action&mdash;A
+mountain lake&mdash;The Jelap la and beyond&mdash;Undefended
+barriers&mdash;Yatung and its Customs House&mdash;Chumbi&mdash;The
+first Press message from Tibet&mdash;Arctic
+clothing&mdash;Scenes in camp&mdash;A very uncomfortable
+'picnic'</td><td class="pgno">22-34
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE CHUMBI VALLEY</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">The Tomos&mdash;A hardy race&mdash;Their habits and diversions&mdash;Chinamen
+in exile&mdash;A prosperous valley&mdash;But a cheerless
+clime&mdash;Kasi and his statistics&mdash;Trade figures&mdash;Tibetan
+cruelties&mdash;Kasi as general provider&mdash;Mountain
+scenery&mdash;The spirit of the Himalayas&mdash;A glorious
+flora&mdash;The Himalayas and the Alps&mdash;The wall of
+Gob-sorg&mdash;Chinamen and Tomos&mdash;A future hill-station&mdash;Lingmathang&mdash;A
+cosy cave&mdash;The Mounted Infantry
+Corps&mdash;Two famous regiments&mdash;Sport at Lingmathang&mdash;The
+Sikkim stag&mdash;Gamebirds and wildfowl&mdash;Gautsa
+camp</td><td class="pgno">35-61</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">PHARI JONG</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">Gautsa to Phari Jong&mdash;A wonderful old fortress&mdash;Tibetan
+dirt&mdash;A medical armoury&mdash;The Lamas' library&mdash;Roadmaking
+and sport&mdash;The Tibetan gazelle and other
+animals&mdash;Evening diversions&mdash;Cold, grime, and misery&mdash;Manning's
+journal&mdash;Bogle's account of Phari&mdash;History
+of the fortress&mdash;The town and its occupants&mdash;The
+mystery of Tibet&mdash;The significance of the
+frescoes&mdash;Departure from Phari&mdash;The monastery of
+the Red Lamas&mdash;Chumulari&mdash;The Tibetan New Year&mdash;Bogle's
+narrative&mdash;The Tang la and the road to Lhasa</td><td class="pgno">62-82</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">A transport 'show'&mdash;Difficulties of the way&mdash;Vicissitudes
+of climate&mdash;Frozen heights and sweltering valleys&mdash;Disease
+amongst transport animals&mdash;A tale of disaster&mdash;The
+stricken Yak Corps&mdash;Troubles of the transport
+officer&mdash;Mules to the rescue&mdash;The coolie transport
+corps&mdash;Carrying power of the transport items&mdash;The
+problem and its solution&mdash;The ekka and the yak&mdash;A
+providentially ascetic beast&mdash;Splendid work of the
+transport service&mdash;Courage and endurance of officers
+and men&mdash;The 12th Mule Corps benighted in a
+blizzard&mdash;Rifle-bolts and Maxims frost-jammed&mdash;Difficulties
+of a Russian advance on Lhasa&mdash;The new
+Ammo Chu cart-road</td><td class="pgno">83-98
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">The deadlock at Tuna&mdash;Discomforts of the garrison&mdash;The
+Lamas' curse&mdash;The attitude of Bhutan&mdash;A diplomatic
+triumph&mdash;Tedious delays&mdash;A welcome move forward&mdash;The
+Tibetan camp at Hot Springs&mdash;The Lhasa
+Depon meets Colonel Younghusband&mdash;Futile conferences&mdash;The
+Tibetan position surrounded&mdash;Coolness
+of the Sikhs and Gurkhas&mdash;The disarming&mdash;A sudden
+outbreak&mdash;A desperate struggle&mdash;The action of the
+Lhasa General&mdash;The rabble disillusioned in their gods&mdash;A
+beaten and bewildered enemy&mdash;Reflections after
+the event&mdash;Tibetans in hospital&mdash;Three months afterwards</td><td class="pgno">99-114</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">A HUMAN MISCELLANY</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">In a doolie to the base&mdash;Tibetan bearers&mdash;A retrospect&mdash;A
+reverie and a reminiscence&mdash;Snow-bound
+at Phari&mdash;The Bhutia as bearer&mdash;The Lepchas and
+their humours&mdash;Mongolian odours&mdash;The road at last&mdash;Platitudes
+in epigram&mdash;Lucknow doolie-wallahs&mdash;Their
+hymn of the obvious&mdash;Meetings on the road&mdash;A
+motley of races&mdash;Through a tropical forest&mdash;The
+Tista and civilization</td><td class="pgno">115-126</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">The Tibetans responsible for hostilities&mdash;Their version of
+the Hot Springs affair&mdash;Treacherous attack at Samando&mdash;Wall-building&mdash;The
+Red Idol Gorge action&mdash;A stiff
+climb&mdash;The enemy outflanked&mdash;Impressed peasants&mdash;First
+phase of the opposition&mdash;Bad generalship&mdash;Lack
+of enterprise&mdash;Erratic shooting&mdash;All quiet at Gyantse&mdash;Enemy
+occupy Karo la&mdash;A booby trap&mdash;Colonel
+Brander's sortie&mdash;Frontal attack repulsed&mdash;Captain
+Bethune killed&mdash;Failure of flanking movement&mdash;A
+critical moment&mdash;Sikhs turn the position&mdash;Flight and
+pursuit&mdash;Second phase of the opposition&mdash;Advanced
+tactics&mdash;Danger of being cut off&mdash;The attack on
+Kangma&mdash;Desperate gallantry of the enemy&mdash;Patriots
+or fanatics?</td><td class="pgno">127-151
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">GYANTSE (BY HENRY NEWMAN)</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">A happy valley&mdash;Devastated by war&mdash;Why the Jong was
+evacuated&mdash;The lull before the storm&mdash;Tibetans
+massing&mdash;The attack on the mission&mdash;A hot ten
+minutes&mdash;Pyjamaed warriors&mdash;Wounded to the rescue&mdash;The
+Gurkhas' rally&mdash;The camp bombarded&mdash;The
+labour of defence work&mdash;Hadow's Maxim&mdash;Life
+during the siege&mdash;Tibetans reinforced&mdash;They enfilade
+our position&mdash;The taking of the 'Gurkha Post'&mdash;Terrible
+carnage</td><td class="pgno">152-169</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">GYANTSE&mdash;<i>continued</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">Attack on the postal riders&mdash;Brilliant exploit of the
+Mounted Infantry&mdash;Communications threatened&mdash;Clearing
+the villages&mdash;A narrow shave&mdash;Arrival of
+reinforcements&mdash;The storming of Palla&mdash;House-fighting&mdash;Capture
+of the post&mdash;A fantastic display&mdash;Night
+attacks&mdash;Seven miles of front&mdash;Advance of the relief
+column&mdash;The Tibetans cornered&mdash;Naini monastery
+taken&mdash;Capture of Tsaden&mdash;Our losses&mdash;The armistice&mdash;Tibetans
+refuse to surrender the Jong&mdash;A bristling
+fortress&mdash;The attack at dawn&mdash;The breach&mdash;Gallantry
+of Lieutenant Grant and his Gurkhas&mdash;Capture of
+the Jong</td><td class="pgno">170-194</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">A garden in the forest&mdash;A jeremiad on transport&mdash;The
+servant question&mdash;Jung Bir&mdash;British Bhutan&mdash;<ins class="corr" title="Kalimpang">Kalimpong</ins>&mdash;'The
+Bhutia tat'&mdash;Father Desgodins&mdash;An
+adventurous career&mdash;A lost opportunity&mdash;Chinese
+duplicity&mdash;Phuntshog&mdash;New arms and new friends
+for Tibet&mdash;A mysterious Lama&mdash;Dorjieff again&mdash;The
+inscrutable Tibetan</td><td class="pgno">195-206
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">TO THE GREAT RIVER</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">Failure of peace negociations&mdash;Opposition expected&mdash;Details
+of force&mdash;March to the Karo la&mdash;Villages
+deserted&mdash;The second Karo la action&mdash;The Gurkhas'
+climb&mdash;The Tibetan rout&mdash;The Kham prisoners&mdash;Hopelessness
+of the Tibetans' struggle&mdash;Their troops
+disheartened&mdash;Arrival at Nagartse&mdash;Tedious delegates&mdash;The
+victory of a personality&mdash;Brush with
+Tibetan cavalry&mdash;The last shot&mdash;The Shapés despoiled&mdash;Modern
+rifles&mdash;Exaggerated reports of Russian
+assistance&mdash;The Yamdok Tso&mdash;Dorje Phagmo&mdash;Legends
+of the lake&mdash;The incubus of an army&mdash;Why
+men travel&mdash;Wildfowl&mdash;Pehte&mdash;View from the
+Khamba Pass&mdash;From the desert to Arcadia&mdash;The
+Tibetan of the tablelands&mdash;The Tuna plateau&mdash;Homely
+scenes&mdash;A mood of indolence&mdash;The course
+of the Tsangpo&mdash;The Brahmaputra Irawaddy controversy&mdash;The
+projected Tsangpo trip&mdash;Legendary
+geography&mdash;Lost opportunities</td><td class="pgno">207-238</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">The passage of the river&mdash;Major Bretherton drowned&mdash;The
+Kyi Chu valley&mdash;Tropical heat&mdash;Atisa's tomb&mdash;Foraging
+in holy places&mdash;First sight of the Potala&mdash;Hidden
+Lhasa&mdash;Symbols of remonstrance&mdash;Prophecies
+of invasion&mdash;And decay of Buddhism&mdash;Medieval Tibet&mdash;Spiritual
+terrorism&mdash;Lamas' fears of enlightenment&mdash;The
+last mystery unveiled&mdash;Arrival at Lhasa&mdash;View
+from the Chagpo Ri&mdash;Entry into the city&mdash;Apathy of
+the people&mdash;The Potala&mdash;Magnificence and squalor&mdash;The
+secret of romance&mdash;A vanished deity&mdash;'Thou
+shalt not kill'&mdash;Secret assassinations&mdash;A marvellous
+disappearance&mdash;The Dalai Lama joins Dorjieff&mdash;His
+personality and character&mdash;The verdict of the
+Nepalese Resident&mdash;The voice without a soul&mdash;The
+wisdom of his flight&mdash;A romantic picture&mdash;The place
+of the dead</td><td class="pgno">239-264
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">Sullen monks&mdash;A Lama runs amok&mdash;The environs of
+Lhasa&mdash;The Lingkhor&mdash;The Ragyabas&mdash;The cathedral&mdash;Service
+before the Great Buddhas&mdash;The Lamas'
+chant&mdash;Vessels of gold&mdash;'Hell'&mdash;White mice&mdash;The
+many-handed Buddha&mdash;Silence and abstraction&mdash;The
+bazaar&mdash;Hats&mdash;The Mongolians&mdash;Curio-hunting&mdash;The
+Ramo-ché&mdash;Sorcery&mdash;The adventures of a soul&mdash;Lamaism
+and Roman Catholicism&mdash;The decay of
+Buddhism&mdash;The three great monasteries&mdash;Their
+political influence&mdash;Depung&mdash;An ecclesiastical University&mdash;The
+'impossible' Tibetan&mdash;An ultimatum&mdash;Consternation
+at Depung&mdash;Temporizing and evasion&mdash;An
+ugly mob&mdash;A political deadlock</td><td class="pgno">265-285</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap" colspan="2"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap2" colspan="2">THE SETTLEMENT</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="desc">An irresponsible administration&mdash;An insolent reply&mdash;Tibetan
+haggling&mdash;Release of the Lachung men&mdash;Social
+relations with the Tibetans&mdash;A guarded ultimatum&mdash;A
+diplomatic triumph&mdash;The signing of the
+treaty&mdash;Colonel Younghusband's speech&mdash;The terms&mdash;Political
+prisoners liberated&mdash;Deposition of the
+Dalai Lama&mdash;The Tashe Lama&mdash;Prospect of an
+Anglophile Pope&mdash;The practical results of the expedition&mdash;Russia
+discredited&mdash;Why a Resident should
+be left at Lhasa&mdash;China hesitates to sign the Treaty&mdash;The
+'vicious circle' again&mdash;Her acquiescence not of
+vital importance&mdash;The attitude of Tibet to Great
+Britain&mdash;Fear and respect the only guarantee of
+future good conduct</td><td class="pgno">286-304</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="loi">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table width="80%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations.">
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#frontis">A Cold Day in Tibet</a></span></td><td class="pgno" colspan="2"> <i>frontispiece</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp006">Headquarters of the Mission at Lhasa</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">6</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp012-1">Chorten</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">12</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp012-2">Panorama of a Convent</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">12</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp020">Tuna Village</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">20</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp030-1">Chinese General Ma</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">30</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp030-2">On the Road to Gautsa</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">30</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#p041">Rock Sculptures</a></span></td><td class="fp"></td><td class="pgno">41</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp054-1">Praying-flags and Mani Wall</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">54</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp054-2">Officers' Tents, Mounted Infantry Camp, Lingmathang</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">54</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp060">Subadar Sangat Singh, 1st Mounted Infantry</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">60</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp070-1">Wounded Kyang</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">70</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp070-2">Goa, or Tibetan Gazelle</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">70</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp076-1">The Tang La</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">76</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp076-2">Phari Jong</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">76</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp094-1">Mounted Infantry Ponies, Tuna Camp</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">94</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp094-2">Yak in Ekka</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">94</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp102">The Depon's Last Conference with Colonel Younghusband</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">102</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp106-1">Tibetans retreating from Sangars</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">106</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp106-2">Turning Tibetans out of the Sangars on the Hillside</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">106</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp110">Diagrammatic View of Hot Springs Action</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">110</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp118-1">The Tibetan Dead</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">118</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp118-2">Field-Hospital Doolie with Tibetan Bearers</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">118</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp124">Tibetan Soldiers</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">124</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp130-1">Wounded Tibetan</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">130</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp130-2">Wounded Tibetan in British Hospital</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">130
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp142">Pioneers destroying Kangma Wall</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">142</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp154">Gyantse Jong</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">154</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp182-1">Golden-roofed Temple, Gyantse</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">182</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp182-2">Buddhas in Palkhor Choide</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">182</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp198-1">Tsachen Monastery</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">198</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp198-2">Group of Shapés parleying</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">198</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#p213">Sketch of the Karo la</a></span></td><td class="fp"></td><td class="pgno">213</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp214-1">Kham Prisoners</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">214</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp214-2">Gurkhas climbing at the Karo la</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">214</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp222">Pehté Jong</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">222</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp230">Gubchi Jong</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">230</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp236-1">Old Chain-Bridge at Chaksam</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">236</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp236-2">Crossing the Tsangpo</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">236</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp244">The Potala</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">244</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp250-1">Entry into Lhasa</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">250</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp250-2">Corner of Courtyard of Astrologer's Temple,
+Nechang</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">250</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp260-1">The Potala, West Front</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">260</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp260-2">Mounted Infantry Guard at the Potala</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">260</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp268-1">Metal Bowls outside the Jokhang</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">268</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp268-2">Street Scene in Lhasa</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">268</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp274-1">The Tsarung Shapé</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">274</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp274-2">Mongolians in Lhasa</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">274</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp286-1">The Ta Lama</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">286</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp286-2">Soldier of the Amban's Escort</a></span></td><td class="fp">"</td><td class="pgno">286</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp290">Colonel Younghusband and the Amban at the
+Races</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">290</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp294">The Tsarung Shapé and the Sechung Shapé leaving
+Lhalu House after the Durbar</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">294</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="desc"><span class="smcap"><a href="#fp298">Tibetan Drama played in the Courtyard of Lhalu
+House</a></span></td><td class="fp"><i>to&nbsp;face&nbsp;p.</i></td><td class="pgno">298</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_1">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><big><big>THE UNVEILING OF LHASA</big></big><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_I"></a><span>CHAPTER I</span>
+
+<small>THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> conduct of Great Britain in her relations with
+Tibet puts me in mind of the dilemma of a big
+boy at school who submits to the attacks of a precocious
+youngster rather than incur the imputation
+of 'bully.' At last the situation becomes intolerable,
+and the big boy, bully if you will, turns on
+the youth and administers the deserved thrashing.
+There is naturally a good deal of remonstrance
+from spectators who have not observed the byplay
+which led to the encounter. But sympathy
+must be sacrificed to the restitution of fitting and
+respectful relations.</p>
+
+<p>The aim of this record of an individual's impressions
+of the recent Tibetan expedition is to
+convey some idea of the life we led in Tibet, the
+scenes through which we passed, and the strange
+people we fought and conquered. We killed
+several thousand of these brave, ill-armed men;
+and as the story of the fighting is not always
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+pleasant reading, I think it right before describing
+the punitive side of the expedition to make
+it quite clear that military operations were unavoidable&mdash;that
+we were drawn into the vortex
+of war against our will by the folly and obstinacy
+of the Tibetans.</p>
+
+<p>The briefest review of the rebuffs Great Britain
+has submitted to during the last twenty years
+will suffice to show that, so far from being to
+blame in adopting punitive measures, she is open
+to the charge of unpardonable weakness in allowing
+affairs to reach the crisis which made such
+punishment necessary.</p>
+
+<p>It must be remembered that Tibet has not
+always been closed to strangers. The history of
+European travellers in Lhasa forms a literature
+to itself. Until the end of the eighteenth century
+only physical obstacles stood in the way of an
+entry to the capital. Jesuits and Capuchins
+reached Lhasa, made long stays there, and were
+even encouraged by the Tibetan Government.
+The first<a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Europeans to visit the city and leave
+an authentic record of their journey were the
+Fathers Grueber and d'Orville, who penetrated
+Tibet from China in 1661 by the Sining route, and
+stayed in Lhasa two months. In 1715 the Jesuits
+Desideri and Freyre reached Lhasa; Desideri
+stayed there thirteen years. In 1719 arrived
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+Horace de la Penna and the Capuchin Mission,
+who built a chapel and a hospice, made several
+converts, and were not finally expelled till 1740.<a id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+The Dutchman Van der Putte, first layman to
+penetrate to the capital, arrived in 1720, and
+stayed there some years. After this we have no
+record of a European reaching Lhasa until the
+adventurous journey in 1811 of Thomas Manning,
+the first and only Englishman to reach the city
+before this year. Manning arrived in the retinue
+of a Chinese General whom he had met at Phari
+Jong, and whose gratitude he had won for medical
+services. He remained in the capital four months,
+and during his stay he made the acquaintance of
+several Chinese and Tibetan officials, and was even
+presented to the Dalai Lama himself. The influence
+of his patron, however, was not strong
+enough to insure his safety in the city. He was
+warned that his life was endangered, and returned
+to India by the same way he came. In 1846 the
+Lazarist missionaries Huc and Gabet reached
+Lhasa in the disguise of Lamas after eighteen
+months' wanderings through China and Mongolia,
+during which they must have suffered as much
+from privations and hardships as any travellers
+who have survived to tell the tale. They were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+received kindly by the Amban and Regent, but
+permission to stay was firmly refused them on
+the grounds that they were there to subvert the
+religion of the State. Despite the attempts of
+several determined travellers, none of whom got
+within a hundred miles of Lhasa, the Lazarist
+fathers were the last Europeans to set foot in the
+city until Colonel Younghusband rode through
+the Pargo Kaling gate on August 4, 1904.</p>
+
+<p>The records of these travellers to Lhasa, and
+of others who visited different parts of Tibet
+before the end of the eighteenth century, do not
+point to any serious political obstacles to the
+admission of strangers. Two centuries ago,
+Europeans might travel in remote parts of Asia
+with greater safety than is possible to-day. Suspicions
+have naturally increased with our encroachments,
+and the white man now inspires
+fear where he used only to awake interest.<a id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>The policy of strict exclusion in Tibet seems to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+have been synchronous with Chinese ascendancy.
+At the end of the eighteenth century the Nepalese
+invaded and overran the country. The Lamas
+turned to China for help, and a force of 70,000
+men was sent to their assistance. The Chinese
+drove the Gurkhas over their frontier, and practically
+annihilated their army within a day's march
+of Khatmandu. From this date China has virtually
+or nominally ruled in Lhasa, and an important
+result of her intervention has been to sow
+distrust of the British. She represented that we
+had instigated the Nepalese invasion, and warned
+the Lamas that the only way to obviate our
+designs on Tibet was to avoid all communication
+with India, and keep the passes strictly closed to
+foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before the Nepalese War, Warren Hastings
+had sent the two missions of Bogle and
+Turner to Shigatze. Bogle was cordially received
+by the Grand Teshu Lama, and an intimate
+friendship was established between the two men.
+On his return to India he reported that the only
+bar to a complete understanding with Tibet was
+the obstinacy of the Regent and the Chinese
+agents at Lhasa, who were inspired by Peking.
+An attempt was arranged to influence the Chinese
+Government in the matter, but both Bogle and
+the Teshu Lama died before it could be carried
+out. Ten years later Turner was despatched to
+Tibet, and received the same welcome as his predecessor.
+Everything pointed to the continuance
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+of a steady and consistent policy by which the
+barrier of obstruction might have been broken
+down. But Warren Hastings was recalled in
+1785, and Lord Cornwallis, the next Governor-General,
+took no steps to approach and conciliate
+the Tibetans. It was in 1792 that the Tibetan-Nepalese
+War broke out, which, owing to the
+misrepresentations of China, precluded any possibility
+of an understanding between India and
+Tibet. Such was the uncompromising spirit of
+the Lamas that, until Lord Dufferin sanctioned
+the commercial mission of Mr. Colman Macaulay
+in 1886, no succeeding Viceroy after Warren
+Hastings thought it worth while to renew the
+attempt to enter into friendly relations with the
+country.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp006"></a><a href="images/fp006.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp006s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Headquarters of the Mission at Lhasa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Macaulay Mission incident was the beginning
+of that weak and abortive policy which
+lost us the respect of the Tibetans, and led to
+the succession of affronts and indignities which
+made the recent expedition to Lhasa inevitable.
+The escort had already advanced into Sikkim,
+and Mr. Macaulay was about to join it, when
+orders were received from Government for its
+return. The withdrawal was a concession to the
+Chinese, with whom we were then engaged in the
+delimitation of the Burmese frontier. This display
+of weakness incited the Tibetans to such a
+pitch of vanity and insolence that they invaded
+our territory and established a military post at
+Lingtu, only seventy miles from Darjeeling.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We allowed the invaders to remain in the protected
+State of Sikkim two years before we made
+any reprisal. In 1888, after several vain appeals
+to China to use her influence to withdraw the
+Tibetan troops, we reluctantly decided on a
+military expedition. The Tibetans were driven
+from their position, defeated in three separate
+engagements, and pursued over the frontier as
+far as Chumbi. We ought to have concluded a
+treaty with them on the spot, when we were in a
+position to enforce it, but we were afraid of offending
+the susceptibilities of China, whose suzerainty
+over Tibet we still recognised, though she had
+acknowledged her inability to restrain the Tibetans
+from invading our territory. At the conclusion
+of the campaign, in which the Tibetans showed
+no military instincts whatever, we returned to
+our post at Gnatong, on the Sikkim frontier.</p>
+
+<p>After two years of fruitless discussion, a convention
+was drawn up between Great Britain and
+China, by which Great Britain's exclusive control
+over the internal administration and foreign relations
+of Sikkim was recognised, the Sikkim-Tibet
+boundary was defined, and both Powers undertook
+to prevent acts of aggression from their respective
+sides of the frontier. The questions of pasturage,
+trade facilities, and the method in which official
+communications should be conducted between the
+Government of India and the authorities at Lhasa
+were deferred for future discussion. Nearly
+three more years passed before the trade regulations
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+were drawn up in Darjeeling&mdash;in December,
+1903. The negociations were characterized by
+the same shuffling and equivocation on the part
+of the Chinese, and the same weak-kneed policy
+of forbearance and conciliation on the part of the
+British. Treaty and regulations were alike impotent,
+and our concessions went so far that we
+exacted nothing as the fruit of our victory over
+the Tibetans&mdash;not even a fraction of the cost of
+the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>Our ignorance of the Tibetans, their Government,
+and their relations with China was at this
+time so profound that we took our cue from the
+Chinese, who always referred to the Lhasa
+authorities as 'the barbarians.' The Shata Shapé,
+the most influential of the four members of Council,
+attended the negociations on behalf of the Tibetans.
+He was officially ignored, and no one thought of
+asking him to attach his signature to the treaty.
+The omission was a blunder of far-reaching consequences.
+Had we realized that Chinese authority
+was practically non-existent in Lhasa, and that
+the temporal affairs of Tibet were mainly directed
+by the four Shapés and the Tsong-du (the very
+existence of which, by the way, was unknown to
+us), we might have secured a diplomatic agent in
+the Shata Shapé who would have proved invaluable
+to us in our future relations with the country.
+Unfortunately, during his stay in Darjeeling the
+Shapé's feelings were lacerated by ill-treatment
+as well as neglect. In an unfortunate encounter
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+with British youth, which was said to have arisen
+from his jostling an English lady off the path, he
+was taken by the scruff of the neck and ducked
+in the public fountain. So he returned to Tibet
+with no love for the English, and after certain
+courteous overtures from the agents of 'another
+Power,' became a confirmed, though more or less
+accidental, Russophile. Though deposed,<a id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> he has
+at the present moment a large following among
+the monks of the Gaden monastery.</p>
+
+<p>In the regulations of 1893 it was stipulated that
+a trade mart should be established at Yatung, a
+small hamlet six miles beyond our frontier. The
+place is obviously unsuitable, situated as it is in
+a narrow pine-clad ravine, where one can throw
+a stone from cliff to cliff across the valley. No
+traders have ever resorted there, and the Tibetans
+have studiously boycotted the place. To show
+their contempt for the treaty, and their determination
+to ignore it, they built a wall a quarter of a
+mile beyond the Customs House, through which
+no Tibetan or British subject was allowed to
+pass, and, to nullify the object of the mart, a tax
+of 10 per cent. on Indian goods was levied at
+Phari. Every attempt was made by Sheng Tai,
+the late Amban, to induce the Tibetans to substitute
+Phari for Yatung as a trade mart. But,
+as an official report admits, 'it was found impossible
+to overcome their reluctance. Yatung was
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+eventually accepted both by the Chinese and
+British Governments as the only alternative to
+breaking off the negociations altogether.' This
+confession of weakness appears to me abject
+enough to quote as typical of our attitude throughout.
+In deference to Tibetan wishes, we allowed
+nearly every clause of the treaty to be separately
+stultified.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans, as might be expected, met our
+forbearance by further rebuffs. Not content with
+evading their treaty obligations in respect to trade,
+they proceeded to overthrow our boundary pillars,
+violate grazing rights, and erect guard-houses at
+Giagong, in Sikkim territory. When called to
+question they repudiated the treaty, and said
+that it had never been shown them by the Amban.
+It had not been sealed or confirmed by any
+Tibetan representative, and they had no intention
+of observing it.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the 'solemn farce' was enacted of
+an appeal to China to use her influence with the
+Lhasa authorities. And it was only after repeated
+representations had been made by the
+Indian Government to the Secretary of State that
+the Home Government realized the seriousness of
+the situation, and the hopelessness of making any
+progress through the agency of China. 'We
+seem,' said Lord Curzon, 'in respect to our policy
+in Tibet, to be moving in a vicious circle. If we
+apply to Tibet we either receive no reply or are
+referred to the Chinese Resident; if we apply to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+the latter, he excuses his failure by his inability
+to put any pressure upon Tibet.' In the famous
+despatch of January 8, 1903, the Viceroy described
+the Chinese suzerainty as 'a political fiction,' only
+maintained because of its convenience to both
+parties. China no doubt is capable of sending
+sufficient troops to Lhasa to coerce the Tibetans.
+But it has suited her book to maintain the present
+elusive and anomalous relations with Tibet, which
+are a securer buttress to her western dependencies
+against encroachment than the strongest army
+corps. For many years we have been the butt of
+the Tibetans, and China their stalking-horse.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetan attitude was clearly expressed by
+the Shigatze officials at Khamba Jong in September
+last year, when they openly boasted that
+'where Chinese policy was in accordance with their
+own views they were ready enough to accept the
+Amban's advice; but if this advice ran counter
+in any respect to their national prejudices, the
+Chinese Emperor himself would be powerless to
+influence them.' China has on several occasions
+confessed her inability to coerce the Tibetans.
+She has proved herself unable to enforce the observance
+of treaties or even to restrain her subjects
+from invading our territory, and during the recent
+attempts at negociations she had to admit that
+her representative in Lhasa was officially ignored,
+and not even allowed transport to travel in the
+country. In the face of these facts her exceedingly
+shadowy suzerainty may be said to have
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+entirely evaporated, and it is unreasonable to
+expect us to continue our relations with Tibet
+through the medium of Peking.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp012-1"></a><a href="images/fp012-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp012-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Chorten.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp012-2"></a><a href="images/fp012-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp012-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Panorama of a Convent.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not until nine years after the signing of
+the convention that we made any attempt to
+open direct communications with the Tibetans
+themselves. It is astonishing that we allowed
+ourselves to be hoodwinked so long. But this
+policy of drift and waiting is characteristic of
+our foreign relations all over the world. British
+Cabinets seem to believe that cure is better than
+prevention, and when faced by a dilemma have
+seldom been known to act on the initiative, or
+take any decided course until the very existence
+of their dependency is imperilled.</p>
+
+<p>In 1901 Lord Curzon was permitted to send a
+despatch to the Dalai Lama in which it was
+pointed out that his Government had consistently
+defied and ignored treaty rights; and in view of
+the continued occupation of British territory, the
+destruction of frontier pillars, and the restrictions
+imposed on Indian trade, we should be compelled
+to resort to more practical measures to enforce
+the observance of the treaty, should he remain
+obstinate in his refusal to enter into friendly
+relations. The letter was returned unopened,
+with the verbal excuse that the Chinese did not
+permit him to receive communications from any
+foreign Power. Yet so great was our reluctance
+to resort to military coercion that we might even
+at this point have let things drift, and submitted
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+to the rebuffs of these impossible Tibetans, had
+not the Dalai Lama chosen this moment for
+publicly flaunting his relations with Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The second<a id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Tibetan Mission reached St. Petersburg
+in June, 1901, carrying autograph letters and
+presents to the Czar from the Dalai Lama. Count
+Lamsdorff declared that the mission had no
+political significance whatever. We were asked
+to believe that these Lamas travelled many
+thousand miles to convey a letter that expressed
+the hope that the Russian Foreign Minister was
+in good health and prosperous, and informed him
+that the Dalai Lama was happy to be able to say
+that he himself enjoyed excellent health.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that the mission to St. Petersburg
+was of a purely religious character, and that there
+was no secret understanding at the time between
+the Lhasa authorities and Russia. Yet the fact
+that the mission was despatched in direct contradiction
+to the national policy of isolation that had
+been respected for over a century, and at a time
+when the Tibetans were aware of impending
+British activity to exact fulfilment of the treaty
+obligations so long ignored by them, points to
+some secret influence working in Lhasa in favour
+of Russia, and opposed to British interests. The
+process of Russification that has been carried on
+with such marked success in Persia and Turkestan,
+Merv and Bokhara, was being applied in Tibet. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+has long been known to our Intelligence Department
+that certain Buriat Lamas, subjects of the
+Czar, and educated in Russia, have been acting
+as intermediaries between Lhasa and St. Petersburg.
+The chief of these, one Dorjieff, headed the
+so-called religious mission of 1901, and has been
+employed more than once as the Dalai Lama's
+ambassador to St. Petersburg. Dorjieff is a man
+of fifty-eight, who has spent some twenty years
+of his life in Lhasa, and is known to be the right-hand
+adviser of the Dalai Lama. No doubt
+Dorjieff played on the fears of the Buddhist Pope
+until he really believed that Tibet was in danger
+of an invasion from India, in which eventuality
+the Czar, the great Pan-Buddhist Protector, would
+descend on the British and drive them back over
+the frontier. The Lamas of Tibet imagine that
+Russia is a Buddhist country, and this belief has
+been fostered by adventurers like Dorjieff, Tsibikoff,
+and others, who have inspired dreams of a
+consolidated Buddhist church under the spiritual
+control of the Dalai Lama and the military ægis
+of the Czar of All the Russias.</p>
+
+<p>These dreams, full of political menace to ourselves,
+have, I think, been dispelled by Lord
+Curzon's timely expedition to Lhasa. The presence
+of the British in the capital and the helplessness
+of Russia to lend any aid in such a crisis
+are facts convincing enough to stultify the effects
+of Russian intrigue in Buddhist Central Asia
+during the last half-century.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fact that the first Dalai Lama who has been
+allowed to reach maturity has plunged his country
+into war by intrigue with a foreign Power proves
+the astuteness of the cold-blooded policy of removing
+the infant Pope, and the investiture of
+power in the hands of a Regent inspired by Peking.
+It is believed that the present Dalai Lama was
+permitted to come of age in order to throw off
+the Chinese yoke. This aim has been secured,
+but it has involved other issues that the Lamas
+could not foresee.</p>
+
+<p>And here it must be observed that the Dalai
+Lama's inclination towards Russia does not represent
+any considerable national movement. The
+desire for a rapprochement was largely a matter
+of personal ambition inspired by that arch-intriguer
+Dorjieff, whose ascendancy over the
+Dalai Lama was proved beyond a doubt when
+the latter joined him in his flight to Mongolia on
+hearing the news of the British advance on Lhasa.
+Dorjieff had a certain amount of popularity with
+the priest population of the capital, and the
+monks of the three great monasteries, amongst
+whom he is known to have distributed largess
+royally. But the traditional policy of isolation
+is so inveterately ingrained in the Tibetan character
+that it is doubtful if he could have organized
+a popular party of any strength.</p>
+
+<p>It may be asked, then, What is, or was, the
+nature of the Russian menace in Tibet? It is
+true that a Russian invasion on the North-East
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+frontier is out of the question. For to reach the
+Indian passes the Russians would have to traverse
+nearly 1,500 miles of almost uninhabited country,
+presenting difficulties as great as any we had to
+contend with during the recent campaign. But
+the establishment of Russian influence in Lhasa
+might mean military danger of another kind. It
+would be easy for her to stir up the Tibetans,
+spread disaffection among the Bhutanese, send
+secret agents into Nepal, and generally undermine
+our prestige. Her aim would be to create a
+diversion on the Tibet frontier at any time she
+might have designs on the North-West. The
+pioneers of the movement had begun their work.
+They were men of the usual type&mdash;astute, insidious,
+to be disavowed in case of premature discovery, or
+publicly flaunted when they had prepared any
+ground on which to stand.</p>
+
+<p>Our countermove&mdash;the Tibet Expedition&mdash;must
+have been a crushing and unexpected
+blow to Russia. For the first time in modern
+history Great Britain had taken a decisive,
+almost high-handed, step to obviate a danger
+that was far from imminent. We had all the
+best cards in our hands. Russia's designs in
+Lhasa became obvious at a time when we could
+point to open defiance on the part of the Tibetans,
+and provocation such as would have goaded any
+other European nation to a punitive expedition
+years before. We could go to Lhasa, apparently
+without a thought of Russia, and yet undo all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+effects of her scheming there, and deal her prestige
+a blow that would be felt throughout the whole of
+Central Asia. Such was Lord Curzon's policy. It
+was adopted in a half-hearted way by the Home
+Government, and eventually forced on them by
+the conduct of the Tibetans themselves. Needless
+to say, the discovery of Russian designs was the
+real and prime cause of the despatch of the
+mission, while Tibet's violation of treaty rights
+and refusal to enter into any relations with us
+were convenient as ostensible motives. It cannot
+be denied that these grievances were valid enough
+to justify the strongest measures.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 1903, came the announcement of
+Colonel Younghusband's mission to Khamba Jong.
+I do not think that the Indian Government ever
+expected that the Tibetans would come to any
+agreement with us at Khamba Jong. It is to their
+credit that they waited patiently several months
+in order to give them every chance of settling
+things amicably. However, as might have been
+expected, the Commission was boycotted. Irresponsible
+delegates of inferior rank were sent by
+the Tibetans and Chinese, and the Lhasa delegates,
+after some fruitless parleyings, shut themselves
+up in the fort, and declined all intercourse,
+official or social, with the Commissioners.<a id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the end of August news came that the
+Tibetans were arming. Colonel Younghusband
+learnt that they had made up their minds to have
+no negociations with us <i>inside</i> Tibet. They had
+decided to leave us alone at Khamba Jong, and to
+oppose us by force if we attempted to advance
+further. They believed themselves fully equal to
+the English, and far from our getting anything
+out of them, they thought that they would be
+able to force something out of us. This is not
+surprising when we consider the spirit of concession
+in which we had met them on previous occasions.</p>
+
+<p>At Khamba Jong the Commissioners were informed
+by Colonel Chao, the Chinese delegate,
+that the Tibetans were relying on Russian assistance.
+This was confirmed later at Guru by the
+Tibetan officials, who boasted that if they were
+defeated they would fall back on another Power.</p>
+
+<p>In September the Tibetans aggravated the
+situation by seizing and beating at Shigatze two
+British subjects of the Lachung Valley in Sikkim.
+These men were not restored to liberty until we
+had forced our way to Lhasa and demanded their
+liberation, twelve months afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>The mission remained in its ignominious position
+at Khamba Jong until its recall in November.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+Almost at the same time the expedition to Gyantse
+was announced.<a id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the face of the gross and deliberate affront
+to which we had been subjected at Khamba Jong
+it was now, of course, impossible to withdraw
+from Tibetan territory until we had impressed
+on the Lamas the necessity of meeting us in a
+reasonable spirit. It was clear that the Tibetans
+meant fighting, and the escort had to be increased
+to 2,500 men. The patience of Government was
+at last exhausted, and it was decided that the
+mission was to proceed into Tibet, dictate terms
+to the Lamas, and, if necessary, enforce compliance.
+The advance to Gyantse was sanctioned
+in the first place. But it was quite expected that
+the obstinacy of the Tibetans would make it
+necessary to push on to Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Younghusband crossed the Jelap la into
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+Tibet on December 13, meeting with no opposition.
+Phari Jong was reached on the 20th, and the fort
+surrendered without a shot being fired. Thence
+the mission proceeded on January 7 across the
+Tang Pass, and took up its quarters on the cold,
+wind-swept plateau of Tuna, at an elevation of
+15,300 feet. Here it remained for three months,
+while preparations were being made for an advance
+in the spring. Four companies of the 23rd
+Pioneers, a machine-gun section of the Norfolk
+Regiment, and twenty Madras sappers, were left
+to garrison the place, and General Macdonald, with
+the remainder of the force, returned to Chumbi for
+winter quarters. Chumbi (10,060 feet) is well
+within the wood belt, but even here the thermometer
+falls to 15° below zero.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp020"></a><a href="images/fp020.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp020s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Tuna Village.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A more miserable place to winter in than Tuna
+cannot be imagined. But for political reasons, it
+was inadvisable that the mission should spend
+the winter in the Chumbi Valley, which is not
+geographically a part of Tibet proper. A retrograde
+movement from Khamba Jong to Chumbi
+would be interpreted by the Tibetans as a sign
+of yielding, and strengthen them in their opinion
+that we had no serious intention of penetrating
+to Gyantse.</p>
+
+<p>With this brief account of the facts that led to
+the expedition I abandon politics for the present,
+and in the succeeding chapters will attempt to
+give a description of the Chumbi Valley, which,
+I believe, was untrodden by any European before
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+Colonel Younghusband's arrival in December,
+1903.</p>
+
+<p>I was in India when I received permission to
+join the force. I took the train to Darjeeling
+without losing a day, and rode into Chumbi in
+less than forty-eight hours, reaching the British
+camp on January 10.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_2">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_II"></a><span>CHAPTER II</span>
+
+<small>OVER THE FRONTIER</small></h2>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Chumbi</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>January</i> 13.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">From</span> Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles. These,
+as in the dominions of Namgay Doola's Raja, are
+mostly on end. The road crosses the Tibetan
+frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty miles
+to the north-east. From Observatory Hill in
+Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
+ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and
+north-west lie Kinchenjunga and the tremendous
+chain of mountains that embraces Everest. To
+the north-east stretches a lower line of dazzling
+rifts and spires, in which one can see a thin gray
+wedge, like a slice in a Christmas cake. That is
+the Jelap. Beyond it lies Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>There is a good military road from Siliguri, the
+base station in the plains to Rungpo, forty-eight
+miles along the Teesta Valley. By following the
+river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents to Kalimpong
+and Ari. The new route saves at least a
+day, and conveys one to Rungli, nearly seventy
+miles from the base, without compassing a single
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+tedious incline. It has also the advantage of
+being practicable for bullock-carts and ekkas as
+far as Rungpo. After that the path is a 6-foot
+mule-track, at its best a rough, dusty incline, at
+its worst a succession of broken rocks and frozen
+puddles, which give no foothold to transport
+animals. From Rungpo the road skirts the stream
+for sixteen miles to Rungli, along a fertile valley
+of some 2,000 feet, through rice-fields and orange-groves
+and peaceful villages, now the scene of
+military bustle and preparation. From Rungli it
+follows a winding mountain torrent, whose banks
+are sometimes sheer precipitous crags. Then it
+strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a
+ladder of stone steps over which no animal in
+the world can make more than a mile and a half
+an hour. From the valley to Gnatong is a climb
+of some 10,000 feet without a break. The scenery
+is most magnificent, and I doubt if it is possible
+to find anywhere in the same compass the characteristics
+of the different zones of vegetation&mdash;from
+tropical to temperate, from temperate to alpine&mdash;so
+beautifully exhibited.</p>
+
+<p>At ordinary seasons transport is easy, and one
+can take the road in comfort; but now every mule
+and pony in Sikkim and the Terai is employed on
+the lines of communication, and one has to pay
+300 rupees for an animal of the most modest pretensions.
+It is reckoned eight days from Darjeeling
+to Chumbi, but, riding all day and most
+of the night, I completed the journey in two.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+Newspaper correspondents are proverbially in a
+hurry. To send the first wire from Chumbi I
+had to leave my kit behind, and ride with poshteen<a id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+and sleeping-bag tied to my saddle. I was
+racing another correspondent. At Rungpo I
+found that he was five hours ahead of me, but he
+rested on the road, and I had gained three hours
+on him before he left the next stage at Rora
+Thang. Here I learnt that he intended to camp
+at Lingtam, twelve miles further on, in a tent
+lent him by a transport officer. I made up my
+mind to wait outside Lingtam until it was dark,
+and then to steal a march on him unobserved.
+But I believed no one. Wayside reports were
+probably intended to deceive me, and no doubt
+my informant was his unconscious confederate.</p>
+
+<p>Outside Rungli, six miles further on, I stopped
+at a little Bhutia's hut, where he had been resting.
+They told me he had gone on only half an hour
+before me. I loitered on the road, and passed
+Lingtam in the dark. The moon did not rise till
+three, and riding in the dark was exciting. At
+first the white dusty road showed clearly enough
+a few yards ahead, but after passing Lingtam it
+became a narrow path cut out of a thickly-wooded
+cliff above a torrent, a wall of rock on one side, a
+precipice on the other. Here the darkness was
+intense. A white stone a few yards ahead looked
+like the branch of a tree overhead. A dim shapeless
+object to the left might be a house, a rock, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+bear&mdash;anything. Uphill and downhill could only
+be distinguished by the angle of the saddle.
+Every now and then a firefly lit up the white
+precipice an arm's-length to the right. Once
+when my pony stopped panting with exhaustion
+I struck a match and found that we had come to
+a sharp zigzag. Part of the revetment had fallen;
+there was a yard of broken path covered with fern
+and bracken, then a drop of some hundred feet to
+the torrent below. After that I led my beast for
+a mile until we came to a charcoal-burner's hut.
+Two or three Bhutias were sitting round a log
+fire, and I persuaded one to go in front of me with
+a lighted brand. So we came to Sedongchen,
+where I left my beast dead beat, rested a few hours,
+bought a good mule, and pressed on in the early
+morning by moonlight. The road to Gnatong lies
+through a magnificent forest of oak and chestnut.
+For five miles it is nothing but the ascent of stone
+steps I have described. Then the rhododendron
+zone is reached, and one passes through a forest of
+gnarled and twisted trunks, writhing and contorted
+as if they had been thrust there for some penance.
+The place suggested a scene from Dante's 'Inferno.'
+As I reached the saddle of Lingtu the
+moon was paling, and the eastern sky-line became
+a faint violet screen. In a few minutes Kinchenjunga
+and Kabru on the north-west caught the
+first rays of the sun, and were suffused with the
+delicate rosy glow of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>I reached Gnatong in time to breakfast with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+the 8th Gurkhas. The camp lies in a little cleft
+in the hills at an elevation of 12,200 feet. When
+I last visited the place I thought it one of the
+most desolate spots I had seen. My first impressions
+were a wilderness of gray stones and gray,
+uninhabited houses, felled tree-trunks denuded of
+bark, white and spectral on the hillside. There
+was no life, no children's voices or chattering
+women, no bazaar apparently, no dogs barking,
+not even a pariah to greet you. If there was a
+sound of life it was the bray of some discontented
+mule searching for stray blades of grass among
+the stones. There were some fifty houses nearly
+all smokeless and vacant. Some had been barracks
+at the time of the last Sikkim War, and of
+the soldiers who inhabited them fifteen still lay
+in Gnatong in a little gray cemetery, which was
+the first indication of the nearness of human life.
+The inscriptions over the graves were all dated
+1888, 1889, or 1890, and though but fourteen
+years had passed, many of them were barely
+decipherable. The houses were scattered about
+promiscuously, with no thought of neighbourliness
+or convenience, as though the people were
+living there under protest, which was very probably
+the case. But the place had its picturesque
+feature. You might mistake some of the houses
+for tumbledown Swiss châlets of the poorer sort
+were it not for the miniature fir-trees planted on
+the roofs, with their burdens of prayers hanging
+from the branches like parcels on a Christmas-tree.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These were my impressions a year or two
+ago, but now Gnatong is all life and bustle. In
+the bazaar a convoy of 300 mules was being
+loaded. The place was crowded with Nepalese
+coolies and Tibetan drivers, picturesque in their
+woollen knee-boots of red and green patterns,
+with a white star at the foot, long russet cloaks
+bound tightly at the waist and bulging out with
+cooking-utensils and changes of dress, embroidered
+caps of every variety and description, as often as
+not tied to the head by a wisp of hair. In Rotten
+Row&mdash;the inscription of 1889 still remains&mdash;I met
+a subaltern with a pair of skates. He showed me
+to the mess-room, where I enjoyed a warm breakfast
+and a good deal of chaff about correspondents
+who 'were in such a devil of a hurry to get to a
+God-forsaken hole where there wasn't going to be
+the ghost of a show.'</p>
+
+<p>I left Gnatong early on a borrowed pony. A
+mile and a half from the camp the road crosses
+the Tuko Pass, and one descends again for another
+two miles to Kapup, a temporary transport stage.
+The path lies to the west of the Bidang Tso, a
+beautiful lake with a moraine at the north-west
+side. The mountains were strangely silent, and
+the only sound of wild life was the whistling of the
+red-billed choughs, the commonest of the <i>Corvidæ</i>
+at these heights. They were flying round and
+round the lake in an unsettled manner, whistling
+querulously, as though in complaint at the intrusion
+of their solitude.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I reached the Jelap soon after noon. No snow
+had fallen. The approach was over broken rock
+and shale. At the summit was a row of cairns,
+from which fluttered praying-flags and tattered bits
+of votive raiment. Behind us and on both sides
+was a thin mist, but in front my eyes explored
+a deep narrow valley bathed in sunshine. Here,
+then, was Tibet, the forbidden, the mysterious.
+In the distance all the land was that yellow and
+brick-dust colour I had often seen in pictures
+and thought exaggerated and unreal. Far to the
+north-east Chumulari (23,930 feet), with its magnificent
+white spire rising from the roof-like mass
+behind, looked like an immense cathedral of snow.
+Far below on a yellow hillside hung the Kanjut
+Lamasery above Rinchengong. In the valley
+beneath lay Chumbi and the road to Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>There is a descent of over 4,000 feet in six miles
+from the summit of the Jelap. The valley is
+perfectly straight, without a bend, so that one
+can look down from the pass upon the Kanjut
+monastery on the hillside immediately above
+Yatung. The pass would afford an impregnable
+military position to a people with the rudiments
+of science and martial spirit. A few riflemen on
+the cliffs that command it might annihilate a
+column with perfect safety, and escape into
+Bhutan before any flanking movement could be
+made. Yet miles of straggling convoy are allowed
+to pass daily with the supplies that are necessary
+for the existence of the force ahead. The road to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+Phari Jong passes through two military walls.
+The first at Yatung, six miles below the pass, is
+a senseless obstruction, and any able-bodied
+Tommy with hobnailed boots might very easily
+kick it down. It has no block-houses, and would
+be useless against a flank attack. Before our
+advance to Chumbi the wall was inhabited by
+three Chinese officials, a dingpon, or Tibetan
+sergeant, and twenty Tibetan soldiers. It served
+as a barrier beyond which no British subject was
+allowed to pass. The second wall lies across the
+valley at Gob-sorg, four miles beyond our camp
+at Chumbi. It is roofed and loop-holed like the
+Yatung barrier, and is defended by block-houses.
+This fortification and every mile of valley between
+the Jelap and Gautsa might be held by a single
+company against an invading force. Yet there
+are not half a dozen Chinese or Tibetan soldiers
+in the valley. No opposition is expected this side
+of the Tang la, but nondescript troops armed with
+matchlocks and bows hover round the mission on
+the open plateau beyond. Our evacuation of
+Khamba Jong and occupation of Chumbi were so
+rapid and unexpected that it is thought the
+Tibetans had no time to bring troops into the
+valley; but to anyone who knows their strategical
+incompetence, no explanation is necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Yatung is reached by one of the worst sections
+of road on the march; one comes across a dead
+transport mule at almost every zigzag of the
+descent. For ten years the village has enjoyed
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+the distinction of being the only place in Southern
+Tibet accessible to Europeans. Not that many
+Europeans avail themselves of its accessibility,
+for it is a dreary enough place to live in, shrouded
+as it is in cloud more than half the year round,
+and embedded in a valley so deep and narrow
+that in winter-time the sun has hardly risen
+above one cliff when it sinks behind another.
+The privilege of access to Yatung was the result
+of the agreement between Great Britain and
+China with regard to trade communications between
+India and Tibet drawn up in Darjeeling
+in 1893, subsequently to the Sikkim Convention.
+It was then stipulated that there should be a trade
+mart at Yatung to which British subjects should
+have free access, and that there should be special
+trade facilities between Sikkim and Tibet. It is
+reported that the Chinese Amban took good care
+that Great Britain should not benefit by these new
+regulations, for after signing the agreement which
+was to give the Indian tea-merchants a market in
+Tibet, he introduced new regulations the other
+side of the frontier, which prohibited the purchase
+of Indian tea. Whether the story is true or not,
+it is certainly characteristic of the evasion and
+duplicity which have brought about the present
+armed mission into Tibet.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp030-1"></a><a href="images/fp030-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp030-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Chinese General Ma.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp030-2"></a><a href="images/fp030-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp030-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />On the Road to Gautsa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To-day, as one rides through the cobbled
+street of Yatung, the only visible effects of the
+Convention are the Chinese Customs House with
+its single European officer, and the residence
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+of a lady missionary, or trader, as the exigencies
+of international diplomacy oblige her to term
+herself. The Customs House, which was opened
+on May 1, 1894, was first established with the
+object of estimating the trade between India
+and Tibet&mdash;traffic is not permitted by any
+other route than the Jelap&mdash;and with a view to
+taxation when the trade should make it worth
+while. It was stipulated that no duties should
+be levied for the period of five years. Up to the
+present no tariff has been imposed, and the only
+apparent use the Customs House serves is to
+collect statistics, and perhaps to remind Tibet of
+the shadowy suzerainty of China. The natives
+have boycotted the place, and refuse to trade
+there, and no European or native of India has
+thought it worth while to open a market. Phari
+is the real trade mart on the frontier, and Kalimpong,
+in British Bhutan, is the foreign trade mart.
+But the whole trade between India and Tibet is
+on such a small scale that it might be in the hands
+of a single merchant.</p>
+
+<p>The Customs House, the missionary house, and
+the houses of the clerks and servants of the
+Customs and of the headman, form a little block.
+Beyond it there is a quarter of a mile of barren
+stony ground, and then the wall with military
+pretensions. I rode through the gate unchallenged.</p>
+
+<p>At Rinchengong, a mile beyond the barrier, the
+Yatung stream flows into the Ammo Chu. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+road follows the eastern bank of the river, passing
+through Cheuma and Old Chumbi, where it crosses
+the stream. After crossing the bridge, a mile of
+almost level ground takes one into Chumbi camp.
+I reached Chumbi on the evening of January 12,
+and was able to send the <i>Daily Mail</i> the first
+cable from Tibet, having completed the journey
+from Darjeeling in two days' hard riding.</p>
+
+<p>The camp lies in a shallow basin in the hills, and
+is flanked by brown fir-clad hills which rise some
+1,500 feet above the river-bed, and preclude a
+view of the mountains on all sides. The situation
+is by no means the best from the view of
+comfort, but strategic reasons make it necessary,
+for if the camp were pitched half a mile further
+up the valley, the gorge of the stream which
+debouches into the Ammo River to the north of
+Chumbi would give the Tibetans an opportunity
+of attacking us in the rear. Despite the protection
+of almost Arctic clothing, one shivers until
+the sun rises over the eastern hill at ten o'clock,
+and shivers again when it sinks behind the opposite
+one at three. Icy winds sweep the valley,
+and hurricanes of dust invade one's tent. Against
+this cold one clothes one's self in flannel vest and
+shirt, sweater, flannel-lined coat, poshteen or
+Cashmere sheepskin, wool-lined Gilgit boots, and
+fur or woollen cap with flaps meeting under the
+chin. The general effect is barbaric and picturesque.
+In after-days the trimness of a military
+club may recall the scene&mdash;officers clad in gold-embroidered
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+poshteen, yellow boots, and fur caps,
+bearded like wild Kerghizes, and huddling round
+the camp fire in this black cauldron-like valley
+under the stars.</p>
+
+<p>Officers are settling down in Chumbi as comfortably
+as possible for winter quarters. Primitive
+dens have been dug out of the ground, walled
+up with boulders, and roofed in with green fir-branches.
+In some cases a natural rock affords
+a whole wall. The den where I am now writing
+is warmed by a cheerful pinewood blaze, a luxury
+after the <i>angeiti</i> in one's tent. I write at an
+operating-table after a dinner of minal (pheasant)
+and yak's heart. A gramophone is dinning in
+my ears. It is destined, I hope, to resound in
+the palace of Potala, where the Dalai Lama and
+his suite may wonder what heathen ritual is
+accompanied by 'A jovial monk am I,' and 'Her
+golden hair was hanging down her back.'</p>
+
+<p>Both at home and in India one hears the Tibet
+Mission spoken of enviously as a picnic. There
+is an idea of an encampment in a smiling valley,
+and easy marches towards the mysterious city.
+In reality, there is plenty of hard and uninteresting
+work. The expedition is attended with all
+the discomforts of a campaign, and very little of
+the excitement. Colonel Younghusband is now
+at Tuna, a desolate hamlet on the Tibetan plateau,
+exposed to the coldest winds of Asia, where the
+thermometer falls to 25° below zero. Detachments
+of the escort are scattered along the line
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+of communications in places of varying cold and
+discomfort, where they must wait until the necessary
+supplies have been carried through to Phari.
+It is not likely that Colonel Younghusband will
+be able to proceed to Gyantse before March. In
+the meanwhile, imagine the Pioneers and Gurkhas,
+too cold to wash or shave, shivering in a dirty
+Tibetan fort, half suffocated with smoke from a
+yak-dung fire. Then there is the transport officer
+shut up in some narrow valley of Sikkim, trying
+to make half a dozen out of three with his camp
+of sick beasts and sheaf of urgent telegrams calling
+for supplies. He hopes there will be 'a show,'
+and that he may be in it. Certainly if anyone
+deserves to go to Lhasa and get a medal for it,
+it is the supply and transport man. But he will
+be left behind.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_3">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_III"></a><span>CHAPTER III</span>
+
+<small>THE CHUMBI VALLEY</small></h2>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Chumbi</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>February, 1904</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Chumbi Valley is inhabited by the Tomos,
+who are said to be descendants of ancient cross-marriages
+between the Bhutanese and Lepchas.
+They only intermarry among themselves, and speak
+a language which would not be understood in other
+parts of Tibet. As no Tibetan proper is allowed
+to pass the Yatung barrier, the Tomos have the
+monopoly of the carrying trade between Phari and
+Kalimpong. They are voluntarily under the protection
+of the Tibetans, who treat them liberally,
+as the Lamas realize the danger of their geographical
+position as a buffer state, and are shrewd
+enough to recognise that any ill treatment or
+oppression would drive them to seek protection
+from the Bhutanese or British.</p>
+
+<p>The Tomos are merry people, hearty, and good-natured.
+They are wonderfully hardy and enduring.
+In the coldest winter months, when the
+thermometer is 20° below zero, they will camp
+out at night in the snow, forming a circle of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+their loads, and sleep contentedly inside with no
+tent or roofing. The women would be comely if
+it were not for the cutch that they smear over
+their faces. The practice is common to the
+Tibetans and Bhutanese, but no satisfactory reason
+has been found for it. The Jesuit Father, Johann
+Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
+custom to a religious whim:&mdash;'The women, out of
+a religious whim, never wash, but daub themselves
+with a nasty kind of oil, which not only causes
+them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely
+ugly and deformed.' A hundred and
+eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
+habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the
+Dalai Lama early in the seventeenth century.
+'The women of Tibet in those days were much
+given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the
+Lamas to a degree to bring their holy order into a
+bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of the
+Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the
+women should never appear in public without
+smearing their faces with a black disfiguring paste.
+Huc recorded that though the order was still
+obeyed, the practice was observed without much
+benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or Tibetan
+to-day why their women smear and daub themselves
+in this unbecoming manner, they invariably
+reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu, that it is
+custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves
+about causes.</p>
+
+<p>The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+cap, with a red badge in the front, which harmonizes
+with their complexion&mdash;a coarse, brick red, of which
+the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously
+called pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness
+of a healthy outdoor life in a cold climate.
+A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque&mdash;at
+a hundred yards. They wrap themselves
+round and round with a thick woollen
+blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear
+on their feet high woollen boots with leather or
+rope soles. If it was not for their disfiguring toilet
+many of them would be handsome. The children
+are generally pretty, and I have seen one or two
+that were really beautiful. When we left a camp
+the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
+come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles,
+string, and cardboard boxes were treasured prizes.
+We threw these out of our cave, and the children
+scrambled for them, and even the women made
+dives at anything particularly tempting. My last
+impression of Lingmathang was a group of women
+giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates
+and advertisements in a number of the <i>Lady</i>, which
+somebody's <i>memsahib</i> had used for the packing of
+a ham.</p>
+
+<p>The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness,
+realize the hygienic value of their hot springs.
+There are resorts in the neighbourhood of Chumbi
+as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
+mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes.
+These healthy folk are not morbidly conscious of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
+are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not
+hot enough, the Tomos bake large boulders in the
+ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the water to
+increase the temperature.</p>
+
+<p>Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They
+dry the leaves of the wild rhubarb, and mix them
+with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called <i>dopta</i>,
+and was the favourite blend of the country.
+Now hundreds of thousands of cheap American
+cigarettes are being introduced, and a lucrative
+tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which
+are sold at a pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at
+Chumbi, and two annas at Phari. Sahibs smoke
+them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers
+smoke them, and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing
+else. Tibetan children of three appreciate them
+hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
+strewn with the empty boxes.</p>
+
+<p>There is a considerable Chinese element in the
+Chumbi Valley&mdash;a frontier officer, with the local
+rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of the
+Customs House, and troops numbering from one
+to two hundred. These, of course, were not in
+evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
+The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives,
+but take to themselves women of the country,
+whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
+villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in
+the country after his term of office. Life at
+Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages.
+He is as unhappy as a Frenchman in Tonquin, cut
+off from all the diversions of social and intellectual
+life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me
+that he had brought his wife with him, and the
+poor lady had never left the house, but cried incessantly
+for China and civilization. Yet to the uninitiated
+the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang
+might have been taken from the far East
+and plumped down on the Indian frontier. There
+is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house,
+the same hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper
+over the lintels of the doors, and the same red and
+green abortions on the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Much has been written and duly contradicted
+about the fertility of the Chumbi Valley. If one
+does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
+12,000 feet, it must be admitted that the valley
+is, relatively speaking, fertile&mdash;that is to say, its
+produce is sufficient to support its three or four
+thousand inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>The lower valley produces buckwheat, turnips,
+potatoes, radishes, and barley. The latter, the
+staple food of the Tibetans, has, when ground, an
+appetizing smell very like oatmeal. The upper
+valley is quite sterile, and produces nothing but
+barley, which does not ripen; it is gathered for
+fodder when green, and the straw is sold at high
+prices to the merchants who visit Phari from Tibet
+and Bhutan. This year the Tibetan merchants are
+afraid to come, and the commissariat benefits by a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+very large supply of fodder which ought to see them
+through the summer.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that the valley is unusually fertile
+probably arose from the well-to-do appearance of
+the natives of Rinchengong and Chumbi, and their
+almost palatial houses, which give evidence of a
+prosperity due to trade rather than agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>The hillsides around Chumbi produce wild strawberries,
+raspberries, currants, and cherries; but these
+are quite insipid in this sunless climate.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese Custom's officer at Yatung tells
+me that the summer months, though not hot, are
+relaxing and enervating. The thermometer never
+rises above 70°. The rainfall does not average
+quite 50 inches; but almost daily at noon a mist
+creeps up from Bhutan, and a constant drizzle falls.
+In June, July, and August, 1901, there were only
+three days without rain.</p>
+
+<p>At Phari I met a venerable old gentleman who
+gave me some statistics. The old man, Katsak
+Kasi by name, was a Tibetan from the Kham
+province, acting at Phari as trade agent for the
+Bhutanese Government. His face was seared and
+parchment-like from long exposure to cold winds
+and rough weather. His features were comparatively
+aquiline&mdash;that is to say, they did not look
+as if they had been flattened out in youth. He
+wore a very large pair of green spectacles, with a
+gold bulb at each end and a red tassel in the
+middle, which gave him an air of wisdom and distinction.
+He answered my rather inquisitive
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[Pg 41/42]</a></span>
+questions with courtesy and decision, and yet with
+such a serious care for details that I felt quite sure
+his figures must be accurate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="p041"></a><a href="images/p041.jpg">
+<img src="images/p041s.jpg" alt="Page 41." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Rock Sculpturers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If statistics were any gauge of the benefits Indian
+trade would derive from an open market with Tibet,
+the present mission, as far as commercial interests
+are concerned, would be wasted. According to
+Kasi's statistics, the cost of two dozen or thirty
+mules would balance the whole of the annual
+revenue on Indian imports into the country. The
+idea that duties are levied at the Yatung and Gob-sorg
+barriers is a mistake. The only Customs
+House is at Phari, where the Indian and Bhutanese
+trade-routes meet. The Customs are under the
+supervision of the two jongpens, who send the
+revenue to Lhasa twice a year.</p>
+
+<p>The annual income on imports from India, Kasi
+assured me, is only 6,000 rupees, whereas the income
+on exports amounts to 20,000. Tibetan
+trade with India consists almost entirely of wool,
+yaks'-tails, and ponies. There is a tax of 2 rupees
+8 annas on ponies, 1 rupee a maund on wool, and
+1 rupee 8 annas a maund on yaks'-tails. Our imports
+into Tibet, according to Kasi's statistics, are
+practically nil. Some piece goods, iron vessels, and
+tobacco leaves find their way over the Jelap, but
+it is a common sight to see mules returning into
+Tibet with nothing but their drivers' cooking
+utensils and warm clothing.<a id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At present no Indian tea passes Yatung. That
+none is sold at Phari confirms the rumour I mentioned
+that the Chinese Amban, after signing the
+trade regulations between India and Tibet in Darjeeling,
+1893, crossed the frontier to introduce new
+laws, virtually annulling the regulations. Indian
+tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
+Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and
+treaty obligations. She has placed every obstacle
+in the way of Indian trade, and insulted our Commissioners;
+yet the despatch of the present mission
+with its armed escort has been called an act of
+aggression.</p>
+
+<p>When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be
+angry with him for helping us, he said they would
+certainly cut off his head if he remained in the fort
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+after we had left. There is some foundation in
+travellers' stories about the punishment inflicted on
+the guards of the passes and other officials who fail
+to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
+towards Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when
+we entered the valley are still detained there, as far
+as I can gather, as hostages for the good behaviour
+of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does
+not fit the crime. The guards of a pass are punished
+for letting white men through, quite irrespective of
+the opposing odds.</p>
+
+<p>The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging,
+but the ordeal is so severe that it often proves fatal.
+I asked Kasi some questions about the magisterial
+powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
+remained in the fort some days after we occupied
+it. He told me that they could not pass capital
+sentence, but they might flog the prisoners, and if
+they died, nothing was said. Several victims have
+died of flogging at Phari.</p>
+
+<p>The natives in Darjeeling have a story of
+Tibetan methods, which have always seemed to me
+the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say,
+the criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he
+cannot tell whether it is night or day. Cobras and
+scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of venom
+are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness,
+for it is still enough, and seek or avoid as he
+has courage. Food is sometimes thrown in to
+tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+agony. I asked Kasi if there were any truth in
+the tale. He told me that there were no venomous
+snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a
+dark prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes
+died of scorpion bites; he added that only the
+worst offenders were punished in this way. The
+modified version of the story is gruesome enough.</p>
+
+<p>It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials
+to receive their pay in grain, it being understood
+that their position puts them in the way of obtaining
+the other necessaries of life, and perhaps a few
+of its luxuries. Kasi, being an important official,
+receives from the Bhutan Government forty maunds
+of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
+receives, in addition, a commission on the trade
+disputes that he decides in proportion to their importance.
+He is now an invaluable servant of the
+British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes
+round Phari are wakening into life. From
+the fort bastions one sees sometimes on the hills
+opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
+gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks
+coming from some blind valley which no one but a
+hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
+exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported
+from Bhutan and sold to the mutual gratification
+of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
+hired and employed on the line of communications.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they
+hear of our good prices, will send supplies over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+frontier to hasten our advance. But we must take
+care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good <ins class="corr" title="services,">services.</ins>
+When I asked him how he stood with the Tibetan
+Government, he laid his hand in a significant
+manner across his throat.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">LINGMATHANG</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>February</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau
+of Tibet, the road to Lhasa winds through seven
+miles of pine forest, which recalls some of the most
+beautiful valleys of Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there
+is nothing but barrenness and desolation. The
+country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
+There are long strips of arable land on each side of
+the road, and villages every two or three miles.
+The fields are terraced and enclosed within stone
+walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built
+houses, with low, over-hanging eaves, and long
+wooden tiles, each weighed down with a gray
+boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg
+or Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags
+and <i>mani</i>-walls brightly painted with Buddhistic
+pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.</p>
+
+<p>There is no lack of colour. In the winter months
+a brier with large red berries and a low, foxy-brown
+thornbush, like a young osier in March, lend
+a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills
+the withered grass is yellow, and the blending of
+these quiet tints, russet, brown, and yellow, gives
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
+sombre enough.</p>
+
+<p>Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In
+springtime there is a profusion of colour. The
+valley is beautiful, beyond the beauty of the
+grandest Alpine scenery, carpeted underfoot with
+spring flowers, and ablaze overhead with flowering
+rhododendrons. To try to describe mountains and
+forests is a most unprofitable task; all the adjectives
+of scenic description are exhausted; the
+coinage has been too long debased. For my own
+part, it has been almost a pain to visit the most
+beautiful parts of the earth and to know that one's
+sensations are incommunicable, that it is impossible
+to make people believe and understand. To those
+who have not seen, scenery is either good, bad,
+or indifferent; there are no degrees. Ruskin, the
+greatest master of description, is most entertaining
+when he is telling us about the domestic circle at
+Herne Hill. But mountain scenery is of all the
+most difficult to describe. The sense of the
+Himalayas is intangible. There are elusive lights
+and shades, and sounds and whispers, and unfamiliar
+scents, and a thousand fleeting manifestations
+of the genius of the place that are impossible
+to arrest. Magnificent, majestic, splendid, are
+weak, colourless words that depict nothing. It is
+the poets who have described what they have not
+seen who have been most successful. Milton's
+hell is as real as any landscape of Byron's, and the
+country through which Childe Roland rode to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+the Dark Tower is more vivid and present to us
+than any of Wordsworth's Westmoreland tarns
+and valleys. So it is a poem of the imagination&mdash;'Kubla
+Khan'&mdash;that seems to me to breathe something
+of the spirit of the Yatung and Chumbi
+Valleys, only there is a little less of mystery and
+gloom here, and a little more of sunshine and
+brightness than in the dream poem. Instead of
+attempting to describe the valley&mdash;Paradise would
+be easier to describe&mdash;I will try to explain as
+logically as possible why it fascinated me more
+than any scenery I have seen.</p>
+
+<p>I had often wondered if there were any place
+in the East where flowers grow in the same profusion
+as in Europe&mdash;in England, or in Switzerland.
+The nearest approach I had seen was in the
+plateau of the Southern Shan States, at about
+4,000 feet, where the flora is very homelike. But
+the ground is not <i>carpeted</i>; one could tread without
+crushing a blossom. Flowers are plentiful, too,
+on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and on
+the hills on the Siamese side of the Tennasserim
+frontier, but I had seen nothing like a field of
+marsh-marigolds and cuckoo-flowers in May, or
+a meadow of buttercups and daisies, or a bank of
+primroses, or a wood carpeted with bluebells, or a
+hillside with heather, or an Alpine slope with
+gentians and ranunculus. I had been told that
+in Persia in springtime the valleys of the Shapur
+River and the Karun are covered profusely with
+lilies, also the forests of Manchuria in the neighbourhood
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+of the Great White Mountain; but until
+I crossed the Jelapla and struck down the valley
+to Yatung I thought I would have to go West
+to see such things again. Never was such profusion.
+Besides the primulas<a id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>&mdash;I counted eight
+different kinds of them&mdash;and gentians and anemones
+and celandines and wood sorrel and wild strawberries
+and irises, there were the rhododendrons
+glowing like coals through the pine forest. As one
+descended the scenery became more fascinating;
+the valley narrowed, and the stream was more
+boisterous. Often the cliffs hung sheer over the
+water's edge; the rocks were coated with green
+and yellow moss, which formed a bed for the dwarf
+rhododendron bushes, now in full flower, white and
+crimson and cream, and every hue between a dark
+reddish brown and a light sulphury yellow&mdash;not
+here and there, but everywhere, jostling one
+another for nooks and crannies in the rock.<a id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>These delicate flowers are very different from
+their dowdy cousin, the coarse red rhododendron
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+of the English shrubbery. At a little distance
+they resemble more hothouse azaleas, and equal
+them in wealth of blossom.</p>
+
+<p>The great moss-grown rocks in the bed of the
+stream were covered with equal profusion. Looking
+behind, the snows crowned the pine-trees, and
+over them rested the blue sky. And here is the
+second reason&mdash;as I am determined to be logical
+in my preference&mdash;why I found the valley so
+fascinating. In contrasting the Himalayas with
+the Alps, there is always something that the
+former is without. Never the snows, and the
+water, and the greenery at the same time; if
+the greenery is at your feet, the snows are far
+distant; where the Himalayas gain in grandeur
+they lose in beauty. So I thought the wild valley
+of Lauterbrunnen, lying at the foot of the Jungfrau,
+the perfection of Alpine scenery until I saw the
+valley of Yatung, a pine-clad mountain glen,
+green as a hawthorn hedge in May, as brilliantly
+variegated as a beechwood copse in autumn, and
+culminating in the snowy peak that overhangs the
+Jelapla. The valley has besides an intangible
+fascination, indescribable because it is illogical.
+Certainly the light that played upon all these
+colours seemed to me softer than everyday sunshine;
+and the opening spring foliage of larch and
+birch and mountain ash seemed more delicate and
+varied than on common ground. Perhaps it was
+that I was approaching the forbidden land. But
+what irony, that this seductive valley should be
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+the approach to the most bare and unsheltered
+country in Asia!</p>
+
+<p>Even now, in February, I can detect a few
+salmon-coloured leaf-buds, which remind me that
+the month of May will be a revelation to the
+mission force, when their veins are quickened by
+the unfamiliar warmth, and their eyes dazzled by
+this unexpected treasure which is now germinating
+in the brown earth.</p>
+
+<p>Four miles beyond Chumbi the road passes
+through the second military wall at the Chinese
+village of Gob-sorg. Riding through the quiet
+gateway beneath the grim, hideous figure of the
+goddess Dolma carved on the rock above, one
+feels a silent menace. One is part of more than a
+material invasion; one has passed the gate that has
+been closed against the profane for centuries; one
+has committed an irretrievable step. Goddess and
+barrier are symbols of Tibet's spiritual and material
+agencies of opposition. We have challenged and
+defied both. We have entered the arena now, and
+are to be drawn into the vortex of all that is most
+sacred and hidden, to struggle there with an implacable
+foe, who is protected by the elemental
+forces of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the wall, above the road, stands the
+Chinese village of Gob-sorg. The Chinamen come
+out of their houses and stand on the revetment to
+watch us pass. They are as quiet and ugly as their
+gods. They gaze down on our convoys and modern
+contrivances with a silent contempt that implies a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+consciousness of immemorial superiority. Who can
+tell what they think or what they wish, these undivinable
+creatures? They love money, we know,
+and they love something else that we cannot know.
+It is not country, or race, or religion, but an inscrutable
+something that may be allied to these
+things, that induces a mental obstinacy, an unfathomable
+reserve which may conceal a wisdom
+beyond our philosophy or mere callousness and
+indifference. The thing is there, though it has no
+European name or definition. It has caused many
+curious and unexplained outbreaks in different
+parts of the world, and it is no doubt symbolized
+in their inexpressibly hideous flag. The element
+is non-conductive, and receives no current from
+progress, and it is therefore incommunicable to us
+who are wrapped in the pride of evolution. The
+question here and elsewhere is whether the Chinese
+love money more or this inscrutable dragon element.
+If it is money, their masks must have concealed a
+satisfaction at the prospect of the increased trade
+that follows our flag; if the dragon element, a
+grim hope that we might be cut off in the wilderness
+and annihilated by Asiatic hordes.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the Chinese, the Tomos are unaffectedly
+glad to see us in the valley. The humblest peasant
+is the richer by our presence, and the landowners
+and traders are more prosperous than they have
+been for many years. Their uncompromising reception
+of us makes a withdrawal from the Chumbi
+Valley impossible, for the Tibetans would punish
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+them relentlessly for the assistance they have given
+their enemies.</p>
+
+<p>A mile beyond Gob-sorg is the Tibetan village of
+Galing-ka, where the praying-flags are as thick as
+masts in a dockyard, and streams of paper prayers
+are hung across the valley to prevent the entrance
+of evil spirits. Chubby little children run out and
+salute one with a cry of 'Backsheesh!' the first
+alien word in their infant vocabulary.</p>
+
+<p>A mile further a sudden turn in the valley
+brings one to a level plain&mdash;a phenomenally flat
+piece of ground where one can race two miles along
+the straight. No one passes it without remarking
+that it is the best site for a hill-station in Northern
+India. Where else can one find a racecourse, polo-ground,
+fishing, and shooting, and a rainfall that
+is little more than a third of that of Darjeeling?
+Three hundred feet above the stream on the west
+bank is a plateau, apparently intended for building
+sites. The plain in the valley was naturally designed
+for the training of mounted infantry, and is
+now, probably for the first time, being turned to
+its proper use.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Lingmathang</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>March 18</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>I have left the discomforts of Phari, and am
+camping now on the Lingmathang Plain. I am
+writing in a natural cave in the rock. The opening
+is walled in by a sangar of stones 5 feet high,
+from which pine-branches support a projecting
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+roof. On fine days the space between the roof
+and wall is left open, and called the window; but
+when it snows, gunny-bags are let down as purdahs,
+and the den becomes very warm and comfortable.
+There is a natural hearth, a natural chimney-piece,
+and a natural chimney that draws excellently. The
+place is sheltered by high cliffs, and it is very
+pleasant to look out from this snugness on a wintry
+landscape, and ground covered deep with snow.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp054-1"></a><a href="images/fp054-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp054-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Praying-flags and Mani Wall.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp054-2"></a><a href="images/fp054-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp054-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Officers' Tents, Mounted Infantry Camp, Lingmathang.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Outside, seventy shaggy Tibetan ponies, rough
+and unshod, averaging 12·2 hands, are tethered
+under the shelter of a rocky cliff. They are being
+trained according to the most approved methods of
+modern warfare. The Mounted Infantry Corps,
+mostly volunteers from the 23rd and 32nd Pioneers
+and 8th Gurkhas, are under the command of
+Captain Ottley of the 23rd. The corps was raised
+at Gnatong in December, and though many of
+the men had not ridden before, after two months'
+training they cut a very respectable figure in the
+saddle. A few years ago a proposal was made to
+the military authorities that the Pioneers, like other
+regiments, should go in for a course of mounted
+infantry training. The reply caused much amusement
+at the time. The suggestion was not adopted,
+but orders were issued that 'every available opportunity
+should be taken of teaching the Pioneers to
+ride in carts.' A wag in the force naturally suggests
+that the new Ekka Corps, now running
+between Phari and Tuna, should be utilized to
+carry out the spirit of this order. Certainly on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+road beyond the Tangla the ekkas would require
+some sitting.</p>
+
+<p>The present mission is the third 'show' on which
+the 23rd and 32nd have been together during the
+last nine years. In Chitral and Waziristan they
+fought side by side. It is no exaggeration to say
+that these regiments have been on active service
+three years out of five since they were raised in
+1857. The original draft of the 32nd, it will be
+remembered, was the unarmed volunteer corps of
+Mazbi Sikhs, who offered themselves as an escort
+to the convoy from Lahore to Delhi during the
+siege. The Mazbis were the most lawless and
+refractory folk in the Punjab, and had long been
+the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi
+they were employed in the trenches, rushing in to
+fill up the places of the killed and wounded as fast
+as they fell. It will be remembered that they
+formed the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags
+to blow up the Cashmere Gate. A hundred
+and fifty-seven of them were killed during the
+siege. With this brilliant opening it is no wonder
+that they have been on active service almost continually
+since.</p>
+
+<p>A frontier campaign would be incomplete without
+the 32nd or 23rd. It was the 32nd who
+cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and
+carried the battery guns to the relief of Chitral.
+The 23rd Pioneers were also raised from the Mazbi
+Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
+history of the two regiments is very similar. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+23rd distinguished themselves in China, Abyssinia,
+Afghanistan, and numerous frontier campaigns.
+One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with
+the Gordon Highlanders under Major (now Sir
+George) White, they captured the Afghan guns at
+Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments
+meet again as members of the same corps on the
+Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most cordial
+relations exist between the men, and one can hear
+them discussing old campaigns as they sit round
+their pinewood fires in the evenings. They and
+the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur
+fame) turn out together every morning for exercise
+on their diminutive steeds. They ride without
+saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
+horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at
+the jumps. The other day, when a Mazbi Sikh
+took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
+reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise
+riding in carts.'</p>
+
+<p>At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of
+sport of a desultory kind. The neighbouring forests
+are the home of that very rare and little-known
+animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal
+of the species to fall to a European gun was shot
+by Major Wallace Dunlop on the Lingmathang
+Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley
+wounded a buck which he was not able to follow
+up on account of a heavy fall of snow. Lately one
+or two shao&mdash;does in all cases&mdash;have come down to
+visit the plain. While we were breakfasting on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+morning of the 16th, we heard a great deal of
+shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
+up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village
+dogs, had broken through the jungle on the hillside
+and emerged on the plain a hundred yards
+from our camp. We mounted at once, and Ottley
+deployed the mounted infantry, who were ready
+for parade, to head the beast from the hills. The
+shao jinked like a hare, and crossed and recrossed
+the stream several times, but the poor beast was
+exhausted, and, after twenty minutes' exciting
+chase, we surrounded it. Captain Ottley threw
+himself on the animal's neck and held it down
+until a sepoy arrived with ropes to bind its hind-legs.
+The chase was certainly a unique incident in
+the history of sport&mdash;a field of seventy in the
+Himalayas, a clear spurt in the open, no dogs, and
+the quarry the rarest zoological specimen in the
+world. The beast stood nearly 14 hands, and was
+remarkable for its long ears and elongated jaw.
+The sequel was sad. Besides the fright and
+exhaustion, the captured shao sustained an injury
+in the loin; it pined, barely nibbled at its food,
+and, after ten days, died.</p>
+
+<p>Sikkim stags are sometimes shot by native
+shikaris, and there is great rivalry among members
+of the mission force in buying their heads. They
+are shy, inaccessible beasts, and they are not met
+with beyond the wood limit.</p>
+
+<p>The shooting in the Chumbi Valley is interesting
+to anyone fond of natural history, though it is a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+little disappointing from the sportsman's point of
+view. When officers go out for a day's shooting,
+they think they have done well if they bring home
+a brace of pheasants. When the sappers and miners
+began to work on the road below Gautsa, the blood-pheasants
+used to come down to the stream to watch
+the operations, but now one sees very few game-birds
+in the valley. The minal is occasionally shot.
+The cock-bird, as all sportsmen know, is, with the
+exception of the Argus-eye, the most beautiful
+pheasant in the world. There is a lamasery in
+the neighbourhood, where the birds are almost
+tame. The monks who feed them think that they
+are inhabited by the spirits of the blest. Where
+the snow melts in the pine-forests and leaves soft
+patches and moist earth, you will find the blood-pheasant.
+When you disturb them they will run
+up the hillside and call vociferously from their
+new hiding-place, so that you may get another
+shot. Pheasant-shooting here is not sport; the
+birds seldom rise, and when they do it is almost
+impossible to get a shot at them in the thick
+jungle. One must shoot them running for the
+pot. Ten or a dozen is not a bad bag for one
+gun later in the year, when more snow has fallen.</p>
+
+<p>At a distance the blood-pheasant appears a dowdy
+bird. The hen is quite insignificant, but, on a closer
+acquaintance, the cock shows a delicate colour-scheme
+of mauve, pink, and green, which is quite
+different from the plumage of any other bird I
+have seen. The skins fetch a good price at home,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+as fishermen find them useful for making flies. A
+sportsman who has shot in the Yatung Valley
+regularly for four years tells me that the cock-bird
+of this species is very much more numerous than
+the hen. Another Chumbi pheasant is the tracopan,
+a smaller bird than the minal, and very beautifully
+marked. I have not heard of a tracopan being shot
+this season; the bird is not at all common anywhere
+on this side of the Himalayas.</p>
+
+<p>Snow-partridge sometimes come down to the
+Lingmathang hills; in the adjacent Kongbu Valley
+they are plentiful. These birds are gregarious, and
+are found among the large, loose boulders on the
+hill-tops. In appearance they are a cross between
+the British grouse and the red-legged partridge,
+having red feet and legs uncovered with feathers,
+and a red bill and chocolate breast. The feathers
+of the back and rump are white, with broad,
+defined bars of rich black.</p>
+
+<p>Another common bird is the snow-pigeon. Large
+flocks of them may be seen circling about the
+valley anywhere between Phari and Chumbi.
+Sometimes, when we are sitting in our cave after
+dinner, we hear the tweek of solitary snipe flying
+overhead, but we have never flushed any. Every
+morning before breakfast I stroll along the river
+bank with a gun, and often put up a stray duck.
+I have frequently seen goosanders on the river,
+but not more than two or three in a party. They
+never leave the Himalayas. The only migratory
+duck I have observed are the common teal and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+Brahminy or ruddy sheldrake, and these only in
+pairs. The latter, though despised on the plains,
+are quite edible up here. I discredit the statement
+that they feed on carrion, as I have never seen one
+near the carcasses of the dead transport animals
+that are only too plentiful in the valley just now.
+After comparing notes with other sportsmen, I
+conclude that the Ammo Chu Valley is not a
+regular route for migratory duck. The odd teal
+that I shot in February were probably loiterers
+that were not strong enough to join in the flight
+southwards.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp060"></a><a href="images/fp060.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp060s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Subadar Sangat Singh, 1st Mounted Infantry.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Near Lingmathang I shot the ibis bill (<i>Ibidorhynchus
+Struthersi</i>), a bird which is allied to the
+oyster catchers. This was the first Central Asian
+species I met.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Gautsa</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>February</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>Gautsa, which lies five miles north of Lingmathang,
+nearly half-way between Chumbi and
+Phari, must be added to the map. A week or two
+ago the place was deserted and unnamed; it did
+not boast a single cowherd's hut. Now it is a busy
+camp, and likely to be a permanent halting-place
+on the road to Phari. The camp lies in a deep,
+moss-carpeted hollow, with no apparent egress.
+On three sides it is flanked by rocky cliffs, densely
+forested with pine and silver birch; on the fourth
+rises an abrupt wall of rock, which is suffused with
+a glow of amber light an hour before sunset. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+Ammo Chu, which is here nothing but a 20-foot
+stream frozen over at night, bisects the camp.
+The valley is warm and sheltered, and escapes
+much of the bitter wind that never spares Chumbi.
+After dinner one prefers the open-air and a camp
+fire. Officers who have been up the line before
+turn into their tents regretfully, for they know that
+they are saying good-bye to comfort, and will not
+enjoy the genial warmth of a good fire again until
+they have crossed the bleak Tibetan tablelands and
+reached the sparsely-wooded Valley of Gyantse.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_4">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><span>CHAPTER IV</span>
+
+<small>PHARI JONG</small></h2>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r2"><i>February</i> 15.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Icy</span> winds and suffocating smoke are not conducive
+to a literary style, though they sometimes
+inspire a rude eloquence that is quite unfit for
+publication. As I write we are huddling over the
+mess-room brazier&mdash;our youngest optimist would
+not call it a fire. Men drop in now and then from
+fatigue duty, and utter an incisive phrase that
+expresses the general feeling, while we who write
+for an enlightened public must sacrifice force for
+euphemism. A week at Phari dispels all illusions;
+only a bargee could adequately describe the place.
+Yet the elements, which 'feelingly persuade us'
+what we are, sometimes inspire us with the
+eloquence of discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>At Gautsa the air was scented with the fragrance
+of warm pine-trees, and there was no indication of
+winter save the ice on the Ammo Chu. The
+torrent roared boisterously beneath its frozen surface,
+and threw up little tentacles of frozen spray,
+which glistened fantastically in the sun. Three
+miles further up the stream the wood-belt ends
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+abruptly; then, after another three miles, one
+passes the last stunted bush; after that there is
+nothing but brown earth and yellow withered
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles above Gautsa is Dotah, the most
+cheerless camp on the march. The wind blows
+through the gorge unceasingly, and penetrates to
+the bone. On the left bank of the stream is the
+frozen waterfall, which might be worshipped by
+the fanciful and superstitious as embodying the
+genius of the place, hard and resistless, a crystallized
+monument of the implacable spirit of Nature
+in these high places.</p>
+
+<p>At Kamparab, where we camped, two miles higher
+up the stream, the thermometer fell to 14° below
+zero. Close by is the meeting-place of the sources
+of the Ammo Chu. All the plain is undermined
+with the warrens of the long-haired marmots and
+voles, who sit on their thresholds like a thousand
+little spies, and curiously watch our approach, then
+dive down into their burrows to tell their wives of
+the strange bearded invaders. They are the despair
+of their rivals, the sappers and miners, who are
+trying to make a level road for the new light
+ekkas. One envies them their warmth and snugness
+as one rides against the bitter penetrating
+winds.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve miles from Gautsa a turn in the valley
+brings one into view of Phari Jong. At first sight
+it might be a huge isolated rock, but as one
+approaches the bastions and battlements become
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+more distinct. Distances are deceptive in this
+rarefied air, and objects that one imagines to be
+quite close are sometimes found to be several miles
+distant.</p>
+
+<p>The fort is built on a natural mound in the
+plain. It is a huge rambling building six stories
+high, surrounded by a courtyard, where mules and
+ponies are stabled. As a military fortification
+Phari Jong is by no means contemptible. The
+walls are of massive stonework which would take
+heavy guns to demolish. The angles are protected
+from attacking parties by machicolated galleries, and
+three enormous bastions project from each flank.
+These are crumbling in places, and the Pioneers
+might destroy the bastion and breach the wall with
+a bag or two of guncotton. On the eastern side
+there is a square courtyard like an Arab caravanserai,
+where cattle are penned. The fortress would
+hold the whole Tibetan army, with provisions for a
+year. It was evacuated the night before we reconnoitred
+the valley.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of the Jong is a warren of stairs,
+landings, and dark cavernous rooms, which would
+take a whole day to explore. The walls are built
+of stone and mud, and coated with century-old
+smoke. There are no chimneys or adequate
+windows, and the filth is indescribable. When
+Phari was first occupied, eighty coolies were
+employed a whole week clearing away refuse.
+Judging by the accretion of dirt, a new-comer
+might class the building as medieval; but filth is
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+no criterion of age, for everything left in the same
+place becomes quickly coated with grime an inch
+thick. The dust that invades one's tent at Chumbi
+is clean and wholesome compared to the Phari dirt,
+which is the filth of human habitation, the secretion
+of centuries of foul living. It falls from the roof on
+one's head, sticks to one's clothes as one brushes
+against the wall, and is blown up into one's eyes
+and throat from the floor.</p>
+
+<p>The fort is most insanitary, but a military occupation
+is necessary. The hacking coughs which
+are prevalent among officers and men are due to
+impurities of the air which affect the lungs. Cartloads
+of dirt are being scraped away every day, but
+gusts of wind from the lower stories blow up more
+dust, which penetrates every nook and cranny of
+the draughty rooms, so that there is a fresh layer
+by nightfall. To clear the lower stories and cellars
+would be a hopeless task; even now rooms are
+found in unexpected places which emit clouds of
+dust whenever the wind eddies round the basement.</p>
+
+<p>I explored the ground-floor with a lantern, and
+was completely lost in the maze of passages and
+dark chambers. When we first occupied the fort,
+they were filled with straw, gunpowder, and old
+arms. A hundred and forty maunds of inferior
+gunpowder was destroyed, and the arms now litter
+the courtyard. These the Tibetans themselves
+abandoned as rubbish. The rusty helmets, shields,
+and breastplates are made of the thinnest iron
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+plates interlaced with leathern thongs, and would
+not stop an arrow. The old bell-mouthed matchlocks,
+with their wooden ground-rests, would be
+more dangerous to the Tibetan marksmen than the
+enemy. The slings and bows and arrows are
+reckoned obsolete even by these primitive warriors.
+Perhaps they attribute more efficacy to the praying-wheels
+which one encounters at every corner
+of the fort. The largest are in niches in the wall
+to left and right of the gateway; rows of smaller
+ones are attached to the banisters on the landings
+and to the battlements of the roof. The wheels are
+covered with grime&mdash;the grime of Lamas' hands.
+Dirt and religion are inseparable in Tibet. The
+Lamas themselves are the most filthy and malodorous
+folk I have met in the country. From
+this it must not be inferred that one class is more
+cleanly in its habits than another, for nobody ever
+thinks of washing. Soap is not included in the list
+of sundries that pass the Customs House at
+Yatung. If the Lamas are dirtier than the yak-herds
+and itinerant merchants it is because they
+lead an indoor life, whereas the pastoral folk are
+continually exposed to the purifying winds of the
+tablelands, which are the nearest equivalent in
+Tibet to a cold bath.</p>
+
+<p>I once read of a Tibetan saint, one of the pupils
+of Naropa, who was credited with a hundred
+miraculous gifts, one of which was that he could
+dive into the water like a fish. Wherein the
+miracle lay had often puzzled me, but when I met
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+the Lamas of the Kanjut Gompa I understood at
+once that it was the holy man's contact with the water.</p>
+
+<p>Phari is eloquent of piety, as it is understood in
+Tibet. The better rooms are frescoed with
+Buddhistic paintings, and on the third floor is a
+library, now used as a hospital, where xylograph
+editions of the Lamaist scriptures and lives of the
+saints are pigeon-holed in lockers in the wall. The
+books are printed on thin oblong sheets of Chinese
+paper, enclosed in boards, and illuminated with
+quaint coloured tailpieces of holy men in devotional
+attitudes. Phari fort, with its casual blending
+of East and West, is full of incongruous effects,
+but the oddest and most pathetic incongruity is the
+chorten on the roof, from which, amidst praying-flags
+and pious offerings of coloured raiment,
+flutters the Union Jack.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r2"><i>February</i> 18.</span></p>
+
+<p>The troops are so busy making roads that they
+have very little time for amusements. The
+8th Gurkhas have already constructed some eight
+miles of road on each side of Phari for the ekka
+transport. Companies of the 23rd Pioneers are
+repairing the road at Dotah, Chumbi, and Rinchengong.
+The 32nd are working at Rinchengong,
+and the sappers and miners on the Nathula and
+at Gautsa.</p>
+
+<p>We have started football, and the Gurkhas have
+a very good idea of the game. One loses one's
+wind completely at this elevation after every spurt
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+of twenty yards, but recovers it again in a wonderfully
+short time. Other amusements are sliding
+and tobogganing, which are a little disappointing
+to enthusiasts. The ice is lumpy and broken, and
+the streamlets that run down to the plain are so tortuous
+that fifty yards without a spill is considered
+a good run for a toboggan. The funniest sight is to
+see the Gurkha soldiers trying to drag the toboggan
+uphill, slipping and tumbling and sprawling on the
+ice, and immensely enjoying one another's discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>To clear the dust from one's throat and shake
+off the depression caused by weeks of waiting in
+the same place, there is nothing like a day's shooting
+or exploring in the neighbourhood of Phari.
+I get up sometimes before daybreak, and spend the
+whole day reconnoitring with a small party of
+mounted infantry. Yesterday we crossed a pass
+which looked down into the Kongbu Valley&mdash;a
+likely camping-ground for the Tibetan troops.
+The valley is connected to the north with the
+Tuna plateau, and is almost as fertile in its lower
+stretches as Chumbi. A gray fortress hangs over
+the cliff on the western side of the valley, and
+above it tower the glaciers of Shudu-Tsenpa and
+the Gora Pass into Sikkim. On the eastern side,
+at a creditable distance from the fort, we could
+see the Kongbu nunnery, which looked from where
+we stood like an old Roman viaduct. The nuns,
+I was told, are rarely celibate; they shave the
+head and wear no ornaments.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Riding back we saw some burrhel on the opposite
+hills, too far off to make a successful stalk possible.
+The valley is full of them, and a week later some
+officers from Phari on a yak-collecting expedition
+got several good heads. The Tibetan gazelle,
+or goa (<i>Gazella hirticaudata</i>), is very common
+on the Phari plateau, and we bagged two that afternoon.
+When the force first occupied the Jong,
+they were so tame that a sportsman could walk up
+to within 100 yards of a herd, and it was not
+an uncommon thing for three buck to fall to the
+same gun in a morning. Now one has to man&oelig;uvre
+a great deal to get within 300 yards of them.</p>
+
+<p>Sportsmen who have travelled in other parts of
+Tibet say the goa are very shy and inaccessible.
+Perhaps their comparative tameness near Phari
+may be accounted for by the fact that the old trade
+route crosses the plateau, and they have never been
+molested by the itinerant merchants and carriers.
+Gazelle meat is excellent. It has been a great
+resource for the garrison. No epicure could wish
+for anything better.</p>
+
+<p>Another unfamiliar beast that one meets in the
+neighbourhood of Phari is the kyang, or Tibetan
+wild ass (<i>Equus hemionus</i>), one or two of which
+have been shot for specimens. The kyang is more
+like a zebra than a horse or donkey. Its flesh, I
+believe, is scorned even by camp-followers. Hare
+are fairly plentiful, but they are quite flavourless.
+A huge solitary gray wolf (<i>Canis laniger</i>) was shot
+the other day, the only one of its kind I have
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+seen. Occasionally one puts up a fox. The Tibetan
+species has a very fine brush that fetches a fancy
+price in the bazaar. At present there is too much
+ice on the plain to hunt them, but they ought to
+give good sport in the spring.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp070-1"></a><a href="images/fp070-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp070-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Wounded Kyang.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp070-2"></a><a href="images/fp070-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp070-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Goa, or Tibetan Gazelle.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was dark when we rode into the Jong. After
+a long day in the saddle, dinner is good, even
+though it is of yak's flesh, and it is good to sit in
+front of a fire even though the smoke chokes you.
+I went so far as to pity the cave-dwellers at Chumbi.
+Phari is certainly very much colder, but it has its
+diversions and interests. There is still some shooting
+to be had, and the place has a quaint old-world
+individuality of its own, which seasons the monotony
+of life to a contemplative man. One is on the
+borderland, and one has a Micawber-like feeling that
+something may turn up. After dinner there is
+bridge, which fleets the time considerably, but at
+Chumbi there were no diversions of any kind&mdash;nothing
+but dull, blank, uninterrupted monotony.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r2"><i>February</i> 20.</span></p>
+
+<p>For two days half a blizzard has been blowing,
+and expeditions have been impossible. Everything
+one eats and drinks has the same taste of argol
+smoke. At breakfast this morning we had to put
+our <i>chapatties</i> in our pockets to keep them clean,
+and kept our meat covered with a soup-plate,
+making surreptitious dives at it with a fork. After
+a few seconds' exposure it was covered with grime.
+Sausages and bully beef, which had just been
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+boiled, were found to be frozen inside. The smoke
+in the mess-room was suffocating. So to bed,
+wrapped in sheepskins and a sleeping-bag. Under
+these depressing conditions I have been reading
+the narratives of Bogle and Manning, old English
+worthies who have left on record the most vivid
+impressions of the dirt and cold and misery of
+Phari.</p>
+
+<p>It is ninety years since Thomas Manning passed
+through Phari on his way to Lhasa. Previously
+to his visit we only know of two Englishmen who
+have set foot in Phari&mdash;Bogle in 1774, and Turner
+in 1783, both emissaries of Warren Hastings.
+Manning's journal is mostly taken up with complaints
+of his Chinese servant, who seems to have
+gained some mysterious ascendancy over him, and
+to have exercised it most unhandsomely. As a
+traveller Manning had a genius for missing effects;
+it is characteristic of him that he spent sixteen days
+at Phari, yet except for a casual footnote, evidently
+inserted in his journal after his return, he makes no
+mention of the Jong. Were it not for Bogle's
+account of thirty years before, we might conclude
+that the building was not then in existence.</p>
+
+<p>On October 21, 1811, Manning writes in his
+diary: 'We arrived at Phari Jong. Frost. Frost
+also two days before. I was lodged in a strange
+place, but so were the natives.' On the 27th
+he summarized his impressions of Phari:&mdash;'Dirt,
+dirt, grease, smoke, misery, but good mutton.'</p>
+
+<p>Manning's journal is expressive, if monosyllabic.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+He was of the class of subjective travellers, who
+visit the ends of the earth to record their own
+personal discomforts. Sensitive, neurotic, ever on
+the look-out for slights, he could not have been a
+happy vagabond. A dozen lines record the impressions
+of his first week at Phari. He was cheated;
+he was treated civilly; he slighted the magistrates,
+mistaking them for idle fellows; he was turned out
+of his room to make way for Chinese soldiers; he
+quarrelled with his servant. A single extract
+portrays the man to the life, as if he were sitting
+dejectedly by his yak-dung fire at this hour brooding
+over his wrongs:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Chinaman was cross again." Says I,
+"Was that a bird at the magistrate's that flapped
+so loud?" Answer: "What signifies whether it
+was a bird or not?" Where he sat I thought he
+might see; and I was curious to know if such large
+birds frequented the <i>building</i>. These are the
+answers I get. He is always discontented and
+grumbling, and takes no trouble off my hands.
+Being younger, and, like all Asiatics, able to stoop
+and crouch without pain or difficulty, he might
+assist me in many things without trouble to himself.
+A younger brother or any English young
+gentleman would in his place of course lay the
+cloth, and do other little services when I am tired;
+but he does not seem to have much of the generous
+about him, nor does he in any way serve me, or
+behave to me with any show of affection or goodwill:
+consequently I grow no more attached to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+him than the first day I saw him. I could not have
+thought it possible for me to have lived so long
+with anyone without either disliking him or caring
+sixpence for him. He has good qualities, too. The
+strangeness of his situation may partly excuse him.
+(I am more attached to my guide, with all his
+faults, who has been with me but a few days.)
+My guide has behaved so damnably ill since I
+wrote that, that I wish it had not come into my
+mind.'</p>
+
+<p>I give the extract at length, not only as an
+illuminating portrait of Manning, but as an incidental
+proof that he visited the Jong, and that it was
+very much the same building then as it is to-day.
+But had it not been for the flapping of the bird
+which occasioned the quarrel with his Chinese
+servant, Manning would have left Phari without a
+reference to the wonderful old fortress which is the
+most romantic feature on the road from India to
+Gyantse. Appended to the journal is this footnote
+to the word <i>building</i>, which I have italicized in the
+extract: 'The building is immensely large, six or
+more stories high, a sort of fortress. At a distance
+it appears to be all Phari Jong. Indeed, most of
+it consists of miserable galleries and holes.'</p>
+
+<p>Members of the mission force who have visited
+Phari will no doubt attribute Manning's evident
+ill-humour and depression during his stay there to
+the environments of the place, which have not
+changed much in the last ninety years. But his
+spirits improved as he continued his journey to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+Gyantse and Lhasa, and he reveals himself the
+kindly, eccentric, and affectionate soul who was the
+friend and intimate of Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>Bogle arrived at Phari on October 23, 1774. He
+and Turner and Manning all entered Tibet through
+Bhutan. 'As we advanced,' he wrote in his
+journal, 'we came in sight of the castle of Phari
+Jong, which cuts a good figure from without.
+It rises into several towers with the balconies, and,
+having few windows, has the look of strength; it is
+surrounded by the town.' The only other reference
+he makes to the Jong shows us that the fortress
+was in bad repair so long ago as 1774. 'The two
+Lhasa officers who have the government of Phari
+Jong sent me some butter, tea, etc., the day after
+my arrival; and letting me know that they expected
+a visit from me, I went. The inside of the castle
+did not answer the notion I had formed of it. The
+stairs are ladders worn to the bone, and the rooms
+are little better than garrets.'</p>
+
+<p>The origin of the fort is unknown. Some of the
+inhabitants of Phari say that it was built more than
+a hundred years ago, when the Nepalese were overrunning
+Sikkim. But this is obviously incorrect,
+as the Tibetan-Nepalese War, in which the Chinese
+drove the Gurkhas out of Tibet, and defeated their
+army within a day's march of Khatmandu, took
+place in 1788-1792, whereas Bogle's description of
+the Jong was written fourteen years earlier. A
+more general impression is that centuries ago orders
+came from Lhasa to collect stones on the hillsides,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+and the building was constructed by forced labour
+in a few months. That is a tale of endurance and
+suffering that might very likely be passed from
+father to son for generations.</p>
+
+<p>Bogle's description of the town might have been
+written by an officer of the garrison to-day, only
+he wrote from the inmate's point of view. He
+noticed the houses 'so huddled together that one
+may chance to overlook them,' and the flat roofs
+covered with bundles of straw. He knocked his
+head against the low ceilings, and ran against the
+pillars that supported the beams. 'In the middle
+of the roof,' he wrote, 'is a hole to let out smoke,
+which, however, departs not without making the
+whole room as black as a chimney. The opening
+serves also to let in the light; the doors are full of
+holes and crevices, through which the women and
+children keep peeping.' Needless to say nothing
+has changed in the last hundred and thirty years,
+unless it is that the women are bolder. I looked
+down from the roof this morning on Phari town,
+lying like a rabbit-warren beneath the fort. All
+one can see from the battlement are the flat roofs
+of low black houses, from which smoke issues in
+dense fumes. The roofs are stacked with straw,
+and connected by a web of coloured praying-flags
+running from house to house, and sometimes over
+the narrow alleys that serve as streets. Enormous fat
+ravens perch on the wall, and innumerable flocks
+of twittering sparrows. For warmth's sake most
+of the rooms are underground, and in these subterranean
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+dens Tibetans, black as coal-heavers,
+huddle together with yaks and mules. Tibetan
+women, equally dirty, go about, their faces smeared
+and blotched with caoutchouc, wearing a red, hoop-like
+head-dress, ornamented with alternate turquoises
+and ruby-coloured stones.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp076-1"></a><a href="images/fp076-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp076-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Tang La.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp076-2"></a><a href="images/fp076-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp076-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Phari Jong.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the fort the first thing one meets of a morning
+is a troop of these grimy sirens, climbing the stairs,
+burdened with buckets of chopped ice and sacks of
+yak-dung, the two necessaries of life. The Tibetan
+coolie women are merry folk; they laugh and
+chatter over their work all day long, and do not in
+the least resist the familiarities of the Gurkha
+soldiers. Sometimes as they pass one they giggle
+coyly, and put out the tongue, which is their way
+of showing respect to those in high places; but
+when one hears their laughter echoing down the
+stairs it is difficult to believe that it is not intended
+for saucy impudence. Their merriment sounds
+unnatural in all this filth and cold and discomfort.
+Certainly if Bogle returned to Phari he would find
+the women very much bolder, though, I am afraid,
+not any cleaner. Could he see the Englishmen in
+Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.</p>
+
+<p>Often in civilized places I shall think of the
+group at Phari in the mess-room after dinner&mdash;a
+group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a blackened,
+smut-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from
+head to foot, bearded like wild men of the woods,
+and sitting round a yak-dung fire, drinking rum.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might
+qualify for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one
+day in Piccadilly one may encounter a half-remembered
+face, and something familiar in walk or gait
+may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in
+'Jimmy's,' memories of argol-smoke and frozen
+moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune
+or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was
+once dreamed of among the unattainable luxuries
+of life.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r2"><i>March 26-28.</i></span></p>
+
+<p>Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong.
+It seems impossible, unnatural, that we are going
+on. After a week or two the place becomes part
+of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there.
+It is difficult to imagine life anywhere else. One
+feels as if one could never again be cold or dirty,
+or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of
+that gray fortress with its strange unknown
+history, standing alone in the desolate plain. For
+my own part, speaking figuratively&mdash;and unfigurative
+language is impotent on an occasion like this&mdash;the
+place will leave an indelible black streak&mdash;very
+black indeed&mdash;on a kaleidoscopic past. There
+can be no faint impressions in one's memories of
+Phari Jong. The dirt and smoke and dust are
+elemental, and the cold is the cold of the Lamas'
+frigid hell.</p>
+
+<p>All the while I was in Phari I forgot the
+mystery of Tibet. I have felt it elsewhere, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable
+folk who had lived in the rooms where we slept,
+and fled in the night, were content with their
+smut-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and
+chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these
+murky environments any spiritual instincts could
+survive to inspire the religious frescoings on the
+wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of
+designs is significant and symbolical. One's first
+impression is that these allegories and metaphysical
+abstractions must have been meaningless to the
+inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot
+dissociate the artistic expression of religious feeling
+from cleanliness and refinement, or at least pious
+care. One feels that they must be the relics of a
+decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but
+in ignorant superstition, like other fetishes all over
+the world. Yet this feeling of scepticism is not
+so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At first
+one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely
+animal and sensual, and to attribute their religious
+observances to the fear of demons who will
+punish the most trivial omission in ritual.</p>
+
+<p>Next one begins to wonder if they really believe
+in the efficacy of mechanical prayer, if they take
+the trouble to square their conscience with their
+inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to
+be absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there
+may come a suspicion that the better classes,
+though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma
+and definite convictions about things spiritual and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+natural that are not easily upset. Perhaps before
+we turn our backs on the mystery of Tibet we
+will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross
+materialists and philistines&mdash;we who are always
+groping and grasping after the particular, while
+they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.</p>
+
+<p>After all, devious and unscrupulous as their
+policy may have been, the Tibetans have had one
+definite aim in view for centuries&mdash;the preservation
+of their Church and State by the exclusion of all
+foreign and heretical influences. When we know
+that the Mongol cannot conceive of the separation
+of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is
+only natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual
+or otherwise, to a foreign Court should introduce
+the first elements of dissolution in a system of
+Government that has held the country intact for
+centuries. And let it be remarked that Great
+Britain is not responsible for this deviation in a
+hitherto inveterate policy.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to Phari. My last impression of
+the place as I passed out of its narrow alleys was
+a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of yak-dung
+over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel,
+and muttering the sacred formula that was
+to release him from all rebirth in this suffering
+world. The wish seemed natural enough.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bright, clear morning when we turned
+our backs on the old fort and started once more
+on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we
+passed the miserable little village of Chuggya,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+which is apparently inhabited by ravens and sparrows,
+and a diminutive mountain-finch that looks
+like a half-starved robin. A mile to the right
+before entering the village is the monastery of
+the Red Lamas, which was the lodging-place
+of the Bhutanese Envoy during his stay at
+Phari. The building, which is a landmark for
+miles, is stone-built, and coated over with red
+earth, which gives it the appearance of brick. Its
+overhanging gables, mullioned windows without
+glass, that look like dominoes in the distance, the
+pendent bells, and the gay decorations of Chinese
+paper, look quaint and mystical, and are in keeping
+with the sacred character of the place. Bogle
+stopped here on October 27, 1774, and drank tea
+with the Abbot. It is very improbable that any
+other white man has set foot in the monastery
+since, until the other day, when some of the
+garrison paid it a visit and took photographs of
+the interior. The Lamas were a little deprecatory,
+but evidently amused. I did not expect them to
+be so tolerant of intrusion, and their clamour for
+backsheesh on our departure dispelled one more
+illusion.</p>
+
+<p>At Chuggya we were at the very foot of Chumulari
+(23,930 feet), which seems to rise sheer from
+the plain. The western flank is an abrupt wall of
+rock, but, as far as one can see, the eastern side is
+a gradual ascent of snow, which would present no
+difficulties to the trained mountaineer. One could
+ride up to 17,000 feet, and start the climb from a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+base 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Chumulari
+is the most sacred mountain in Tibet, and it is
+usual for devout Buddhists to stop and offer a
+sacrifice as they pass. Bogle gives a detailed
+account of the service, the rites of which are very
+similar to some I witnessed at Galingka on the
+Tibetan New Year, February 16.</p>
+
+<p>'Here we halted,' he wrote in his journal, 'and
+the servants gathering together a parcel of dried
+cow-dung, one of them struck fire with his tinder-box
+and lighted it. When the fire was well
+kindled, Parma took out a book of prayers, one
+brought a copper cup, another filled it with a kind
+of fermented liquor out of a new-killed sheep's
+paunch, mixing in some rice and flour; and after
+throwing some dried herbs and flour into the flame,
+they began their rites. Parma acted as chaplain.
+He chanted the prayers in a loud voice, the others
+accompanying him, and every now and then the
+little cup was emptied towards the rock, about
+eight or ten of these libations being poured forth.
+The ceremony was finished by placing upon the
+heap of stones the little ensign which my fond
+imagination had before offered up to my own
+vanity.'</p>
+
+<p>Most of the flags and banners one sees to-day on
+the chortens and roofs of houses, and cairns on the
+mountain-tops, must be planted with some such
+inaugural ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Facing Chumulari on the west, and apparently
+only a few miles distant, are the two Sikkim peaks
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+of Powhunri (23,210 feet) and Shudu-Tsenpa
+(22,960 feet). From Chuggya the Tangla is
+reached by a succession of gradual rises and depressions.
+The pass is not impressive, like the
+Jelap, as a passage won through a great natural
+barrier. One might cross it without noticing the
+summit, were it not for the customary cairns and
+praying-flags which the Lamas raise in all high
+places.</p>
+
+<p>From a slight rise on the east of the pass one
+can look down across the plateau on Tuna, an
+irregular black line like a caterpillar, dotted with
+white spots, which glasses reveal to be tents. The
+Bamtso lake lies shimmering to the east beneath
+brown and yellow hills. At noon objects dance
+elusively in the mirage. Distances are deceptive.
+Yaks grazing are like black Bedouin tents. Here,
+then, is the forbidden land. The approach is as it
+should be. One's eyes explore the road to Lhasa
+dimly through a haze. One would not have it
+laid out with the precision of a diagram.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_5">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_V"></a><span>CHAPTER V</span>
+
+<small>THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">To</span> write of any completed phase of the expedition
+at this stage, when I have carried my readers
+only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity that
+requires an apology. My excuse is that to all
+transport officers, and everyone who was in touch
+with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will be
+remembered as the very backbone of resistance,
+the most implacable barriers to our advance.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition was essentially a transport
+'show.' It is true that the Tibetans proved
+themselves brave enemies, but their acquired
+military resources are insignificant when compared
+with the obstacles Nature has planted in
+the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the
+passes, the severity of the climate, the sterility
+of the mountains and tablelands, make the interior
+of the country almost inaccessible to an
+invading army. That we went through these
+obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was a matter
+of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to
+many members of the expeditionary force.</p>
+
+<p>To appreciate the difficulties the mission force
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+had to contend with, one must first realize the
+extraordinary changes of climate that are experienced
+in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna.
+Choose the coldest day in the year at Kew Gardens,
+expose yourself freely to the wind, and then spend
+five minutes in the tropical house, and you may
+gather some idea of the sensation of sleeping in
+the Rungpo Valley the night after crossing the
+Jelapla.</p>
+
+<p>When I first made the journey in early January,
+even the Rungpo Valley was chilly, and the
+vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the
+change very keenly in March, when I made a
+hurried rush into Darjeeling for equipment and
+supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the
+pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was
+warm and sunny in the daytime, in places where
+there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were
+beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw,
+migratory duck were coming up the valley in
+twos and threes from the plains of India&mdash;even a
+few vultures had arrived to fatten on the carcasses
+of the dead transport animals. The morning after
+leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at
+13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale
+and rock. When I crossed the Jelapla half a
+hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet
+of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take
+advantage of every protuberance in the rock to
+prevent myself from being blown over the <i>khud</i>.
+The road was impassable for mules and ponies.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+The cold was numbing. The next evening, in a
+valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was suffering from
+the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and
+vegetation is equally striking&mdash;from glaciers and
+moraines to tropical forests brilliant with the
+scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet
+I had not seen an insect of any kind for two
+months, but in the Sikkim valleys the most
+gorgeous butterflies were abundant, and the rest-house
+at Rungpo was invested by a plague of
+flies. In the hot weather the climate of the
+Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most
+stations in the plains of India. The valleys are
+close and shut in, and the heat is intensified by
+the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders.
+In the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious.
+The Supply and Transport Corps, who were left
+behind at stages like Rungpo through the hot
+weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time
+on the whole than the half-frozen troops at the
+front, and they were left out of all the fun.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the
+severity of climate, and the scarcity of fodder and
+fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend with
+every description of disease and misfortune&mdash;anthrax,
+rinderpest, foot and mouth disease,
+aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
+precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding.
+The worst fatalities occurred on the
+Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
+with the transport were singularly unsuccessful.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+Out of two hundred buffaloes employed at low
+elevations, only three survived, and the seven
+camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri
+and Gantok all died by way of protest.
+Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
+was practically exterminated. From four to five
+thousand were originally purchased, of which
+more than a thousand died from anthrax before
+they reached the frontier. All the drinking-water
+on the route was infected; the Nepalese
+did not believe the disease was contagious, and
+took no precautions. The disease spread almost
+universally among the cattle, and at the worst
+time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts
+were massed on the Nepal frontier. Segregation
+camps were formed, and ultimately, after much
+patient care, the disease was stamped out.</p>
+
+<p>Then began the historic march through Sikkim,
+which, as a protracted struggle against natural
+calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
+the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck
+Tartars. Superstitious natives might well think
+that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
+As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the
+reduced corps were attacked by rinderpest, which
+carried off seventy. When the herds left the
+Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the
+sudden change in climate overwhelmed hundreds.
+No real yak survived the heat of the Sikkim
+valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or
+halfbreeds from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+cross from the bull and female yaks. In Sikkim,
+which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle
+diseases, the wretched survivors were infected
+with foot and mouth disease. The epidemic is
+not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
+fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude
+of climate, it carried off scores. Then, to avoid
+spreading contagion, the yaks were driven through
+trackless, unfrequented country, up and down
+precipitous mountain-sides, and through dense
+forests. Again segregation camps were formed,
+and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty
+at a time. Every day there was a holocaust.
+Then followed the ascent into high altitudes,
+where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless
+corps. The few survivors were exterminated by
+pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January 23, the
+3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437;
+two months afterwards all but 70 had died. On
+March 21, 80 exhausted beasts straggled into
+Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and
+2nd Yak Corps, which originally numbered 2,300
+heads. The officers, who, bearded and weather-beaten,
+deserted by many of their followers, after
+months of wandering, reached our camp with the
+remnants of the corps, told a story of hardship
+and endurance that would provide a theme for an
+epic.</p>
+
+<p>The epic of the yaks does not comprise the
+whole tale of disaster. Rinderpest carried off
+77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+was segregated for two months with foot and
+mouth disease. Amongst other casualties there
+were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony
+corps, and the Tibet pony corps raised locally.
+The animals were hastily mobilized and incompletely
+equipped, overworked and underfed.
+Cheap and inferior saddlery was issued, which
+gave the animals sore backs within a week.
+The transport officer was in a constant dilemma.
+He had to overwork his animals or delay the
+provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently
+needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no
+rest, but worked till they dropped. Of the
+original draft of mules that were employed
+on the line to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per
+cent. died. It is no good trying to blink the
+fact that the expedition was unpopular, and
+that at the start many economical shifts were
+attempted which proved much more expensive
+in the end. Our party system is to blame. The
+Opposition must be appeased, expenses kept down,
+and the business is entered into half-heartedly.
+In the usual case a few companies are grudgingly
+sent to the front, and then, when something like
+a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps at
+the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade
+follows, and Government wakes to the necessity
+of grappling with the situation seriously.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the spot where the evil effects
+of the system were felt, and not merely girded at.
+To replace and supplement the local drafts of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+animals that were dying, trained Government
+mule corps were sent up from the plains, properly
+equipped and under experienced officers. These
+did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in
+Lhasa on August 3 in as good condition as one
+could wish. Of all transport animals, the mule is
+the hardiest and most enduring. He does not
+complain when he is overloaded, but will go on
+all day, and when he drops there is no doubt that
+he has had enough. Nine times out of ten when
+he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent
+to extremes of heat and cold. On the road from
+Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules fell over
+a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally
+submerged. Their drivers could not pull them
+out, and, to solve the dilemma, went on and reported
+them dead. The next day an officer found
+them and extricated them alive. They had been
+exposed to 46° of frost. They still survive.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in
+good condition, unless it is the Balti and Ladaki
+coolie. Several hundred of these hardy mountaineers
+were imported from the North-West
+frontier to work on the most dangerous and difficult
+sections of the road. They can bear cold and
+fatigue and exposure better than any transport
+animal on the line, and they are surer-footed.
+Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but were
+afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are
+excellent workers at high altitudes, and sing
+cheerily as they toil up the mountains with their
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+loads. I have seen them throw down their packs
+when they reached the summit of a pass, make a
+rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer lustily
+like school-boys. But the coolies were not all
+equally satisfactory. Those indented from the
+Nepal durbar were practically an impressed gang.
+Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm
+clothing did not seem to reconcile them to hard
+work, and after a month or two they became discontented
+and refractory. Their officers, however,
+were men of tact and decision, and they
+were able to prevent what might have been a
+serious mutiny. The discontented ones were
+gradually replaced by Baltis, Ladakis, and Garwhalis,
+and the coolies became the most reliable
+transport corps on the line.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression
+current at the time, was got into working order,
+and a system was gradually developed by which
+the right animal, man, or conveyance was working
+in the right place, and supplies were sent through
+at a pace that was very creditable considering the
+country traversed.</p>
+
+<p>From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a
+distance of sixty miles, the ascent in the road is
+scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a few
+contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this
+section of the line was worked by bullock-carts.
+Government carts are built to carry 11 maunds
+(880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs
+with 15 or 16 maunds. As the carrying power
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is only
+2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport
+in a mountainous country, where there can be no
+road for vehicles, is nearly five times as difficult
+and complicated as in the plains. And this is
+without making any allowance for the inevitable
+mortality among transport animals at high elevations,
+or taking into account the inevitable congestion
+on mountain-paths, often blocked by
+snow, carried away by the rains, and always too
+narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of March, when the line was
+in its best working order, from 1,500 to 2,000
+maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of
+these, only 400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the
+rest was stored at Gantok or consumed on the
+road. Later, when the line was extended to
+Gyantse, not more than 100 maunds a day reached
+the front.</p>
+
+<p>In the first advance on Gyantse, our column
+was practically launched into the unknown. As
+far as we knew, no local food or forage could be
+obtained. It was too early in the season for the
+spring pasturage. We could not live on the
+country. The ever-lengthening line of communication
+behind us was an artery, the severing of
+which would be fatal to our advance.</p>
+
+<p>One can best realize the difficulties grappled
+with by imagining the extreme case of an army
+entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it
+must be remembered, can only carry its own food
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+for ten days. That is to say, in a country where
+there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can make
+at the most nine marches. On the ninth day
+beasts and drivers will have consumed all the
+supplies taken with them. Supposing on the
+tenth day no supply-base has been reached, the
+convoy is stranded, and can neither advance nor
+retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary
+convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed
+nothing to the advance of the army.
+Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding,
+guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still
+await transport at the base.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, the country between our frontier
+and Lhasa is not all desert. Yet it is barren
+enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with
+such short preparation, we were able to push
+through troops to Gyantse in April, when there
+was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in
+Lhasa in August with a force of more than 4,000
+fighting men and followers.</p>
+
+<p>Before the second advance to Gyantse the
+spring crops had begun to appear. Without them
+we could not have advanced. All other local
+produce on the road was exhausted. That is to
+say, for 160 miles, with the important exception
+of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our
+own supplies. The mules carried their own grain,
+and no more. Gyantse once reached, the Tibetan
+Government granaries and stores from the monasteries
+produced enough to carry us on. But
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+besides the transport mules, there were 100
+Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200
+mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers'
+mounts, to be fed, and these carried nothing&mdash;contributed
+nothing to the stomach of the army.</p>
+
+<p>How were these beasts to be fed, and how was
+the whole apparatus of an army to be carried
+along, when every additional transport animal was
+a tax on the resources of the transport? There
+were two possible solutions, each at first sight
+equally absurd and impracticable:&mdash;wheeled transport
+in Tibet, or animals that did not require
+feeding. The Supply and Transport men were
+resourceful and fortunate enough to provide both.
+It was due to the light ekka and that providentially
+ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach
+Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and
+carried by coolies from the cart-road at Rungpo
+eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab
+on the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of
+these light carts is 400 pounds, two and a half
+times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth
+to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen
+in Tibet, and they saved the situation.</p>
+
+<p>The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna
+plains, and down the Nyang Chu Valley as far as
+Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.</p>
+
+<p>The yak is the most extraordinary animal
+Nature has provided the transport officer in his
+need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of
+grass, tamarisk, and tufts of lichen, that he picks
+up on the road. He moves slowly, and wears a
+look of ineffable resignation. He is the most
+melancholy disillusioned beast I have seen, and
+dies on the slightest provocation. The red and
+white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the
+Tibetans hang about his neck are as incongruous
+on the poor beast as gauds and frippery on the
+heroine of a tragedy.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp094-1"></a><a href="images/fp094-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp094-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Mounted Infantry Ponies, Tuna Camp.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp094-2"></a><a href="images/fp094-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp094-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Yak in Ekka.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties
+would be reduced to a minimum. But he
+is not. We have seen how the four thousand died
+in their passage across Sikkim without doing a
+day's work. Local drafts did better. Yet I have
+often passed the Lieutenant in command of the
+corps lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of
+my cows died this morning. Look, there goes
+another! D&mdash;n the beasts! I believe they do
+it out of spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport
+officer, always a humorist in adversity,
+when asked why they were dying off every day,
+said: 'I think it must be due to overfeeding.'
+But we owe much to the yak.</p>
+
+<p>The final advance from Gyantse to Lhasa was
+a comparatively easy matter. Crops were plentiful,
+and large supplies of grain were obtained from
+the monasteries and jongs on the road. We
+found, contrary to anticipation, that the produce
+in this part of Tibet was much greater than the
+consumption. In many places we found stores
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+that would last a village three or four years. Our
+transport animals lived on the country. We
+arrived at Lhasa with 2,600 mules and 400 coolies.
+The yak and donkey corps were left at the river
+for convoy work. It would have been impossible
+to have pushed through in the winter.</p>
+
+<p>All the produce we consumed on the road was
+paid for. In this way the expense of the army's
+keep fell on the Lhasa Government, who had to
+pay the indemnity, and our presence in the country
+was not directly, at any rate, a burden on the
+agricultural population of the villages through
+which we passed.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back on the splendid work accomplished
+by the transport, it is difficult to select any special
+phase more memorable than another. The complete
+success of the organization and the endurance
+and grit displayed by officers and men are equally
+admirable. I could cite the coolness of a single
+officer in a mob of armed and mutinous coolies,
+when the compelling will of one man and a few
+blows straight from the shoulder kept the discontented
+harnessed to their work and quelled
+a revolt; or the case of another who drove his
+diseased yaks over the snow passes into Chumbi,
+and after two days' rest started with a fresh corps
+on ten months of the most tedious labour the
+mind of man can imagine, rising every day before
+daybreak in an almost Arctic cold, traversing the
+same featureless tablelands, and camping out at
+night cheerfully in the open plain with his escort
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+of thirty rifles. There was always the chance of
+a night attack, but no other excitement to break
+the eternal monotony. But it was all in the day's
+work, and the subaltern took it like a picnic.
+Another supreme test of endurance in man and
+beast were the convoys between Chumbi and
+Tuna in the early part of the year, which for
+hardships endured remind me of Skobeleff's dash
+through the Balkans on Adrianople. Only our
+labours were protracted, Skobeleff's the struggle
+of a few days. Even in mid-March a convoy of
+the 12th Mule Corps, escorted by two companies
+of the 23rd Pioneers, were overtaken by a blizzard
+on their march between Phari and Tuna, and
+camped in two feet of snow with the thermometer
+18° below zero. A driving hurricane made it impossible
+to light a fire or cook food. The officers
+were reduced to frozen bully beef and neat spirits,
+while the sepoys went without food for thirty-six
+hours. The fodder for the mules was buried
+deep in snow. The frozen flakes blowing through
+the tents cut like a knife. While the detachment
+was crossing a stream, the mules fell through the
+ice, and were only extricated with great difficulty.
+The drivers arrived at Tuna frozen to the waist.
+Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten,
+and thirty men of the 23rd Pioneers were
+so incapacitated that they had to be carried in on
+mules. On the same day there were seventy cases
+of snow-blindness among the 8th Gurkhas.</p>
+
+<p>Until late in April all the plain was intersected
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+by frozen streams. Blankets were stripped from
+the mules to make a pathway for them over the
+ice. Often they went without water at night, and
+at mid-day, when the surface of the ice was
+melted, their thirst was so great that many died
+from overdrinking.</p>
+
+<p>Had the Tibetans attacked us in January, they
+would have taken us at a great disadvantage.
+The bolts of our rifles jammed with frozen oil.
+Oil froze in the Maxims, and threw them out of
+gear. More often than not the mounted infantry
+found the butts of their rifles frozen in the buckets,
+and had to dismount and use both hands to extricate
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I think these men who took the convoys through
+to Tuna; the 23rd, who wintered there and supplied
+most of the escort; and the 8th Gurkhas, who cut
+a road in the frost-bound plain, may be said to
+have broken the back of the resistance to our
+advance. They were the pioneers, and the troops
+who followed in spring and summer little realized
+what they owed to them.</p>
+
+<p>The great difficulties we experienced in pushing
+through supplies to Tuna, which is less than 150
+miles from our base railway-station at Siliguri,
+show the absurdity of the idea of a Russian
+advance on Lhasa. The nearest Russian outpost
+is over 1,000 miles distant, and the country
+to be traversed is even more barren and inhospitable
+than on our frontier.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the present the route to Chumbi has been
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+viâ Siliguri and the Jelap and Nathu Passes, but
+the natural outlet of the valley is by the Ammo
+Chu, which flows through Bhutan into the Dooars,
+where it becomes the Torsa. The Bengal-Dooars
+Railway now extends to Madhari Hat, fifteen miles
+from the point where the Torsa crosses the frontier,
+whence it is only forty-eight miles as the crow flies
+to Rinchengong in the Chumbi Valley. When the
+projected Ammo Chu cart-road is completed, all
+the difficulty of carrying stores into Chumbi will
+be obviated. Engineers are already engaged on
+the first trace, and the road will be in working
+order within a few months. It avoids all snow
+passes, and nowhere reaches an elevation of more
+than 9,000 feet. The direct route will shorten
+the journey to Chumbi by several days, bring
+Lhasa within a month's journey of Calcutta, and
+considerably improve trade facilities between
+Tibet and India.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_6">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><span>CHAPTER VI</span>
+
+<small>THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> village of Tuna, which lies at the foot of bare
+yellow hills, consists of a few deserted houses.
+The place is used mainly as a halting-stage by
+the Tibetans. The country around is sterile and
+unproductive, and wood is a luxury that must be
+carried from a distance of nearly fifty miles.</p>
+
+<p>It was in these dismal surroundings that Colonel
+Younghusband's mission spent the months of
+January, February, and March. The small garrison
+suffered all the discomforts of Phari. The
+dirt and grime of the squalid little houses became
+so depressing that they pitched their tents in an
+open courtyard, preferring the numbing cold to the
+filth of the Tibetan hovels. Many of the sepoys
+fell victims to frost-bite and pneumonia, and nearly
+every case of pneumonia proved fatal, the patient
+dying of suffocation owing to the rarefied air.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Younghusband had not been at Tuna
+many days before it became clear that there could
+be no hope of a peaceful solution. The Tibetans
+began to gather in large numbers at Guru, eight
+miles to the east, on the road to Lhasa. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+Depon, or Lhasa General, whom Colonel Younghusband
+met on two occasions, repeated that he
+was only empowered to treat on condition that
+we withdrew to Yatung. Messages were sent
+from the Tibetan camp to Tuna almost daily
+asking us to retire, and negociations again came
+to a deadlock. After a month the tone of the
+Tibetans became minatory. They threatened to
+invest our camp, and an attack was expected
+on March 1, the Tibetan New Year. The Lamas,
+however, thought better of it. They held a Commination
+Service instead, and cursed us solemnly
+for five days, hoping, no doubt, that the British
+force would dwindle away by the act of God.
+Nobody was 'one penny the worse.'</p>
+
+<p>Though we made no progress with the Tibetans
+during this time, Colonel Younghusband utilized
+the halt at Tuna in cementing a friendship with
+Bhutan. The neutrality of the Bhutanese in the
+case of a war with Tibet was a matter of the
+utmost importance. Were these people unfriendly
+or disposed to throw in their lot with their co-religionists,
+the Tibetans, our line of communications
+would be exposed to a flank attack along the
+whole of the Tuna Plain, which is conterminous
+with the Bhutan frontier, as well as a rear attack
+anywhere in the Chumbi Valley as far south as
+Rinchengong. The Bhutanese are men of splendid
+physique, brave, warlike, and given to pillage.
+Their hostility would have involved the despatch
+of a second force, as large as that sent to Tibet,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+and might have landed us, if unprepared, in a
+serious reverse. The complete success of Colonel
+Younghusband's diplomacy was a great relief to
+the Indian Government, who were waiting with
+some anxiety to see what attitude the Bhutanese
+would adopt. Having secured from them assurances
+of their good will, Colonel Younghusband
+put their friendship to immediate test by broaching
+the subject of the Ammo Chu route to Chumbi
+through Bhutanese territory. Very little time
+was lost before the concession was obtained from
+the Tongsa Penlop, ruler of Bhutan, who himself
+accompanied the mission as far as Lhasa in the
+character of mediator between the Dalai Lama
+and the British Government. The importance
+of the Ammo Chu route in our future relations
+with Tibet I have emphasized elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if ever an advance was more welcome
+to waiting troops than that which led to the
+engagement at the Hot Springs.</p>
+
+<p>For months, let it be remembered, we had been
+marking time. When a move had to be made to
+escort a convoy, it was along narrow mountain-paths,
+where the troops had to march in single
+file. There was no possibility of an attack this
+side of Phari. The ground covered was familiar
+and monotonous. One felt cooped in, and was
+thoroughly bored and tired of the delay, so that
+when General Macdonald marched out of Phari
+with his little army in three columns, a feeling of
+exhilaration communicated itself to the troops.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here was elbow-room at last, and an open
+plain, where all the army corps of Europe might
+man&oelig;uvre. At Tuna, on the evening of the 29th,
+it was given out in orders that a reconnaissance
+in force was to be made the next morning, and
+two companies of the 32nd Pioneers would be left
+at Guru. The Tibetan camp at the Hot Springs
+lay right across our line of march, and the hill that
+flanked it was lined with their sangars. They must
+either fight or retire. Most of us thought that
+the Tibetans would fade away in the mysterious
+manner they have, and build another futile wall
+further on. The extraordinary affair that followed
+must be a unique event in military history.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp102"></a><a href="images/fp102.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp102s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Depon's Last Conference with Colonel Younghusband.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The morning of the 30th was bitterly cold. An
+icy wind was blowing, and snow was lying on the
+ground. I put on my thick sheepskin for the
+first time for two months, and I owe my life to it.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour after leaving Tuna, two or three
+Tibetan messengers rode out from their camp to
+interview Colonel Younghusband. They got down
+from their ponies and began chattering in a very
+excited manner, like a flock of frightened parrots.
+It was evident to us, not understanding the language,
+that they were entreating us to go back,
+and the constant reference to Yatung told us that
+they were repeating the message that had been
+sent into the Tuna camp almost daily during the
+past few months&mdash;that if we retired to Yatung
+the Dalai Lama would send an accredited envoy
+to treat with us. Being met with the usual
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+answer, they mounted dejectedly and rode off
+at a gallop to their camp.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after they had disappeared another group
+of horsemen were seen riding towards us. These
+proved to be the Lhasa Depon, accompanied by
+an influential Lama and a small escort armed with
+modern rifles. The rifles were naturally inspected
+with great interest. They were of different
+patterns&mdash;Martini-Henri, Lee-Metford, Snider&mdash;but
+the clumsily-painted stocks alone were enough
+to show that they were shoddy weapons of native
+manufacture. They left no mark on our troops.</p>
+
+<p>According to Tibetan custom, a rug was spread
+on the ground for the interview between Colonel
+Younghusband and the Lhasa Depon, who
+conferred sitting down. Captain O'Connor, the
+secretary of the mission, interpreted. The Lhasa
+Depon repeated the entreaty of the messengers,
+and said that there would be trouble if we proceeded.
+Colonel Younghusband's reply was terse
+and to the point.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell him,' he said to Captain O'Connor, 'that
+we have been negociating with Tibet for fifteen
+years; that I myself have been waiting for eight
+months to meet responsible representatives from
+Lhasa, and that the mission is now going on to
+Gyantse. Tell him that we have no wish to fight,
+and that he would be well advised if he ordered
+his soldiers to retire. Should they remain blocking
+our path, I will ask General Macdonald to
+remove them.'
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Lhasa Depon was greatly perturbed. He
+said that he had no wish to fight, and would try
+and stop his men firing upon us. But before he
+left he again tried to induce Colonel Younghusband
+to turn back. Then he rode away to join his
+men. What orders he gave them will never be
+known.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think the Tibetans ever believed in our
+serious intention to advance. No doubt they
+attributed our evacuation of Khamba Jong and
+our long delay in Chumbi to weakness and vacillation.
+And our forbearance since the negociations
+of 1890 must have lent itself to the same interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>As we advanced we could see the Tibetans running
+up the hill to the left to occupy the sangars.
+To turn their position, General Macdonald deployed
+the 8th Gurkhas to the crest of the ridge;
+at the same time the Pioneers, the Maxim detachment
+of the Norfolks, and Mountain Battery
+were deployed on the right until the Tibetan
+position was surrounded.</p>
+
+<p>The man&oelig;uvre was completely successful. The
+Tibetans on the hill, finding themselves outflanked
+by the Gurkhas, ran down to the cover of the wall
+by the main camp, and the whole mob was encircled
+by our troops.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this occasion that the Sikhs and
+Gurkhas displayed that coolness and discipline
+which won them a European reputation. They
+had orders not to fire unless they were fired upon,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+and they walked right up to the walls of the sangars
+until the muzzles and prongs of the Tibetan matchlocks
+were almost touching their chests. The
+Tibetans stared at our men for a moment across
+the wall, and then turned and shambled down
+sulkily to join their comrades in the redan.</p>
+
+<p>No one dreamed of the sanguinary action
+that was impending. I dismounted, and hastily
+scribbled a despatch on my saddle to the effect
+that the Tibetan position had been taken without
+a shot being fired. The mounted orderly who
+carried the despatch bore a similar message from
+the mission to the Foreign Office. Then the disarming
+began. The Tibetans were told that if
+they gave up their arms they would be allowed to
+go off unmolested. But they did not wish to give
+up their arms. It was a ridiculous position, Sikh
+and Mongol swaying backwards and forwards as
+they wrestled for the possession of swords and
+matchlocks. Perhaps the humour of it made one
+careless of the underlying danger. Accounts differ
+as to how this wrestling match developed into
+war, how, to the delight of the troops, the toy
+show became the 'real thing.' Of one thing I
+am certain, that a rush was made in the south-east
+corner before a shot was fired. If there had
+been any firing, I would not have been wandering
+about by the Tibetan flank without a revolver in
+my hand. As it was, my revolver was buried in
+the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket under my
+poshteen.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have no excuse for this folly except a misplaced
+contempt for Tibetan arms and courage&mdash;a
+contempt which accounted for our only serious
+casualty in the affair of 1888.<a id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Also I think there
+was in the margin of my consciousness a feeling
+that one individual by an act of rashness might
+make himself responsible for the lives of hundreds.
+Hemmed in as the Tibetans were, no one gave
+them credit for the spirit they showed, or imagined
+that they would have the folly to resist. But we
+had to deal with the most ignorant and benighted
+people on earth, most of whom must have thought
+our magazine rifles and Maxims as harmless as
+their own obsolete matchlocks, and believed that
+they bore charms by which they were immune
+from death.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp106-1"></a><a href="images/fp106-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp106-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Tibetans retreating from Sangars.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp106-2"></a><a href="images/fp106-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp106-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Turning Tibetans out of the Sangars on the Hillside.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The attack on the south-east corner was so
+sudden that the first man was on me before I had
+time to draw my revolver.<a id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> He came at me with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+his sword lifted in both hands over his head. He
+had a clear run of ten yards, and if I had not
+ducked and caught him by the knees he must
+have smashed my skull open. I threw him, and
+he dragged me to the ground. Trying to rise, I
+was struck on the temple by a second swordsman,
+and the blade glanced off my skull. I received
+the rest of my wounds, save one or two, on my
+hands&mdash;as I lay on my face I used them to protect
+my head. After a time the blows ceased;
+my assailants were all shot down or had fled. I
+lay absolutely still for a while until I thought it
+safe to raise my head. Then I looked round, and,
+seeing no Tibetans near in an erect position, I got
+up and walked out of the ring between the rifles
+of the Sikhs. The firing line had been formed in
+the meantime on a mound about thirty yards
+behind me, and I had been exposed to the bullets
+of our own men from two sides, as well as the
+promiscuous fire of the Tibetans.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more
+fatal for their stand&mdash;a bluff hill to the north, a
+marsh and stream on the east, and to the west a
+stone wall built across the path, which they had
+to scale in their attempted assault on General
+Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got
+over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground,
+packed so thickly with seething humanity that
+the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in offered
+little danger to their own men.</p>
+
+<p>The Lhasa General must have fired off his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+revolver after I was struck down. I cannot credit
+the rumour that his action was a signal for a
+general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed
+themselves to be herded together as a ruse to
+get us at close quarters. To begin with, the demand
+that they should give up their arms, and
+the assurance that they might go off unmolested,
+must have been quite unexpected by them, and
+I doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack
+at close quarters.</p>
+
+<p>My own impression is that the shot was the act
+of a desperate man, ignorant and regardless of
+what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his
+army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot
+having been fired, must have meant ruin to him,
+and probably death. When we reached Gyantse
+we heard that his property had been confiscated
+from his family on account of his failure to prevent
+our advance.</p>
+
+<p>The Depon was a man of fine presence and
+bearing. I only saw him once, in his last interview
+with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot
+dissociate from him a personal courage and a
+pride that must have rankled at the indignity of
+his position. Probably he knew that his shot was
+suicidal.</p>
+
+<p>The action has been described as one of extreme
+folly. But what was left him if he lived except
+shame and humiliation? And what Englishman
+with the same prospect to face, caught in this
+dark eddy of circumstance, would not have done
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+the same thing? He could only fire, and let his
+men take their chance, God help them!</p>
+
+<p>And the rabble? They have been called
+treacherous. Why, I don't know. They were
+mostly impressed peasants. They did not wish to
+give up their arms. Why should they? They knew
+nothing of the awful odds against them. They
+were being hustled by white men who did not
+draw knives or fire guns. Amid that babel of
+1,500 men, many of them may not have heard the
+command; they may not have believed that their
+lives would have been spared.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back on the affair with all the sanity
+of experience, nothing is more natural than what
+happened. It was folly and suicide, no doubt;
+but it was human nature. They were not going
+to give in without having a fling. I hope I shall
+not be considered a pro-Tibetan when I say that
+I admire their gallantry and dash.</p>
+
+<p>As my wounds were being dressed I peered over
+the mound at the rout. They were walking away!
+Why, in the name of all their Bodhisats and
+Munis, did they not run? There was cover behind
+a bend in the hill a few hundred yards distant,
+and they were exposed to a devastating hail
+of bullets from the Maxims and rifles, that seemed
+to mow down every third or fourth man. Yet
+they walked!</p>
+
+<p>It was the most extraordinary procession I have
+ever seen. My friends have tried to explain the
+phenomenon as due to obstinacy or ignorance, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+Spartan contempt for life. But I think I have the
+solution. They were bewildered. The impossible
+had happened.</p>
+
+<p>Prayers, and charms, and mantras, and the
+holiest of their holy men, had failed them. I
+believe they were obsessed with that one thought.
+They walked with bowed heads, as if they had
+been disillusioned in their gods.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp110"></a><a href="images/fp110.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp110s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Diagrammatic View of Hot Springs Action.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>After the last of the retiring Tibetans had disappeared
+round the corner of the Guru road, the
+8th Gurkhas descended from the low range of hills
+on the right of the position, and crossed the Guru
+Plain in extended order with the 2nd Mounted
+Infantry on their extreme left. Orders were then
+received by Major Row, commanding the detachment,
+to take the left of the two houses which
+were situated under the hills at the further side
+of the plain. This movement was carried out in
+conjunction with the mounted infantry. The
+advance was covered by the 7-pounder guns
+of the Gurkhas under Captain Luke, R.A. The
+attacking force advanced in extended order by a
+series of small rushes. Cover was scanty, but the
+Tibetans, though firing vigorously, fired high, and
+there were no casualties. At last the force reached
+the outer wall of the house, and regained breath
+under cover of it. A few men of the Gurkhas
+then climbed on to the roof and descended into
+the house, making prisoners of the inmates, who
+numbered forty or fifty. Shortly afterwards the
+door, which was strongly barricaded, was broken
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+in, and the remainder of the force entered the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>During the advance a number of the Tibetans
+attempted to escape on mules and ponies, but
+the greater number of these were followed up and
+killed. The Tibetan casualties were at least 700.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps no British victory has been greeted
+with less enthusiasm than the action at the Hot
+Springs. Certainly the officers, who did their
+duty so thoroughly, had no heart in the business
+at all. After the first futile rush the Tibetans
+made no further resistance. There was no
+more fighting, only the slaughter of helpless
+men.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to criticise after the event, but it
+seems to me that the only way to have avoided
+the lamentable affair at the Hot Springs would
+have been to have drawn up more troops round
+the redan, and, when the Tibetans were hemmed
+in with the cliff in their rear, to have given them
+at least twenty minutes to lay down their arms.
+In the interval the situation might have been
+made clear to everyone. If after the time-limit
+they still hesitated, two shots might have brought
+them to reason. Then, if they were mad enough
+to decide on resistance, their suicide would be on
+their own heads. But to send two dozen sepoys
+into that sullen mob to take away their arms was
+to invite disaster. Given the same circumstances,
+and any mob in the world of men, women, or
+children, civilized or savage, and there would be
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+found at least one rash spirit to explode the mine
+and set a spark to a general conflagration.</p>
+
+<p>It was thought at the time that the lesson
+would save much future bloodshed. But the
+Tibetan is so stubborn and convinced of his self-sufficiency
+that it took many lessons to teach him
+the disparity between his armed rabble and the
+resources of the British Raj. In the light of after-events
+it is clear that we could have made no
+progress without inflicting terrible punishment.
+The slaughter at Guru only forestalled the inevitable.
+We were drawn into the vortex of war by
+the Tibetans' own folly. There was no hope of
+their regarding the British as a formidable Power,
+and a force to be reckoned with, until we had killed
+several thousand of their men.</p>
+
+<p>After the action the Tibetan wounded were
+brought into Tuna, and an abandoned dwelling-house
+was fitted up as a hospital. An empty
+cowshed outside served as an operating-theatre.
+The patients showed extraordinary hardihood and
+stoicism. After the Dzama Tang engagement
+many of the wounded came in riding on yaks from
+a distance of fifty or sixty miles. They were consistently
+cheerful, and always ready to appreciate
+a joke. One man, who lost both legs, said: 'In
+my next battle I must be a hero, as I cannot run
+away.' Some of the wounded were terribly mutilated
+by shell. Two men who were shot through
+the brain, and two who were shot through the
+lungs, survived. For two days Lieutenant Davys,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+Indian Medical Service, was operating nearly all
+day. I think the Tibetans were really impressed
+with our humanity, and looked upon Davys as
+some incarnation of a medicine Buddha. They
+never hesitated to undergo operations, did not
+flinch at pain, and took chloroform without fear.
+Their recuperative power was marvellous. Of
+the 168 who were received in hospital, only 20
+died; 148 were sent to their homes on hired yaks
+cured. Everyone who visited the hospital at
+Tuna left it with an increased respect for the
+Tibetans.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Three months after the action I found the
+Tibetans still lying where they fell. One shot
+through the shoulder in retreat had spun as he
+fell facing our rifles. Another tore at the grass
+with futile fingers through which a delicate pink
+primula was now blossoming. Shrunk arms and
+shanks looked hideously dwarfish. By the stream
+the bodies lay in heaps with parched skin, like
+mummies, rusty brown. A knot of coarse black
+hair, detached from a skull, was circling round in
+an eddy of wind. Everything had been stripped
+from the corpses save here and there a wisp of
+cloth, looking more grim than the nakedness it
+covered, or round the neck some inexpensive
+charm, which no one had thought worth taking
+for its occult powers. Nature, more kindly, had
+strewn round them beautiful spring flowers
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>&mdash;primulas,
+buttercups, potentils. The stream
+'bubbled oilily,' and in the ruined house bees
+were swarming.</p>
+
+<p>Ten miles beyond the Springs an officer was
+watering his horse in the Bamtso Lake. The
+beast swung round trembling, with eyes astare.
+Among the weeds lay the last victim.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_7">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><span>CHAPTER VII</span>
+
+<small>A HUMAN MISCELLANY</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses
+like a row of cormorants, and watched the doolie
+pass underneath. At a little distance it was hard
+to distinguish the children, so motionless were
+they, from the squat praying-flags wrapped in
+black skin and projecting from the parapets of
+the roof. The very babes were impassive and
+inscrutable. Beside them perched ravens of an
+ebony blackness, sleek and well groomed, and so
+consequential that they seemed the most human
+element of the group.</p>
+
+<p>My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with
+a woman on the roof who wore a huge red hoop in
+her hair, which was matted and touzled like a
+negress's. A child behind was searching it, with
+apparent success. The woman asked a question,
+and the bearers jerked out a few guttural monosyllables,
+which she received with indifference.
+She was not visibly elated when she heard that
+the doolie contained the first victim of the Tibetan
+arms. I should like to have heard her views on
+the political situation and the question of a settlement.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+Some of her relatives, perhaps, were
+killed in the mêlée at the Hot Springs. Others
+who had been taken prisoners might be enlisted
+in the new doolie corps, and receiving an unexpected
+wage; others, perhaps, were wounded
+and being treated in our hospitals with all the
+skill and resources of modern science; or they
+were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or
+setting booby-traps for them, and lying in wait
+behind sangars to snipe them in the Red Idol
+Gorge.</p>
+
+<p>The bearers started again; the hot sun and
+the continued exertion made them stink intolerably.
+Every now and then they put down the
+doolie, and began discussing their loot&mdash;ear-rings
+and charms, rough turquoises and ruby-coloured
+stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and
+wounded. For the moment I was tired of Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted
+with the country. I had been allured
+across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of
+the snows. I had escaped the Avernus of the
+plains, and I might have been content, but there
+was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an
+upper story, but I must climb on to the roof.
+Every morning the Sun-god threw open the magnificent
+portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and
+spires, black cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless
+vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of subtlest jewellery.'<br /></span>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace
+was clear and cloudless, but about its base hung
+little clouds of snow-dust, as though the Olympians
+had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen
+in the tracks of their chariots. All this was seen
+over galvanized iron roofs. The Sun-god had
+thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch
+and toss on the steps. While I was so engrossed
+I looked up. Columns of white cloud were rising
+to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft
+of sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid
+flash, a dazzle of jewel-work, and the portals
+closed. I was covered with bashfulness and
+shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some
+excuse to my companion, said I had an engagement,
+went straight to my rooms, and packed.</p>
+
+<p>But while the aroma of my carriers insulted
+the pure air, and their chatter over their tawdry
+spoil profaned the silent precincts of Chumulari,
+their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment
+of that earlier visit. I remembered
+sitting on a hillside near a lamasery, which was
+surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses.
+Outside the temple a priest was operating on a
+yak for vaccine. He had bored a large hole in
+the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his
+forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A
+hideous yellow trickle beneath indicated that the
+poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd of
+admiring little boys and girls looked on with
+relish. The smell of the poor yak was distressing,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+but the smell of the Lama was worse. I turned
+away in disgust&mdash;turned my back contentedly
+and without regret on the mysterious land and
+the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment,
+if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise
+with a dozen outriders and implored me to come,
+I would not have visited him, not for a thousand
+yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my
+eyes; the spirit of unrest died within me. I had
+a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white linen,
+fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed
+men.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp118-1"></a><a href="images/fp118-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp118-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Tibetan Dead.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp118-2"></a><a href="images/fp118-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp118-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Field-Hospital Doolie with Tibetan Bearers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And here again I was returning very slowly to
+civilization; but I was coming back with half an
+army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his throne&mdash;or
+if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do
+what? I wondered if the gentlemen sitting
+snugly in Downing Street had any idea.</p>
+
+<p>At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and
+there were no doolie-bearers. The Darjeeling
+dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where
+they were most wanted, as the trained army
+doolie corps are plainsmen, who can barely
+breathe, much less work, at these high elevations.
+At last we secured some Bhutias who were
+returning to the front.</p>
+
+<p>The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though
+not in the capacity of bearer. These men regarded
+the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece
+of baggage that had to be conveyed from one
+camp to another, no matter how. Of the art of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+their craft they knew nothing, but they battled
+with the elements so stoutly that one forgave
+them their awkwardness. They carried me along
+mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find
+no foothold, through snow so deep and clogging
+that with all their toil they could make barely
+half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once
+from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick
+head-covering might have been fatal. Often they
+dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of a
+precipice, in places where one perspired with
+fright; they collided quite unnecessarily with
+stones and rocks; but they got through, and
+that was the main point. Men who have carried
+a doolie over a difficult mountain-pass (14,350 feet),
+slipping and stumbling through snow and ice in
+the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of
+the great Raj which they serve.</p>
+
+<p>On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the
+absence of trained doolie-bearers, I met a human
+miscellany that I am not likely to forget. Eight
+miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong,
+whence there is a continual descent to the plains
+of India. The neighbouring hills and valleys had
+been searched for men; high wages were offered,
+and at last from some remote village in Sikkim
+came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in appearance,
+and of uncouth speech, who understood no
+civilized tongue. They had never seen a doolie,
+but in default of better they were employed. It
+was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+the profession was unpopular. I was their 'first
+job.' I settled myself comfortably, all unconscious
+of my impending fate. They started off
+with a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air,
+caught it on their shoulders, and played cup and
+ball with the contents until they were tired. I
+swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani,
+but it was small relief, as they didn't take
+the slightest notice, and I had neither hands to
+beat them nor feet to kick them over the <i>khud</i>.
+My orderly followed and told them in a mild
+North-Country accent that they would be punished
+if they did it again; there is some absurd army
+regulation about British soldiers striking followers.
+For all they knew, he was addressing the stars.
+They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten miles,
+and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I
+shall shy at a hospital doolie for the rest of my
+natural life.</p>
+
+<p>There is a certain Mongol smell which is the
+most unpleasant human odour I know. It is
+common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans,
+but it is found in its purest essence in these low-country,
+cross-bred Lepchas, who were my close
+companions for two days. When we reached the
+heat of the valley, they jumped into the stream
+and bathed, but they emerged more unsavoury
+than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule.
+At the next village they got drunk, after which
+they developed an amazing surefootedness, and
+carried me in without mishap.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After two days with my Lepchas we reached
+Rungli (2,000 feet), whence the road to the plains
+is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to
+a Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.</p>
+
+<p>'He writes all about our soldiers and the
+fighting in Tibet,' he said. 'It all goes home
+to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at
+home are reading what he says an hour or two
+after he has given <i>khubber</i> to the office here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and
+if things are well the people in England will be
+very glad; and if we are ill and die, and there is
+too much cold, they will be very sorry.'</p>
+
+<p>The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere
+and sympathetic. If an Englishman had said the
+same thing, he would have been thought half-witted,
+but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes
+as if they were epigrams.</p>
+
+<p>The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point
+that it called up a little picture in my mind of
+the London Underground and a liveried official
+dealing out <i>Daily Mails</i> to crowds of inquirers
+anxious for news of Tibet. Only the sun blazed
+overhead and the stream made music at our feet.</p>
+
+<p>I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned
+to the inevitable jolting, and expecting another
+promiscuous collection of humanity to do duty as
+<i>kahars</i>. But, to my great joy, I found twelve
+Lucknow doolie-wallahs waiting by the veranda,
+lithe and erect, and part of a drilled corps. Drill
+discipline is good, but in the art of their trade
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+these men needed no teaching. For centuries
+their ancestors had carried palanquins in the
+plains, bearing Rajas and ladies of high estate,
+perhaps even the Great Mogul himself. The running
+step to their strange rhythmic chants must
+be an instinct to them. That morning I knew
+my troubles were at an end. They started off
+with steps of velvet, improvising as they went a
+kind of plaintive song like an intoned litany.</p>
+
+<p>The leading man chanted a dimeter line,
+generally with an iambus in the first foot; but
+when the road was difficult or the ascent toilsome,
+the metre became trochaic, in accordance with
+the best traditions of classical poetry. The hind-men
+responded with a sing-song trochaic dimeter
+which sounded like a long-drawn-out monosyllable.
+They never initiated anything. It was
+not custom; it had never been done. The laws
+of Nature are not so immutable as the ritual of a
+Hindu guild.</p>
+
+<p>We sped on smoothly for eight miles, and when
+I asked the <i>kahars</i> if they were tired, they said
+they would not rest, as relays were waiting on the
+road. All the way they chanted their hymn of
+the obvious:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Mountains are steep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Chorus</i>: Yes, they are.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The road is narrow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes, it is.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sahib is wounded;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is so.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With many wounds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They are many.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The road goes down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes, it does.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now we are hurrying;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes, we are.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here they ran swiftly till the next rise in the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting in the shade for relays, I heard two
+Englishmen meet on the road. One had evidently
+been attached, and was going down to join his
+regiment; the other was coming up on special
+service. I caught fragments of our crisp expressive
+argot.</p>
+
+<p><i>Officer going down</i> (<i>apparently disillusioned</i>):
+'Oh, it's the same old bald-headed maidan we
+usually muddle into.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Officer coming up</i>: '... Up above Phari ideal
+country for native cavalry, isn't it?... A few
+men with lances prodding those fellows in the
+back would soon put the fear of God into them.
+Why don't they send up the &mdash;th Light Cavalry?'</p>
+
+<p><i>Officer going down</i>: 'They've Walers, and you
+can't feed 'em, and the &mdash;th are all Jats. They're
+no good; can't do without a devil of a lot of milk.
+They want bucketsful of it. Well, bye-bye;
+you'll soon get fed up with it.'</p>
+
+<p>The doolie was hitched up, and the <i>kahars</i> resumed
+their chant:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A sahib goes up;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yes, he does.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sahib goes down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That is so.'<br /></span>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>The heat and the monotonous cadence induced
+drowsiness, and one fell to thinking of this odd
+motley of men, all of one genus, descended from
+the anthropoid ape, and exhibiting various phases
+of evolution&mdash;the primitive Lepcha, advanced
+little further than his domestic dog; the Tibetan
+<i>kahar</i> caught in the wheel of civilization, and
+forming part of the mechanism used to bring his
+own people into line; the Lucknow doolie-bearer
+and the Jemadar Sahib, products of a hoary
+civilization that have escaped complexity and
+nerves; and lord of all these, by virtue of his
+race, the most evolved, the English subaltern.
+All these folk are brought together because the
+people on the other side of the hills will insist on
+being obsolete anachronisms, who have been asleep
+for hundreds of years while we have been developing
+the sense of our duty towards our neighbour.
+They must come into line; it is the will of the
+most evolved.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp124"></a><a href="images/fp124.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp124s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Tibetan Soldiers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The next day I was carried for miles through a
+tropical forest. The damp earth sweated in the
+sun after last night's thunder-storm, and the
+vegetation seemed to grow visibly in the steaming
+moisture. Gorgeous butterflies, the epicures of a
+season, came out to indulge a love of sunshine and
+suck nectar from all this profusion. Overhead,
+birds shrieked and whistled and beat metal, and
+did everything but sing. The cicadas raised a
+deafening din in praise of their Maker, seeming to
+think, in their natural egoism, that He had made
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+the forest, oak, and gossamer for their sakes. We
+were not a thousand feet above the sea. Thousands
+of feet above us, where we were camping a
+day or two ago, our troops were marching through
+snow.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we crossed the Tista River,
+and the road led up through sal forests to a tea-garden
+at 3,500 feet. Here we entered the most
+perfect climate in the world, and I enjoyed genial
+hospitality and a foretaste of civilization: a bed,
+sheets, a warm bath, clean linen, fruit, sparkling
+soda, a roomy veranda with easy-chairs, and outside
+roses and trellis-work, and a garden bright
+with orchids and wild-turmeric and a profusion of
+semi-tropical and English flowers&mdash;all the things
+which the spoilt children of civilization take as a
+matter of course, because they have never slept
+under the stars, or known what it is to be hungry
+and cold, or exhausted by struggling against the
+forces of untamed Nature.</p>
+
+<p>At noon next day, in the cantonments at Jelapahar,
+an officer saw a strange sight&mdash;a field-hospital
+doolie with the red cross, and twelve
+<i>kahars</i>, Lucknow men, whose plaintive chant
+must have recalled old days on the North-West
+frontier. Behind on a mule rode a British orderly
+of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, bearded and
+weather-stained, and without a trace of the spick-and-spanness
+of cantonments. I saw the officer's
+face lighten; he became visibly excited; he could
+not restrain himself&mdash;he swung round, rode after
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+my orderly, and began to question him without
+shame. Here was civilization longing for the
+wilderness, and over there, beyond the mist,
+under that snow-clad peak, were men in the
+wilderness longing for civilization.</p>
+
+<p>A cloud swept down and obscured the Jelap, as
+if the chapter were closed. But it is not. That
+implacable barrier must be crossed again, and
+then, when we have won the most secret places
+of the earth, we may cry with Burton and his
+Arabs, 'Voyaging is victory!'</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_8">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><span>CHAPTER VIII</span>
+
+<small>THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> intention of the Tibetans at the Hot Springs
+has not been made clear. They say that their
+orders were to oppose our advance, but to avoid
+a battle, just as our orders were to take away
+their arms, if possible, without firing a shot. The
+muddle that ensued lends itself to several interpretations,
+and the Tibetans ascribe their loss to
+British treachery. They say that we ordered them
+to destroy the fuses of their matchlocks, and then
+fired on them. This story was taken to Lhasa,
+with the result that the new levies from the
+capital were not deterred by the terrible punishment
+inflicted on their comrades. Orders were
+given to oppose us on the road to Gyantse, and
+an armed force, which included many of the
+fugitives from Guru, gathered about Kangma.</p>
+
+<p>The peace delegates always averred that we
+fired the first shot at Guru. But even if we give
+the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt, and admit
+that the action grew out of the natural excitement
+of two forces struggling for arms, both of whom
+were originally anxious to avoid a conflict, there
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+is still no doubt that the responsibility of continuing
+the hostilities lies with the Tibetans.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of April 7 ten scouts of the
+2nd Mounted Infantry, under Captain Peterson,
+found the Tibetans occupying the village of Samando,
+seventeen miles beyond Kalatso. As our
+men had orders not to fire or provoke an attack,
+they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one
+of the Tibetans to come out and parley. They
+said they would send for a man, and invited us
+to come nearer. When we had ridden up to
+within a hundred yards of the village, they opened
+a heavy fire on us with their matchlocks. Our
+scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards,
+and took cover behind stones. Not a man or
+pony was hit. Before retiring, the mounted infantry
+fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who
+were lining the roofs of two large houses and a
+wall that connected them, their heads only appearing
+above the low turf parapets. Twice the
+Tibetans sent off a mounted man for reinforcements,
+but our shooting was so good that each
+time the horse returned riderless. The next
+morning we found the village unoccupied, and discovered
+six dead left on the roofs, most of whom
+were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had
+penetrated the two feet of turf and killed the man
+behind. Putting aside the question of Guru, the
+Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility
+directed against the mission.</p>
+
+<p>After Samando there was no longer any doubt
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+that the Tibetans intended to oppose our advance.
+On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a
+wall built across the valley and up the hills just
+this side of Kangma, which they reported as
+occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late
+to attack that night, we formed camp. The next
+morning we found the wall evacuated, and the
+villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired
+to the gorge below. This habit of building formidable
+barriers across a valley, stretching from
+crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a well-known
+trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built
+in the night and abandoned the next morning.
+One would imagine that, after toiling all night to
+make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
+their wall if they intended to make a stand
+anywhere. But they do not grudge the labour.
+Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
+Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot
+resist placing one on the top of the other.
+So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
+studded with these monuments of wasted labour,
+erected to propitiate the genii of the place, or
+from mere force of habit to while away an idle
+hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this
+practice of strengthening and abandoning positions
+more than anything else which gained the
+Tibetans the reputation of cowardice, which they
+have since shown to be totally undeserved.</p>
+
+<p>On April 8, owing to the delay in reconnoitring
+the wall, we made only about eight miles, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+camped. The next morning we had marched
+about two miles, when we found the high ridge
+on the left flank occupied by the enemy, and the
+mounted infantry reported them in the gorge
+beyond. Two companies of the 8th Gurkhas
+under Major Row were sent up to the hill on
+the left to turn the enemy's right flank, and the
+mountain battery (No. 7) came into action on
+the right at over 3,000 yards. The enemy kept
+up a continuous but ineffectual fire from the
+ridge, none of their jingal bullets falling anywhere
+near us. The Gurkhas had a very difficult climb.
+The hill was quite 2,000 feet above the valley;
+the lower and a good deal of the other slopes were
+of coarse sand mixed with shale, and the rest
+nothing but slippery rock. The summit of the
+hill was approached by a number of step-like
+shale terraces covered with snow. When only
+a short way up, a snowstorm came on and obscured
+the Gurkhas from view. The cold was
+intense, and the troops in the valley began to
+collect the sparse brushwood, and made fires to
+keep themselves warm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp130-1"></a><a href="images/fp130-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp130-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Wounded Tibetan.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp130-2"></a><a href="images/fp130-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp130-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Wounded Tibetan in British Hospital.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On account of the nature of the hillside and the
+high altitude, the progress of the Gurkhas was very
+slow, and it took them nearly three hours to reach
+the ridge held by the enemy. When about two-thirds
+of the way up, they came under fire from
+the ridge, but all the shots went high. The
+jingals carried well over them at about 1,200
+yards. The enemy also sent a detachment to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+meet them on the top, but these did not fire long,
+and retired as the Gurkhas advanced. When the
+8th reached the summit, the Tibetans were in full
+flight down the opposite slope, which was also
+snow-covered. Thirty were shot down in the
+rout, and fifty-four who were hiding in the caves
+were made prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile the battery had been making
+very good practice at 3,000 yards. Seven men
+were found dead on the summit, and four wounded,
+evidently by their fire.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the main action in the gorge.
+The Tibetans held a very strong position among
+some loose boulders on the right, two miles beyond
+the gully which the Gurkhas had ascended to
+make their flank attack. The rocks extended
+from the bluff cliff to the path which skirted the
+stream. No one could ask for better cover; it
+was most difficult to distinguish the drab-coated
+Tibetans who lay concealed there. To attack this
+strong position General Macdonald sent Captain
+Bethune with one company of the 32nd Pioneers,
+placing Lieutenant Cook with his Maxim on a
+mound at 500 yards to cover Bethune's advance.
+Bethune led a frontal attack. The Tibetans fired
+wildly until the Sikhs were within eighty yards, and
+then fled up the valley. Not a single man of the
+32nd was hit during the attack, though one sepoy
+was wounded in the pursuit by a bullet in the
+hand from a man who lay concealed behind a
+rock within a few yards of him. While the 32nd
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+were dislodging the Tibetans from the path and
+the rocks above it, the mounted infantry galloped
+through them to reconnoitre ahead and cut off
+the fugitives in the valley. They also came
+through the enemy's fire at very close quarters
+without a casualty. On emerging from the gorge
+the mounted infantry discovered that the ridge
+the Tibetans had held was shaped like the letter
+S, so that by doubling back along an almost
+parallel valley they were able to intercept the
+enemy whom the Gurkhas had driven down the
+cliffs. The unfortunate Tibetans were now
+hemmed in between two fires, and hardly a
+man of them escaped.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetan casualties, as returned at the time,
+were much exaggerated. The killed amounted
+to 100, and, on the principle that the proportion
+of wounded must be at least two to one, it
+was estimated that their losses were 300. But,
+as a matter of fact, the wounded could not have
+numbered more than two dozen.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoners taken by the Gurkhas on the top
+of the ridge turned out to be impressed peasants,
+who had been compelled to fight us by the Lamas.
+They were not soldiers by inclination or instinct,
+and I believe their greatest fear was that they
+might be released and driven on to fight us again.</p>
+
+<p>The action at the Red Idol Gorge may be regarded
+as the end of the first phase of the Tibetan
+opposition. We reached Gyantse on April 11,
+and the fort was surrendered without resistance.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+Nothing had occurred on the march up to disturb
+our estimate of the enemy. Since the campaign
+of 1888 no one had given the Tibetans any credit
+for martial instincts, and until the Karo la action
+and the attack on Gyantse they certainly displayed
+none. It would be hard to exaggerate the
+strategical difficulties of the country through
+which we had to pass. The progress of the
+mission and its escort under similar conditions
+would have been impossible on the North-West
+frontier or in any country inhabited by a people
+with the rudiments of sense or spirit. The difficulties
+of transport were so great that the escort
+had to be cut down to the finest possible figure.
+There were barely enough men for pickets, and
+many of the ordinary precautions of field man&oelig;uvres
+were out of the question. But the Tibetan
+failed to realize his opportunities. He avoided
+the narrow forest-clad ravines of Sikkim and
+Chumbi, and made his first stand on the open
+plateau at Guru. Fortunately for us, he never
+learnt what transport means to a civilized army.
+A bag of barley-meal, some weighty degchies, and
+a massive copper teapot slung over the saddle are
+all he needs; evening may produce a sheep or a
+yak. His movements are not hampered by supplies.
+If the importance of the transport question
+had ever entered his head, he would have
+avoided the Tuna camp, with its Maxims and
+mounted infantry, and made a dash upon the
+line of communications. A band of hardy mountaineers
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+in their own country might very easily
+surprise and annihilate an ill-guarded convoy in
+a narrow valley thickly forested and flanked by
+steep hills. To furtively cut an artery in your
+enemy's arm and let out the blood is just as
+effective as to knock him on the head from in
+front. But in this first phase of the operations
+the Tibetans showed no strategy; they were
+badly led, badly armed, and apparently devoid
+of all soldier-like qualities. Only on one or two
+occasions they displayed a desperate and fatal
+courage, and this new aspect of their character
+was the first indication that we might have to
+revise the views we had formed sixteen years
+ago of an enemy who has seemed to us since
+a unique exception to the rule that a hardy
+mountain people are never deficient in courage
+and the instinct of self-defence.</p>
+
+<p>The most extraordinary aspect of the fighting
+up to our arrival at Gyantse was that we had only
+one casualty from a gunshot wound&mdash;the Sikh
+who was shot in the hand at the Dzama Tang
+affair by a Tibetan whose jezail was almost touching
+him. Yet at the Hot Springs the Tibetans
+fired off their matchlocks and rifles into the thick
+of us, and at Guru an hour afterwards the Gurkhas
+walked right up to a house held by the enemy,
+under heavy fire, and took it without a casualty.
+The mounted infantry were exposed to a volley
+at Samando at 100 yards, and again in the Red
+Idol Gorge they rode through the enemy's fire
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+at an even shorter range. In the same action
+the 32nd made a frontal attack on a strong position
+which was held until they were within eighty
+yards, and not a man was hit. No wonder we had
+a contempt for the Tibetan arms. Their matchlocks,
+weapons of the rudest description, must
+have been as dangerous to their own marksmen
+as to the enemy; their artillery fire, to judge by
+our one experience of it at Dzama Tang, was
+harmless and erratic; and their modern Lhasa-made
+rifles had not left a mark on our men. The
+Tibetans' only chance seemed to be a rush at close
+quarters, but they had not proved themselves
+competent swordsmen. My own individual case
+was sufficient to show that they were bunglers.
+Besides the twelve wounds I received at the Hot
+Springs, I found seven sword-cuts on my poshteen,
+none of which were driven home. During the
+whole campaign we had only one death from
+sword-wounds.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at Gyantse, we settled down with some
+sense of security. A bazaar was held outside the
+camp. The people seemed friendly, and brought
+in large quantities of supplies. Colonel Younghusband,
+in a despatch to the Foreign Office, reported
+that with the surrender of Gyantse Fort
+on April 12 resistance in that part of Tibet was
+ended. A letter was received from the Amban
+stating that he would certainly reach Gyantse
+within the next three weeks, and that competent
+and trustworthy Tibetan representatives would
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+accompany him. The Lhasa officials, it was said,
+were in a state of panic, and had begged the
+Amban to visit the British camp and effect a
+settlement.</p>
+
+<p>On April 20 General Macdonald's staff, with the
+10-pounder guns, three companies of the 23rd
+Pioneers, and one and a half companies of the
+8th Gurkhas, returned to Chumbi to relieve the
+strain on the transport and strengthen the line of
+communications. Gyantse Jong was evacuated,
+and we occupied a position in a group of houses,
+as we thought, well out of range of fire from the
+fort.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was quiet until the end of April,
+when we heard that the Tibetans were occupying
+a wall in some strength near the Karo la, forty-two
+miles from Gyantse, on the road to Lhasa.
+Colonel Brander, of the 32nd Pioneers, who was
+left in command at Gyantse, sent a small party
+of mounted infantry and pioneers to reconnoitre
+the position. They discovered 2,000 of the enemy
+behind a strong loopholed wall stretching across
+the valley, a distance of nearly 600 yards. As the
+party explored the ravine they had a narrow escape
+from a booby-trap, a formidable device of Tibetan
+warfare, which was only employed against our
+troops on this occasion. An artificial avalanche
+of rocks and stones is so cunningly contrived
+that the removal of one stone sends the whole
+engine of destruction thundering down the hillside.
+Luckily, the Tibetans did not wait for
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+our main body, but loosed the machine on an
+advance guard of mounted infantry, who were
+in extended order and able to take shelter behind
+rocks.</p>
+
+<p>On the return of the reconnaissance Colonel
+Brander decided to attack, as he considered the
+gathering threatened the safety of the mission.
+The Karo Pass is an important strategical position,
+lying as it does at the junction of the two
+roads to India, one of which leads to Kangma,
+the other to Gyantse. A strong force holding the
+pass might at any moment pour troops down the
+valley to Kangma, cut us off in the rear, and
+destroy our line of communications. When Colonel
+Brander led his small force to take the pass, it
+was not with the object of clearing the road to
+Lhasa. The measure was purely defensive: the
+action was undertaken to keep the road open
+for convoys and reinforcements, and to protect
+isolated posts on the line. The force with the
+mission was still an 'escort,' and so far its operations
+had been confined to dispersing the armed
+levies that blocked the road.</p>
+
+<p>On May 3 Colonel Brander left Gyantse with
+his column of 400 rifles, comprising three companies
+of the 32nd Pioneers, under Captains
+Bethune and Cullen and Lieutenant Hodgson;
+one company of the 8th, under Major Row
+and Lieutenant Coleridge, with two 7-pounder
+guns; the Maxim detachment of the Norfolks,
+under Lieutenant Hadow; and forty-five of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley. On
+the first day the column marched eighteen miles,
+and halted at Gobshi. On the second day they
+reached Ralung, eleven miles further, and on the
+third marched up the pass and encamped on an
+open spot about two miles from where the Tibetans
+had built their wall. A reconnaissance that afternoon
+estimated the enemy at 2,000, and they
+were holding the strongest position on the road to
+Lhasa. They had built a wall the whole length
+of a narrow spur and up the hill on the other side
+of the stream, and in addition held detached
+sangars high up the steep hills, and well thrown
+forward. Their flanks rested on very high and
+nearly precipitous rocks. It was only possible to
+climb the ridge on our right from a mile behind,
+and on the left from nearly three-quarters of a
+mile. Colonel Brander at first considered the
+practicability of delaying the attack on the main
+wall until the Gurkhas had completed their flanking
+movements, cleared the Tibetans out of the
+sangars that enfiladed our advance in the valley,
+and reached a position on the hills beyond the
+wall, whence they could fire into the enemy's
+rear. But the cliffs were so sheer that the ascent
+was deemed impracticable, and the next morning
+it was decided to make a frontal attack without
+waiting for the Gurkhas to turn the flank. No
+one for a moment thought it could be done.</p>
+
+<p>The troops marched out of camp at ten o'clock.
+One company of the 32nd Pioneers, under Captain
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+Cullen, was detailed to attack on the right, and
+a second company, under Captain Bethune, to
+follow the river-bed, where they were under cover
+of the high bank until within 400 yards of the
+wall, and then rush the centre of the position.
+The 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley,
+were to follow this company along the valley.
+The guns, Maxims, and one company of the 32nd
+in reserve, occupied a small plateau in the centre.
+Half a company of the 8th Gurkhas were left
+behind to guard the camp. A second half-company,
+under Major Row, were sent along the hillside
+on the left to attack the enemy's extreme
+right sangar, but their progress over the shifting
+shale slopes and jagged rocks was so slow that the
+front attack did not wait for them.</p>
+
+<p>The fire from the wall was very heavy, and the
+advance of Cullen's and Bethune's companies was
+checked. Bethune sent half a company back,
+and signalled to the mounted infantry to retire.
+Then, compelled by some fatal impulse, he changed
+his mind, and with half a company left the cover
+of the river-bed and rushed out into the open
+within forty yards of the main wall, exposed to a
+withering fire from three sides. His half-company
+held back, and Bethune fell shot through
+the head with only four men by his side&mdash;a bugler,
+a store-office babu, and two devoted Sikhs. What
+the clerk was doing there no one knows, but
+evidently the soldier in the man had smouldered in
+suppression among the office files and triumphed
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+splendidly. It was a gallant reckless charge
+against uncounted odds. Poor Bethune had
+learnt to despise the Tibetans' fire, and his contempt
+was not unnatural. On the march to
+Gyantse the enemy might have been firing blank
+cartridges for all the effect they had left on our
+men. At Dzama Tang Bethune had made a
+frontal attack on a strong position, and carried it
+without losing a man. Against a similar rabble
+it might have been possible to rush the wall with
+his handful of Sikhs, but these new Kham levies
+who held the Karo la were a very different type
+of soldier.</p>
+
+<p>The frontal attack was a terrible mistake, as
+was shown four hours afterwards, when the
+enemy were driven from their position without
+further loss to ourselves by a flanking movement
+on the right.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o'clock Major Row, after a laborious
+climb, reached a point on a hillside level with the
+sangars, which were strongly held on a narrow
+ledge 200 yards in front of him. Here he sent up
+a section of his men under cover of projecting
+rocks to get above the sangars and fire down into
+them. In the meanwhile some of the enemy
+scrambled on to the rocks above, and began throwing
+down boulders at the Gurkhas, but these
+either broke up or fell harmless on the shale slopes
+above. After waiting an hour, Major Row went
+back himself and found his section checked half-way
+by the stone-throwing and shots from above;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+they had tried another way, but found it impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>Keeping a few men back to fire on any stone-throwers
+who showed themselves, Row dribbled
+his men across the difficult place, and in half
+an hour reached the rocky ledge above the
+sangars and looked right down on the enemy.
+At the first few shots from the Gurkhas they
+began to bolt, and, coming into the fire of the
+men below, who now rushed forward, nearly
+every man&mdash;forty in all&mdash;was killed. One or two
+who escaped the fire found their flight cut off by
+a precipice, and in an abandonment of terror
+hurled themselves down on the rocks below.
+After clearing the sangar, the Gurkhas had only
+to surmount the natural difficulties of the rocky
+and steep hill; for though the enemy fired on
+them from the wall, their shooting was most
+erratic. When at last they reached a small spur
+that overlooked the Tibetan main position, they
+found, to their disgust, that each man was protected
+from their fire by a high stone traverse,
+on the right-hand of which he lay secure, and
+fired through loopholes barely a foot from the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>The Gurkhas had accomplished a most difficult
+mountaineering feat under a heavy fire; they
+had turned the enemy out of their sangars, and
+after four hours' climbing they had scaled the
+heights everyone thought inaccessible. But their
+further progress was barred by a sheer cliff; they
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+had reached a cul-de-sac. Looking up from the
+valley, it appeared that the spot where they
+stood commanded the enemy's position, but we
+had not reckoned on the traverses. This amazing
+advance in the enemy's defensive tactics had
+rendered their position unassailable from the
+left, and made the Gurkhas' flanking movement
+a splendid failure.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp142"></a><a href="images/fp142.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp142s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Pioneers destroying Kangma Wall.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was now two o'clock, and, except for the capture
+of the enemy's right sangars, we had done
+nothing to weaken their opposition. The frontal
+and flanking attacks had failed. Bethune was
+killed, and seventeen men. Our guns had made
+no impression on their wall. Looking down from
+the spur which overlooked the Tibetan camp and
+the valley beyond, the Gurkhas could see a large
+reinforcement of at least 500 men coming up to
+join the enemy. The situation was critical. In
+four hours we had done nothing, and we knew
+that if we could not take the place by dusk we
+would have to abandon the attack or attempt to
+rush the camp at night. That would have been a
+desperate undertaking&mdash;400 men against 3,000, a
+rush at close quarters with the bayonet, in which
+the superiority of our modern rifles would be
+greatly discounted.</p>
+
+<p>Matters were at this crisis, when we saw the
+Tibetans running out of their extreme left sangars.
+At twelve o'clock, when the front attack had
+failed and the left attack was apparently making
+no progress, fifteen men of the 32nd who were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+held in reserve were sent up the hill on the right.
+They had reached a point above the enemy's left
+forward sangar, and were firing into it with great
+effect. Twice the Tibetans rushed out, and, coming
+under a heavy Maxim fire, bolted back again.
+The third time they fled in a mass, and the
+Maxims mowed down about thirty. The capture
+of the sangars was a signal for a general
+stampede. From the position they had won the
+Sikhs could enfilade the main wall itself. The
+Tibetans only waited a few shots; then they
+turned and fled in three huge bodies down the
+valley. Thus the fifteen Sikhs on the right saved
+the situation. The tension had been great. In
+no other action during the campaign, if we except
+Palla, did the success of our arms stand so long in
+doubt. Had we failed to take the wall by daylight,
+Colonel Brander's column would have been
+in a most precarious position. We could not
+afford to retire, and a night attack could only
+have been pushed home with heavy loss.</p>
+
+<p>Directly the flight began, the 1st Mounted Infantry&mdash;forty-two
+men, under Captain Ottley&mdash;rode
+up to the wall. They were ten minutes
+making a breach. Then they poured into the
+valley and harassed the flying masses, riding on
+their flanks and pursuing them for ten miles to
+within sight of the Yamdok Tso. It showed
+extraordinary courage on the part of this little
+band of Masbis and Gurkhas that they did not
+hesitate to hurl themselves on the flanks of this
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+enormous body of men, like terriers on the heels
+of a flock of cattle, though they had had experience
+of their stubborn resistance the whole day
+long, and rode through the bodies of their fallen
+comrades. Not a man drew rein. The Tibetans
+were caught in a trap. The hills that sloped
+down to the valley afforded them little cover.
+Their fate was only a question of time and ammunition.
+The mounted infantry returned at
+night with only three casualties, having killed
+over 300 men.</p>
+
+<p>The sortie to the Karo la was one of the most
+brilliant episodes of the campaign. We risked
+more then than on any other occasion. But the
+safety of the mission and many isolated posts on
+the line was imperilled by this large force at the
+cross-roads, which might have increased until it
+had doubled or trebled if we had not gone out
+to disperse it. A weak commander might have
+faltered and weighed the odds, but Colonel
+Brander saw that it was a moment to strike, and
+struck home. His action was criticised at the
+time as too adventurous. But the sortie is one
+of the many instances that our interests are best
+cared for by men who are beyond the telegraph-poles,
+and can act on their own initiative without
+reference to Government offices in Simla.</p>
+
+<p>As the column advanced to the Karo la, a
+message was received that the mission camp at
+Gyantse had been attacked in the early morning
+of the 5th, and that Major Murray's men&mdash;150
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+odd rifles&mdash;had not only beaten the enemy off,
+but had made three sorties from different points
+and killed 200.</p>
+
+<p>With the action at the Karo la and the attack
+on the mission at Gyantse began the second phase
+of the operations, during which we were practically
+besieged in our own camp, and for nine
+weeks compelled to act on the defensive. The
+courage of the Tibetans was now proved beyond
+a doubt. The new levies from Kham and Shigatze
+were composed of very different men from
+those we herded like sheep at Guru. They were
+also better armed than our previous assailants, and
+many of them knew how to shoot. At the same
+time they were better led. The primitive ideas
+of strategy hitherto displayed by the Tibetans
+gave place to more advanced tactics. The usual
+story got wind that the Tibetans were being led
+by trained Russian Buriats. But there was no
+truth in it. The altered conditions of the campaign,
+as we may call it, after it became necessary
+to begin active operations, were due to the force
+of circumstances&mdash;the arrival of stouter levies
+from the east, the great numerical superiority of
+the enemy, and their strongly fortified positions.</p>
+
+<p>The operations at Gyantse are fully dealt with
+in another chapter, and I will conclude this account
+of the opposition to our advance with a description
+of the attack on the Kangma post, the only
+attempt on the part of the enemy to cut off
+our line of communications. Its complete failure
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+seems to have deterred the Tibetans from subsequent
+ventures of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>From Ralung, ten miles this side of the Karo la,
+two roads branch off to India. The road leading
+to Kangma is the shortest route; the other road
+makes a détour of thirty miles to include Gyantse.
+Ralung lies at the apex of the triangle, as shown
+in this rough diagram. Gyantse and Kangma
+form the two base angles.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/p146.png"><img src="images/p146s.png" alt="Diagram." title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>If it had been possible, a strong post would have
+been left at the Karo la after the action of May 6.
+But our small force was barely sufficient to garrison
+Gyantse, and we had to leave the alternative
+approach to Kangma unguarded. An attack was
+expected there; the post was strongly fortified,
+and garrisoned by two companies of the 23rd
+Pioneers, under Captain Pearson.</p>
+
+<p>The attack, which was made on June 7, was
+unexpectedly dramatic. We have learnt that the
+Tibetan has courage, but in other respects he is
+still an unknown quantity. In motive and action
+he is as mysterious and unaccountable as his
+paradoxical associations would lead us to imagine.
+In dealing with the Tibetans one must expect
+the unexpected. They will try to achieve the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+impossible, and shut their eyes to the obvious.
+They have a genius for doing the wrong thing at
+the wrong time. Their élan, their dogged courage,
+their undoubted heroism, their occasional acuteness,
+their more general imbecile folly and vacillation
+and inability to grasp a situation, make it
+impossible to say what they will do in any given
+circumstances. A few dozen men will hurl themselves
+against hopeless odds, and die to a man
+fighting desperately; a handful of impressed
+peasants will devote themselves to death in the
+defence of a village, like the old Roman patriots.
+At other times they will forsake a strongly
+sangared position at the first shot, and thousands
+will prowl round a camp at night, shouting grotesquely,
+but too timid to make a determined
+attack on a vastly outnumbered enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The uncertainty of the enemy may be accounted
+for to some extent by the fact that we are not
+often opposed by the same levies, which would
+imply that theirs is greatly the courage of ignorance.
+Yet in the face of the fighting at Palla,
+Naini, and Gyantse Jong, this is evidently no
+fair estimate of the Tibetan spirit. The men who
+stood in the breach at Gyantse in that hell of
+shrapnel and Maxim and rifle fire, and dropped
+down stones on our Gurkhas as they climbed the
+wall, met death knowingly, and were unterrified
+by the resources of modern science in war, the
+magic, the demons, the unseen, unimagined messengers
+of death.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the men who attacked the Kangma post,
+what parallel in history have we for these? They
+came by night many miles over steep mountain
+cliffs and rocky ravines, perhaps silently, with
+determined purpose, weighing the odds; or, as
+I like to think, boastfully, with song and jest,
+saying, 'We will steal in upon these English at
+dawn before they wake, and slay them in their
+beds. Then we will hold the fort, and kill all
+who come near.'</p>
+
+<p>They came in the gray before dawn, and hid
+in a gully beside our camp. At five the reveillé
+sounded and the sentry left the bastions. Then
+they sprang up and rushed, sword in hand, their
+rifles slung behind their backs, to the wall. The
+whole attack was directed on the south-east front,
+an unscalable wall of solid masonry, with bastions
+at each corner four feet thick and ten feet high.
+They directed their attack on the bastions, the
+only point on that side they could scramble over.
+They knew nothing of the fort and its tracing.
+Perhaps they had expected to find us encamped
+in tents on the open ground. But from the shallow
+nullah where they lay concealed, not 200 yards
+distant, and watched our sentry, they could survey
+the uncompromising front which they had
+set themselves to attack with the naked sword.
+They had no artillery or guncotton or materials
+for a siege, but they hoped to scale the wall and
+annihilate the garrison that held it. They had
+come from Lhasa to take Kangma, and they
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+were not going to turn back. They came on undismayed,
+like men flushed with victory. The
+sepoys said they must be drunk or drugged. They
+rushed to the bottom of the wall, tore out stones,
+and flung them up at our sepoys; they leapt up
+to seize the muzzles of our rifles, and scrambled
+to gain a foothold and lift themselves on to the
+parapet; they fell bullet-pierced, and some turned
+savagely on the wall again. It was only a question
+of time, of minutes, and the cool mechanical
+fire of the 23rd Pioneers would have dropped every
+man. One hundred and six bodies were left under
+the wall, and sixty more were killed in the pursuit.
+Never was there such a hopeless, helpless struggle,
+such desperate and ineffectual gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>Almost before it was light the yak corps with
+their small escort of thirty rifles of the 2nd
+Gurkhas were starting on the road to Kalatso.
+They had passed the hiding-place of the Tibetans
+without noticing the 500 men in rusty-coloured
+cloaks breathing quietly among the brown stones.
+Then the Tibetans made their charge, just as the
+transport had passed, and a party of them made
+for the yaks. Two Tibetan drivers in our service
+stood directly in their path. 'Who are you?'
+cried one of the enemy. 'Only yak-drivers,' was
+the frightened answer. 'Then, take that,' the
+Tibetan said, slashing at his arm with no intent
+to kill. The Gurkha escort took up a position
+behind a sangar and opened fire&mdash;all save one
+man, who stood by his yak and refused to come
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+under cover, despite the shouts and warnings of
+his comrades. He killed several, but fell himself,
+hacked to pieces with swords. The Tibetans
+were driven off, and joined the rout from the
+fort. The whole affair lasted less than ten
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Our casualties were: the isolated Gurkha killed,
+two men in the fort wounded by stones, and three
+of the 2nd Gurkhas severely wounded&mdash;two by
+sword-cuts, one by a bullet in the neck.</p>
+
+<p>But what was the flame that smouldered in
+these men and lighted them to action? They
+might have been Paladins or Crusaders. But the
+Buddhists are not fanatics. They do not stake
+eternity on a single existence. They have no
+Mahdis or Juggernaut cars. The Tibetans, we
+are told, are not patriots. Politicians say that
+they want us in their country, that they are priest-ridden,
+and hate and fear their Lamas. What,
+then, drove them on? It was certainly not fear.
+No people on earth have shown a greater contempt
+for death. Their Lamas were with them until the
+final assault. Twenty shaven polls were found
+hiding in the nullah down which the Tibetans had
+crept in the dark, and were immediately despatched.
+What promises and cajoleries and
+threats the holy men used no one will ever know.
+But whatever the alternative, their simple followers
+preferred death.</p>
+
+<p>The second phase of the operations, in which we
+had to act on the defensive in Gyantse, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+beginning of the third phase, which saw the arrival
+of reinforcements and the collapse of the Tibetan
+opposition, are described by an eye-witness in the
+next two chapters. During the whole of these
+operations I was invalided in Darjeeling, owing to
+a second operation which had to be performed on
+my amputation wound.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_9">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><span>CHAPTER IX</span>
+
+<small>GYANTSE</small></h2>
+
+<p class="center">[<span class="smcap">By Henry Newman</span>]</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gyantse Plain</span> lies at the intersection of four
+great valleys running almost at right angles to
+one another. In the north-eastern corner there
+emerge two gigantic ridges of sandstone. On one
+is built the jong, and on the other the monastery.
+The town fringes the base of the jong, and creeps
+into the hollow between the two ridges. The
+plain, about six miles by ten, is cultivated almost
+to the last inch, if we except a few stony patches
+here and there. There are, I believe, thirty-three
+villages in the plain. These are built in the midst
+of groves of poplar and willow. At one time, no
+doubt, the waters from the four valleys united to
+form a lake. Now they have found an outlet,
+and flow peacefully down Shigatze way. High up
+on the cold mountains one sees the cold bleached
+walls of the Seven Monasteries, some of them
+perched on almost inaccessible cliffs, whence they
+look sternly down on the warmth and prosperity
+below.</p>
+
+<p>For centuries the Gyantse folk had lived self-contained
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+and happy, practising their simple arts
+of agriculture, and but dimly aware of any world
+outside their own. Then one day there marched
+into their midst a column of British troops&mdash;white-faced
+Englishmen, dark, lithe Gurkhas, great,
+solemn, bearded Sikhs&mdash;and it was borne in upon
+the wondering Gyantse men that beyond their
+frontiers there existed great nations&mdash;so great,
+indeed, that they ventured to dispute on equal
+terms with the awful personage who ruled from
+Lhasa. It is true that from time to time there
+must have passed through Gyantse rumours of
+war on the distant frontier. The armies that we
+defeated at Guru and in the Red Idol Gorge had
+camped at Gyantse on their way to and fro.
+Gyantse saw and wondered at the haste of Lhasa
+despatch-riders. But I question whether any
+Gyantse man realized that events, great and
+shattering in his world, were impending when
+the British column rounded the corner of Naini
+Valley.</p>
+
+<p>At first we were received without hostility, or
+even suspicion. The ruined jong, uninhabited
+save for a few droning Lamas, was surrendered
+as soon as we asked for it. A clump of buildings
+in a large grove near the river was rented
+without demur&mdash;though at a price&mdash;to the Commission.
+And when the country-people found
+that there was a sale for their produce, they
+flocked to the camp to sell. The entry of the
+British troops made no difference to the peace
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+of Gyantse till the Lamas of Lhasa embarked
+on the fatal policy of levying more troops in
+Lhasa, Shigatze, and far-away Kham, and sending
+them down to fight. Then there entered the
+peaceful valley all the horrors of war&mdash;dead and
+maimed men in the streets and houses, burning
+villages, death and destruction of all kinds.
+Gyantse Plain and the town became scenes of
+desolation. To the British army in India war,
+unfortunately, is nothing new, but one can
+imagine what an upheaval this business of
+which I am about to write meant to people who
+for generations had lived in peace.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp154"></a><a href="images/fp154.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp154s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Gyantse Jong.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The incidents connected with the arrival of the
+mission with its escort at Gyantse need not be
+described in detail. On the day of arrival we
+camped in the midst of some fallow fields about
+two miles from the jong. The same afternoon a
+Chinese official, who called himself 'General' Ma,
+came into camp with the news that the jong was
+unoccupied, and that the local Tibetans did not
+propose to offer any resistance. The next morning
+we took quiet possession of the jong, placing
+two companies of Pioneers in garrison. The
+General with a small escort visited the monastery
+behind the fort, and was received with friendliness
+by the venerable Abbot. Neither the villagers nor
+the towns-people showed any signs of resentment
+at our presence. The Jongpen actively interested
+himself in the question of procuring an official residence
+for Colonel Younghusband and the members
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+of the mission. There were reports of the Dalai
+Lama's representatives coming in haste to treat.
+Altogether the outlook was so promising that
+nobody was surprised when, after a stay of a
+week, General Macdonald, bearing in mind the
+difficulty of procuring supplies for the whole force,
+announced his intention of returning to Chumbi
+with the larger portion of the escort, leaving a
+sufficient guard with the mission.</p>
+
+<p>The guard left behind consisted of four
+companies of the 32nd Pioneers, under Colonel
+Brander; four companies of the 8th Gurkhas,
+under Major Row; the 1st Mounted Infantry,
+under Captain Ottley; and the machine-gun
+section of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow.
+Mention should also be made of the two 7-pounder
+mountain-guns attached to the 8th Gurkhas,
+under the command of Captain Luke.</p>
+
+<p>Before the General left for Chumbi he decided
+to evacuate the jong. The grounds on which
+this decision was come to were that the whole
+place was in a ruinous and dangerous condition,
+the surroundings were insanitary, there was only
+one building fit for human habitation, the water-supply
+was bad and deficient, and there seemed
+to be no prospect of further hostilities. Besides,
+from the military point of view there was some
+risk in splitting up the small guard to be left
+behind between the jong and the mission post.
+However, the precaution was taken of further
+dismantling the jong. The gateways and such
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+portions as seemed capable of lending themselves
+to defence were blown up.</p>
+
+<p>The house, or, rather, group of houses, rented
+by Colonel Younghusband for the mission was
+situated about 100 yards from a well-made stone
+bridge over the river. A beautiful grove, mostly
+of willow, extended behind the post along the
+banks of the river to a distance of about 500 yards.
+The jong lay about 1,800 yards to the right front.
+There were two houses in the intervening space,
+built amongst fields of iris and barley. Small
+groups of trees were dotted here and there. Altogether,
+the post was located in a spot as pleasant
+as one could hope to find in Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>For some days before the General left, all the
+troops were engaged in putting the post in a
+state of defence. It was found that the force
+to be left behind could be easily located within
+the perimeter of a wall built round the group
+of houses. There was no room, however, for
+200 mules and their drivers, needed for convoy
+purposes. These were placed in a kind of hornwork
+thrown out to the right front.</p>
+
+<p>After the departure of the General we resigned
+ourselves to what we conceived would be a monotonous
+stay at Gyantse of two or three months,
+pending the signing of the treaty. The people
+continued to be perfectly friendly. A market was
+established outside the post, to which practically
+the whole bazaar from Gyantse town was removed.
+We were able to buy in the market, very cheap,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+the famous Gyantse carpets, for which enormous
+prices are demanded at Darjeeling and elsewhere
+in India. Unarmed officers wandered freely about
+Gyantse town, and the monks of Palkhor Choide,
+the monastery behind the fort, willingly conducted
+parties over the most sacred spots. They even
+readily sold some of the images before the altars,
+and the silk screens which shrouded the forms
+of the gigantic Buddhas. I mention these facts
+about the carpets and images because, when hereafter
+they adorned Simla and Darjeeling drawing-rooms,
+unkind people began to say that British
+officers had wantonly looted Palkhor Choide, one
+of the most famous monasteries in Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>A little shooting was to be had, and officers
+wandered about the plain, gun in hand, bringing
+home mountain-hare&mdash;a queer little beast with a
+blue rump&mdash;duck, and pigeon. Occasionally an
+excursion up one of the side valleys would result
+in the shooting of a burhel or of a Tibetan gazelle.
+The country-people met with were all perfectly
+friendly.</p>
+
+<p>Another feature of those first few peaceful days
+at Gyantse was the eagerness with which the
+Tibetans availed themselves of the skilled medical
+attendance with the mission. At first only one
+or two men wounded at the Red Idol Gorge were
+brought in, but the skill of Captain Walton, Indian
+Medical Service, soon began to be noised abroad,
+and every morning the little outdoor dispensary
+was crowded with sufferers of all kinds.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But during the last week in May reports began
+to reach Colonel Younghusband that, so far from
+attempting to enter into negociations, the Lhasa
+Government was levying an army in Kham, and
+that already five or six hundred men were camped
+on the other side of the Karo la, and were busily
+engaged in building a wall. Lieutenant Hodgson
+with a small force was sent to reconnoitre. He
+came back with the news that the wall was already
+built, stretching from one side of the valley to the
+other, and that there were several thousand well-armed
+men behind it. Both Colonel Younghusband
+and Colonel Brander considered it highly
+necessary that this gathering should be immediately
+dispersed, for it is a principle in Indian
+frontier warfare to strike quickly at any tribal
+assembly, in order to prevent it growing into
+dangerous proportions. The possibly exciting
+effect the force on the Karo la might have on the
+inhabitants of Gyantse had particularly to be considered.
+Accordingly, on May 3 Colonel Brander
+led the major portion of the Gyantse garrison
+towards the Karo la, leaving behind as a guard to
+the post two companies of Gurkhas, a company
+of the 32nd Pioneers, and a few mounted infantry,
+all under the command of Major Murray.</p>
+
+<p>I accompanied the Karo la column, and must
+rely on hearsay as to my facts with regard to the
+attack on the mission. We heard about the
+attack the night before Colonel Brander drove
+the Tibetans from their wall on the Karo la, after
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+a long fight which altered all our previous conceptions
+of the fighting qualities of the Tibetans.
+The courage shown by the enemy naturally
+excited apprehension about the safety of the
+mission. Colonel Brander did not stay to rest
+his troops after their day of arduous fighting, but
+began his return march next morning, arriving at
+Gyantse on the 9th.</p>
+
+<p>The column had been warned that it was likely
+to be fired on from the jong if it entered camp by
+the direct Lhasa road. Accordingly, we marched
+in by a circuitous route, moving in under cover
+of the grove previously mentioned. The Maxims
+and guns came into action at the edge of the
+grove to cover the baggage. But, though numbers
+of Tibetans were seen on the walls of the jong,
+not a shot was fired.</p>
+
+<p>We then learnt the story of the attack on the
+post. It appears that the day after Colonel
+Brander left for the Karo la (May 3) certain
+wounded and sick Tibetans that we had been
+attending informed the mission that about 1,000
+armed men had come down towards Gyantse
+from Shigatze, and were building a wall about
+twelve miles away. It was added that they might
+possibly attack the post if they got to know that
+the garrison had been largely depleted. This
+news seemed to be worth inquiring into, and,
+accordingly, next day Major Murray sent some
+mounted infantry to reconnoitre up the Shigatze
+road. The latter returned with the information
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+that they had gone up the valley some seven or
+eight miles, but had found no signs of any enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The very next morning the post was attacked
+at dawn. It appears that the Shigatze force,
+about 1,000 strong, was really engaged in building
+a wall twelve miles away. Hearing that very
+few troops were guarding the mission, its commander&mdash;who,
+I hear, was none other than
+Khomba Bombu, the very man who arrested
+Sven Hedin's dash to Lhasa&mdash;determined to
+make a sudden attack on the post. He marched
+his men during the night, and about an hour
+before sunrise had them crouching behind trees
+and inside ditches all round the post.</p>
+
+<p>The attack was sudden and simultaneous. A
+Gurkha sentry had just time to fire off his rifle
+before the Tibetans rushed to our walls and had
+their muskets through our loopholes. The enemy
+did not for the moment attempt to scale, but contented
+themselves with firing into the post through
+the loopholes they had taken. This delay proved
+fatal to their plans, for it gave the small garrison
+time to rise and arm. The brunt of the Tibetan
+fire was directed on the courtyard of the house
+where the tents of the members of the mission
+were pitched. Major Murray, who had rushed
+out of bed half clad, first directed his attention
+to this spot. The Sikhs, emerging from their
+tents with bandolier and rifle, in extraordinary
+costumes, were directed towards the loopholes.
+Some were sent on the roof of the mission-house,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+whence they could enfilade the attackers. Elsewhere
+various junior officers had taken command.
+Captain Luke, who, owing to sickness, had not
+gone on with the Karo la column, took charge of
+the Gurkhas on the south and west fronts. Lieutenant
+Franklin, the medical officer of the 8th
+Gurkhas, rallied Gurkhas and Pioneers to the
+loopholes on the east and north. Lieutenant
+Lynch, the treasure-chest officer, who had a guard
+of about twenty Gurkhas, took his men to the
+main gate to the south. There were at this time
+in hospital about a dozen Sikhs, who had been
+badly burnt in a lamentable gunpowder explosion
+a few days previously. These men, bandaged
+and crippled as they were, rose from their couches,
+made their painful way to the tops of the houses,
+and fired into the enemy below. About a dozen
+Tibetans had just begun to scramble over the
+wall by the time the defenders had manned the
+whole position, which was now not only held by
+fighting men, but by various members of the
+mission, including Colonel Younghusband, who
+had emerged with revolvers and sporting guns.
+A few of the enemy got inside the defences, and
+were immediately shot down.</p>
+
+<p>Our fire was so heavy and so well directed that
+it is supposed that not more than ten minutes
+elapsed from the time the first shot was fired
+to the time the enemy began to withdraw. The
+withdrawal, however, was only to the shelter of
+trees and ditches a few hundred yards away,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+whence a long but almost harmless fusillade was
+kept up on the post. After about twenty minutes
+of this firing, Major Murray determined on a rally.
+Lieutenant Lynch with his treasure guard dashed
+out from the south gate. Some five-and-twenty
+Tibetans were discovered hiding in a small refuse
+hut about fifteen yards from the gate. The
+furious Gurkhas rushed in upon them and killed
+them all, and then dashed on through the long
+grove, clearing the enemy in front of them. Returning
+along the banks of the river, the same
+party discovered another body of Tibetans hiding
+under the arches of the bridge. Twenty or thirty
+were shot down, and about fifteen made prisoners.
+Similar success attended a rally from the north-east
+gate made by Major Murray and Lieutenant
+Franklin. The enemy fled howling from their
+hiding-places towards the town and jong as soon
+as they saw our men issue. They were pursued
+almost to the very walls of the fort. Indeed, but
+for the fringe of houses and narrow streets at the
+base of the jong, Major Murray would have gone
+on. The Tibetans, however, turned as soon as
+they reached the shelter of walls, and it would
+have been madness to attack five or six hundred
+determined men in a maze of alleys and passages
+with only a weak company. Major Murray accordingly
+made his way back to the post, picking
+up a dozen prisoners <i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In this affair our casualties only amounted to
+five wounded and two killed. One hundred and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+forty dead of the enemy were counted outside the
+camp.</p>
+
+<p>During the course of the day Major Murray sent
+a flag of truce to the jong with an intimation to
+the effect that the Tibetans could come out and
+bury their dead without fear of molestation. The
+reply was that we could bury the dead ourselves
+without fear of molestation. As it was impossible
+to leave all the bodies in the vicinity of the camp,
+a heavy and disagreeable task was thrown on the
+garrison.</p>
+
+<p>Towards sundown the enemy in the jong began
+to fire into the camp, and our troops became
+aware of the unpleasant fact that the Tibetans
+possessed jingals, which could easily range from
+1,800 to 2,000 yards. It was also realized that
+the jong entirely dominated the post; that our
+walls and stockades, protection enough against
+a direct assault from the plain, were no protection
+against bullets dropped from a height.
+So for the next four days, pending the return of
+the Karo la column, the little garrison toiled unceasingly
+at improving the defences. Traverses
+were built, the walls raised in height, the
+gates strengthened. It was discovered that the
+Tibetan fire was heaviest when we attempted to
+return it by sniping at figures seen on the jong.
+Accordingly, pending the completion of the traverses
+and other new protective works, Major
+Murray forbade any return fire.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the position of affairs when the Karo la
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+column returned. One of Colonel Brander's first
+acts, after his weary troops had rested for an hour
+or two, was to turn the Maxim on the groups who
+could be seen wandering about the jong. They
+quickly disappeared under cover, but only to man
+their jingals. Then began the bombardment of
+the post, which we had to endure for nearly seven
+weeks.</p>
+
+<p>This is the place to speak of the bombardment
+generally, for it would be tedious to recapitulate
+in the form of a diary incidents which, however
+exciting at the time, now seem remarkable only
+for their monotony. It may be said at once that
+the bombardment was singularly ineffective.
+From first to last only fifteen men in the post
+were hit. Of these twelve were either killed or
+died of the wound. Of course, I exclude the
+casualties in the fighting, of which I will presently
+speak, outside the post. But the futility of the
+bombardment must not be entirely put down to
+bad marksmanship on the part of the Tibetans.
+That our losses were not heavier is largely due to
+the fact that the garrison laboured daily&mdash;and at
+first at night also&mdash;in erecting protecting walls
+and traverses. Practically every tent had a
+traverse built in front of it. It was found that
+the hornwork in which the mules were located
+came particularly under fire of the jong. This
+was pulled down one dark night, and the mules
+transferred to a fresh enclosure at the back of the
+post. Strong parapets of sand-bags were built on
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+the roofs of the houses. Every window facing the
+jong was securely blocked with mud bricks. It
+will be realized how considerable was the labour
+involved in building the traverses when it is
+remembered that the jong looked down into the
+post. The majority of the walls had to be considerably
+higher than the tents themselves. They
+were mostly built of stakes cut from the grove,
+with two feet of earth rammed in between. After
+the first week or so the enemy brought to bear on
+the post several brass cannon, throwing balls
+weighing four or five pounds, and travelling with
+a velocity which enabled them to penetrate our
+traverses&mdash;when they struck them, for the majority
+of shots from the cannon whistled harmlessly over
+our heads.</p>
+
+<p>Practically, we did not return the fire from the
+jong. All that was done in this direction was to
+place one of Lieutenant Hadow's Maxims on the
+roof of the house occupied by the mission, and
+thence to snipe during the daylight hours at any
+warriors who showed themselves above the walls
+of the jong. Hadow was very patient and persistent
+with his gun, and quickly made it clear to
+the Tibetans that, if we were obliged to keep under
+cover, so were they. But our fire from the post
+was probably as ineffective as that of the enemy
+from the jong, for the Tibetans build walls with
+extraordinary rapidity. Working mostly at night
+in order to avoid the malignant Maxim, the enemy
+within a few days almost altered the face of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+jong. New walls, traverses, and covered ways
+seemed to spring up with the rapidity of mushrooms.</p>
+
+<p>Our life during the siege, if so the bombardment
+can be called, was hardly as unpleasant as people
+might imagine. To begin with, we were never
+short of food&mdash;that is to say, of Tibetan barley
+and meat. The commissariat stock of tea&mdash;a
+necessity in Tibet&mdash;also never gave out. From
+time to time also convoys and parcel-posts with
+little luxuries came through. Again, the longest
+period for which we were without a letter-post
+was eight days. Socially, the relations of the
+officers with one another and with the members
+of the Commission were most harmonious. I make
+a point of mentioning this fact, because all those
+who have had any experience of sieges, or of
+similar conditions where small communities are
+shut up together in circumstances of hardship and
+danger, know how apt the temper is to get on
+edge, how often small differences are likely to give
+rise to bitter animosities. But we had in the
+Gyantse garrison men of such vast experience and
+geniality as Colonel Brander, of such high culture
+and attainment as Colonel Younghusband, Captain
+O'Connor, and Mr. Perceval Landon&mdash;the correspondent
+of <i>The Times</i>; men whose spirits never
+failed, and who found humour in everything, such
+as Major Row, Captain Luke, Captain Coleridge,
+Lieutenant Franklin. Amongst the besieged
+was Colonel Waddell, I.M.S., an Orientalist and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+Sinologist of European fame. Hence, in some
+of its aspects the Gyantse siege was almost a
+delightful episode. In the later days, when all
+the outpost fighting occurred, our spirits were
+somewhat damped, for we had to mourn brave
+men killed and sympathize with others dangerously
+wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, one of the first questions for consideration
+when the Karo la column returned to
+Gyantse was whether the enemy could or could
+not be turned out of the jong. To make a
+frontal attack on the frowning face overlooking
+the post would have been foolhardy, but Colonel
+Brander decided to make a reconnaissance to a
+monastery on the high hills to our right, whence
+the jong itself could be overlooked. A subsidiary
+reason for visiting this monastery was that it was
+known to have afforded shelter to a number of
+those who had fled from the attack on the post.
+The hill was climbed with every military precaution,
+but only a few old monks were found in
+occupation of the buildings. More disappointing
+was the fact that an examination through telescopes
+of the rear of the jong showed that the
+Tibetans had been also building indefatigably
+there. A strong loopholed wall ran zigzagging up
+the side of the rock. It was clear that nothing
+could be done till the General returned from
+Chumbi with more troops and guns.</p>
+
+<p>For more than two weeks our rear remained
+absolutely open. The post, carried by mounted
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+infantry, came in and went out regularly. Two
+large convoys reached us unopposed. The only
+danger lay in the fact that people seen entering
+or leaving the post came under a heavy fire from
+the jong. To minimize risks, departures from the
+post were always made before dawn.</p>
+
+<p>During the two weeks streams of men could be
+seen entering the jong from both the Shigatze and
+Lhasa roads. Emboldened by numbers, and also
+by our non-aggressive attitude, the enemy began
+to cast about for means of taking the post. One
+of the first steps taken by the Tibetan General in
+pursuance of this policy was to occupy during the
+night a small house surrounded by trees, lying to
+our left front, almost midway between the jong
+and the post. On the morning of the 18th bullets
+from a new direction were whizzing in amongst
+us, and partly enfilading our traverses. This was
+not to be tolerated, and the same night arrangements
+were made for the capture of the position.</p>
+
+<p>Five companies stole out during the hours of
+darkness and surrounded the house. The rush,
+delivered at dawn, was left to the Gurkhas. But
+the entrance was found blocked with stones, and
+the enemy was thoroughly awake by the time the
+Gurkhas were under the wall. Luckily, the loopholes
+were not so constructed as to allow the
+Tibetans to fire their jingals down upon our men,
+who had only to bear the brunt of showers of
+stones thrown upon them from the roof. The
+shower was well directed enough to bruise a
+good many Gurkhas. Three officers were struck
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>&mdash;
+Major Murray, Lieutenant Lynch, and Lieutenant
+Franklin, I.M.S. Whilst the Gurkhas were
+striving to effect an entrance, the Pioneer companies
+deployed on the flanks came under
+a heavy fire from the jong. We had three men
+hit. One fell on a bit of very exposed ground,
+and was gallantly dragged under cover by Colonel
+Brander and Captain Minogue, Staff officer.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon evident that the Gurkhas would
+never get in without explosives. Accordingly, Lieutenant
+Gurdon, 32nd Pioneers, was sent to join
+them with a box of guncotton. Gurdon speedily
+blew a hole through the wall, and the Gurkhas
+dashed in yelling. The Tibetans on the roof could
+easily at this time have jumped off and escaped
+towards the jong. But they chose a braver part.
+They slid down into the middle of the courtyard,
+and, drawing their swords, awaited the Gurkha
+onset. I must not describe the pitiful struggle
+that followed. The Tibetans&mdash;about fifty in
+number&mdash;herded themselves together as if to
+meet a bayonet charge, but our troops, rushing
+through the door, extended themselves along the
+edges of the courtyard, and emptied their magazines
+into the mob. Within a minute all the fifty
+were either dead or mortally wounded.</p>
+
+<p>The house was hereafter held by a company of
+Gurkhas all through the bombardment, and proved
+a great thorn in the side of the enemy; for the
+Gurkhas often used to sally out at night and
+ambuscade parties of men and convoys on the
+Shigatze road.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_10">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_X"></a><span>CHAPTER X</span>
+
+<small>GYANTSE&mdash;<i>continued</i></small></h2>
+
+<p class="center">[<span class="smcap">By Henry Newman</span>]</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> the afternoon of the day on which the house
+was taken we were provided with a new excitement&mdash;continuous
+firing was heard to the rear of
+the post about a mile away. Captain Ottley
+galloped out with his mounted infantry, and
+was only just in time to save a party of his men
+who were coming up from Kangma with the
+letter-bags. These Sikhs&mdash;eight in number&mdash;were
+riding along the edge of the river, when they were
+met by a fusillade from a number of the enemy
+concealed amongst sedges on the opposite bank.
+Before the Sikhs could take cover, one man was
+killed, three wounded, and seven out of the eight
+horses shot down. The remaining men showed
+rare courage. They carried their wounded comrades
+under cover of a ditch, untied and brought
+to the same place the letter-bags, and then lay
+down and returned the fire of the enemy. The
+Tibetans, however, were beginning to creep round,
+and the ammunition of the Sikhs was running low,
+when Captain Ottley dashed up to the rescue.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+Without waiting to consider how many of the
+enemy might be hiding in the sedge, Ottley took
+his twenty men splashing through the river.
+Nearly 300 Tibetans bolted out in all directions
+like rabbits from a cover. The mounted infantry,
+shooting and smiting, chased them to the very
+edge of the plain. On reaching hilly ground the
+enemy, who must have lost about fifty of their
+number, began to turn, having doubtless realized
+that they were running before a handful of men.
+At the same time shots were fired from villages,
+previously thought unoccupied, on Ottley's left,
+and a body of matchlock men were seen running
+up to reinforce from a large village on the Lhasa
+road. Under these conditions it would have been
+madness to continue the fight, and Ottley cleverly
+and skilfully withdrew without having lost a
+single man. In the meanwhile a company of
+Pioneers had brought in the men wounded in the
+attack on the postal riders.</p>
+
+<p>This affair was even more significant than the
+occupation by the enemy of the position taken by
+the Gurkhas in the early morning. It showed
+that the Tibetan General had at last conceived a
+plan for cutting off our line of communications.
+This was a rude shock. It implied that the
+enemy had received reinforcements which were to
+be utilized for offensive warfare of the kind most
+to be feared by an invader. We knew that so
+long as our ammunition lasted there was absolutely
+no danger of the post being captured.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+But an enemy on the lines would certainly cause
+the greatest annoyance to, and might even cut
+off, our convoys. As it would be very difficult
+to get messages through, apprehensions as to
+our safety would be excited in the outer world.
+Further, General Macdonald's arrangements for
+the relief of the mission would have to be considerably
+modified if he were obliged to fight his
+way through to us.</p>
+
+<p>With the same prompt decision that marked his
+action with regard to the gathering on the Karo la,
+Colonel Brander determined on the very next day
+to clear the villages found occupied by the mounted
+infantry. As far as could be discovered, the
+villages were five in number, all on the right bank
+of the river, and occupying a position which could
+be roughly outlined as an equilateral triangle.
+Captain Ottley was sent round to the rear of the
+villages to cut off the retreat of the enemy; Captain
+Luke took his two mountain-guns, under cover of
+the right bank of the river, to a position whence he
+could support the infantry attack, if necessary, by
+shell fire. Two companies of Pioneers with one
+in reserve were sent forward to the attack.</p>
+
+<p>The first objective was two villages forming the
+base of the triangle of which I have spoken. The
+troops advanced cautiously, widely extended, but
+both villages were found deserted. They were set
+on fire. Then Captain Hodgson with a company
+went forward to the village forming the apex of
+the triangle. He came under a flanking fire from
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+the villages on the left, and had one man severely
+wounded. The houses in front seemed to be unoccupied,
+and our right might have been swung
+round to face this fire; but Colonel Brander was
+determined to do the work thoroughly, and Hodgson
+was directed to move on and burn the village
+ahead of him before changing front. The troops
+accordingly took no notice of the flanking fire,
+and moved on till they were under the walls of
+the two houses of which the village was composed.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly fire was opened on our soldiers from
+the upper windows of the two houses. All the doors
+were found blocked with bricks and stones. Two
+Sikhs dropped, and for the moment it seemed as
+if we would lose heavily. But Lieutenant Gurdon
+with half a dozen men rushed up with a box of
+explosives, and blew a breach in the wall. Two
+of the party helping to lay the fuse were killed by
+shots fired from a loophole a few feet above.
+Captain Hodgson was the first man through the
+breach. He was confronted by a swordsman, who
+cut hard just as Hodgson fired his revolver. The
+man fell dead, but Hodgson received a severe
+wound on the wrist. But this was the only man
+who stood after the explosion. About thirty
+others in the village rushed to the roofs of the
+houses, jumped off, and fled to the left. They
+came, however, under a very heavy fire as they
+were running away, and the majority dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were now made for taking the remaining
+village. This was protected by a high
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+loopholed embankment, which sheltered about
+five or six hundred of the enemy. The Pioneers
+had just extended, and were advancing, when
+someone who happened to be looking at the jong
+through his glasses suddenly uttered a loud exclamation.
+Turning round, we all saw a dense
+stream of men, several thousands in number,
+forming up at the base of the rock, evidently
+with the intention of rushing the mission post
+whilst the majority of the garrison and the guns
+were engaged elsewhere. Colonel Brander immediately
+gave the order for the whole force to
+retire into the post at the double. The withdrawal
+was effected before the Tibetans made
+their contemplated rush, but we all felt that it
+was rather a narrow shave.</p>
+
+<p>Troops were to have gone out again the next
+day to clear the village we had left untaken,
+but the mounted infantry reconnoitring in the
+morning reported that the enemy had fled,
+and that the lines of communication were again
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>On the succeeding day a large convoy and reinforcements
+under Major Peterson, 32nd Pioneers,
+came safely through. The additional troops included
+a section of No. 7 (British) Mountain
+Battery, under Captain Easton; one and a half
+companies of Sappers and Miners, under Captain
+Shepherd and Lieutenant Garstin; and another
+company of the 32nd Pioneers. Major Peterson
+reported that his convoy had come under a heavy
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+fire from the village and monastery of Naini.
+This monastery lies about seven miles from
+Gyantse in an opening of the valley just before
+the road turns into Gyantse Plain. It holds
+about 5,000 monks. When the column first
+passed by it, the monks were extremely friendly,
+bringing out presents of butter and eggs, and
+readily selling flour and meat. The monastery
+is surrounded by a wall thirty feet high, and at
+least ten feet thick. The buildings inside are
+also solidly built of stone. Altogether the position
+was a very difficult one to tackle, but Colonel
+Brander, following his usual policy, decided that
+the enemy must be turned out of it at all costs.
+Accordingly, on the 24th a column, which included
+Captain Easton's two guns, marched out to Naini.
+But the monastery and the group of buildings outside
+it were found absolutely deserted. The walls
+were far too heavy and strong to be destroyed by
+a small force, which had to return before nightfall,
+but Captain Shepherd blew up the four towers at
+the corners and a portion of the hall in which the
+Buddhas were enthroned.</p>
+
+<p>The 27th provided a new excitement. About
+1,000 yards to the right of the post stood what
+was known as the Palla House, the residence of a
+Tibetan nobleman of great wealth. The building
+consisted of a large double-storied house, surrounded
+by a series of smaller buildings, each
+within a courtyard of its own. During the night
+the Tibetans in the jong built a covered way
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+extending about half the distance between the
+jong and Palla. In the morning the latter place
+was seen to be swarming with men, busily occupied
+in erecting defences, making loopholes, and generally
+engaged in work of a menacing character.
+The enemy could less be tolerated in Palla than
+in the Gurkha outpost, for fire from the former
+would have taken us absolutely in the flank, and
+the garrison was not strong enough to provide the
+labour necessary for building an entirely new
+series of traverses.</p>
+
+<p>That very night Colonel Brander detailed the
+troops that were to take Palla by assault at
+dawn. The storming-party was composed of
+three companies of the 32nd under Major Peterson,
+assisted by the Sappers and Miners with
+explosives under Captain Shepherd. Our four
+mountain-guns, the 7-pounders under Captain
+Luke, and the 10-pounders under Captain Easton,
+escorted by a company of Gurkhas, were detailed
+to occupy a position on a ridge which overlooked
+Palla. The troops fell in at two in the morning.
+The night was pitch-dark, but with such care were
+the operations conducted that the troops had
+made a long détour, and got into their respective
+positions before dawn, without an alarm being
+raised.</p>
+
+<p>Daylight was just breaking when Captain Shepherd
+crept up to the wall of the house on the
+extreme left, where it was believed the majority
+of the enemy were located, and laid his explosives.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+A tremendous explosion followed, the
+whole side of the house falling in. A minute afterwards,
+and Palla was alarmed and firing furiously
+all round, and even up in the air. The jong also
+awoke, and from that time till the village was
+finally ours poured a continuous storm of bullets
+into Palla, regardless whether friend or foe was
+hit. Our guns on the ridge did their best to
+quiet the jong, but without much effect. Against
+Tibetan walls, provided as they are with head
+cover, our experience showed shrapnel to be
+almost entirely useless.</p>
+
+<p>A company of Pioneers followed Captain Shepherd
+into the breach he had made. But they
+found themselves only in a small courtyard, with
+no means of entering the rest of the village,
+except over or through high walls lined by the
+enemy. All that could be done was to blow in
+another breach. The preparations for doing this
+were attended with a good deal of danger. Of
+three men who attempted to rush across the
+courtyard, two were killed and the third mortally
+wounded. However, by creeping along under
+cover of the wall, Captain Shepherd and Lieutenant
+Garstin were able to lay the guncotton
+and light the fuse for another explosion. They
+were fired at from a distance of a few yards, but
+escaped being hit by a miracle. But the second
+explosion only led into another courtyard, from
+which there was also no exit. There was the
+same fire to be faced from the next house whilst
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+the needful preparations were being made for
+making a third breach.</p>
+
+<p>During the time Shepherd with his gallant lieutenants
+and equally gallant sepoys was working
+his way in from the left, the companies of Pioneers
+lining ditches and banks outside Palla were exposed
+to a persistent fire from about a hundred
+of the enemy inside the big two-storied house
+mentioned above. The men in this house&mdash;all
+Kham warriors&mdash;seemed to be filled with an extraordinary
+fury. Many exposed themselves boldly at
+the windows, calling to our men to come on. A
+dozen or so even climbed to the roof of the house,
+and danced about thereon in what seemed frantic
+derision. There was a Maxim on the ridge with
+the mountain-guns, the fire from which put an end
+to the fantastic display. Our rifle fire, however,
+seemed totally unable to check the Tibetan
+warriors in the loopholed windows. They kept
+up a fusillade which made a rush impossible.
+Major Peterson finally, with great daring, led a
+few men into the dwelling on the extreme right.
+The escalade was managed by means of a ruined
+tree which projected from the wall. But Peterson,
+like Shepherd, found himself in a courtyard
+with high walls which baffled further progress.</p>
+
+<p>The fight now began to drag. Hours passed
+without any signal incident. The Tibetans were
+greatly elated at the failure of our troops to make
+progress. They shouted and yelled, and were
+encouraged by answering cheers from the jong.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+Then about mid-day the jong Commandant conceived
+the idea of reinforcing Palla. A dozen
+men mounted on black mules, followed by about
+fifty infantry, suddenly dashed out from the half-completed
+covered way mentioned above, and
+made for the village. This party was absolutely
+annihilated. As soon as it emerged from the
+covered way it came under the fire, not only of
+the troops round the village and on the hill, but
+of the Maxim on the roof of the mission-house.
+In three minutes every single man and mule was
+down, except one animal with a broken leg,
+gazing disconsolately at the body of its master.</p>
+
+<p>This disaster evidently shook the Tibetans in
+Palla. Their fire slackened. Captain Luke on
+the ridge was then directed to put some common
+shell into the roof of the double-storied house.
+He dropped the shells exactly where they were
+wanted, and so disconcerted the enemy that
+Shepherd was able to resume his preparations
+for making a way into the Tibetan stronghold.
+But he still had to face an awkward fire, and the
+three further breaches he made were attended
+by the loss of several men, including Lieutenant
+Garstin, shot through the head. But the last
+explosion led our troops into the big house.
+Tibetan resistance then practically ceased. About
+twenty or thirty men made an attempt to get
+away to the jong, but the majority were shot
+down before they could reach the covered way.</p>
+
+<p>In this affair our total casualties were twenty-three.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+In addition to Lieutenant Garstin, we had
+seven men killed. The wounded included Captain
+O'Connor, R.A., secretary to the mission, and
+Lieutenant Mitchell, 32nd Pioneers. The enemy
+must have lost quite 250 in killed and wounded.
+The position at Palla was too important to be
+abandoned, and for the rest of the bombardment
+it was held by a company of Sikhs. In order to
+provide free communication both day and night,
+Captain Shepherd, with his usual energy, dug a
+covered way from the post to the village.</p>
+
+<p>The fight at Palla was the last affair of any
+importance in which the garrison was engaged
+pending the arrival of the relieving force. The
+Tibetans had received such a shock that in future
+they confined themselves practically to the defensive,
+if we except five half-hearted night
+attacks which were never anywhere near being
+pushed home. There were no more attempts to
+interrupt our lines of communication, though
+later on Naini was again occupied as part of the
+Tibetan scheme for resisting General Macdonald's
+advance. The jong Commandant devoted his
+energies chiefly to strengthening his already strong
+position.</p>
+
+<p>The night attacks were all very similar in character,
+and may be summed up and dismissed in a
+paragraph. Generally about midnight, bands of
+Tibetans would issue from the jong and take up
+their position about four or five hundred yards from
+the post. Then they would shout wildly, and fire
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+off their matchlocks and Martini rifles. The troops
+would immediately rush to their loopholes, clad
+in impossible garments, and wait shivering in the
+cold, finger on trigger, for the rush that never
+came. After shouting and firing for about an
+hour, the Tibetans would retire to the jong and
+our troops creep back to their beds. On no occasion
+did the enemy come close enough to be seen
+in the dark. We never fired a single shot from
+the post. Twice, however, the Gurkha outpost
+and the Sikhs at Palla were enabled to get in
+a few volleys at Tibetans as they slunk past.
+During the night attacks the jong remained silent,
+except on one occasion, when there was so much
+firing from the Gurkha outpost that the enemy
+thought we were about to make a counter-attack.
+Every jingal, musket, and rifle in the jong was
+then loosed off in any and every direction. We
+even heard firing in the rear of the monastery.
+Although no one was hit in this wild fire, the
+volume of it was ominously indicative of the
+strength in which the jong was held.</p>
+
+<p>But even more ominous against the day when
+our troops should be called upon to take the jong
+were the defensive preparations mentioned above.
+Nearly every morning we found that during the
+night the enemy had built up a new wall or covered
+way somewhere on the jong or about the village
+that fringed the base of the rock. When the
+fortress was fortified as strongly as Tibetan wit
+could devise, the jong Commandant began to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+fortify and place in a position of defence the
+villages and monasteries on his right and left.
+It was calculated that, from the small monastery
+perched on the hills to his left to Tsechen Monastery
+on a ridge to his right, the Tibetan General
+had occupied and fortified a position with nearly
+seven miles of front.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp182-1"></a><a href="images/fp182-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp182-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Golden-roofed Temple, Gyantse.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp182-2"></a><a href="images/fp182-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp182-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Buddhas in Palkhor Choide.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whilst the Tibetans were engaged in making
+these preparations, our garrison was busy collecting
+forage for the enormous number of animals
+coming up with the relief column. Our rear being
+absolutely open, small parties with mules were
+able to collect quantities of hay from villages
+within a radius of seven miles behind us. It was
+the fire opened on these parties when they attempted
+to push to the right or left of the jong
+which first revealed to us the full extent of the
+defensive position occupied by the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>On June 6 Colonel Younghusband left the post
+with a returning convoy, in order to confer with
+the General at Chumbi. This convoy was attacked
+whilst halting at the entrenched post at
+Kangma. The enemy in this instance came down
+from the Karo la, and it is for this reason that I
+do not include the Kangma attack amongst the
+operations at and around Gyantse.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till June 15 that we got definite news
+of the approaching advance of the relief column.
+Reinforcements had come up to Chumbi from
+India in the interval, and the General was accompanied
+by the 2nd Mounted Infantry under Captain
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+Peterson, No. 7 British Mountain Battery
+under Major Fuller, a section of No. 30 Native
+Mountain Battery under Captain Marindin, four
+companies of the Royal Fusiliers under Colonel
+Cooper, four companies of the 40th Pathans under
+Colonel Burn, five companies of the 23rd Pioneers
+under Colonel Hogge, and the two remaining companies
+of the 8th Gurkhas under Colonel Kerr,
+together with the usual medical and other details.</p>
+
+<p>The force arrived at Kangma on June 23. On
+the 25th a party of mounted infantry from Gyantse
+met Captain Peterson's mounted infantry reconnoitring
+at the monastery of Naini, previously
+mentioned. Whilst greetings were being exchanged
+a sudden fire was opened on our men
+from the monastery, which the enemy had apparently
+occupied and fortified during the night.
+The position was apparently held in strength, and
+the mounted infantry had no other course except
+to retire to their respective camps. Captain
+Peterson had one man mortally wounded.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 26th the sentries at the
+mission post saw about twenty mounted men,
+followed by two or three hundred infantry, issue
+from the rear of the jong and creep up the hills
+on our left in the direction of Naini. It was
+evident that a determined effort was to be made
+at the monastery to check the advance of the
+relief column, which was expected at Gyantse
+next day. Colonel Brander came to the conclusion
+that he had found an opportunity for catching
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+the Tibetans in a trap. He determined to
+send out a force which would block the retreat of
+the enemy when they retired before the advance
+of the relief column. Accordingly, before dawn
+four companies of Pioneers, four guns, and the
+Maxim gun left the post, and ascended the hills
+overlooking the monastery. Captain Ottley's
+mounted infantry were directed to close the road
+leading directly from Gyantse to the monastery.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Brander's forces were in position some
+hours before the mounted infantry of the relief
+column appeared in sight. It was discovered that
+the enemy not only held the monastery, but some
+ruined towers on the hill above, and a cluster of
+one-storied dwellings in a grove below. Captain
+Peterson with his mounted infantry appeared in
+front of the monastery at eleven o'clock. He
+had with him a company of the 40th Pathans,
+and his orders were to clear the monastery with
+this small force, if the enemy made no signs of a
+stubborn resistance. Otherwise he was to await
+the arrival of more troops with the mountain-guns.</p>
+
+<p>Peterson delivered his attack from the left,
+having dismounted his troopers, who, together
+with the 40th Pathans, were soon very hotly
+engaged. The troops came under a heavy fire
+both from the monastery and from a ruined
+tower above it, but advanced most gallantly.
+When under the walls of the monastery, they
+were checked for some time by the difficulty of
+finding a way in. In the meanwhile, hearing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+heavy firing, the General and his Staff, followed
+by Major Fuller's battery and the rest of the
+40th, had hastened up. The battery came into
+action against the tower, and the 40th rushed up
+in support of their comrades. Colonel Brander's
+guns and Maxim on the top of the hill were also
+brought into play. For nearly an hour a furious
+cannonade and fusillade raged. Then the Pathans
+and Peterson's troopers, circling round the walls
+of the monastery, found a ramp up which they
+could climb. They swarmed up, and were quickly
+inside the building. But the Tibetans had realized
+that their retreat was cut off, and, instead of
+making a clean bolt for it, only retired slowly from
+room to room and passage to passage. Two companies
+of the 23rd were sent up to assist in clearing
+the monastery. It proved a perfect warren of dark
+cells and rooms. The Tibetan resistance lasted
+for over two hours. Bands of desperate swordsmen
+were found in knots under trap-doors and
+behind sharp turnings. They would not surrender,
+and had to be killed by rifle shots fired at
+a distance of a few feet.</p>
+
+<p>While the monastery was being cleared, another
+fight had developed in the cluster of dwellings outside
+it to the right. From this spot Tibetan riflemen
+were enfilading our troops held in reserve.
+The remaining companies of the 23rd were sent
+to clear away the enemy. They took three houses,
+but could not effect an entrance into the fourth,
+which was very strongly barricaded. Lieutenant
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+Turnbull, walking up to a window with a section,
+had three men hit in a few seconds. One man fell
+directly under the window. Turnbull carried him
+into safety in the most gallant fashion. Then the
+General ordered up the guns, which fired into the
+house at a range of a few hundred yards. But not
+till it was riddled with great gaping holes made by
+common shell did the fire from the house cease.</p>
+
+<p>At about three o'clock the Tibetan resistance
+had completely died away, and the column resumed
+its march towards Gyantse, which was not
+reached till dark. But as the transport was
+making its slow way past Naini, about half a
+dozen Tibetans who had remained in hiding in
+the monastery and village opened fire on it. The
+Gurkha rearguard had a troublesome task in
+clearing these men out, and lost one man killed.</p>
+
+<p>In this affair at Naini our casualties were six
+killed and nine wounded, including Major Lye,
+23rd Pioneers, who received a severe sword-cut
+in the hand.</p>
+
+<p>The General's camp was pitched about a mile
+from the mission post, well out of range of the
+jong, though our troops whilst crossing the river
+came under fire from some of the bigger jingals.
+The next day was one of rest, which the troops
+badly needed after their long march from Chumbi.
+The Tibetans in the jong also refrained from firing.
+On the 29th the General began the operations intended
+to culminate in the capture of the jong.
+His objective was Tsechen Monastery, on the extreme
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+left. But before the monastery could be
+attacked, some twelve fortified villages between
+it and the river had to be cleared. It proved
+a difficult task, not so much on account of the
+resistance offered by the enemy&mdash;for after a few
+idle shots the Tibetans quickly retired on the
+monastery&mdash;as because of the nature of the ground
+that had to be traversed. The whole country
+was a network of deep irrigation channels and
+water-cuts, in the fording and crossing of which
+the troops got wet to the skin. However, by four
+in the afternoon all the villages had been cleared,
+and the Fusiliers were lying in a long grove under
+the right front of the monastery.</p>
+
+<p>It was then discovered that not only was
+Tsechen very strongly held, but that masses of
+the enemy were lying behind the rocks on the
+top of the ridge, on the summit of which there
+was a ruined tower, also held by fifty or sixty
+men. The General sent two companies of Gurkhas
+to scale the ridge from the left, whilst the 40th
+Pathans were ordered to make a direct assault on
+the monastery. A hundred mounted infantry
+made their way to the rear to cut off the retreat
+of the enemy. Fuller and Marindin with their
+guns covered the advance of the infantry. Four
+Maxims were also brought into action. Our guns
+made splendid practice on the top of the ridge,
+and time and again we could see the enemy bolting
+from cover. But with magnificent bravery
+they would return to oppose the advance of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+Gurkhas creeping round their flank. The guns
+had presently to cease fire to enable the Gurkhas
+to get nearer. A series of desperate little fights
+then took place on the top of the ridge, the
+Tibetans slinging and throwing stones when they
+found they could not load their muskets quickly
+enough. But as the Gurkhas would not be
+stopped, the Tibetans had to move. In the
+meanwhile the Pathans worked through the
+monastery below, only meeting with small resistance
+from a band of men in one house. The
+Tibetans fled in a mass over the right edge of
+the ridge into the jaws of the mounted infantry
+lying in wait below. Slaughter followed.</p>
+
+<p>It was now quite dark, and the troops made
+their way back to camp. Next morning a party
+went up to Tsechen, found it entirely deserted,
+and set fire to it. The taking of the monastery
+cost us the lives of Captain Craster, 40th Pathans,
+and two sepoys. Our wounded numbered ten,
+including Captains Bliss and Humphreys, 8th
+Gurkhas.</p>
+
+<p>On July 1 the General intended assaulting the
+jong, but in the interval the jong Commandant
+sent in a flag of truce. He prayed for an armistice
+pending the arrival of three delegates who were
+posting down from Lhasa with instructions to
+make peace. As Colonel Younghusband had been
+directed to lose no opportunity of bringing affairs
+to an end at Gyantse, the armistice was granted,
+and two days afterwards the delegates, all
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+Lamas, were received in open durbar in a large
+room in the mission post. Colonel Younghusband,
+after having satisfied himself that the delegates
+possessed proper credentials, made them a speech.
+He reviewed the history of the mission, pointing
+out that we had only come to Gyantse because of
+the obstinacy and evasion of the Tibetan officials,
+who could easily have treated with us at Khamba
+Jong and again at Tuna, had they cared to. We
+were perfectly willing to come to terms here, and
+it rested with the peace delegates whether we went
+on to Lhasa or not. Younghusband then informed
+the delegates that he was prepared to open
+negociations on the next day. The delegates were
+due at eleven next morning, but they did not put
+in an appearance till three. They were then told
+that as a preliminary they must surrender the
+jong by noon on the succeeding day. They
+demurred a great deal, but the Commissioner was
+quite firm, and they went away downcast, with
+the assurance that if the jong was not surrendered
+we should take it by force. Younghusband, however,
+added that after the capture of the fort he
+was perfectly willing to open negociations again.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, shortly after noon, a signal gun was
+fired to indicate that the armistice was at an
+end, and the General forthwith began his preparations
+to storm the formidable hill fortress.
+The Tibetans had taken advantage of the armistice
+to build more walls and sangars. No one
+could look at the bristling jong without realizing
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+how difficult was the task before our troops, and
+without anxiety as to the outcome of the assault
+in killed and wounded. But we all knew that
+the jong had to be taken, whatever the cost.</p>
+
+<p>Operations began in the afternoon, the General
+making a demonstration against the left face of
+the jong and Palkhor Choide Monastery. Fuller's
+battery took up a position about 1,600 yards
+from the jong. Five companies of infantry were
+extended on either flank. Both the jong and
+monastery opened fire on our troops, and we
+had one man mortally wounded. The General's
+intention, however, was only to deceive the
+Tibetans into thinking that we intended to assault
+from that side. As soon as dusk fell, the troops
+were withdrawn and preparations made for the
+real assault.</p>
+
+<p>The south-eastern face of the rock on which the
+jong is built is most precipitous, yet this was
+exactly the face which the General decided to
+storm. His reasons, I imagine, were that the fringe
+of houses at the base of the rock was thinnest on
+this side, and that the very multiplicity of sangars
+and walls that the enemy had built prevented
+their having the open field of fire necessary to
+stop a rush. Moreover, down the middle of the
+rock ran a deep fissure or cleft, which was commanded,
+the General noticed, by no tower or
+loopholed wall. At two points, however, the
+Tibetans had built walls across the fissure. The
+first of these the General believed could be
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+breached by our artillery. Our troops through
+that could work their way round to either flank,
+and so into the heart of the jong.</p>
+
+<p>The plan of operations was very simple. Before
+dawn three columns were to rush the fringe of
+houses at the base. Then was to follow a storm
+of artillery fire directed on all the salient points
+of the jong, after which our guns were to make a
+breach in the lower wall across the cleft up which
+the storming-party was later on to climb.</p>
+
+<p>The action turned out exactly as was planned,
+with the exception that the fighting lasted much
+longer than was expected, for the Tibetans made
+a heroic resistance. The troops were astir shortly
+after midnight. The night was very dark, and
+the necessary deployment of the three columns
+took some hours. However, an hour before dawn
+the troops had begun their cautious advance, the
+General and his Staff taking up their position at
+Palla. The alarm was not given till our leading
+files were within twenty yards of the fringe of
+houses at the base of the rock. The storm of fire
+which then burst from the jong was an alarming
+indication of the strength in which it was held.
+The heavy jingals were all directed on Palla, and
+the General and his Staff had many narrow
+escapes. As on the previous occasion when the
+jong bombarded us at night, there were moments
+when every building in it seemed outlined in
+flame.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three columns, only that on the extreme
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+left, Gurkhas under Major Murray, was able to
+get in at once. The other two columns were for
+the time being checked, so bullet-swept was the
+open space they had to cross. From time to time
+small parties of two or three dashed across in the
+dark, and gained the shelter of the walls of the
+houses in front. There were barely twenty men
+and half a dozen officers across when Captain
+Shepherd blew in the walls of the house most
+strongly held. The storming-party came under
+a most heavy fire from the jong above. Among
+those hit was Lieutenant Gurdon, of the 32nd.
+He was shot through the head, and died almost
+immediately. The breach made by Shepherd was
+the point to which most of the men of the centre
+and right columns made, but their progress became
+very slow when daylight appeared and the
+Tibetans could see what they were firing at. It
+was not till nearly nine o'clock that the whole
+fringe of houses at the base of the front face of
+the rock was in our possession.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed several hours of cannonading and
+small-arms fire. The position the troops had now
+won was commanded almost absolutely from the
+jong. It was found impossible to return the
+Tibetan fire from the roofs of the houses we had
+occupied without exposing the troops in an unnecessary
+degree, but loopholes were hastily made
+in the walls of the rooms below, and the 40th
+Pathans were sent into a garden on the extreme
+right, where some cover was to be had. Colonel
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+Campbell, commanding the first line, was able to
+show the enemy that our marksmen were still in
+a position to pick off such Tibetans as were rash
+enough to unduly expose themselves. In the
+meanwhile, Luke's guns on the extreme right,
+Fuller's battery at Palla, and Marindin's guns at
+the Gurkha outpost threw a stream of shrapnel
+on all parts of the jong.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not till four o'clock in the afternoon
+that the General decided that the time had come
+to make the breach aforementioned. The reserve
+companies of Gurkhas and Fusiliers were sent
+across from Palla in the face of very heavy jingal
+and rifle fire, and took cover in the houses we had
+occupied. In the meanwhile Fuller was directed
+to make the breach. So magnificent was the
+shooting made by his guns that a dozen rounds
+of common shell, planted one below the other,
+had made a hole large enough for active men
+to clamber through. The enemy quickly saw the
+purport of the breach. Dozens of men could be
+distinctly seen hurrying to the wall above it.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Gurkhas and Fusiliers began their
+perilous ascent. The nimble Gurkhas, led by
+Lieutenant Grant, soon outpaced the Fusiliers,
+and in ten brief minutes forty or fifty of them
+were crouching under the breach. The Tibetans,
+finding their fire could not stop us, tore great
+stones from the walls and rolled them down the
+cleft. Dozens of men were hit and bruised.
+Presently Grant was through the breach, followed
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+by fifteen or twenty flushed and shouting men.
+The breach won, the only thought of the enemy
+was flight. They made their way by the back
+of the jong into the monastery. By six o'clock
+every building in the great fortress was in our
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>Our casualties in this affair were forty-three&mdash;Lieutenant
+Gurdon and seven men killed, and
+twelve officers, including the gallant Grant, and
+twenty-three men wounded. These casualties
+exclude a number of men cut and bruised with
+stones.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning the monastery was found deserted.
+It was reported that the bulk of the
+enemy had fled to Dongtse, about ten miles up
+the Shigatze road. A column was sent thither,
+but found the place empty, except for a very
+humble and submissive monk.</p>
+
+<p>On the 14th, having waited for over a week in
+the hope of the peace delegates putting in an
+appearance, the force started on its march to
+Lhasa.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_11">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><span>CHAPTER XI</span>
+
+<small>GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT</small></h2>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Ari, Sikkim</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>June 24</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I write</span> in an old forest rest-house on the borders
+of British Bhutan.</p>
+
+<p>The place is quiet and pastoral; climbing roses
+overhang the roof and invade the bedrooms;
+martins have built their nests in the eaves;
+cuckoos are calling among the chestnuts down
+the hill. Outside is a flower-garden, gay with
+geraniums and petunias and familiar English
+plants that have overrun their straggling borders
+and scattered themselves in the narrow plot of
+grass that fringes the forest. Some Government
+officer must have planted them years ago, and
+left them to fight it out with Nature and the
+caretaker.</p>
+
+<p>The forest has encroached, and it is hard to say
+where Nature's hand or Art's begins and ends.
+Beside a rose-bush there has sprung up the solid
+pink club of the wild ginger, and from a bed of
+amaryllis a giant arum raises itself four feet
+in its dappled, snake-like sheath. Gardens have
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+most charm in spots like this, where their mingled
+trimness and neglect contrast with the insolent
+unconcern of an encroaching forest.</p>
+
+<p>At Ari I am fifty miles from Darjeeling, on the
+road to Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>On June 21 I set my face to Lhasa for the
+second time. I took another route to Chumbi,
+viâ Kalimpong and Pedong in British Bhutan.
+The road is no further, but it compasses some
+arduous ascents. On the other hand it avoids
+the low, malarious valleys of Sikkim, where the
+path is constantly carried away by slips. There
+is less chance of a block, and one is above the
+cholera zone. The Jelap route, which I strike
+to-morrow, is closed, owing to cholera and land-slips,
+so that I shall not touch the line of communications
+until within a few miles of Chumbi, in
+which time my wound will have had a week longer
+to heal before I risk a medical examination and
+the chance of being sent back. The relief column
+is due at Gyantse in a few days; it depends on
+the length of the operations there whether I
+catch the advance to Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>Through avoiding the Nathu-la route to
+Chumbi I had to arrange my own transport. In
+Darjeeling my coolies bolted without putting a
+pack on their backs. More were secured; these
+disappeared in the night at Kalimpong without
+waiting to be paid. Pack-ponies were hired to
+replace them, but these are now in a state of
+collapse. Arguing, and haggling, and hectoring,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+and blarneying, and persuading are wearisome at
+all times, but more especially in these close steamy
+valleys, where it is too much trouble to lift an
+eyelid, and the air induces an almost immoral
+state of lassitude, in which one is tempted to dole
+out silver indifferently to anyone who has it in
+his power to oil the wheels of life. I could fill a
+whole chapter with a jeremiad on transport, but
+it is enough to indicate, to those who go about in
+vehicles, that there are men on the road to Tibet
+now who would beggar themselves and their
+families for generations for a macadamized highway
+and two hansom cabs to carry them and their
+belongings smoothly to Lhasa. Before I reached
+Kalimpong I wished I had never left the 'radius.'
+No one should embark on Asiatic travel who is
+not thoroughly out of harmony with civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The servant question is another difficulty. No
+native bearer wishes to join the field force. Why
+should he? He has to cook and pack and do
+the work of three men; he has to make long, exhausting
+marches; he is exposed to hunger, cold,
+and fatigue; he may be under fire every day;
+and he knows that if he falls into the hands of the
+Tibetans, like the unfortunate servants of Captain
+Parr at Gyantse, he will be brutally murdered and
+cut up into mincemeat. In return for which he
+is fed and clothed, and earns ten rupees more a
+month than he would in the security of his own
+home. After several unsuccessful trials, I have
+found one Jung Bir, a Nepali bearer, who is
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+attached to me because I forget sometimes to
+ask for my bazaar account, and do not object
+to his being occasionally drunk. In Tibet the
+poor fellow will have little chance of drinking.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp198-1"></a><a href="images/fp198-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp198-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Tsachen Monastery.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp198-2"></a><a href="images/fp198-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp198-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Group of Shapés parleying.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>My first man lost his nerve altogether, and, when
+told to work, could only whine out that his father
+and mother were not with him. My next applicant
+was an opium-eater, prematurely bent and aged,
+with the dazed look of a toad that has been incarcerated
+for ages in a rock, and is at last restored
+to light and the world by the blow of a mason's
+hammer. He wanted money to buy more dreams,
+and for this he was willing to expose his poor old
+body to hardships that would have killed him in
+a month. Jung Bir was a Gurkha and more
+martial. His first care on being engaged was
+to buy a long and heavy chopper&mdash;'for making
+mince,' he said; but I knew it was for the Tibetans.</p>
+
+<p>To reach Ari one has to descend twice, crossing
+the Teesta at 700 feet, and the Russett Chu at
+1,500 feet. These valleys are hotter than the
+plains of India. The streams run east and west,
+and the cliffs on both sides catch the heat of
+the early morning sun and hold it all day. The
+closeness, the refraction from the rocks, and the
+evaporation of the water, make the atmosphere
+almost suffocating, and one feels the heat the
+more intensely by the change from the bracing air
+above. Crossing the Teesta, one enters British
+Bhutan, a strip of land of less than 300 square
+miles on the left bank of the river. It was ceded
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+to us with other territories by the treaty of 1865;
+or, in plain words, it was annexed by us as a
+punishment for the outrage on Sir Ashley Eden,
+the British Envoy, who was captured and grossly
+insulted by the Bhutanese at Punakha in the
+previous year. The Bhutanese were as arrogant,
+exclusive, and impossible to deal with, in those
+days, as the Tibetans are to-day. Yet they have
+been brought into line, and are now our friends.
+Why should not the Tibetans, who are of the
+same stock, yield themselves to enlightenment?
+Their evolution would be no stranger.</p>
+
+<p>Nine miles above the Teesta bridge is Kalimpong,
+the capital of British Bhutan, and virtually
+the foreign mart for what trade passes out of Tibet.
+The Tomos of the Chumbi Valley, who have the
+monopoly of the carrying, do not go further south
+than this. At Kalimpong I found a horse-dealer
+with a good selection of 'Bhutia tats.' These excellent
+little beasts are now well known to be as
+strong and plucky a breed of mountain ponies as
+can be found anywhere. I discovered that their
+fame is not merely modern when I came across
+what must be the first reference to them in
+history in the narrative of Master Ralph Fitch,
+England's pioneer to India. 'These northern
+merchants,' says Fitch, speaking of the Bhutia,
+'report that in their countrie they haue very
+good horses, but they be litle.' The Bhutias
+themselves, equally ubiquitous in the Sikkim
+Himalayas, but not equally indispensable, Fitch
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+describes to the letter. At Kalimpong I found
+them dirty, lazy, good-natured, independent
+rascals, possessed, apparently, of wealth beyond
+their deserts, for hard work is as alien to their
+character as straight dealing. Even the drovers
+will pay a coolie good wages to cut grass for
+them rather than walk a mile downhill to fetch
+it themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The main street of Kalimpong is laid out in
+the correct boulevard style, with young trees protected
+by tubs and iron railings. It is dominated
+by the church of the Scotch Mission, whose steeple
+is a landmark for miles. The place seems to be
+overrun with the healthiest-looking English children
+I have seen anywhere, whose parents are
+given over to very practical good works.</p>
+
+<p>I took the Bhutan route chiefly to avoid running
+the gauntlet of the medicals; but another inducement
+was the prospect of meeting Father Desgodins,
+a French Roman Catholic, Vicar Apostolic
+of the Roman Catholic Mission to Western Tibet,
+who, after fifty years' intimacy with various
+Mongol types, is probably better acquainted with
+the Tibetans than any other living European.</p>
+
+<p>I met Father Desgodins at Pedong. The rest-house
+here looks over the valley to his symmetrical
+French presbytery and chapel, perched on
+the hillside amid waving maize-fields, whose spring
+verdure is the greenest in the world. Scattered
+over the fields are thatched Lamas' houses and
+low-storied gompas, with overhanging eaves and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+praying-flags&mdash;'horses of the wind,' as the Tibetans
+picturesquely call them, imagining that the prayers
+inscribed on them are carried to the good god,
+whoever he may be, who watches their particular
+fold and fends off intruding spirits as well as
+material invaders.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the presbytery are terraced rice-fields,
+irrigated by perennial streams, and bordered by
+thick artemisia scrub, which in the hot sun, after
+rain, sends out an aromatic scent, never to be
+dissociated in travellers' dreams and reveries
+from these great southern slopes of the Himalayas.</p>
+
+<p>Père Desgodins is an erect old gentleman with
+quiet, steely gray eyes and a tawny beard now
+turning gray. He is known to few Englishmen,
+but his adventurous travels in Tibet and his
+devoted, strenuous life are known throughout
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>He was sent out from France to the Tibet
+Mission shortly after the murder of Krick and
+Bourry by the Mishmis. Failing to enter Tibet
+from the south through Sikkim, he made preparations
+for an entry by Ladak. His journey
+was arrested by the Indian Mutiny, when he was
+one of the besieged at Agra. He afterwards
+penetrated Western Tibet as far as Khanam,
+but was recalled to the Chinese side, where he
+spent twenty-two perilous and adventurous
+years in the establishment of the mission at
+Batang and Bonga. The mission was burnt
+down and the settlement expelled by the Lamas.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+In 1888 Father Desgodins was sent to Pedong,
+his present post, as Pro-vicar of the Mission to
+Western Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the present situation in Tibet,
+Father Desgodins expressed astonishment at our
+policy of folded arms.</p>
+
+<p>'You have missed the occasion,' he said; 'you
+should have made your treaty with the Tibetans
+themselves in 1888. You could have forced them
+to treat then, when they were unprepared for a
+military invasion. You should have said to them'&mdash;here
+Père Desgodins took out his watch&mdash;'"It
+is now one o'clock. Sign that treaty by five, or
+we advance to-morrow." What could they have
+done? Now you are too late. They have
+been preparing for this for the last fifteen
+years.'</p>
+
+<p>Father Desgodins was right. It is the old story
+of ill-advised conciliation and forbearance. We
+were afraid of the bugbear of China. The British
+Government says to her victim after the chastisement:
+'You've had your lesson. Now run off
+and be good.' And the spoilt child of arrested
+civilization runs off with his tongue in his cheek
+and learns to make new arms and friends. The
+British Government in the meantime sleeps in
+smug complacency, and Exeter Hall is appeased.</p>
+
+<p>'But why did you not treat with the Tibetans
+themselves?' Père Desgodins asked. 'China!'&mdash;here
+he made an expressive gesture&mdash;'I have
+known China for fifty years. She is not your
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+friend.' Of course it is to the interest of China
+to keep the tea monopoly, and to close the market
+to British India. Travellers on the Chinese
+borders are given passports and promises of assistance,
+but the natives of the districts they traverse
+are ordered to turn them back and place every
+obstacle in their way. Nobody knows this better
+than Father Desgodins. China's policy is the
+same with nations as with individuals. She will
+always profess willingness to help, but protest
+that her subjects are unmanageable and out of
+hand. Why, then, deal with China at all? We
+can only answer that she had more authority in
+Lhasa in 1888. Moreover, we were more afraid
+of offending her susceptibilities. But that bubble
+has burst.</p>
+
+<p>Others who hold different views from Père
+Desgodins say that this very unruliness of her
+vassal ought to make China welcome our intervention
+in Tibet, if we engage to respect her claims
+there when we have subdued the Lamas. This
+policy might certainly point a temporary way out
+of the muddle, whereby we could save our face
+and be rid of the Tibet incubus for perhaps a year.
+But the plan of leaving things to the suzerain
+Power has been tried too often.</p>
+
+<p>As I rode down the Pedong street from the presbytery
+someone called me by name, and a little,
+smiling, gnome-like man stepped out of a whitewashed
+office. It was Phuntshog, a Tibetan
+friend whom I had known six years previously
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+on the North-East frontier. I dismounted, expecting
+entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>The office was bare of furniture save a new
+writing-table and two chairs, but heaped round
+the walls were piles of cast steel and iron plates
+and files and pipes for bellows. Phuntshog explained
+that he was frontier trade examiner, and
+that the steel had been purchased in Calcutta
+by a Lama last year, and was confiscated on the
+frontier as contraband. It was material for an
+armoury. The spoilt child was making new
+arms, like the schoolboy who exercises his muscle
+to avenge himself after a beating.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you get much of this sort of thing?' I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Not now,' he said; 'they have given up trying
+to get it through this way.'</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago eight Mohammedans, experts
+in rifle manufacture, had been decoyed from a
+Calcutta factory to Lhasa. Two had died there,
+and one I traced at Yatung. His wife had not
+been allowed to pass the barrier, but he was
+given a Tibetan helpmate. The wife lived some
+months at Yatung, and used to receive large
+instalments from her husband; once, I was told,
+as much as Rs. 1,400. But he never came back.
+The Tibetans have learned to make rifles for
+themselves now. Phuntshog had a story about
+another suspicious character, a mysterious Lama
+who arrived in Darjeeling in 1901 from Calcutta
+with 5,000 alms bowls for Tibet, which he said
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+he had purchased in Germany. The man was
+detained in Darjeeling five months under police
+espionage, and finally sent back to Calcutta.</p>
+
+<p>Our Intelligence Department on this frontier
+is more alert than it used to be. Dorjieff,
+Phuntshog told me, had been to Darjeeling
+twice, and stayed in a trader's house at
+Kalimpong several days. He wore the dress
+of a Lama. The ostensible object of his
+journey was to visit the sacred Chorten at
+Khatmandu and the shrines of Benares. He
+visited these, and was known to spend some
+time in Calcutta. On the occasion of the mission
+to St. Petersburg Dorjieff and his colleagues
+entered India through Nepal, took train to Bombay,
+and shipped thence to Odessa. The discovery
+of the Lamas' visit to India was almost
+simultaneous with their departure from Bombay.</p>
+
+<p>Phuntshog is not an admirer of our Tibetan
+policy. We ought to have laid ourselves out, he
+said, to influence the Lamas by secret agents, as
+Russia did. There was no chance of a compromise
+now; they would fight to the death.
+Phuntshog said much more which I suspected
+was inspired by the daily newspapers, so I
+questioned him as to the feelings of the natives
+of the district.</p>
+
+<p>'The feeling of patriotism is extinct,' he said;
+and he looked at his stomach, showing that he
+spoke the truth. 'We Tibetan British subjects
+are fed well and paid well by your Government.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+We want nothing more. My family are here.
+Now I have no trade to examine.' His eyes
+slowly surveyed the room, glanced over his office
+table, with its pen and ink and blank paper,
+lit on the 150 maunds of cast-steel, and finally
+rested on two volumes by his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you read much?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Sometimes,' he said. 'I have learnt a good
+deal from these books.'</p>
+
+<p>They were the Holy Bible and Miss Braddon's
+'Dead Men's Shoes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Phuntshog,' I said, 'you are a psychological
+enigma. Your mind is like that cast-iron huddled
+in the corner there, bought in an enlightened
+Western city and destined for your benighted
+Lhasa, but stuck halfway. Only it was going
+the other way. You don't understand? Neither
+do I.'</p>
+
+<p>And here at Ari, as I look across the valley of
+the Russett Chu to Pedong, and hear the vesper
+bell, I cannot help thinking of that strange conflict
+of minds&mdash;the devotee who, seeing further
+than most men, has cared nothing for the things
+of this incarnation, and Phuntshog, the strange
+hybrid product of restless Western energies, stirring
+and muddying the shallows of the Eastern
+mind. Or are they depths?</p>
+
+<p>Who knows? I know nothing, only that these
+men are inscrutable, and one cannot see into their
+hearts.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_12">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><span>CHAPTER XII</span>
+
+<small>TO THE GREAT RIVER</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">I reached</span> Gyantse on July 12. The advance to
+Lhasa began on the 14th. As might be expected
+from the tone of the delegates, peace negociations
+fell through. The Lhasa Government seemed to
+be chaotic and conveniently inaccessible. The
+Dalai Lama remained a great impersonality, and
+the four Shapés or Councillors disclaimed all
+responsibility. The Tsong-du, or National Assembly,
+who virtually governed the country, had
+sent us no communication. The delegates' attitude
+of <i>non possumus</i> was not assumed. Though
+these men were the highest officials in Tibet, they
+could not guarantee that any settlement they
+might make with us would be faithfully observed.
+There seemed no hope of a solution to the deadlock
+except by absolute militarism. If the
+Tibetans had fought so stubbornly at Gyantse,
+what fanaticism might we not expect at Lhasa!
+Most of us thought that we could only reach the
+capital through the most awful carnage. We
+pictured the 40,000 monks of Lhasa hurling
+themselves defiantly on our camp. We saw
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+them mown down by Maxims, lanes of dead.
+A hopeless struggle, and an ugly page in military
+history. Still, we must go on; there was no help
+for it. The blood of these people was on their
+own heads.</p>
+
+<p>We left Gyantse on the 14th, and plunged into
+the unknown towards Lhasa, which we had
+reason to believe lay in some hidden valley
+150 miles to the north, beyond the unexplored
+basin of the Tsangpo. Every position on the
+road was held. The Karo la had been enormously
+strengthened, and was occupied by
+2,000 men. The enemy's cavalry, which we had
+never seen, were at Nagartse Jong. Gubshi, a
+dilapidated fort, only nineteen miles on the road,
+was held by several hundred. The Tibetans
+intended to dispute the passage of the Brahmaputra,
+and there were other strong positions where
+the path skirted the Kyi-chu for miles beneath
+overhanging rocks, which were carefully prepared
+for booby-traps. We had to launch ourselves
+into this intensely hostile region and compel
+some people&mdash;we did not know whom&mdash;to attach
+their signatures and seals to a certain parchment
+which was to bind them to good behaviour in the
+future, and a recognition of obligations they had
+hitherto disavowed.</p>
+
+<p>Our force consisted of eight companies of the
+8th Gurkhas, five companies of the 32nd Pioneers,
+four companies of the 40th Pathans, four companies
+of the Royal Fusiliers, two companies of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+Mounted Infantry, No. 30 British Mountain
+Battery, a section of No. 7 Native Mountain
+Battery, 1st Madras Sappers and Miners, machine-gun
+section of the Norfolks, and details.<a id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> The
+23rd Pioneers, to their disgust, were left to garrison
+Gyantse. The transport included mule, yak,
+donkey, and coolie corps.</p>
+
+<p>The first three marches to Ralung were a repetition
+of the country between Kalatso and Gyantse&mdash;in
+the valley a strip of irrigated land, green and
+gold, with alternate barley and mustard fields
+between hillsides bare and verdureless save for
+tufts of larkspur, astragalus, and scattered yellow
+poppies. To Gyantse one descends 2,000 feet
+from a country entirely barren of trees to a valley
+of occasional willow and poplar groves; while
+from Gyantse, as one ascends, the clusters of trees
+become fewer, until one reaches the treeless zone
+again at Ralung (15,000 feet). The last grove is
+at Gubchi.</p>
+
+<p>I quote some notes of the march from my
+diary:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 14.</i>&mdash;The villages by the roadside are
+deserted save for old women and barking dogs.
+The Tibetans came down from the Karo la and
+impressed the villagers. Many have fled into the
+hills, and are hiding among the rocks and caves.
+Our pickets fired on some to-night. Seeing their
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+heads bobbing up and down among the rocks,
+they thought they were surrounded. Many of
+the fugitives were women. Luckily, none were
+hit. They were brought into camp whimpering
+and salaaming, and became embarrassingly grateful
+when it was made clear to them that they were
+not to be tortured or killed, but set free. They
+were called back, however, to give information
+about grain, and thought their last hour had
+come.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>July 16.</i>&mdash;All the houses between Gubchi and
+Ralung are decorated with diagonal blue, red, and
+white stripes, characteristic of the Ning-ma sect
+of Buddhists. They remind me of the walls of
+Damascus after the visit of the German Emperor.
+Heavy rain falls every day. Last night we
+camped in a wet mustard-field. It is impossible
+to keep our bedding dry.'</p>
+
+<p>From Ralung the valley widens out, and the
+country becomes more bleak. We enter a plateau
+frequented by gazelle. Cultivation ceases. The
+ascent to the Karo Pass is very gradual. The
+path takes a sudden turn to the east through a
+narrow gorge.</p>
+
+<p>On the 17th we camped under the Karo la in
+the snow range of Noijin Kang Sang, at an elevation
+of 1,000 feet above Mont Blanc. The pass
+was free of snow, but a magnificent glacier descended
+within 500 feet of the camp. We lay
+within four miles of the enemy's position. Most
+of us expected heavy fighting the next morning,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+as we knew the Tibetans had been strengthening
+their defences at the Karo la for some days.
+Volleys were fired on our scouts on the 16th and
+17th. The old wall had been extended east and
+west until it ended in vertical cliffs just beneath
+the snow-line. A second barrier had been built
+further on, and sangars constructed on every prominent
+point to meet flank attacks. The wall
+itself was massively strong, and it was approached
+by a steep cliff, up which it was impossible to
+make a sustained charge, as the rarefied air at
+this elevation (16,600 feet) leaves one breathless
+after the slightest exertion. The Karo la was the
+strongest position on the road to Lhasa. If the
+Tibetans intended to make another stand, here
+was their chance.</p>
+
+<p>In the messes there was much discussion as to
+the seriousness of the opposition we were likely
+to meet with. The flanking parties had a long
+and difficult climb before them that would take
+them some hours, and the general feeling was
+that we should be lucky if we got the transport
+through by noon. But when one of us suggested
+that the Tibetans might fail to come up to the
+scratch, and abandon the position without firing
+a shot, we laughed at him; but his conjecture was
+very near the mark.</p>
+
+<p>At 7 a.m. the troops forming the line of
+advance moved into position. The disposition
+of the enemy's sangars made a turning movement
+extremely difficult, but a frontal attack on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+wall, if stubbornly resisted, could not be carried
+without severe loss. General Macdonald sent
+flanking parties of the 8th Gurkhas on both sides
+of the valley to scale the heights and turn the
+Tibetan position, and despatched the Royal
+Fusiliers along the centre of the valley to attack
+the wall when the opposition had been weakened.</p>
+
+<p>Stretched on a grassy knoll on the left, enjoying
+the sunshine and the smell of the warm turf, we
+civilians watched the whole affair with our glasses.
+It might have been a picnic on the Surrey downs
+if it were not for the tap-tap of the Maxim, like a
+distant woodpecker, in the valley, and the occasional
+report of the 10-pounders by our side,
+which made the valleys and cliffs reverberate like
+thunder.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans' ruse was to open fire from the
+wall directly our troops came into view, and then
+evacuate the position. They thus delayed the
+pursuit while we were waiting for the scaling-party
+to ascend the heights.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="p213"></a><a href="images/p213.jpg">
+<img src="images/p213s.jpg" alt="Page 213." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />KARO LA.</span>
+
+<p class="imgcap">A. Gurkhas line of Adv.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">B. Rocks occupied by enemy
+finally dislodged by
+Gurkhas.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">C. Distant rocky spur up which
+majority of Enemy retired
+from Walls. It was up this
+ridge that 40th Pathans
+eventually pursued.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">D. Walls.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">E. Fusiliers line of Advance.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">F. 2 Coys Gorkhas.</p>
+<p class="imgcap">G. Track.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock the Gurkhas on the left signalled
+that no enemy were to be seen. At the same
+time Colonel Cooper, of the Royal Fusiliers,
+heliographed that the wall was unoccupied and
+the Tibetans in full retreat. The mounted
+infantry were at once called up for the pursuit.
+Meanwhile one or two jingals and some Tibetan
+marksmen kept up an intermittent fire on the
+right flanking party from clefts in the overhanging
+cliffs. A battery replied with shrapnel,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">[Pg 213/214]</a><br /></span>
+covering our advance. These pickets on the
+left stayed behind and engaged our right flanking
+party until eleven o'clock. To turn the
+position the Gurkhas climbed a parallel ridge,
+and were for a long time under fire of their
+jingals. The last part of the ascent was along
+the edge of a glacier, and then on to the shoulder
+of the ridge by steps which the Gurkhas cut in
+the ice with their <i>kukris</i>, helping one another up
+with the butts of their rifles. They carried rope
+scaling-ladders, but these were for the descent.
+At 11.30 Major Murray and his two companies
+of Gurkhas appeared on the heights, and possession
+was taken of the pass. The ridge that the
+Tibetans had held was apparently deserted, but
+every now and then a man was seen crouching
+in a cave or behind a rock, and was shot down.
+One Kham man shot a Gurkha who was looking
+into the cave where he was hiding. He then ran
+out and held up his thumbs, expecting quarter.
+He was rightly cut down with <i>kukris</i>. The dying
+Gurkha's comrades rushed the cave, and drove
+six more over the precipice without using steel
+or powder. They fell sheer 300 feet. Another
+Gurkha cut off a Tibetan's head with his own
+sword. On several occasions they hesitated to
+soil their <i>kukris</i> when they could despatch their
+victims in any other way.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp214-1"></a><a href="images/fp214-1.jpg">
+<i><img src="images/fp214-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></i></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Kham Prisoners.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp214-2"></a><a href="images/fp214-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp214-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Gurkhas climbing at the Karo la.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On a further ridge, a heart-breaking ascent of
+shale and boulders, we saw two or three hundred
+Tibetans ascending into the clouds. We had
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+marked them at the beginning of the action, before
+we knew that the wall was unoccupied. Even then
+it was clear that the men were fugitives, and
+had no thought of holding the place. We could
+see them hours afterwards, with our glasses,
+crouching under the cliffs. We turned shrapnel
+and Maxims on them; the hillsides began to move.
+Then a company of Pathans was sent up, and
+despatched over forty. It was at this point I
+saw an act of heroism which quite changed my
+estimate of these men. A group of four were
+running up a cliff, under fire from the Pathans
+at a distance of about 500 yards. One was hit,
+and his comrade stayed behind to carry him.
+The two unimpeded Tibetans made their escape,
+but the rescuer could only shamble along with
+difficulty. He and his wounded comrade were
+both shot down.</p>
+
+<p>The 18th was a disappointing day to our
+soldiers. But the action was of great interest,
+owing to the altitude in which our flanking parties
+had to operate. There is a saying on the Indian
+frontier: 'There is a hill; send up a Gurkha.'
+These sturdy little men are splendid mountaineers,
+and will climb up the face of a rock while the
+enemy are rolling down stones on them as coolly
+as they will rush a wall under heavy fire on the
+flat. Their arduous climb took three and a half
+hours, and was a real mountaineering feat. The
+cave fighting, in which they had three casualties,
+took place at 19,000 feet, and this is probably the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+highest elevation at which an action has been
+fought in history.</p>
+
+<p>A few of the Tibetans fled by the highroad,
+along which the mounted infantry pursued, killing
+twenty and taking ten prisoners. I asked a
+native officer how he decided whom to spare or
+kill, and he said he killed the men who ran, and
+spared those who came towards him. The destiny
+that preserved the lives of our ten Kham prisoners
+when nearly the whole of the levy perished reminded
+me in its capriciousness of Caliban's
+whim in Setebos:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These Kham men were in our mounted infantry
+camp until the release of the prisoners in Lhasa,
+and made themselves useful in many ways&mdash;loading
+mules, carrying us over streams, fetching
+wood and water, and fodder for our horses. They
+were fed and cared for, and probably never fared
+better in their lives. When they had nothing to
+do, they would sit down in a circle and discuss
+things resignedly&mdash;the English, no doubt, and
+their ways, and their own distant country.
+Sometimes they would ask to go home; their
+mothers and wives did not know if they were
+alive or dead. But we had no guarantee that
+they would not fight us again. Now they knew
+the disparity of their arms they might shrink
+from further resistance, yet there was every
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+chance that the Lamas would compel them to
+fight. They became quite popular in the camp,
+these wild, long-haired men, they were so good-humoured,
+gentle in manner, and ready to help.</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle
+was so hopeless. They were brave and simple,
+and none of us bore the slightest vindictiveness
+against them. Here was all the brutality of war,
+and none of the glory and incentive. These
+men were of the same race as the people I had
+been living amongst at Darjeeling&mdash;cheerful, jolly
+fellows&mdash;and I had seen their crops ruined, their
+houses burnt and shelled, the dead lying about
+the thresholds of what were their homes, and all
+for no fault of their own&mdash;only because their
+leaders were politically impossible, which, of
+course, the poor fellows did not know, and there
+was no one to tell them. They thought our
+advance an act of unprovoked aggression, and
+they were fighting for their homes.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning
+to put the fear of God into them. We
+never saw a Tibetan within five miles who did
+not carry a huge white flag. The second action
+at the Karo la was the end of the Tibetan resistance.
+The fall of Gyantse Jong, which they
+thought unassailable, seems to have broken their
+spirit altogether. At the Karo la they had
+evidently no serious intention of holding the
+position, but fought like men driven to the front
+against their will, with no confidence or heart
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+in the business at all. The friendly Bhutanese
+told us that the Tibetans would not stand where
+they had once been defeated, and that levies
+who had once faced us were not easily brought
+into the field again. These were casual generalizations,
+no doubt, but they contained a great deal
+of truth. The Kham men who opposed us at
+the first Karo la action, the Shigatze men who
+attacked the mission in May, and the force from
+Lhasa who hurled themselves on Kangma, were
+all new levies. Many of our prisoners protested
+very strongly against being released, fearing to
+be exposed again to our bullets and their own
+Lamas.</p>
+
+<p>On the 18th we reached Nagartse Jong, and
+found the Shapés awaiting us. They met us in
+the same impracticable spirit. We were not to
+occupy the jong, and they were not empowered
+to treat with us unless we returned to Gyantse.
+It was a repetition of Khamba Jong and Tuna.
+In the afternoon a durbar was held in Colonel
+Younghusband's tent, when the Tibetans showed
+themselves appallingly futile and childish. They
+did not seem to realize that we were in a position
+to dictate terms, and Colonel Younghusband had
+to repeat that it was now too late for any compromise,
+and the settlement must be completed
+at Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>From Nagartse we held interviews with these
+tedious delegates at almost every camp. They
+exhausted everyone's patience except the Commissioner's.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+For days they did not yield a point,
+and refused even to discuss terms unless we
+returned to Gyantse. But their protests became
+more urgent as we went on, their tone less minatory.
+It was not until we were within fifty miles
+of Lhasa that the Tibetan Government deigned
+to enter into communication with the mission.
+At Tamalung Colonel Younghusband received the
+first communication from the National Assembly;
+at Chaksam arrived the first missive the British
+Government had ever received from the Dalai
+Lama. During the delay at the ferry the councillors
+practically threw themselves on Colonel
+Younghusband's mercy. They said that their
+lives would be forfeited if we proceeded, and
+dwelt on the severe punishment they might incur
+if they failed to conclude negociations satisfactorily.
+But Colonel Younghusband was equal to
+every emergency. It would be impossible to find
+another man in the British Empire with a personality
+so calculated to impress the Tibetans.
+He sat through every durbar a monument of
+patience and inflexibility, impassive as one of
+their own Buddhas. Priests and councillors found
+that appeals to his mercy were hopeless. He, too,
+had orders from his King to go to Lhasa; if he
+faltered, <i>his</i> life also was at stake; decapitation
+would await <i>him</i> on his return. That was the
+impression he purposely gave them. It curtailed
+palaver. How in the name of all their Buddhas
+were they to stop such a man?
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The whole progress of negociations put me in
+mind of the coercion of very naughty children.
+The Lamas tried every guile to reduce his demands.
+They would be cajoling him now if he had not
+given them an ultimatum, and if they had not
+learnt by six weeks' contact and intercourse with
+the man that shuffling was hopeless, that he never
+made a promise that was not fulfilled, or a threat
+that was not executed. The Tibetan treaty was
+the victory of a personality, the triumph of an
+impression on the least impressionable people in
+the world. But I anticipate.</p>
+
+<p>While the Shapés were holding Colonel Younghusband
+in conference at Nagartse, their cavalry
+were escorting a large convoy on the road to
+Lhasa. Our mounted infantry came upon them
+six miles beyond Nagartse, and as they were
+rounding them up the Tibetans foolishly fired on
+them. We captured eighty riding and baggage
+ponies and mules and fourteen prisoners, and
+killed several. They made no stand, though they
+were well armed with a medley of modern rifles
+and well mounted. This was actually the last
+shot fired on our side. The delegates had been
+full of assurances that the country was clear of
+the enemy, hoping that the convoy would get
+well away while they delayed us with fruitless
+protests and reiterated demands to go back.
+While they were palavering in the tent, they
+looked out and saw the Pathans go past with
+their rich yellow silks and personal baggage
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+looted in the brush with the cavalry. Their
+consternation was amusing, and the situation
+had its element of humour. A servant rushed
+to the door of the tent and delivered the whole
+tale of woe. A mounted infantry officer arrived
+and explained that our scouts had been fired on.
+After this, of course, there was no talk of anything
+except the restitution of the loot. The
+Shapés deserved to lose their kit. I do not remember
+what was arranged, but if any readers
+of this record see a gorgeous yellow cloak of
+silk and brocade at a fancy-dress ball in London,
+I advise them to ask its history.</p>
+
+<p>This last encounter with the Tibetans is especially
+interesting, as they were the best-armed
+body of men we had met. The weapons we
+captured included a Winchester rifle, several
+Lhasa-made Martinis, a bolt rifle of an old
+Austrian pattern, an English-made muzzle-loading
+rifle, a 12-bore breech-loading shot-gun, some
+Eley's ammunition, and an English gun-case.
+The reports of Russian arms found in Tibet have
+been very much exaggerated. During the whole
+campaign we did not come across more than
+thirty Russian Government rifles, and these were
+weapons that must have drifted into Tibet from
+Mongolia, just as rifles of British pattern found
+their way over the Indian frontier into Lhasa.
+Also it must be remembered that the weapons
+locally made in Lhasa were of British pattern,
+and manufactured by experts decoyed from a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+British factory. Had these men been Russian
+subjects, we should have regarded their presence
+in Lhasa as an unquestionable proof of Muscovite
+assistance. Jealousy and suspicion make nations
+wilfully blind. Russia fully believes that we are
+giving underhand assistance to the Japanese, and
+many Englishmen, who are unbiassed in other
+questions, are ready to believe, without the
+slightest proof, that Russia has been supplying
+Tibet with arms and generals. We had been
+informed that large quantities of Russian rifles
+had been introduced into the country, and it was
+rumoured that the Tibetans were reserving these
+for the defence of Lhasa itself. But it is hardly
+credible that they should have sent levies against
+us armed with their obsolete matchlocks when
+they were well supplied with weapons of a modern
+pattern. Russian intrigue was active in Lhasa,
+but it had not gone so far as open armament.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp222"></a><a href="images/fp222.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp222s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Pehté Jong.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Nagartse we came across the great Yamdok
+or Palti Lake, along the shores of which winds
+the road to Lhasa. Nagartse Jong is a striking
+old keep, built on a bluff promontory of hill
+stretching out towards the blue waters of the
+lake. In the distance we saw the crag-perched
+monastery of Samding, where lives the mysterious
+Dorje Phagmo, the incarnation of the goddess
+Tara.</p>
+
+<p>The wild mountain scenery of the Yamdok
+Tso, the most romantic in Tibet, has naturally
+inspired many legends. When Samding was
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+threatened by the Dzungarian invaders early in
+the eighteenth century, Dorje Phagmo miraculously
+converted herself and all her attendant
+monks and nuns into pigs. Serung Dandub, the
+Dzungarian chief, finding the monastery deserted,
+said that he would not loot a place guarded only
+by swine, whereupon Dorje Phagmo again metamorphosed
+herself and her satellites. The terrified
+invaders prostrated themselves in awe before
+the goddess, and presented the monastery with
+the most priceless gifts. Similarly, the Abbot of
+Pehte saved the fortress and town from another
+band of invaders by giving the lake the appearance
+of green pasturelands, into which the Dzungarians
+galloped and were engulfed. I quote
+these tales, which have been mentioned in nearly
+every book on Tibet, as typical of the country.
+Doubtless similar legends will be current in a few
+years about the British to account for the sparing
+of Samding, Nagartse, and Pehte Jong.</p>
+
+<p>Special courtesy was shown the monks and
+nuns of Samding, in recognition of the hospitality
+afforded Sarat Chandra Dass by the last incarnation
+of Dorje Phagmo, who entertained the Bengali
+traveller, and saw that he was attended
+to and cared for through a serious illness. A
+letter was sent Dorje Phagmo, asking if she
+would receive three British officers, including the
+antiquary of the expedition. But the present
+incarnation, a girl of six or seven years, was invisible,
+and the convent was reported to be bare
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+of ornament and singularly disappointing. There
+were no pigs.</p>
+
+<p>If only one were without the incubus of an
+army, a month in the Noijin Kang Sang country
+and the Yamdok Plain would be a delightful
+experience. But when one is accompanying a
+column one loses more than half the pleasure of
+travel. One has to get up at a fixed hour&mdash;generally
+uncomfortably early&mdash;breakfast, and pack
+and load one's mules and see them started in their
+allotted place in the line, ride in a crowd all day,
+often at a snail's pace, and halt at a fixed place.
+Shooting is forbidden on the line of march. When
+alone one can wander about with a gun, pitch
+camp where one likes, make short or long marches
+as one likes, shoot or fish or loiter for days in the
+same place. The spirit which impels one to
+travel in wild places is an impulse, conscious or
+unconscious, to be free of laws and restraints,
+to escape conventions and social obligations, to
+temporarily throw one's self back into an obsolete
+phase of existence, amidst surroundings which
+bear little mark of the arbitrary meddling of man.
+It is not a high ideal, but men often deceive themselves
+when they think they make expeditions in
+order to add to science, and forsake the comforts
+of life, and endure hunger, cold, fatigue and loneliness,
+to discover in exactly what parallel of unknown
+country a river rises or bends to some
+particular point of the compass. How many
+travellers are there who would spend the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+time in an office poring over maps or statistics
+for the sake of geography or any other science?
+We like to have a convenient excuse, and make a
+virtue out of a hobby or an instinct. But why
+not own up that one travels for the glamour of
+the thing? In previous wanderings my experience
+had always been to leave a base with several
+different objectives in view, and to take the route
+that proved most alluring when met by a choice
+of roads&mdash;some old deserted city or ruined shrine,
+some lake or marshland haunted by wild-fowl
+that have never heard the crack of a gun, or a
+strip of desert where one must calculate how to
+get across with just sufficient supplies and no
+margin. I like to drift to the magnet of great
+watersheds, lofty mountain passes, frontiers where
+one emerges among people entirely different in
+habit and belief from folk the other side, but
+equally convinced that they are the only enlightened
+people on earth. Often in India I had
+dreamed of the great inland waters of Tibet and
+Mongolia, the haunts of myriads of duck and
+geese&mdash;Yamdok Tso, Tengri Nor, Issik Kul,
+names of romance to the wild-fowler, to be breathed
+with reverence and awe. I envied the great
+flights of mallard and pochard winging northward
+in March and April to the unknown; and
+here at last I was camping by the Yamdok Tso
+itself&mdash;with an army.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I have digressed to grumble at the only
+means by which a sight of these hidden waters
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+was possible. When we passed in July, there
+were no wild-fowl on the lake except the bar-headed
+geese and Brahminy duck. The ruddy
+sheldrake, or Brahminy, is found all over Tibet,
+and will be associated with the memory of nearly
+every march and camping-ground. It is distinctly
+a Buddhist bird. From it is derived the
+title of the established Church of the Lamas, the
+Abbots of which wear robes of ruddy sheldrake
+colour, Gelug-pa.<a id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> In Burmah the Brahminy
+is sacred to Buddhism as a symbol of devotion
+and fidelity, and it was figured on Asoka's
+pillars in the same emblematical character.<a id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>
+The Brahminy is generally found in pairs, and
+when one is shot the other will often hover round
+till it falls a victim to conjugal love. In India
+the bird is considered inedible, but we were glad
+of it in Tibet, and discovered no trace of fishy
+flavour.</p>
+
+<p>Early in April, when we passed the Bam Tso
+and Kala Tso we found the lakes frequented by
+nearly all the common migratory Indian duck;
+and again, on our return large flights came in.
+But during the summer months nothing remained
+except the geese and sheldrake and the goosander,
+which is resident in Tibet and the Himalayas. I
+take it that no respectable duck spends the
+summer south of the Tengri Nor. At Lhasa,
+mallard, teal, gadwall, and white-eyed pochard
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+were coming in from the north as we were leaving
+in the latter half of September, and followed us
+down to the plains. They make shorter flights
+than I imagined, and longer stays at their fashionable
+Central Asian watering-places.</p>
+
+<p>We marched three days along the banks of the
+Yamdok Tso, and halted a day at Nagartse.
+Duck were not plentiful on the lake. Black-headed
+gulls and redshanks were common. The
+fields of blue borage by the villages were an
+exquisite sight. On the 22nd we reached Pehte.
+The jong, a medieval fortress, stands out on the
+lake like Chillon, only it is more crumbling and
+dilapidated. The courtyards are neglected and
+overgrown with nettles. Soldiers, villagers, both
+men and women, had run away to the hills with
+their flocks and valuables. Only an old man and
+two boys were left in charge of the chapel and the
+fort. The hide fishing-boats were sunk, or carried
+over to the other side. On July 24 we left the
+lake near the village of Tamalung, and ascended
+the ridge on our left to the Khamba Pass, 1,200
+feet above the lake level. A sudden turn in the
+path brought us to the saddle, and we looked
+down on the great river that has been guarded
+from European eyes for nearly a century. In
+the heart of Tibet we had found Arcadia&mdash;not a
+detached oasis, but a continuous strip of verdure,
+where the Tsangpo cleaves the bleak hills and
+desert tablelands from west to east.</p>
+
+<p>All the valley was covered with green and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+yellow cornfields, with scattered homesteads surrounded
+by clusters of trees, not dwarfish and
+stunted in the struggle for existence, but stately
+and spreading&mdash;trees that would grace the valley
+of the Thames or Severn.</p>
+
+<p>We had come through the desert to Arcady.
+When we left Phari, months and months before,
+and crossed the Tang la, we entered the
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time
+does not boast a blade of grass. Within a mile
+there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and sapless,
+which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and
+wild asses, beasts that from the beginning have
+chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans, who
+people the same waste, are content with spare
+diet so long as they are left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Every Tibetan of the tableland is a hermit by
+choice, or some strange hereditary instinct has
+impelled him to accept Nature's most niggard
+gifts as his birthright, so that he toils a lifetime
+to win by his own labour and in scanty
+measure the necessaries which Nature deals
+lavishly elsewhere, herding his yaks on the waste
+lands, tilling the unproductive soil for his meagre
+crop of barley, and searching the hillsides for
+yak-dung for fuel to warm his stone hut and
+cook his meal of flour.</p>
+
+<p>Yet north and south of him, barely a week's
+journey, are warm, fertile valleys, luxuriant
+crops, unstinted woodlands, where Mongols like
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+himself accept Nature's largess philosophically
+as the most natural thing in the world.</p>
+
+<p>It seems as if some special and economical law
+of Providence, such a law as makes at least one
+man see beauty in every type of woman, even the
+most unlovely, had ordained it, so that no corner
+of the earth, not even the Sahara, Tadmor, Tuna,
+or Guru, should lack men who devote themselves
+blindly and without question to live there, and
+care for what one might think God Himself had
+forgotten and overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>These men&mdash;Bedouin, Tibetans, and the like&mdash;enjoy
+one thing, for which they forego most
+things that men crave for, and that is freedom.
+They do not possess the gifts that cause strife,
+and divisions, and law-making, and political
+parties, and changes of Government. They have
+too little to share. Their country is invaded only
+at intervals of centuries. On these occasions they
+fight bravely, as their one inheritance is at stake.
+But they are bigoted and benighted; they have
+not kept time with evolution, and so they are
+defeated. The conservatism, the exclusiveness,
+that has kept them free so long has shut the
+door to 'progress,' which, if they were enlightened
+and introspective, they would recognise as a
+pestilence that has infected one half of the world
+at the expense of the other, making both unhappy
+and discontented.</p>
+
+<p>The Tuna Plain is like the Palmyra Desert at
+the point where one comes within view of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+snows of Lebanon. It is not monotonous; there
+is too much play of light and shade for that.
+Everywhere the sun shines, the mirage dances;
+the white calcined plain becomes a flock of
+frightened sheep hurrying down the wind; the
+stunted sedge by the lakeside leaps up like a
+squadron in ambush and sweeps rapidly along
+without ever approaching nearer. Sometimes a
+herd of wild asses is mingled in the dance, grotesquely
+magnified; stones and nettles become
+walls and men. All the country is elusive and
+unreal.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp230"></a><a href="images/fp230.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp230s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Gubchi Jong.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A few miles beyond Guru the road skirts the
+Bamtso Lake, which must once have filled the
+whole valley. Now the waters have receded, as
+the process of desiccation is going on which has
+entirely changed the geographical features of
+Central Asia, and caused the disappearance of
+great expanses of water like the Koko Nor, and
+the dwindling of lakes and river from Khotan to
+Gobi. The Roof of the World is becoming less and
+less inhabitable.</p>
+
+<p>From the desert to Arcady is not a long journey,
+but armies travel slowly. After months of waiting
+and delay we reached the promised land. It
+was all suddenly unfolded to our view when we
+stood on the Khamba la. Below us was a purely
+pastoral landscape. Beyond lay hills even more
+barren and verdureless than those we had crossed.
+But every mile or so green fan-shaped valleys,
+irrigated by clear streams, interrupted the barrenness,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+opening out into the main valley east and
+west with perfect symmetry. To the north-east
+flowed the Kyi Chu, the valley in which Lhasa
+lay screened, only fifty-six miles distant.</p>
+
+<p>To the south of the pass lay the great Yamdok
+Lake, wild and beautiful, its channels twining
+into the dark interstices of the hills&mdash;valleys of
+mystery and gloom, where no white man has
+ever trod. Lights and shadows fell caressingly
+on the lake and hills. At one moment a peak
+was ebony black, at another&mdash;as the heavy clouds
+passed from over it, and the sun's rays illumined
+it through a thin mist&mdash;golden as a field of buttercups.
+Often at sunset the grassy cones of the
+hills glow like gilded pagodas, and the Tibetans,
+I am told, call these sunlit plots the 'golden
+ground.'</p>
+
+<p>In bright sunlight the lake is a deep turquoise
+blue, but at evening time transient lights and
+shades fleet over it with the moving clouds, light
+forget-me-not, deep purple, the azure of a butterfly's
+wing&mdash;then all is swept away, immersed in
+gloom, before the dark, menacing storm-clouds.</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th I crossed the river with the 1st
+Mounted Infantry and 40th Pathans. My tent is
+pitched on the roof of a rambling two-storied
+house, under the shade of a great walnut-tree.
+Crops, waist-deep, grow up to the walls&mdash;barley,
+wheat, beans, and peas. On the roof are garden
+flowers in pots, hollyhocks, and marigolds. The
+cornfields are bright with English wild-flowers
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>&mdash;
+dandelions, buttercups, astragalus, and a purple
+Michaelmas daisy.</p>
+
+<p>There is no village, but farmhouses are dotted
+about the valley, and groves of trees&mdash;walnut and
+peach, and poplar and willow&mdash;enclosed within
+stone walls. Wild birds that are almost tame are
+nesting in the trees&mdash;black and white magpies,
+crested hoopoes, and turtle-doves. The groves
+are irrigated like the fields, and carpeted with
+flowers. Homelike butterflies frequent them, and
+honey-bees.</p>
+
+<p>Everything is homelike. There is no mystery
+in the valley, except its access, or, rather, its inaccessibility.
+We have come to it through snow
+passes, over barren, rocky wildernesses; we have
+won it with toil and suffering, through frost and
+rain and snow and blistering sun.</p>
+
+<p>And now that we had found Arcady, I would
+have stayed there. Lhasa was only four marches
+distant, but to me, in that mood of almost immoral
+indolence, it seemed that this strip of
+verdure, with its happy pastoral scenes, was the
+most impassable barrier that Nature had planted
+in our path. Like the Tibetans, she menaced
+and threatened us at first, then she turned to us
+with smiles and cajoleries, entreating us to stay,
+and her seduction was harder to resist.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>To trace the course of the Tsangpo River from
+Tibet to its outlet into Assam has been the goal
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+of travellers for over a century. Here is one of
+the few unknown tracts of the world, where no
+white man has ever penetrated. Until quite
+recently there was a hot controversy among
+geographers as to whether the Tsangpo was the
+main feeder of the Brahmaputra or reappeared
+in Burmah as the Irawaddy. All attempts to
+explore the river from India have proved fruitless,
+owing to the intense hostility of the Abor
+and Passi Minyang tribes, who oppose all intrusion
+with their poisoned arrows and stakes, sharp
+and formidable as spears, cunningly set in the
+ground to entrap invaders; while the vigilance
+of the Lamas has made it impossible for any
+European to get within 150 miles of the Tsangpo
+Valley from Tibet. It was not until 1882 that
+all doubt as to the identity of the Tsangpo and
+Brahmaputra was set aside by the survey of the
+native explorer A. K. And the course of the
+Brahmaputra, or Dihong, as it is called in Northern
+Assam, was never thoroughly investigated until
+the explorations of Mr. Needham, the Political
+Officer at Sadiya, and his trained Gurkhas, who
+penetrated northwards as far as Gina, a village
+half a day's journey beyond Passi Ghat, and only
+about seventy miles south of the point reached by
+A. K. from Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>The return of the British expedition from Tibet
+was evidently the opportunity of a century for
+the investigation of this unexplored country. We
+had gained the hitherto inaccessible base, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+were provided with supplies and transport on the
+spot; we had no opposition to expect from the
+Tibetans, who were naturally eager to help us
+out of the country by whatever road we chose,
+and had promised to send officials with us to
+their frontier at Gyala Sendong, who would
+forage for us and try to impress the villagers into
+our service. The hostile tribes beyond the frontier
+were not so likely to resist an expedition moving
+south to their homes after a successful campaign
+as a force entering their country from our Indian
+frontier. In the latter case they would naturally
+be more suspicious of designs on their independence.
+The distance from Lhasa to Assam was
+variously estimated from 500 to 700 miles. I
+think the calculations were influenced, perhaps
+unconsciously, by sympathy with, or aversion
+from, the enterprise.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The Shapés, it is true, though they promised to
+help us if we were determined on it, advised us
+emphatically not to go by the Tsangpo route.
+They said that the natives of their own outlying
+provinces were bandits and cut-throats, practically
+independent of the Lhasa Government,
+while the savages beyond the frontier were
+dangerous people who obeyed no laws. The
+Shapés' notions as to the course of the river
+were most vague. When questioned, they said
+there was a legend that it disappeared into a
+hole in the earth. The country near its mouth
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+was inhabited by savages, who went about unclothed,
+and fed on monkeys and reptiles. It
+was rumoured that they were horned like animals,
+and that mothers did not know their own children.
+But this they could not vouch for.</p>
+
+<p>It was believed that tracks of a kind existed
+from village to village all along the route, but
+these, of course, after a time would become impracticable
+for pack transport. The mules would
+have to be abandoned, and sent back to Gyantse
+by our guides, or presented to the Tibetan officials
+who accompanied us. Then we were to proceed
+by forced marches through the jungle, with coolie
+transport if obtainable; if not, each man was to
+carry rice for a few days. The distance from the
+Tibet frontier to Sadiya is not great, and the unexplored
+country is reckoned not to be more than
+seven stages. The force would bivouac, and, if
+their advance were resisted, would confine themselves
+solely to defensive tactics. In case of
+opposition, the greatest difficulty would be the
+care of the wounded, as each invalid would
+need four carriers. Thus, a few casualties would
+reduce enormously the fighting strength of the
+escort.</p>
+
+<p>But opposition was unlikely. Mr. Needham,
+who has made the tribes of the Dihong Valley
+the study of a lifetime, and succeeded to some
+extent in gaining their confidence, considered the
+chances of resistance small. He would, he said,
+send messages to the tribes that the force coming
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+through their country from the north were his
+friends, that they had been engaged in a punitive
+expedition against the Lamas (whom the Abors
+detested), that they were returning home by the
+shortest route to Assam, and had no designs on
+the territory they traversed. It was proposed
+that Mr. Needham should go up the river as
+far as possible and furnish the party with
+supplies.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp236-1"></a><a href="images/fp236-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp236-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Old Chain-Bridge at Chaksam.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp236-2"></a><a href="images/fp236-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp236-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Crossing the Tsangpo.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>All arrangements had been made for the exploring-party,
+which was to leave the main force
+at Chaksam Ferry, and was expected to arrive in
+Sadiya almost simultaneously with the winding
+up of the expedition at Siliguri. Captain Ryder,
+R.E., was to command the party, and his escort
+was to be made up of the 8th Gurkhas, who had
+long experience of the Assam frontier tribes, and
+were the best men who could be chosen for the
+work. Officers were selected, supply and transport
+details arranged, everything was in readiness,
+when at the last moment, only a day or two before
+the party was to start, a message was received
+from Simla refusing to sanction the expedition.
+Colonel Younghusband was entirely in favour of
+it, but the military authorities had a clean slate;
+they had come through so far without a single
+disaster, and it seemed that no scientific or
+geographical considerations could have any
+weight with them in their determination to take
+no risks. Of course there were risks, and always
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+must be in enterprises of the kind; but I think
+the circumstances of the moment reduced them
+to a minimum, and that the results to be obtained
+from the projected expedition should have entirely
+outweighed them.</p>
+
+<p>In European scientific circles much was expected
+of the Tibetan expedition. But it has
+added very little to science. The surveys that
+were made have done little more than modify
+the previous investigations of native surveyors.<a id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>An expedition to the mountains bordering the
+Tengri Nor, only nine days north of Lhasa, would
+have linked all the unknown country north of the
+Tsang po with the tracts explored by Sven Hedin,
+and left the map without a hiatus in four degrees
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+of longitude from Cape Comorin to the Arctic
+Ocean. But military considerations were paramount.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, the abandonment of the expedition
+was a great disappointment. I had counted on
+it as early as February, and had made all preparations
+to join it.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_13">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><span>CHAPTER XIII</span>
+
+<small>LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> passage of the river was difficult and dangerous.
+If we had had to depend on the four
+Berthon boats we took with us, the crossing
+might have taken weeks. But the good fortune
+that attended the expedition throughout did not
+fail us. At Chaksam we found the Tibetans had
+left behind their two great ferry-boats, quaint old
+barges with horses' heads at the prow, capacious
+enough to hold a hundred men. The Tibetan
+ferrymen worked for us cheerfully. A number
+of hide boats were also discovered. The transport
+mules were swum over, and the whole force was
+across in less than a week.</p>
+
+<p>But the river took its toll most tragically.
+The current is swift and boisterous; the eddies
+and whirlpools are dangerously uncertain. Two
+Berthon boats, bound together into a raft, capsized,
+and Major Bretherton, chief supply and
+transport officer, and two Gurkhas were drowned.
+It seemed as if the genius of the river, offended
+at our intrusion, had claimed its price and carried
+off the most valuable life in the force. It was
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+Major Bretherton's foresight more than anything
+that enabled us to reach Lhasa. His loss was
+calamitous.</p>
+
+<p>We left our camp at the ferry on July 31, and
+started for Lhasa, which was only forty-three
+miles distant. It was difficult to believe that in
+three days we would be looking on the Potala.</p>
+
+<p>The Kyi Chu, the holy river of Lhasa, flows into
+the Tsangpo at Chushul, three miles below Chaksam
+ferry, where our troops crossed. The river
+is almost as broad as the Thames at Greenwich,
+and the stream is swift and clear. The valley is
+cultivated in places, but long stretches are bare
+and rocky. Sand-dunes, overgrown with artemisia
+scrub, extend to the margin of cultivation,
+leaving a well-defined line between the green
+cornfields and the barren sand. The crops were
+ripening at the time of our advance, and promised
+a plentiful harvest.</p>
+
+<p>For many miles the road is cut out of a precipitous
+cliff above the river. A few hundred
+men could have destroyed it in an afternoon, and
+delayed our advance for another week. Newly-built
+sangars at the entrance of the gorge showed
+that the Tibetans had intended to hold it. But
+they left the valley in a disorganized state the
+day we reached the Tsangpo. Had they fortified
+the position, they might have made it stronger
+than the Karo la.</p>
+
+<p>The heat of the valley was almost tropical.
+Summer by the Kyi Chu River is very different
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+from one's first conceptions of Tibet. To escape
+the heat, I used to write my diary in the shade of
+gardens and willow groves. Hoopoes, magpies,
+and huge black ravens became inquisitive and
+confidential. I have a pile of little black notebooks
+I scribbled over in their society, dirty and
+torn and soiled with pressed flowers. For a
+picture of the valley I will go to these. One's
+freshest impressions are the best, and truer than
+reminiscences.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Nethang.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>In the most fertile part of the Kyi Chu Valley,
+where the fields are intersected in all directions
+by clear-running streams bordered with flowers,
+in a grove of poplars where doves were singing
+all day long, I found Atisa's tomb.</p>
+
+<p>It was built in a large, plain, barn-like building,
+clean and sweet-smelling as a granary, and innocent
+of ornament outside and in. It was the only
+clean and simple place devoted to religion I had
+seen in Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>In every house and monastery we entered on the
+road there were gilded images, tawdry paintings,
+demons and she-devils, garish frescoes on the
+wall, hideous grinning devil-masks, all the Lama's
+spurious apparatus of terrorism.</p>
+
+<p>These were the outward symbols of demonolatry
+and superstition invented by scheming priests as
+the fabric of their sacerdotalism. But this was
+the resting-place of the Reformer, the true son
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+of Buddha, who came over the Himalayas to
+preach a religion of love and mercy.</p>
+
+<p>I entered the building out of the glare of the
+sun, expecting nothing but the usual monsters
+and abortions&mdash;just as one is dragged into a
+church in some tourist-ridden land, where, if only
+for the sake of peace, one must cast an apathetic
+eye at the lions of the country. But as the
+tomb gradually assumed shape in the dim light,
+I knew that there was someone here, a priest or
+a community, who understood Atisa, who knew
+what he would have wished his last resting-place
+to be; or perhaps the good old monk had left a
+will or spoken a plain word that had been handed
+down and remembered these thousand years, and
+was now, no doubt, regarded as an eccentric's
+whim, that there must be no gods or demons by
+his tomb, nothing abnormal, no pretentiousness
+of any kind. If his teaching had lived, how
+simple and honest and different Tibet would be
+to-day!</p>
+
+<p>The tomb was not beautiful&mdash;a large square
+plinth, supporting layers of gradually decreasing
+circumference and forming steps two feet in height,
+the last a platform on which was based a substantial
+vat-like structure with no ornament or
+inscription except a thin line of black pencilled
+saints. By climbing up the layers of masonry
+I found a pair of slant eyes gazing at nothing
+and hidden by a curve in the stone from gazers
+below. This was the only painting on the tomb.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Never in the thousand years since the good
+monk was laid to rest at Nethang had a white
+man entered this shrine. To-day the courtyard
+was crowded with mules and drivers; Hindus and
+Pathans in British uniform: they were ransacking
+the place for corn. A transport officer was
+shouting:</p>
+
+<p>'How many bags have you, babu?'</p>
+
+<p>'A hundred and seven, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'Remember, if anyone loots, he will get fifty
+<i>beynt</i>' (stripes with the cat-o'-nine-tails).</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to me.</p>
+
+<p>'What the devil is that old thief doing over
+there?' he said, and nodded at a man with
+archæological interests, who was peering about
+in a dark corner by the tomb. 'There is nothing
+more here.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is examining Atisa's tomb.'</p>
+
+<p>'And who the devil is Atisa?'</p>
+
+<p>And who is he? Merely a name to a few dry-as-dust
+pedants. Everything human he did is
+forgotten. The faintest ripple remains to-day
+from that stone cast into the stagnant waters so
+many years ago. A few monks drone away their
+days in a monastery close by. In the courtyard
+there is a border of hollyhocks and snapdragon and
+asters. Here the unsavoury guardians of Atisa's
+tomb watch me as I write, and wonder what on
+earth I am doing among them, and what spell or
+mantra I am inscribing in the little black book
+that shuts so tightly with a clasp.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp244"></a><a href="images/fp244.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp244s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Potala.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Toilung.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>To-morrow we reach Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours ago we caught the first glimpse
+of the Potala Palace, a golden dome standing
+out on a bluff rock in the centre of the valley.
+The city is not seen from afar perched on a hill
+like the great monasteries and jongs of the
+country. It is literally 'hidden.' A rocky promontory
+projects from the bleak hills to the
+south like a screen, hiding Lhasa, as if Nature
+conspired in its seclusion. Here at a distance
+of seven miles we can see the Potala and the
+Lamas' Medical College.</p>
+
+<p>Trees and undulating ground shut out the
+view of the actual city until one is within a
+mile of it.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow we camp outside. It is nearly a
+hundred years since Thomas Manning, the only
+Englishman (until to-day) who ever saw Lhasa,
+preceded us. Our journey has not been easy,
+but we have come in spite of everything.</p>
+
+<p>The Lamas have opposed us with all their
+material and spiritual resources. They have
+fought us with medieval weapons and a medley
+of modern firearms. They have held Commination
+Services, recited mantras, and cursed us
+solemnly for days. Yet we have come on.</p>
+
+<p>They have sent delegates and messengers of
+every rank to threaten and entreat and plead
+with us&mdash;emissaries of increasing importance as
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+we have drawn nearer their capital, until the
+Dalai Lama despatched his own Grand Chamberlain
+and Grand Secretary, and, greater than these,
+the Ta Lama and Yutok Shapé, members of the
+ruling Council of Five, whose sacred persons had
+never before been seen by European eyes. To-morrow
+the Amban himself comes to meet Colonel
+Younghusband. The Dalai Lama has sent him a
+letter sealed with his own seal.</p>
+
+<p>Every stretch of road from the frontier to Lhasa
+has had its symbol of remonstrance. Cairns and
+chortens, and <i>mani</i> walls and praying-flags,
+demons painted on the rock, writings on the
+wall, white stones piled upon black, have emitted
+their ray of protest and malevolence in vain.</p>
+
+<p>The Lamas knew we must come. Hundreds
+of years ago a Buddhist saint wrote it in his book
+of prophecies, Ma-ong Lung-Ten, which may be
+bought to-day in the Lhasa book-shops. He
+predicted that Tibet would be invaded and conquered
+by the Philings (Europeans), when all of
+the true religion would go to Chang Shambula,
+the Northern Paradise, and Buddhism would
+become extinct in the country.</p>
+
+<p>And now the Lamas believe that the prophecy
+will be fulfilled by our entry into Lhasa, and that
+their religion will decay before foreign influence.
+The Dalai Lama, they say, will die, not by violence
+or sickness, but by some spiritual visitation. His
+spirit will seek some other incarnation, when he
+can no longer benefit his people or secure his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+country, so long sacred to Buddhists, from the
+contamination of foreign intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans are not the savages they are
+depicted. They are civilized, if medieval. The
+country is governed on the feudal system. The
+monks are the overlords, the peasantry their
+serfs. The poor are not oppressed. They and
+the small tenant farmers work ungrudgingly for
+their spiritual masters, to whom they owe a blind
+devotion. They are not discontented, though
+they give more than a tithe of their small income
+to the Church. It must be remembered that
+every family contributes at least one member to
+the priesthood, so that, when we are inclined to
+abuse the monks for consuming the greater part
+of the country's produce, we should remember
+that the laymen are not the victims of class prejudice,
+the plebeians groaning under the burden
+of the patricians, so much as the servants of a
+community chosen from among themselves, and
+with whom they are connected by family ties.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the Lamas employ spiritual terrorism
+to maintain their influence and preserve the temporal
+government in their hands; and when they
+speak of their religion being injured by our intrusion,
+they are thinking, no doubt, of another unveiling
+of mysteries, the dreaded age of materialism
+and reason, when little by little their ignorant
+serfs will be brought into contact with the facts
+of life, and begin to question the justness of the
+relations that have existed between themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+and their rulers for centuries. But at present
+the people are medieval, not only in their system
+of government and their religion, their inquisition,
+their witchcraft, their incantations, their
+ordeals by fire and boiling oil, but in every aspect
+of their daily life.</p>
+
+<p>I question if ever in the history of the world
+there has been another occasion when bigotry
+and darkness have been exposed with such
+abruptness to the inroad of science, when a
+barrier of ignorance created by jealousy and fear
+as a screen between two peoples living side by
+side has been demolished so suddenly to admit
+the light of an advanced civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans, no doubt, will benefit, and
+many abuses will be swept away. Yet there
+will always be people who will hanker after the
+medieval and romantic, who will say: 'We men
+are children. Why could we not have been
+content that there was one mystery not unveiled,
+one country of an ancient arrested civilization,
+and an established Church where men are still
+guided by sorcery and incantations, and direct
+their mundane affairs with one eye on a grotesque
+spirit world, which is the most real thing
+in their lives&mdash;a land of topsy-turvy and inverted
+proportions, where men spend half their lives
+mumbling unintelligible mantras and turning
+mechanical prayers, and when dead are cut up
+into mincemeat and thrown to the dogs and
+vultures?'
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To-morrow, when we enter Lhasa, we will have
+unveiled the last mystery <ins class="corr" title="the of">of the</ins> East. There are
+no more forbidden cities which men have not
+mapped and photographed. Our children will
+laugh at modern travellers' tales. They will
+have to turn again to Gulliver and Haroun al
+Raschid. And they will soon tire of these. For
+now that there are no real mysteries, no unknown
+land of dreams, where there may still be genii
+and mahatmas and bottle-imps, that kind of
+literature will be tolerated no longer. Children
+will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned,
+and there will be no sale for fairy-stories
+any more.</p>
+
+<p>But we ourselves are children. Why could we
+not have left at least one city out of bounds?</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Lhasa</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>August 3</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>We reached Lhasa to-day, after a march of
+seven miles, and camped outside the city. As
+we approached, the road became an embankment
+across a marsh. Butterflies and dragon-flies were
+hovering among the rushes, clematis grew in the
+stonework by the roadside, cows were grazing in
+the rich pastureland, redshanks were calling, a
+flight of teal passed overhead; the whole scene
+was most homelike, save for the bare scarred
+cliffs that jealously preclude a distant view of the
+city.</p>
+
+<p>Some of us climbed the Chagpo Ri and looked
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+down on the city. Lhasa lay a mile in front of
+us, a mass of huddled roofs and trees, dominated
+by the golden dome of the Jokhang Cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>It must be the most hidden city on earth. The
+Chagpo Ri rises bluffly from the river-bank like a
+huge rock. Between it and the Potala hill there
+is a narrow gap not more than thirty yards wide.
+Over this is built the Pargo Kaling, a typical
+Tibetan chorten, through which is the main gateway
+into Lhasa. The city has no walls, but
+beyond the Potala, to complete the screen,
+stretches a great embankment of sand right
+across the valley to the hills on the north.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/p249.png"><img src="images/p249s.png" alt="Diagram." title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Lhasa</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>August 4</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>An epoch in the world's history was marked
+to-day when Colonel Younghusband entered the
+city to return the visit of the Chinese Amban.
+He was accompanied by all the members of the
+mission, the war correspondents, and an escort
+of two companies of the Royal Fusiliers and
+the 2nd Mounted Infantry. Half a company of
+mounted infantry, two guns, a detachment of
+sappers, and four companies of infantry were
+held ready to support the escort if necessary.</p>
+
+<p>In front of us marched and rode the Amban's
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+escort&mdash;his bodyguard, dressed in short loose
+coats of French gray, embroidered in black, with
+various emblems; pikemen clad in bright red with
+black embroidery and black pugarees; soldiers
+with pikes and scythes and three-pronged spears,
+on all of which hung red banners with devices
+embroidered in black.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp250-1"></a><a href="images/fp250-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp250-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Entry into Lhasa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp250-2"></a><a href="images/fp250-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp250-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Corner of Courtyard of Astrologer's Temple, Nechang.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We found the city squalid and filthy beyond
+description, undrained and unpaved. Not a
+single house looked clean or cared for. The
+streets after rain are nothing but pools of stagnant
+water frequented by pigs and dogs searching
+for refuse. Even the Jokhang appeared mean
+and squalid at close quarters, whence its golden
+roofs were invisible. There was nothing picturesque
+except the marigolds and hollyhocks in
+pots and the doves and singing-birds in wicker
+cages.</p>
+
+<p>The few Tibetans we met in the street were
+strangely incurious. A baker kneading dough
+glanced at us casually, and went on kneading. A
+woman weaving barely looked up from her work.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were almost deserted, perhaps by
+order of the authorities to prevent an outbreak.
+But as we returned small crowds had gathered
+in the doorways, women were peering through
+windows, but no one followed or took more than
+a listless interest in us. The monks looked on
+sullenly. But in most faces one read only indifference
+and apathy. One might think the
+entry of a foreign army into Lhasa and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+presence of English Political Officers in gold-laced
+uniform and beaver hats were everyday
+events.</p>
+
+<p>The only building in Lhasa that is at all imposing
+is the Potala.</p>
+
+<p>It would be misleading to say that the palace
+dominated the city, as a comparison would be
+implied&mdash;a picture conveyed of one building
+standing out signally among others. This is
+not the case.</p>
+
+<p>The Potala is superbly detached. It is not a
+palace on a hill, but a hill that is also a palace.
+Its massive walls, its terraces and bastions
+stretch upwards from the plain to the crest, as if
+the great bluff rock were merely a foundation-stone
+planted there at the divinity's nod. The
+divinity dwells in the palace, and underneath,
+at the distance of a furlong or two, humanity
+is huddled abjectly in squalid smut-begrimed
+houses. The proportion is that which exists
+between God and man.</p>
+
+<p>If one approached within a league of Lhasa,
+saw the glittering domes of the Potala, and turned
+back without entering the precincts, one might
+still imagine it an enchanted city, shining with turquoise
+and gold. But having entered, the illusion
+is lost. One might think devout Buddhists had
+excluded strangers in order to preserve the myth
+of the city's beauty and mystery and wealth,
+or that the place was consciously neglected
+and defaced so as to offer no allurements to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+heretics, just as the repulsive women one meets
+in the streets smear themselves over with grease
+and cutch to make themselves even more hideous
+than Nature ordained.</p>
+
+<p>The place has not changed since Manning
+visited it ninety years ago, and wrote:&mdash;'There is
+nothing striking, nothing pleasing, in its appearance.
+The habitations are begrimed with smut
+and dirt. The avenues are full of dogs, some
+growling and gnawing bits of hide that lie about
+in profusion, and emit a charnel-house smell;
+others limping and looking livid; others ulcerated;
+others starved and dying, and pecked at by
+ravens; some dead and preyed upon. In short,
+everything seems mean and gloomy, and excites
+the idea of something unreal.' That is the Lhasa
+of to-day. Probably it was the same centuries
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>Above all this squalor the Potala towers
+superbly. Its golden roofs, shining in the sun
+like tongues of fire, are a landmark for miles, and
+must inspire awe and veneration in the hearts of
+pilgrims coming from the desert parts of Tibet,
+Kashmir, and Mongolia to visit the sacred city
+that Buddha has blessed.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of romance is remoteness, whether
+in time or space. If we could be thrown back to
+the days of Agincourt we should be enchanted at
+first, but after a week should vote everything
+commonplace and dull. Falstaff, the beery lout,
+would be an impossible companion, and Prince
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+Hal a tiresome young cub who wanted a good
+dressing-down. In travel, too, as one approaches
+the goal, and the country becomes gradually
+familiar, the husk of romance falls off. Childe
+Roland must have been sadly disappointed in the
+Dark Tower; filth and familiarity very soon
+destroyed the romance of Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>But romance still clings to the Potala. It is
+still remote. Like Imray, its sacred inmate has
+achieved the impossible. Divinity or no, he has
+at least the divine power of vanishing. In the
+material West, as we like to call it, we know how
+hard it is for the humblest subject to disappear, in
+spite of the confused hub of traffic and intricate
+network of communications. Yet here in Lhasa,
+a city of dreamy repose, a King has escaped,
+been spirited into the air, and nobody is any the
+wiser.</p>
+
+<p>When we paraded the city yesterday, we made
+a complete circuit of the Potala. There was no
+one, not even the humblest follower, so unimaginative
+that he did not look up from time
+to time at the frowning cliff and thousand sightless
+windows that concealed the unknown. Those
+hidden corridors and passages have been for centuries,
+and are, perhaps, at this very moment, the
+scenes of unnatural piety and crime.</p>
+
+<p>Within the precincts of Lhasa the taking of life
+in any form is sacrilege. Buddha's first law was,
+'Thou shalt not kill'; and life is held so sacred by
+his devout followers that they are careful not to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+kill the smallest insect. Yet this palace, where
+dwells the divine incarnation of the Bodhisat, the
+head of the Buddhist Church, must have witnessed
+more murders and instigations to crime than the
+most blood-stained castle of medieval Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Since the assumption of temporal power by the
+fifth Grand Lama in the middle of the seventeenth
+century, the whole history of the Tibetan hierarchy
+has been a record of bloodshed and intrigue.
+The fifth Grand Lama, the first to receive the title
+of Dalai, was a most unscrupulous ruler, who
+secured the temporal power by inciting the
+Mongols to invade Tibet, and received as his
+reward the kingship. He then established his
+claim to the godhead by tampering with Buddhist
+history and writ. The sixth incarnation was
+executed by the Chinese on account of his profligacy.
+The seventh was deposed by the Chinese
+as privy to the murder of the regent. After the
+death of the eighth, of whom I can learn nothing,
+it would seem that the tables were turned: the
+regents systematically murdered their charge,
+and the crime of the seventh Dalai Lama was
+visited upon four successive incarnations. The
+ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth all died prematurely,
+assassinated, it is believed, by their
+regents.</p>
+
+<p>There are no legends of malmsey-butts, secret
+smotherings, and hired assassins. The children
+disappeared; they were absorbed into the Universal
+Essence; they were literally too good to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+live. Their regents and protectors, monks only
+less sacred than themselves, provided that the
+spirit in its yearning for the next state should not
+be long detained in its mortal husk. No questions
+were asked. How could the devout trace the
+comings and goings of the divine Avalokita, the
+Lord of Mercy and Judgment, who ordains into
+what heaven or hell, demon, god, hero, mollusc,
+or ape, their spirits must enter, according to their
+sins?</p>
+
+<p>So, when we reached Lhasa the other day, and
+heard that the thirteenth incarnation had fled, no
+one was surprised. Yet the wonder remains. A
+great Prince, a god to thousands of men, has been
+removed from his palace and capital, no one
+knows whither or when. A ruler has disappeared
+who travels with every appanage of state, inspiring
+awe in his prostrate servants, whose movements,
+one would think, were watched and talked
+about more than any Sovereign's on earth. Yet
+fear, or loyalty, or ignorance keeps every subject
+tongue-tied.</p>
+
+<p>We have spies and informers everywhere, and
+there are men in Lhasa who would do much to
+please the new conquerors of Tibet. There are
+also witless men, who have eyes and ears, but, it
+seems, no tongues.</p>
+
+<p>But so far neither avarice nor witlessness has
+betrayed anything. For all we know, the Dalai
+Lama may be still in his palace in some hidden
+chamber in the rock, or maybe he has never left
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+his customary apartments, and still performs his
+daily offices in the Potala, confident that there
+at least his sanctity is inviolable by unbelievers.</p>
+
+<p>The British Tommy in the meanwhile parades
+the streets as indifferently as if they were the
+New Cut or Lambeth Palace Road. He looks up
+at the Potala, and says: 'The old bloke's done a
+bunk. Wish we'd got 'im; we might get 'ome
+then.'</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Lhasa</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>August</i> &mdash;.</span></p>
+
+<p>We had been in Lhasa nearly three weeks
+before we could discover where the Dalai Lama
+had fled. We know now that he left his palace
+secretly in the night, and took the northern road
+to Mongolia. The Buriat, Dorjieff met him at
+Nagchuka, on the verge of the great desert that
+separates inhabited Tibet from Mongolia, 100 miles
+from Lhasa. On the 20th the Amban told us
+that he had already left Nagchuka twelve days,
+and was pushing on across the desert to the
+frontier.</p>
+
+<p>I have been trying to find out something about
+the private life and character of the Grand Lama.
+But asking questions here is fruitless; one can
+learn nothing intimate. And this is just what
+one might expect. The man continues a bogie,
+a riddle, undivinable, impersonal, remote. The
+people know nothing. They have bowed before
+the throne as men come out of the dark into a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+blinding light. Scrutiny in their view would be
+vain and blasphemous. The Abbots, too, will
+reveal nothing; they will not and dare not.
+When Colonel Younghusband put the question
+direct to a head Lama in open durbar, 'Have
+you news of the Dalai Lama? Do you know
+where he is?' the monk looked slowly to left and
+right, and answered, 'I know nothing.' 'The
+ruler of your country leaves his palace and
+capital, and you know nothing?' the Commissioner
+asked. 'Nothing,' answered the monk,
+shuffling his feet, but without changing colour.</p>
+
+<p>From various sources, which differ surprisingly
+little, I have a fairly clear picture of the man's
+face and figure. He is thick-set, about five feet
+nine inches in height, with a heavy square jaw, nose
+remarkably long and straight for a Tibetan,
+eyebrows pronounced and turning upwards in a
+phenomenal manner&mdash;probably trained so, to
+make his appearance more forbidding&mdash;face pockmarked,
+general expression resolute and sinister.
+He goes out very little, and is rarely seen by the
+people, except on his annual visit to Depung,
+and during his migrations between the Summer
+Palace and the Potala. He was at the Summer
+Palace when the messenger brought the news that
+our advance was inevitable, but he went to the
+Potala to put his house in order before projecting
+himself into the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>His face is the index of his character. He is a
+man of strong personality, impetuous, despotic,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+and intolerant of advice in State affairs. He is
+constantly deposing his Ministers, and has
+estranged from himself a large section of the
+upper classes, both ecclesiastical and official,
+owing to his wayward and headstrong disposition.
+As a child he was so precociously acute and
+resolute that he survived his regent, and so
+upset the traditional policy of murder, being the
+only one out of the last five incarnations to reach
+his majority. Since he took the government of
+the country into his own hands he has reduced the
+Chinese suzerainty to a mere shadow, and, with
+fatal results to himself, consistently insulted and
+defied the British. His inclination to a rapprochement
+with Russia is not shared by his Ministers.</p>
+
+<p>The only glimpse I have had into the man
+himself was reflected in a conversation with the
+Nepalese Resident, a podgy little man, very ugly
+and good-natured, with the manners of a French
+comedian and a face generally expanded in a broad
+grin. He shook with laughter when I asked him
+if he knew the Dalai Lama, and the idea was
+really intensely funny, this mercurial, irreverent
+little man hobnobbing with the divine. 'I have
+seen him,' he said, and exploded again. 'But
+what does he do all day?' I asked. The Resident
+puckered up his brow, aping abstraction, and
+began to wave his hand in the air solemnly with
+a slow circular movement, mumbling '<i>Om man
+Padme om</i>' to the revolutions of an imaginary
+praying-wheel. He was immensely pleased with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+the effort and the effect it produced on a sepoy
+orderly. 'But has he no interests or amusements?'
+I asked. The Resident could think of
+none. But he told me a story to illustrate the
+dulness of the man, for whom he evidently had
+no reverence. On his return from his last visit
+to India, the Maharaja of Nepal had given him
+a phonograph to present to the Priest-King.
+The impious toy was introduced to the Holy of
+Holies, and the Dalai Lama walked round it
+uneasily as it emitted the strains of English
+band music, and raucously repeated an indelicate
+Bhutanese song. After sitting a long while in
+deep thought, he rose and said he could not live
+with this voice without a soul; it must leave his
+palace at once. The rejected phonograph found
+a home with the Chinese Amban, to whom it was
+presented with due ceremonial the same day.
+'The Lama is <i>gumar</i>,' the Resident said, using a
+Hindustani word which may be translated, according
+to our charity, by anything between 'boorish'
+and 'unenlightened.' I was glad to meet a man
+in this city of evasiveness whose views were
+positive, and who was eager to communicate
+them. Through him I tracked the shadow, as it
+were, of this impersonality, and found that to
+many strangers in Lhasa, and perhaps to a few
+Lhasans themselves, the divinity was all clay, a
+palpable fraud, a pompous and puritanical dullard
+masquerading as a god.</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, I think the oracle that
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+counselled his flight wiser than the statesmen who
+object that it was a political mistake. He has
+lost his prestige, they say. But imagine him
+dragged into durbar as a signatory, gazed at by
+profane eyes, the subject of a few days' gossip
+and comment, then sunk into commonplace,
+stripped of his mystery like this city of Lhasa,
+through which we now saunter familiarly,
+wondering when we shall start again for the
+<i>wilds</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp260-1"></a><a href="images/fp260-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp260-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Potala, West Front.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp260-2"></a><a href="images/fp260-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp260-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Mounted Infantry Guard at the Potala.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To escape this ordeal he has fled, and to us,
+at least, his flight has deepened the mystery
+that envelops him, and added to his dignity and
+remoteness; to thousands of mystical dreamers
+it has preserved the effulgence of his godhead
+unsoiled by contact with the profane world.</p>
+
+<p>From our camp here the Potala draws the eye
+like a magnet. There is nothing but sky and
+marsh and bleak hill and palace. When we look
+out of our tents in the morning, the sun is striking
+the golden roof like a beacon light to the faithful.
+Nearly every day in August this year has opened
+fine and closed with storm-clouds gathering from
+the west, through which the sun shines, bathing
+the eastern valley in a soft, pearly light. The
+western horizon is dark and lowering, the eastern
+peaceful and serene. In this division of darkness
+and light the Potala stands out like a haven, not
+flaming now, but faintly luminous with a restful
+mystic light, soothing enough to rob Buddhist
+metaphysics of its pessimism and induce a mood,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+even in unbelievers, in which one is content to
+merge the individual and become absorbed in the
+universal spirit of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that, when one looks for mystery in
+Lhasa, one's thoughts dwell solely on the Dalai
+Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwelling
+on the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It
+plunges us into medievalism. To my mind, there is
+no picture so romantic and engrossing in modern
+history as that exodus, when the spiritual head of
+the Buddhist Church, the temporal ruler of six
+millions, stole out of his palace by night and was
+borne away in his palanquin, no one knows on
+what errand or with what impotent rage in his
+heart. The flight was really secret. No one but
+his immediate confidants and retainers, not even
+the Amban himself, knew that he had gone. I
+can imagine the awed attendants, the burying of
+treasure, the locking and sealing of chests, faint
+lights flickering in the passages, hurried footsteps
+in the corridors, dogs barking intermittently at
+this unwonted bustle&mdash;I feel sure the Priest-King
+kicked one as he stepped on the terrace for the
+last time. Then the procession by moonlight up
+the narrow valley to the north, where the roar of
+the stream would drown the footsteps of the
+palanquin-bearers.</p>
+
+<p>A month afterwards I followed on his track,
+and stood on the Phembu Pass twelve miles north
+of Lhasa, whence one looks down on the huge belt
+of mountains that lie between the Brahmaputra
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+and the desert, so packed and huddled that their
+crests look like one continuous undulating plain
+stretching to the horizon. Looking across the
+valley, I could see the northern road to Mongolia
+winding up a feeder of the Phembu Chu. They
+passed along here and over the next range, and
+across range after range, until they reached the
+two conical snow-peaks that stand out of the plain
+beside Tengri Nor, a hundred miles to the north.
+For days they skirted the great lake, and then, as
+if they feared the Nemesis of our offended Raj
+could pursue them to the end of the earth, broke
+into the desert, across which they must be hurrying
+now toward the great mountain chain of Burkhan
+Buddha, on the southern limits of Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="r1"><span class="smcap">Lhasa</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="r2"><i>August 19</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p>The Tibetans are the strangest people on earth.
+To-day I discovered how they dispose of their
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>To hold life sacred and benefit the creatures are
+the laws of Buddha, which they are supposed to
+obey most scrupulously. And as they think they
+may be reborn in any shape of mammal, bird, or
+fish, they are kind to living things.</p>
+
+<p>During the morning service the Lamas repeat
+a prayer for the minute insects which they have
+swallowed inadvertently in their meat and drink,
+and the formula insures the rebirth of these
+microbes in heaven. Sometimes, when a Lama's
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+life is despaired of, the monks will ransom a yak
+or a bullock from the shambles, and keep him a
+pensioner in their monastery, praying the good
+Buddha to spare the sick man's life for the life
+ransomed. Yet they eat meat freely, all save
+the Gelug-pa, or Reformed Church, and square
+their conscience with their appetite by the pretext
+that the sin rests with the outcast assassin, the
+public butcher, who will be born in the next
+incarnation as some tantalized spirit or agonized
+demon. That, however, is his own affair.</p>
+
+<p>But it is when a Tibetan dies that his charity
+to the creatures becomes really practical. Then,
+by his own tacit consent when living, his body is
+given as a feast to the dogs and vultures. This
+is no casual or careless gift to avoid the trouble of
+burial or cremation. All creatures who have a
+taste for these things are invited to the ceremony,
+and the corpse is carved to their liking by an
+expert, who devotes his life to the practice.</p>
+
+<p>When a Tibetan dies he is left three days in his
+chamber, and a slit is made in his skull to let his
+soul pass out. Then he is rolled into a ball,
+wrapped in a sack, or silk if he is rich, packed
+into a jar or basket, and carried along to the
+music of conch shells to the ceremonial stone.
+Here a Lama takes the corpse out of its vessel and
+wrappings, and lays it face downwards on a large
+flat slab, and the pensioners prowl or hop round,
+waiting for their dole. They are quite tame.
+The Lamas stand a little way apart, and see that
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+strict etiquette is observed during the entertainment.
+The carver begins at the ankle, and cuts
+upwards, throwing little strips of flesh to the
+guests; the bones he throws to a second attendant,
+who pounds them up with a heavy stone.</p>
+
+<p>I passed the place to-day as I rode in from a
+reconnaissance. The slab lies a stone's-throw
+to the left of the great northern road to Tengri
+Nor and Mongolia, about two miles from the city.</p>
+
+<p>A group of stolid vultures, too demoralized to
+range in search of carrion, stood motionless on a
+rock above, waiting the next dispenser of charity.</p>
+
+<p>A few ravens hopped about sadly; they, too,
+were evidently pauperized. One magpie was
+prying round in suspicious proximity, and dogs
+conscious of shame slunk about without a bark
+in them, and nosed the ground diligently. They
+are always there, waiting.</p>
+
+<p>There was hardly a stain on the slab, so quick
+and eager are the applicants for charity. Only
+a few rags lay around, too poor to be carried away.</p>
+
+<p>I have not seen the ceremony, and I have no
+mind to. My companion this morning, a hardened
+young subaltern who was fighting nearly every
+day in April, May, and June, and has seen more
+bloodshed than most veterans, saw just as much
+as I have described. He then felt very ill, dug
+his spurs into his horse, and rode away.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_14">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><span>CHAPTER XIV</span>
+
+<small>THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> the first week in September I had visited all
+the most important temples and monasteries in
+Lhasa. We generally went in parties of four and
+five, and a company of Sikhs or Pathans was left
+in the courtyard in case of accidents. We were
+well armed, as the monks were sullen, though I
+do not think they were capable of any desperate
+fanaticism. If they had had the abandon of
+dervishes, they might have rushed our camp long
+before. They missed their chance at Gyantse,
+when a night attack pushed home by overwhelming
+numbers could have wiped out our little garrison.
+In Lhasa there was the one case of the
+Lama who ran amuck outside the camp with the
+coat of mail and huge paladin's sword concealed
+beneath his cloak, a medieval figure who thrashed
+the air with his brand like a flail in sheer lust of
+blood. He was hanged medievally the next day
+within sight of Lhasa. Since then the exploit
+has not been repeated, but no one leaves the
+perimeter unarmed.</p>
+
+<p>I have written of the squalor of the Lhasa
+streets. The environs of the city are beautiful
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+enough&mdash;willow groves intersected by clear-running
+streams, walled-in parks with palaces and
+fish-ponds, marshes where the wild-duck flaunt
+their security, and ripe barley-fields stretching
+away to the hills. In September the trees
+were wearing their autumn tints, the willows
+were mostly a sulphury yellow, and in the pools
+beneath the red-stalked <i>polygonum</i> and burnished
+dock-leaf glowed in brilliant contrast. Just before
+dusk there was generally a storm in the valley,
+which only occasionally reached the city; but the
+breeze stirred the poplars, and the silver under the
+leaves glistened brightly against the background
+of clouds. Often a rainbow hung over the Potala
+like a nimbus.</p>
+
+<p>On the Lingkhor, or circular road, which winds
+round Lhasa, we saw pilgrims and devotees moving
+slowly along in prayer, always keeping the Potala
+on their right hand. The road is only used for
+devotion. One meets decrepit old women and
+men, halting and limping and slowly revolving
+their prayer-wheels and mumbling charms. I
+never saw a healthy yokel or robust Lama performing
+this rite. Nor did I see the pilgrims
+whom one reads of as circumambulating the city
+on their knees by a series of prostrations, bowing
+their heads in the dust and mud. All the devotees
+are poor and ragged, and many blind. It seems
+that the people of Lhasa do not begin to think
+of the next incarnation until they have nothing
+left in this.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When one leaves the broad avenues between the
+walls of the groves and pleasure-gardens, and
+enters the city, one's senses are offended by everything
+that is unsightly and unclean. Pigs and
+pariah dogs are nosing about in black oozy mud.
+The houses are solid but dirty. It is hard to
+believe that they are whitewashed every year.</p>
+
+<p>Close to the western entrance are the huts of
+the Ragyabas, beggars, outcasts, and scavengers,
+who cut up the dead. The outer walls of their
+houses are built of yak-horns.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the houses had banks of turf built up
+outside the doors, with borders of English flowers.
+The dwellings are mostly two or three storied.
+Bird-cages hang from the windows.</p>
+
+<p>The outside of the cathedral is not at all imposing.
+From the streets one cannot see the
+golden roof, but only high blank walls, and at
+the entrance a forest of dingy pillars beside a
+massive door. The door is thrown open by a
+sullen monk, and a huge courtyard is revealed
+with more dingy pillars that were once red. The
+entire wall is covered with paintings of Buddhist
+myth and symbolism. The colours are subdued
+and pleasing. In the centre of the yard are
+masses of hollyhocks, marigolds, nasturtiums, and
+stocks. Beside the flower-borders is a pyramidical
+structure in which are burnt the leaves
+of juniper and pine for sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>The cloisters are two-storied; on the upper
+floor the monks have their cells. Looking up,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+one can see hundreds of them gazing at us with
+interest over the banisters. The upper story, as
+in every temple in Tibet, is coated with a dark
+red substance which looks like rough paint, but
+is really sacred earth, pasted on to evenly-clipped
+brushwood so as to seem like a continuation of the
+masonry. On the face of the wall are emblems in
+gilt, Buddhist symbols, like our Prince of Wales's
+feathers, sun and crescent moon, and various other
+devices. A heavy curtain of yak-hair hangs above
+the entrance-gate. On the roof are large cylinders
+draped in yak-hair cloth topped by a crescent or
+a spear. Every monastery and jong, and most
+houses in Tibet, are ornamented with these.
+When one first sees them in the distance they
+look like men walking on the roof.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp268-1"></a><a href="images/fp268-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp268-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Metal Bowls outside the Jokhang.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp268-2"></a><a href="images/fp268-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp268-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Street Scene in Lhasa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Generally one ascends steps from the outer
+courtyard to the temple, but in the Jokhang the
+floors are level. We enter the main temple by a
+dark passage. The great doorway that opens
+into the street has been closed behind us, but we
+leave a company of Pathans in the outer yard,
+as the monks are sullen. Our party of four is
+armed with revolvers.</p>
+
+<p>Service is being held before the great Buddhas
+as we enter, and a thunderous harmony like an
+organ-peal breaks the interval for meditation.
+The Abbot, who is in the centre, leans forward
+from his chair and takes a bundle of peacock-feathers
+from a vase by his side. As he points
+it to the earth there is a clashing of cymbals, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+beating of drums, and a blowing of trumpets and
+conch shells.</p>
+
+<p>Then the music dies away like the reverberation
+of cannon in the hills. The Abbot begins the
+chant, and the monks, facing each other like
+singing-men in a choir, repeat the litany. They
+have extraordinary deep, devotional voices, at
+once unnatural and impressive. The deepest
+bass of the West does not approach it, and their
+sense of time is perfect.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the thousand monks is like the
+drone of some subterranean monster, musically
+plaintive&mdash;the wail of the Earth God praying for
+release to the God of the Skies.</p>
+
+<p>The chant sounds like the endless repetition of
+the same formula; the monks sway to it rhythmically.
+The temple would be dark if it were not
+for the flickering of many thousands of votive
+candles and butter lamps. Rows upon rows of
+them are placed before every shrine.</p>
+
+<p>In an inner temple we found the three great
+images of the Buddhist trinity&mdash;the Buddhas of
+the past, present, and future. The images were
+greater than life-size, and set with jewels from
+foot to crown. As in the cloisters of an English
+cathedral, there were little side-chapels, which
+held sacred relics and shrines.</p>
+
+<p>There were lamps of gold, and solid golden
+bowls set on altars, and embossed salvers of copper
+and bronze.</p>
+
+<p>A hanging grille of chainwork protected the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+precincts from sacrilege, and an extended hand,
+bloody and menacing, was stretched from the
+wall, terrible enough when suddenly revealed in
+that dim light to paralyze and strike to earth
+with fright any profane thief who would dare to
+enter.</p>
+
+<p>In the upper story we found a place which we
+called 'Hell,' where some Lamas were worshipping
+the demon protectress of the Grand Lama. The
+music here was harsh and barbaric. There were
+displayed on the pillars and walls every freak of
+diabolical invention in the shape of scrolls and
+devil-masks. The obscene object of this worship
+was huddled in a corner&mdash;a dwarfish abortion,
+hideous and malignant enough for such rites.</p>
+
+<p>All about the Lamas' feet ran little white mice
+searching for grain. They are fed daily, and are
+scrupulously reverenced, as in their frail white
+bodies the souls of the previous guardians of the
+shrine are believed to be reincarnated.</p>
+
+<p>In another temple we found the Lamas holding
+service in worship of the many-handed Buddha,
+Avalokitesvara. The picture of the god hung
+from pillars by the altar. The chief Lamas were
+wearing peaked caps picturesquely coloured with
+subdued blue and gold, and vestments of the
+same hue. The lesser Lamas were bare-headed,
+and their hair was cropped.</p>
+
+<p>When we first entered, an acolyte was pouring
+tea out of a massive copper pot with a turquoise
+on the spout. Each monk received his tea in a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+wooden bowl, and poured in barley-flour to make
+a paste.</p>
+
+<p>During this interval no one spoke or whispered.
+The footsteps of the acolytes were noiseless.
+Only the younger ones looked up at us self-consciously
+as we watched them from a latticed
+window in the corridor above.</p>
+
+<p>Centuries ago this service was ordained, and
+the intervals appointed to further the pursuit
+of truth through silence and abstraction. The
+monks sat there quiet as stone. They had seen
+us, but they were seemingly oblivious.</p>
+
+<p>One wondered, were they pursuing truth or were
+they petrified by ritual and routine? Did they
+regard us as immaterial reflexes, unsubstantial
+and illusory, passing shadows of the world cast
+upon them by an instant's illusion, to pass away
+again into the unreal, while they were absorbed
+in the contemplation of changeless and universal
+truths? Or were we noted as food for gossip
+and criticism when their self-imposed ordeal was
+done?</p>
+
+<p>The reek of the candles was almost suffocating.
+'Thank God I am not a Lama!' said a subaltern
+by my side. An Afridi Subadar let the butt of
+his rifle clank from his boot to the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>At these calls to sanity we clattered out of
+this unholy atmosphere of dreams as if by an
+unquestioned impulse into the bright sunshine
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>In the bazaar there is a gay crowd. The streets
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+are thronged by as good-natured a mob as I have
+met anywhere. Sullenness and distrust have
+vanished. Officers and men, Tommies, Gurkhas,
+Sikhs, and Pathans, are stared at and criticised
+good-humouredly, and their accoutrements fingered
+and examined. It is a bright and interesting
+crowd, full of colour. In a corner of the square
+a street singer with a guitar and dancing children
+attracts a small crowd. His voice is a rich baritone,
+and he yodels like the Tyrolese. The crowd
+is parted by a Shapé riding past in gorgeous yellow
+silks and brocades, followed by a mounted retinue
+whose head-gear would be the despair of an
+operatic hatter. They wear red lamp-shades,
+yellow motor-caps, exaggerated Gainsboroughs,
+inverted cooking-pots, coal-scuttles, and medieval
+helmets. And among this topsy-turvy, which does
+not seem out of place in Lhasa, the most eccentrically-hatted
+man is the Bhutanese Tongsa
+Penlop, who parades the streets in an English
+gray felt hat.</p>
+
+<p>The Mongolian caravan has arrived in Lhasa,
+after crossing a thousand miles of desert and
+mountain tracks. The merchants and drivers
+saunter about the streets, trying not to look too
+rustic. But they are easily recognisable&mdash;tall,
+sinewy men, very independent in gait, with faces
+burnt a dark brick red by exposure to the wind
+and sun. I saw one of their splendidly robust
+women, clad in a sheepskin cloak girdled at the
+waist, bending over a cloth stall, and fingering
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+samples as if shopping were the natural business
+of her life.</p>
+
+<p>On fine days the wares are spread on the cobbles
+of the street, and the coloured cloth and china
+make a pretty show against the background of
+garden flowers. At the doors of the shops stand
+pale Nuwaris, whose ancestors from Nepal settled
+in Lhasa generations ago. They wear a flat
+brown cap, and a dull russet robe darker than
+that of the Lamas. The Cashmiri shopkeepers
+are turbaned, and wear a cloak of butcher's blue.
+They and the Nuwaris and the Chinese seem to
+monopolize the trade of the city.</p>
+
+<p>British officers haunt the bazaars searching for
+curios, but with very little success. Lhasa has
+no artistic industries; nearly all the knick-knacks
+come from India and China. Cloisonné ware is
+rare and expensive, as one has to pay for the
+1,800 miles of transport from Peking. Religious
+objects are not sold. Turquoises are plentiful,
+but coarse and inferior. Hundreds of paste
+imitations have been bought. There is a certain
+sale for amulets, rings, bells, and ornaments for
+the hair, but these and the brass and copper work
+can be bought for half the price in the Darjeeling
+bazaar. The few relics we have found of the
+West must have histories. In the cathedral there
+was a bell with the inscription 'Te Deum laudamus,'
+probably a relic of the Capuchins. In the
+purlieus of the city we found a bicycle without
+tyres, and a sausage-machine made in Birmingham.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the cathedral, most of
+the temples and monasteries are on the outskirts
+of the city. There is a sameness about these
+places of worship that would make description
+tedious. Only the Ramo-ché and Moru temples,
+which are solely devoted to sorcery, are different.
+Here one sees the other soul-side of the people.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp274-1"></a><a href="images/fp274-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp274-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Tsarung Shapé.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp274-2"></a><a href="images/fp274-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp274-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Mongolians in Lhasa.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Ramo-ché is as dark and dingy as a vault.
+On each side of the doorway are three gigantic
+tutelary demons. In the vestibule is a collection
+of bows, arrows, chain-armour, stag-horns, stuffed
+animals, scrolls, masks, skulls, and all the paraphernalia
+of devil-worship. On the left is a dark
+recess where drums are being beaten by an unseen
+choir.</p>
+
+<p>A Lama stands, chalice in hand, before a deep
+aperture cut in the wall like a buttery hatch, and
+illumined by dim, flickering candles, which reveal
+a malignant female fiend. As a second priest
+pours holy water into a chalice, the Lama raises
+it solemnly again and again, muttering spells to
+propitiate the fury.</p>
+
+<p>In the hall there are neither ornaments, gods,
+hanging canopies, nor scrolls, as in the other
+temples. There is neither congregation nor
+priests. The walls are apparently black and unpainted,
+but here and there a lamp reveals a
+Gorgon's head, a fiend's eye, a square inch or two
+of pigment that time has not obscured.</p>
+
+<p>The place is immemorially old. There are huge
+vessels of carved metal and stone, embossed, like
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+the roof, with griffins and skulls, which probably
+date back to before the introduction of Buddhism
+into Tibet, and are survivals of the old Bon
+religion. There is nothing bright here in colour
+or sound, nothing vivid or animated.</p>
+
+<p>Stricken men and women come to remove a
+curse, vindictive ones to inflict one, bereaved ones
+to pay the initiated to watch the adventures of
+the soul in purgatory and guide it on its passage
+to the new birth, while demons and furies are
+lurking to snatch it with fiery claws and drag it
+to hell.</p>
+
+<p>All these beings must be appeased by magic
+rites. So in the Ramo-ché there is no rapture of
+music, no communion with Buddha, no beatitudes,
+only solitary priests standing before the shrines
+and mumbling incantations, dismal groups of two
+or three seated Buddha-fashion on the floor, and
+casting spells to exercise a deciding influence, as
+they hope, in the continual warfare which is
+being waged between the tutelary and malignant
+deities for the prize of a soul.</p>
+
+<p>In the chancel of the temple, behind the altar, is
+a massive pile of masonry stretching from floor
+to roof, under which, as folk believe, an abysmal
+chasm leads down to hell. Round this there is a
+dark and narrow passage which pilgrims circumambulate.
+The floor and walls are as slippery as
+ice, worn by centuries of pious feet and groping
+hands. One old woman in some urgent need is
+drifting round and round abstractedly.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere one might linger in the place fascinated,
+but here in Lhasa one moves among
+mysteries casually; for one cannot wonder, in this
+isolated land where the elements are so aggressive,
+among these deserts and wildernesses, heaped
+mountain chains, and impenetrable barriers of
+snow, that the children of the soil believe that
+earth, air, and water are peopled by demons who
+are struggling passionately over the destinies of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I will not describe any more of the Lhasa
+temples. One shrine is very like another, and
+details would be tedious. Personally, I do not
+care for systematic sightseeing, even in Lhasa,
+but prefer to loiter about the streets and bazaars,
+and the gardens outside the city, watch the people,
+and enjoy the atmosphere of the place. The
+religion of Tibet is picturesque enough in an
+unwholesome way, but to inquire how the layers
+of superstition became added to the true faith,
+and trace the growth of these spurious accretions,
+I leave to archæologists. Perhaps one reader in
+a hundred will be interested to know that a temple
+was built by the illustrious Konjo, daughter of the
+Emperor Tai-Tsung and wife of King Srong-btsan-gombo,
+but I think the other ninety and nine will
+be devoutly thankful if I omit to mention it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet one cannot leave the subject of the Lhasa
+monasteries without remarking on the striking
+resemblance between Tibetan Lamaism and the
+Romish Church. The resemblance cannot be
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+accidental. The burning of candles before altars,
+the sprinkling of holy water, the chanting of
+hymns in alternation, the giving alms and saying
+Masses for the dead, must have their origin in the
+West. We know that for many centuries large
+Christian communities have existed in Western
+China near the Tibetan frontier, and several
+Roman Catholic missionaries have penetrated to
+Lhasa and other parts of Tibet during the last
+three centuries. As early <ins class="corr" title="a">as</ins> 1641 the Jesuit
+Father Grueber visited Lhasa, and recorded that
+the Lamas wore caps and mitres, that they used
+rosaries, bells, and censers, and observed the
+practice of confession, penance, and absolution.
+Besides these points common to Roman Catholicism,
+he noticed the monastic and conventual
+system, the tonsure, the vows of poverty, chastity,
+and obedience, the doctrine of incarnation and the
+Trinity, and the belief in purgatory and paradise.<a id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We occasionally saw a monk with the refined
+ascetic face of a Roman Cardinal. Te Rinpoche,
+the acting regent, was an example. One or two
+looked as if they might be humane and benevolent&mdash;men
+who might make one accept the gentle old
+Lama in 'Kim' as a not impossible fiction; but
+most of them appeared to me to be gross and
+sottish. I must confess that during the protracted
+negociations at Lhasa I had little sympathy with
+the Lamas. It is a mistake to think that they
+keep their country closed out of any religious
+scruple. Buddhism in its purest form is not
+exclusive or fanatical. Sakya Muni preached a
+missionary religion. He was Christlike in his
+universal love and his desire to benefit all living
+creatures. But Buddhism in Tibet has become
+more and more degenerate, and the Lamaist
+Church is now little better than a political
+mechanism whose chief function is the uncompromising
+exclusion of foreigners. The Lamas
+know that intercourse with other nations must
+destroy their influence with the people.</p>
+
+<p>And Tibet is really ruled by the Lamas. Outside
+Lhasa are the three great monasteries of
+Depung, Sera, and Gaden, whose Abbots, backed
+by a following of nearly 30,000 armed and bigoted
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+monks, maintain a preponderating influence in
+the national assembly.<a id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> These men wield a
+greater influence than the four Shapés or the
+Dalai Lama himself, and practically dictate the
+policy of the country.</p>
+
+<p>The three great monasteries are of ancient
+foundation, and intimately associated with the
+history of the country. They are, in fact, ecclesiastical
+Universities,<a id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and resemble in many ways
+our Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The
+Universities are divided into colleges. Each has
+its own Abbot, or Master, and disciplinary staff.
+The undergraduates, or candidates for ordination,
+must attend lectures and chapels, and pass
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+examinations in set books, which they must learn
+from cover to cover before they can take their
+degree. Failure in examination, as well as
+breaches in discipline and manners, are punished
+by flogging. Corporal punishment is also dealt
+out to the unfortunate tutors, who are held
+responsible for their pupils' omissions. If a
+candidate repeatedly fails to pass his examination,
+he is expelled from the University, and can only
+enter again on payment of increased fees. The
+three leading Universities are empowered to confer
+degrees which correspond to our Bachelor and
+Doctor of Divinity. The monks live in rooms in
+quadrangles, and have separate messing clubs,
+but meet for general worship in the cathedral.
+If their code is strictly observed, which I very
+much doubt, prayers and tedious religious observances
+must take up nearly their whole day.
+But the Lamas are adept casuists, and generally
+manage to evade the most irksome laws of their
+scriptures.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after our arrival in Lhasa we had occasion
+to visit Depung, which is probably the largest
+monastery in the world. It stands in a natural
+amphitheatre in the hillside two miles from the
+city, a huge collection of temples and monastic
+buildings, larger, and certainly more imposing,
+than most towns in Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>The University was founded in 1414, during the
+reign of the first Grand Lama of the Reformed
+Church. It is divided into four colleges, and contains
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+nearly 8,000 monks, amongst whom there
+is a large Mongolian community. The fourth
+Grand Lama, a Mongolian, is buried within the
+precincts. The fifth and greatest Dalai Lama,
+who built the Potala and was the first to combine
+the temporal and spiritual power, was an Abbot
+of Depung. The reigning Dalai Lama visits
+Depung annually, and a palace in the university
+is reserved for his use. The Abbot, of course, is
+a man of very great political influence.</p>
+
+<p>All these facts I have collected to show that the
+monks have some reason to be proud of their
+monastery as the first in Tibet. One may forgive
+them a little pride in its historic distinctions.
+Even in our own alma mater we meet the best
+of men who seem to gather importance from old
+traditions and association with a long roll of distinguished
+names. What, then, can we expect of
+this Tibetan community, the most conservative
+in a country that has prided itself for centuries
+on its bigotry and isolation&mdash;men who are ignorant
+of science, literature, history, politics, everything,
+in fact, except their own narrow priestcraft and
+confused metaphysics? We call the Tibetan
+'impossible.' His whole education teaches him
+to be so, and the more educated he is the more
+'impossible' he becomes.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine, then, the consternation at Depung
+when a body of armed men rode up to the monastery
+and demanded supplies. We had refrained
+from entering the monasteries of Lhasa and its
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+neighbourhood at the request of the Abbots and
+Shapés, but only on condition that the monks
+should bring in supplies, which were to be paid
+for at a liberal rate. The Abbots failed to keep
+their promise, supplies were not forthcoming, and
+it became necessary to resort to strong measures.
+An officer was sent to the gate with an escort of
+three men and a letter saying that if the provisions
+were not handed over within an hour we would
+break into the monastery and take them, if necessary,
+by force. The messengers were met by a
+crowd of excited Lamas, who refused to accept
+the letter, waved them away, and rolled stones
+towards them menacingly, as an intimation that
+they were prepared to fight. As the messengers
+rode away the tocsin was heard, warning the
+villagers, women and children, who were gathered
+outside with market produce, to depart.</p>
+
+<p>General Macdonald with a strong force of
+British and native troops drew up within 1,300
+yards of the monastery, guns were trained on
+Depung, the infantry were deployed, and we
+waited the expiration of the period of grace
+intimated in the letter. An hour passed by, and
+it seemed as if military operations were inevitable,
+when groups of monks came out with a white
+flag, carrying baskets of eggs and a complimentary
+scarf.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the face of this military display they
+began to temporize. They bowed and chattered
+and protested in their usual futile manner, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+condescended so far as to say they would talk
+the matter over if we retired at once, and send
+the supplies to our camp the next day, if they
+came to a satisfactory decision. The Lamas are
+trained to wrangle and dispute and defer and
+vacillate.<a id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> They seem to think that speech was
+made only to evade conclusions. The curt ultimatum
+was repeated, and the deputation was
+removed gently by two impassive sepoys, still
+chattering like a flock of magpies.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile we sat and waited and smoked
+our pipes, and wondered if there were going to be
+another Guru. It seemed the most difficult thing
+in the world to save these poor fools from the
+effects of their obstinate folly. The time-limit
+had nearly expired, the two batteries were advanced
+300 yards, the gunners took their sights
+again, and trained the 10-pounders on the very
+centre of the monastery.</p>
+
+<p>There were only five minutes more, and we were
+stirred, according to our natures, by pity or
+exasperation or the swift primitive instinct for
+the dramatic, which sweeps away the humanities,
+and leaves one to the conflict of elemental passions.</p>
+
+<p>At last a thin line of red-robed monks was seen
+to issue from the gate and descend the hill, each
+carrying a bag of supplies. The crisis was over,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+and we were spared the necessity of inflicting a
+cruel punishment. I waited to see the procession,
+a group of sullen ecclesiastics, who had never
+bowed or submitted to external influence in their
+lives, carrying on their backs their unwilling contribution
+to the support of the first foreign army
+that had ever intruded on their seclusion. It
+must have been the most humiliating day in the
+history of Depung.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that it was not a moment
+when the monks looked their best. Yet I could
+not help comparing their appearance with that
+of the simple honest-looking peasantry. Many of
+them looked sottish and degraded; other faces
+showed cruelty and cunning; their brows were
+contracted as if by perpetual scheming; some
+were almost simian in appearance, and looked
+as if they could not harbour a thought that was
+not animal or sensual. They waddled in their
+walk, and their right arms, exposed from the
+shoulder, looked soft and flabby, as if they had
+never done an honest day's work in their life.</p>
+
+<p>One man had the face of an inquisitor&mdash;round,
+beady eyes, puffed cheeks, and thin, tightly-shut
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>How they hated us! If one of us fell into their
+hands secretly, I have no doubt they would rack
+him limb from limb, or cut him into small pieces
+with a knife.</p>
+
+<p>The Depung incident shows how difficult it was
+to make any headway with the Tibetans without
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+recourse to arms. We were present in the city
+to insist on compliance with our demands. But
+an amicable settlement seemed hopeless, and we
+could not stay in Lhasa indefinitely. What if
+these monks were to say, 'You may stay here
+if you like. We will not molest you, but we
+refuse to accept your terms'? We could only
+retire or train our guns on the Potala. Retreat
+was, of course, impossible.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="chapter" id="chapter_15">
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><span>CHAPTER XV</span>
+
+<small>THE SETTLEMENT</small></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> political deadlock continued until within a
+week of the signing of the treaty.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time no responsible delegates were
+forthcoming. The Shapés, who were weak men
+and tools of the fugitive Dalai Lama, protested
+that any treaty they might make with us would
+result in their disgrace. If, on the other hand,
+they made no treaty, and we were compelled to
+occupy the Potala, or take some other step offensive
+to the hierarchy, their ruin would be equally
+certain. Ruin, in fact, faced them in any case.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp286-1"></a><a href="images/fp286-1.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp286-1s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Ta Lama.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp286-2"></a><a href="images/fp286-2.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp286-2s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Soldier of the Amban's Escort.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The highest officials in Tibet visited Colonel
+Younghusband, expressed their eagerness to see
+differences amicably settled, and, when asked to
+arrange the simplest matter, said they were afraid
+to take on themselves the responsibility. And
+this was not merely astute evasiveness. It was
+really a fact that there was no one in Lhasa who
+dared commit himself by an action or assurance
+of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there existed some kind of irresponsible
+disorganized machine of administration which
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+sometimes arrived at a decision about matters
+of the moment. The National Assembly was
+sufficiently of one mind to depose and imprison
+the Ta Lama, the ecclesiastical member of Council.
+His disgrace was due to his failure to persuade
+us to return to Gyantse.</p>
+
+<p>The National Assembly held long sessions daily,
+and after more than a week of discussion they
+began to realize that there was at least one aim
+that was common to them all&mdash;that the English
+should be induced to leave Lhasa. They then
+appointed accredited delegates, whose decisions,
+they said, would be entirely binding on the
+Dalai Lama, should he come back. The Dalai
+Lama had left his seal with Te Rinpoche, the
+acting regent, but with no authority to use it.</p>
+
+<p>The terms of the treaty were disclosed to the
+Amban, who communicated them to the Tsong-du.
+The Tsong-du submitted the draft of their
+reply to the Amban before it was presented to
+Colonel Younghusband. The first reply of the
+Assembly to our demands ought to be preserved
+as a historic epitome of national character. The
+indemnity, they said, ought to be paid by us,
+and not by them. We had invaded their territory,
+and spoiled their monasteries and lands,
+and should bear the cost. The question of
+trade marts they were obstinately opposed to;
+but, provided we carried out the other terms
+of the treaty to their satisfaction, they would
+consider the advisability of conceding us a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+market at Rinchengong, a mile and a half beyond
+the present one at Yatung. They would not be
+prepared, however, to make this concession unless
+we undertook to pay for what we purchased on
+the spot, to respect their women, and to refrain
+from looting. Road-making they could not allow,
+as the blasting and upheaval of soil offended
+their gods and brought trouble on the neighbourhood.
+The telegraph-wire was against their
+customs, and objectionable on religious grounds.
+With regard to foreign relations, they had never
+had any dealings with an outside race, and they
+intended to preserve this policy so long as they
+were not compelled to seek protection from
+another Power.</p>
+
+<p>The tone of the reply indicates the attitude of
+the Tibetans. Obstinacy could go no further.
+The document, however, was not forwarded
+officially to the Commissioner, but returned to
+the Assembly by the Amban as too impertinent
+for transmission. The Amban explained to
+Colonel Younghusband that the Tibetans regarded
+the negociations in the light of a huckster's
+bargain. They did not realize that we
+were in a position to enforce terms, and that
+our demands were unconditional, but thought
+that by opening negociations in an unconciliatory
+manner, and asking for more than they
+expected, they might be able to effect a compromise
+and escape the full exaction of the
+penalty.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first concession on the part of the Tibetans
+was the release of the two Lachung men, natives
+of Sikkim and British subjects, who had been
+captured and beaten at Tashilunpo in July, 1903,
+while the Commission was waiting at Khamba
+Jong. Their liberation was one of the terms of
+the treaty. Colonel Younghusband made the
+release the occasion of an impressive durbar, in
+which he addressed a solemn warning to the
+Tibetans on the sanctity of the British subject.
+The imprisonment of the two men from Sikkim,
+he said, was the most serious offence of which the
+Tibetans had been guilty. It was largely on that
+account that the Indian Government had decided
+to advance to Gyantse. The prisoners were
+brought straight from the dungeon to the audience-hall.
+They had been incarcerated in a dark
+underground cell for more than a year, and they
+knew nothing of the arrival of the English in
+Lhasa until the morning when Colonel Younghusband
+told them they were free by the command
+of the King-Emperor. I shall never forget
+the scene&mdash;the bewilderment and delight of the
+prisoners, their drawn, blanched features, and the
+sullen acquiescence of the Tibetans, who learnt
+for the first time the meaning of the old Roman
+boast, 'Civis Romanus sum.'</p>
+
+<p>On August 20 Colonel Younghusband received
+through the Amban the second reply to our
+demands. The tone of the delegates was still
+impossible, though slightly modified and more
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+reasonable. Several durbars followed, but they
+did not advance the negociations. Instead of
+discussing matters vital to the settlement, the
+Tibetan representatives would arrive with all the
+formalities and ceremonial of durbar to beg us
+not to cut grass in a particular field, or to request
+the return of the empty grain-bags to the monasteries.
+The Amban said that he had met with
+nothing but shuffling from the 'barbarians'
+during his term of office. They were 'dark and
+cunning adepts at prevarication, children in the
+conduct of affairs.'</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp290"></a><a href="images/fp290.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp290s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Colonel Younghusband and the Amban at the Races.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The counsellors, however, began to show signs
+of wavering. They were evidently eager to come
+to terms, though they still hoped to reduce our
+demands, and tried to persuade the Commissioner
+to agree to conditions proposed by themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout this rather trying time our social
+relations with the Tibetans were of a thoroughly
+friendly character. The Shapés and one or two
+of the leading monks attended race-meetings and
+gymkanas, put their money on the totalizator,
+and seemed to enjoy their day out. When their
+ponies ran in the visitors' race, the members of
+Council temporarily forgot their stiffness, waddled
+to the rails to see the finish, and were genuinely
+excited. They were entertained at lunch and tea
+by Colonel Younghusband, and were invited to a
+Tibetan theatrical performance given in the courtyard
+of the Lhalu house, which became the headquarters
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+of the mission. On these occasions they
+were genial and friendly, and appreciated our
+hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>The humbler folk apparently bore us no vindictiveness,
+and showed no signs of resenting our
+presence in the city. Merchants and storekeepers
+profited by the exaggerated prices we paid for
+everything we bought. Trade in Lhasa was never
+brisker. The poor were never so liberally treated.
+One day a merry crowd of them were collected
+on the plain outside the city, and largess was
+distributed to more than 11,000. Every babe
+in arms within a day's march of Lhasa was
+brought to the spot, and received its dole of a
+tanka (5d.).</p>
+
+<p>I think the Tibetans were genuinely impressed
+with our humanity during this time, and when,
+on the eve of our departure, the benign and venerable
+Te Rinpoche held his hands over General
+Macdonald in benediction, and solemnly blessed
+him for his clemency and moderation in sparing
+the monasteries and people, no one doubted his
+thankfulness was sincere. The golden Buddha
+he presented to the General was the highest pledge
+of esteem a Buddhist priest could bestow.</p>
+
+<p>When, on September 1, the Tibetans, after
+nearly a month's palaver, had accepted only two
+of the terms of the treaty,<a id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Colonel Younghusband
+decided that the time had come for a guarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+ultimatum. He told the delegates that, if the
+terms were not accepted in full within a week,
+he would consult General Macdonald as to what
+measures it would be necessary to take to enforce
+compliance. Their submission was complete, and
+immediate.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Younghusband had achieved a diplomatic
+triumph of the highest order. If the ultimatum
+had been given three weeks, or even a fortnight,
+earlier, I believe the Tibetans would have
+resisted. When we reached Lhasa on August 3,
+the Nepalese Resident said that 10,000 armed
+monks had been ready to oppose us if we had
+decided to quarter ourselves inside the city, and
+they had only dispersed when the Shapés who
+rode out to meet us at Toilung returned with
+assurances that we were going to camp outside.
+At one time it seemed impossible to make any
+progress with negociations without further recourse
+to arms. But patience and diplomacy
+conquered. We had shown the Tibetans we
+could reach Lhasa and yet respect their religion,
+and left an impression that our strength was
+tempered with humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty was signed in the Potala on August 7,
+in the Dalai Lama's throne-room. The Tibetan
+signatories were the acting regent, who affixed
+the seal of the Dalai Lama; the four Shapés;
+the Abbots of the three great monasteries, Depung,
+Sera, and Gaden; and a representative of the
+National Assembly. The Amban was not empowered
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+to sign, as he awaited 'formal sanction'
+from Peking. Lest the treaty should be afterwards
+disavowed through a revolution in Government,
+the signatories included representatives of
+every organ of administration in Lhasa.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the 7th our troops lined the
+causeway on the west front of the Potala. Towards
+the summit the rough and broken road became an
+ascent of slippery steps, where one had to walk
+crabwise to prevent falling, and plant one's feet
+on the crevices of the age-worn flagstones, where
+grass and dock-leaves gave one a securer foothold.
+Then through the gateway and along a maze of
+slippery passages, dark as Tartarus, but illumined
+dimly by flickering butter lamps held by aged
+monks, impassive and inscrutable. In the audience-chamber
+Colonel Younghusband, General
+Macdonald, and the Chinese Amban sat beneath
+the throne of the Dalai Lama. On either side of
+them were the British Political Officer and Tibetan
+signatories. In another corner were the Tongsa
+Penlop of Bhutan and his lusty big-boned men,
+and the dapper little Nepalese Resident, wreathed
+in smiles. British officers sat round forming a
+circle. Behind them stood groups of Tommies,
+Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Pathans. In the centre the
+treaty, a voluminous scroll, was laid on a table,
+the cloth of which was a Union Jack.</p>
+
+<p>When the terms had been read in Tibetan, the
+signatories stepped forward and attached their
+seals to the three parallel columns written in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+English, Tibetan, and Chinese. They showed no
+trace of sullenness and displeasure. The regent
+smiled as he added his name.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp294"></a><a href="images/fp294.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp294s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />The Tsarung Shapé and the Sechung Shapé leaving Lhalu House after the Durbar.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>After the signing Colonel Younghusband
+addressed the Tibetans:</p>
+
+<p>'The convention has been signed. We are now
+at peace, and the misunderstandings of the past
+are over. The bases have been laid for mutual
+good relations in the future.</p>
+
+<p>'In the convention the British Government
+have been careful to avoid interfering in the
+smallest degree with your religion. They have
+annexed no part of your territory, have made no
+attempt to interfere in your internal affairs, and
+have fully recognised the continued suzerainty
+of the Chinese Government. They have merely
+sought to insure&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'1. That you shall abide by the treaty made
+by the Amban in 1890.</p>
+
+<p>'2. That trade relations between India and
+Tibet, which are no less advantageous to you
+than to us, should be established as they have
+been with every other part of the Chinese Empire,
+and with every other country in the world except
+Tibet.</p>
+
+<p>'3. That British representatives should be
+treated with respect in future.</p>
+
+<p>'4. That you should not depart from your
+traditional policy in regard to political relations
+with other countries.</p>
+
+<p>'The treaty which has now been made I promise
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+you on behalf of the British Government we
+will rigidly observe, but I also warn you that we
+will as rigidly enforce it. Any infringement of it
+will be severely punished in the end, and any
+obstruction of trade, any disrespect or injury to
+British subjects, will be noticed and reparation
+exacted.</p>
+
+<p>'We treat you well when you come to India.
+We do not take a single rupee in Customs duties
+from your merchants. We allow any of you to
+travel and reside wherever you will in India.
+We preserve the ancient buildings of the Buddhist
+faith, and we expect that when we come to Tibet
+we shall be treated with no less consideration and
+respect than we show you in India.</p>
+
+<p>'You have found us bad enemies when you
+have not observed your treaty obligations and
+shown disrespect to the British Raj. You will
+find us equally good friends if you keep the treaty
+and show us civility.</p>
+
+<p>'I hope that the peace which has at this moment
+been established between us will last for ever, and
+that we may never again be forced to treat you
+as enemies.</p>
+
+<p>'As the first token of peace I will ask General
+Macdonald to release all prisoners of war. I
+expect that you on your part will set at liberty
+all those who have been imprisoned on account
+of dealings with us.'</p>
+
+<p>At the conclusion of the speech, which was
+interpreted to the Tibetans sentence by sentence,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+and again in Chinese, the Shapés expressed their
+intention to observe the treaty faithfully.<a id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The next day in durbar a scene was enacted
+which reminded one of a play before the curtain
+falls, when the characters are called on the stage
+and apprised of their changed fortunes, and
+everything ends happily. Among the mutual
+pledges and concessions and evidences of goodwill
+that followed we secured the release of the political
+captives who had been imprisoned on account of
+assistance rendered British subjects. An old man
+and his son were brought into the hall looking
+utterly bowed and broken. The old man's chains
+had been removed from his limbs that morning
+for the first time in twenty years, and he came in
+blinking at the unaccustomed light like a blind
+man miraculously restored to sight. He had been
+the steward of the Phalla estate near Dongste;
+his offence was hospitality shown to Sarat Chandra
+Das in 1884. An old monk of Sera was released
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+next. He was so weak that he had to be supported
+into the room. His offence was that he had been
+the teacher of Kawa Guchi, the Japanese traveller
+who visited Lhasa in the disguise of a Chinese
+pilgrim. We who looked on these sad relics of
+humanity felt that their restitution to liberty
+was in itself sufficient to justify our advance to
+Lhasa.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="fp298"></a><a href="images/fp298.jpg">
+<img src="images/fp298s.jpg" alt="" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption"><br />Tibetan Drama played in the Courtyard of Lhalu House.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On August 14 the Amban posted in the streets
+of Lhasa a proclamation that the Dalai Lama was
+deposed by the authority of the Chinese Emperor,
+owing to the desertion of his trust at a national
+crisis. Temporal power was vested in the hands
+of the National Assembly and the regent, while
+the spiritual power was transferred to Panchen
+Rinpoche, the Grand Lama of Tashilunpo, who
+is venerated by Buddhists as the incarnation of
+Amitabha, and held as sacred as the Dalai Lama
+himself. The Tashe Lama, as he is called in
+Europe, has always been more accessible than
+the Dalai Lama. It was to the Tashe Lama that
+Warren Hastings despatched the missions of
+Bogle and Turner, and the intimate friendship
+that grew up between George Bogle and the
+reigning incarnation is perhaps the only instance
+of such a tie existing between an Englishman
+and a Tibetan. The officials of the Tsang province,
+where the Tashe Lama resides, are not so bigoted
+as the Lhasa oligarchy. It was a minister of the
+Tashe Lama who invited Sarat Chandra Das to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+Shigatze, learnt the Roman characters from him,
+and sat for hours listening to his talk about
+languages and scientific developments. The exile
+of this man, and the execution of the Abbot of
+Dongste, who was drowned in the Tsangpo,
+for hospitality shown to the Bengali explorer, are
+the most recent marks of the difference in attitude
+between the Lhasans and the people of Tsang.</p>
+
+<p>The present incarnation has not shown himself
+bitterly anti-foreign. During the operations in
+Tibet he remained as neutral and inactive as
+safety permitted, and it is not impossible that the
+hope of Mr. Ular may be realized, and an Anglophile
+Buddhist Pope established at Shigatze.
+Herein lies a possible simplification of the Tibetan
+problem, which has already lost some of its
+complexity by the flight of the Dalai Lama to
+Urga.</p>
+
+<p>In estimating the practical results of the Tibet
+Expedition, we should not attach too much
+importance to the exact observance of the terms
+of the treaty. Trade marts and roads, and telegraph-wires,
+and open communications are important
+issues, but they were never our main
+objective. What was really necessary was to
+make the Tibetans understand that they could
+not afford to trifle with us. The existence of a
+truculent race on our borders who imagined that
+they were beyond the reach of our displeasure
+was a source of great political danger. We went
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+to Tibet to revolutionize the whole policy of the
+Lhasa oligarchy towards the Indian Government.</p>
+
+<p>The practical results of the mission are these:
+The removal of a ruler who threatened our security
+and prestige on the North-East frontier by overtures
+to a foreign Power; the demonstration to
+the Tibetans that this Power is unable to support
+them in their policy of defiance to Great Britain,
+and that their capital is not inaccessible to British
+troops.</p>
+
+<p>We have been to Lhasa once, and if necessary
+we can go there again. The knowledge of this is
+the most effectual leverage we could have in
+removing future obstruction. In dealing with
+people like the Tibetans, the only sure basis of
+respect is fear. They have flouted us for nearly
+twenty years because they have not believed in
+our power to punish their defiance. Out of this
+contempt grew the Russian menace, to remove
+which was the real object of the Tibet Expedition.
+Have we removed it? Our verdict on the
+success or failure of Lord Curzon's Tibetan policy
+should, I think, depend on the answer to this
+question.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that the despatch of
+British troops to Lhasa has shown the Tibetans
+that Russia is a broken reed, her agents utterly
+unreliable, and her friendship nothing but a
+hollow pretence. The British expedition has
+not only frustrated her designs in Tibet: it has
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+made clear to the whole of Central Asia the
+insincerity of her pose as the Protector of the
+Buddhist Church.</p>
+
+<p>But the Tibetans are not an impressionable
+people. Their conduct after the campaign of
+1888 shows us that they forget easily. To make
+the results of the recent expedition permanent,
+Lord Curzon's original policy should be carried
+out in full, and a Resident with troops left in Lhasa.
+It will be objected that this forward policy is too
+fraught with possibilities of political trouble, and
+too costly to be worth the end in view. But
+half-measures are generally more expensive and
+more dangerous in the long-run than a bold policy
+consistently carried out.</p>
+
+<p>We have left a trade agent at Gyantse with an
+escort of fifty men, as well as four or five companies
+at Chumbi and Phari Jong, at distances of
+100 and 130 miles. But no vigilance at Gyantse
+can keep the Indian Government informed of
+Russian or Chinese intrigue in Lhasa. Lhasa is
+Tibet, and there alone can we watch the ever-shifting
+pantomime of Tibetan politics and the
+man&oelig;uvres of foreign Powers. If we are not
+to lose the ground we have gained, the foreign
+relations of Tibet must stand under British
+surveillance.</p>
+
+<p>But putting aside the question of vigilance, our
+prestige requires that there should be a British
+Resident in Lhasa. That we have left an officer
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+at Gyantse, and none at Lhasa, will be interpreted
+by the Tibetans as a sign of weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, diplomatic relations with Tibet can
+only continue a farce while we are ignorant of the
+political situation in Lhasa. Influences in the
+capital grow and decay with remarkable rapidity.
+The Lamas are adepts in intrigue. When we left
+Lhasa, the best-informed of our political officers
+could not hazard a guess as to what party would
+be in power in a month's time, whether the
+Dalai Lama would come back, or in what manner
+his deposition would affect our future relations
+with the country. We only knew that our
+departure from Lhasa was likely to be the signal
+for a conflict of political factions that would
+involve a state of confusion. The Dalai Lama
+still commanded the loyalty of a large body of
+monks. Sera Monastery was known to support
+him, while Gaden, though it contained a party
+who favoured the deposed Shata Shapé, numbered
+many adherents to his cause. The only political
+figure who had no following or influence of any
+kind was the unfortunate Amban.<a id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Whatever
+party gains the upper hand, the position of the
+Chinese Amban is not enviable.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment of writing China has not signed
+the treaty; she may do so yet, but her signature
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+is not of vital importance. The Tibetans will
+decide for themselves whether it is safe to provoke
+our hostility. If they decide to defy us, then of
+course trouble may arise from their refusing to
+recognise the treaty of 1904 on the pretext that
+it was not signed by the Amban.</p>
+
+<p>It will be remembered that after the campaign
+of 1888 the convention we drew up in Calcutta was
+signed by China, and afterwards repudiated by
+Tibet. For many years the Tibetans have ignored
+China's suzerainty, and refused to be bound by
+a convention drawn up by her in their behalf; but
+now the plea of suzerainty is convenient, they may
+use it as a pretext to escape their new obligations.</p>
+
+<p>It is even possible that the Amban advised the
+Tibetan delegates in Lhasa to agree to any terms
+we asked, if they wanted to be rid of us, as any
+treaty we might make with them would be invalid
+without the acquiescence of China. Thus the
+'vicious circle' revolves, and a more admirable
+political device from the Chino-Tibetan point of
+view cannot be conceived.</p>
+
+<p>But the permanence of the new conditions in
+Tibet does not depend on China. If the Tibetans
+think they are still able to flout us, they will do
+so, and one pretext will serve as well as another.
+But if they have learnt that our displeasure is
+dangerous they will take care not to provoke it
+again.</p>
+
+<p>The success or failure of the recent expedition
+depends on the impression we have left on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+Tibetans. If that impression is to be lasting, we
+must see that our interests are well guarded in
+Lhasa, or in a few months we may lose the ground
+we gained, with what cost and danger to ourselves
+only those who took part in the expedition can
+understand.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><br /><br />THE END<br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="hr15t"><small>BILLING AND SONS LIMITED, GUILDFORD.</small><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes" id="footnotes"><h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Friar Oderic of Portenone is supposed to have visited
+Lhasa in 1325, but the authenticity of this record is open
+to doubt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> When in Lhasa I sought in vain for any trace of these
+buildings. The most enlightened Tibetans are ignorant, or
+pretend to be so, that Christian missionaries have resided in
+the city. In the cathedral, however, we found a bell with
+the inscription, '<span class="smcap">TE DEUM LAUDAMUS</span>,' which is probably a relic
+of the Capuchins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Suspicion and jealousy of foreigners seems to have been
+the guiding principle both of Tibetans and Chinese even in
+the earlier history of the country. The attitude is well
+illustrated by a letter written in 1774 by the Regent at
+Lhasa to the Teshu Lama with reference to Bogle's mission:
+'He had heard of two Fringies being arrived in the Deb
+Raja's dominions, with a great retinue of servants; that the
+Fringies were fond of war, and after insinuating themselves
+into a country raised disturbances and made themselves
+masters of it; that as no Fringies had ever been admitted
+into Tibet, he advised the Lama to find some method of
+sending them back, either on account of the violence of the
+small-pox or on any other pretence.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The Shata Shapé and his three colleagues were deposed
+by the Dalai Lama in October, 1903.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> A previous mission had been received by the Czar at
+Livadia in October, 1900.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Their attitude was thus summed up by Captain O'Connor,
+secretary to the mission: 'We cannot accept letters; we
+cannot write letters; we cannot let you into our zone; we
+cannot let you travel; we cannot discuss matters, because this
+is not the proper place; go back to Giogong and send away
+all your soldiers, and we will come to an agreement' (Tibetan
+Blue-Book).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The situation was thus eloquently summarized by the
+Government of India in a despatch to Mr. Brodrick,
+November 5, 1903: 'It is not possible that the Tibet
+Government should be allowed to ignore its treaty obligations,
+thwart trade, encroach upon our territory, destroy our
+boundary pillars, and refuse even to receive our communications.
+Still less do we think that when an amicable conference
+has been arranged for the settlement of these difficulties we
+should acquiesce in our mission being boycotted by the very
+persons who have been deputed to meet it, our officers
+insulted, our subjects arrested and ill-used, and our authority
+despised by a petty Power which only mistakes our forbearance
+for weakness, and which thinks that by an attitude of
+obstinate inertia it can once again compel us, as it has done
+in the past, to desist from our intentions.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Sheepskin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The only articles imported to the value of £1,000 are
+cotton goods, woollen cloths, metals, chinaware, coral, indigo,
+maize, silk, fur, and tobacco.
+</p><p>
+The only exports to the value of £1,000 are musk, ponies,
+skins, wool, and yaks'-tails.
+</p><p>
+Appended are the returns for the years 1895-1902:
+</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="margleft" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Returns for the years 1895-1902.">
+<tr><td>Year.</td>
+<td>Value of Articles<br />
+Imported into<br />
+Tibet.</td>
+<td>Value of Articles<br />
+Exported from<br />
+Tibet.</td>
+<td>Total Value of<br />
+Imports and<br />
+Exports.</td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td>Rs.</td><td>Rs.</td><td>Rs.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1895</td><td>416,218</td><td>634,086</td><td>1,050,304</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1896</td><td>561,395</td><td>781,269</td><td>1,342,664</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1897</td><td>674,139</td><td>820,300</td><td>1,494,436</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1898</td><td>718,475</td><td>817,851</td><td>1,536,326</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1899</td><td>962,637</td><td>822,760</td><td>1,785,397</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1900</td><td>730,502</td><td>710,012</td><td>1,440,514</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1901</td><td>734,075</td><td>783,480</td><td>1,517,555</td></tr>
+<tr><td>1902</td><td>761,837</td><td>805,338</td><td>1,567,075</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><i>Customs House Returns, Yatung.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Between Gnatong and Gautsa, thirteen different species
+of primulas are found. They are: <i>Primula Petiolaris</i>,
+<i>P. glabra</i>, <i>P. Sapphirina</i>, <i>P. pusilia</i>, <i>P. Kingii</i>, <i>P. Elwesiana</i>,
+<i>P. Capitata</i>, <i>P. Sikkimensis</i>, <i>P. Involucra</i>, <i>P. Denticulata</i>,
+<i>P. Stuartii</i>, <i>P. Soldanelloides</i>, <i>P. Stirtonia</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The species are: <i>Rhododendron campanulatum</i>, purple
+flowers; <i>R. Fulgens</i>, scarlet; <i>R. Hodgsonii</i>, rose-coloured;
+<i>R. Anthopogon</i>, white; <i>R. Virgatum</i>, purple; <i>R. Nivale</i>, rose-red;
+<i>R. Wightii</i>, yellow; <i>R. Falconeri</i>, cream-coloured;
+<i>R. cinndbarinum</i>, brick-red ('The Gates of Tibet,' Appendix I.,
+J. A. H. Louis).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> When Colonel Bromhead pursued a Tibetan unarmed.
+Called upon to surrender, the Tibetan turned on Colonel
+Bromhead, cut off his right arm, and badly mutilated the
+left.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs
+affair were inaccurate as to the manner in which I was
+wounded, and also Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only
+European anywhere near me at the time. Major Dunlop
+shot his own man, but at such close quarters that the
+Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his rifle and cut
+off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald and
+Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers,
+were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined
+house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Companies of Pathans and Gurkhas were left to
+garrison Ralung, Nagartse, Pehte, Chaksam, and Toilung
+Bridge.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet,' p. 200.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 409.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The only expedition sanctioned is that which is now exploring
+the little-known trade route between Gyantse and
+Gartok, where a mart has been opened to us by the recent
+Tibetan treaty. The party consists of Captain Ryder, R.E.,
+in command, Captain Wood, R.E., Lieutenant Bailey, of the
+32nd Pioneers, and six picked men of the 8th Gurkhas. They
+follow the main feeder of the Tsangpo nearly 500 miles, then
+strike into the high lacustrine tableland of Western Tibet,
+passing the great Mansarowar Lake to Gartok; thence over
+the Indus watershed, and down the Sutlej Valley to Simla,
+where they are expected about the end of January. The
+party will be able to collect useful information about the
+trade resources of the country; but the route has already
+been mapped by Nain Singh, the Indian surveyor, and the
+geographical results of the expedition will be small compared
+with what would have been derived from the projected Tengri
+Nor and Brahmaputra trips.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> It is interesting to compare Grueber's account with the
+journal of Father Rubruquis, who travelled in Mongolia in
+the thirteenth century. In 1253 he wrote of the Lamas:
+</p><p>
+'All their priests had their heads shaven quite over, and
+they are clad in saffron-coloured garments. Being once
+shaven, they lead an unmarried life from that time forward,
+and they live a hundred or two of them in one cloister.... They
+have with them also, whithersoever they go, a certain
+string, with a hundred or two hundred nutshells thereupon,
+much like our beads which we carry about with us; and they
+do always mutter these words, "Om mani pectavi (om mani
+padme hom)"&mdash;"God, Thou knowest," as one of them expounded
+it to me; and so often do they expect a reward at
+God's hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance
+of God.... I made a visit to their idol temple, and found
+certain priests sitting in the outward portico, and those which
+I saw seemed, by their shaven beards, as if they had been our
+countrymen; they wore certain ornaments upon their heads
+like mitres made of paper.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> 'It may be asked how the monastic influence is brought
+to bear on a Government in which three out of the four principal
+Ministers (Shapé) are laymen. The fact seems to be that
+lying behind the Tak Lama, the Shapés, and all the machinery
+of the Tibetan Government, as we have hitherto been acquainted
+with it, there is an institution called the "Tsong-du-chembo,"
+or "Tsong-dugze-tsom," which may reasonably
+be compared with what we call a "National Assembly," or,
+as the word implies, "Great Assembly." It is constituted
+of the Kenpas or Abbots of the three great monasteries,
+representatives from the four lings or small monasteries
+actually in Lhasa city, and from all the other monasteries
+in the province of U; and besides this, all the officials of the
+Government are present&mdash;laymen and ecclesiastics alike&mdash;to
+the number of several hundreds.'&mdash;Captain O'Connor's Diary
+at Khamba Jong (Tibetan Blue-Book, 1904).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> I have derived most of my information regarding the
+discipline and constitution of Depung from 'Lamaism in
+Tibet,' by Colonel Augustine Waddell, who accompanied the
+expedition as Archæologist and Principal Medical Officer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> The highest degree which is conferred on the Lamas by
+their Universities is the Rabs-jam-pa (verbally overflowing
+endlessly).&mdash;Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> The liberation of the Lachung men and the destruction
+of the Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> The following is a draft of the terms as communicated
+by <i>The Times</i> Correspondent at Peking. The terms have not
+yet been disclosed in their final form, but I understand that
+Dr. Morrison's summary contains the gist of them:
+</p><p>
+'1. Tibetans to re-erect boundary-stones at the Tibet
+frontier.
+</p><p>
+'2. Tibetans to establish marts at Gyangtse, Yatung,
+Gartok, and facilitate trade with India.
+</p><p>
+'3. Tibet to appoint a responsible official to confer with
+the British officials regarding the alteration of any objectionable
+features of the treaty of 1893.
+</p><p>
+'4. No further Customs duties to be levied upon merchandise
+after the tariff shall have been agreed upon by
+Great Britain and the Tibetans.
+</p><p>
+'5. No Customs stations to be established on the route
+between the Indian frontier and the three marts mentioned
+above, where officials shall be appointed to facilitate diplomatic
+and commercial intercourse.
+</p><p>
+'6. Tibet to pay an indemnity of £500,000 in three
+annual instalments, the first to be paid on January 1, 1906.
+</p><p>
+'7. British troops to occupy the Chumbi Valley for three
+years, or until such time as the trading posts are satisfactorily
+established and the indemnity liquidated in full.
+</p><p>
+'8. All forts between the Indian frontier on routes
+traversed by merchants from the interior of Tibet to be
+demolished.
+</p><p>
+'9. Without the consent of Great Britain no Tibetan
+territory shall be sold, leased, or mortgaged to any foreign
+Power whatsoever; no foreign Power whatsoever shall be
+permitted to concern itself with the administration of the
+government of Tibet, or any other affairs therewith connected;
+no foreign Power shall be permitted to send either
+official or non-official persons to Tibet&mdash;no matter in what
+pursuit they may be engaged&mdash;to assist in the conduct of
+Tibetan affairs; no foreign Power shall be permitted to
+construct roads or railways or erect telegraphs or open mines
+anywhere in Tibet.
+</p><p>
+'In the event of Great Britain's consenting to another
+Power constructing roads or railways, opening mines, or
+erecting telegraphs, Great Britain will make a full examination
+on her own account for carrying out the arrangements
+proposed. No real property or land containing minerals
+or precious metals in Tibet shall be mortgaged, exchanged,
+leased, or sold to any foreign Power.
+</p><p>
+'10. Of the two versions of the treaty, the English text
+to be regarded as operative.'
+</p><p>
+The ninth clause, which precludes Russian interference and
+consequent absorption, is of course the most vital article of
+the treaty.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> The Amban or Chinese Resident in Lhasa is in the same
+position as a British Resident in the Court of a protected
+chief in India. Of late years, however, the Amban's
+authority has been little more than nominal.</p></div>
+</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class="notebox"><a id="TN"></a>
+
+<h2>Transcriber's note:</h2>
+
+<p>The following corrections have been made to the text:</p>
+
+<p>Contents, Chapter XII: 'Kalimpang' replaced with 'Kalimpong'.</p>
+
+<p>Page 46: The comma after 'services' replaced with a period.</p>
+
+<p>Page 248: 'the of' replaced with 'of the'.</p>
+
+<p>Page 277: 'a' replaced with 'as'.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7987 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unveiling of Lhasa
+
+Author: Edmund Candler
+
+Release Date: August 6, 2010 [EBook #33359]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNVEILING OF LHASA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs, Asad Razzaki and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in
+    the original.
+
+  Some typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected. A
+    complete list follows the text.
+
+  Words italicized in the original are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+  The 'oe' ligature is represented as oe.
+
+
+
+
+              THE UNVEILING
+                OF LHASA
+
+                   BY
+
+             EDMUND CANDLER
+
+      AUTHOR OF 'A VAGABOND IN ASIA'
+
+
+       _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP_
+
+                 LONDON
+              EDWARD ARNOLD
+      Publisher to H.M. India Office
+  41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
+                  1905
+          [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+                    THESE PAGES,
+     WRITTEN MOSTLY IN THE DRY COLD WIND OF TIBET,
+  OFTEN WHEN INK WAS FROZEN AND ONE'S HAND TOO NUMBED
+          TO FEEL A PEN, ARE DEDICATED TO
+
+               COLONEL HOGGE, C.B.,
+
+                       AND
+
+         THE OFFICERS OF THE 23RD SIKH PIONEERS,
+   WHOSE GENIAL SOCIETY IS ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT
+            MEMORIES OF A RIGOROUS CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The recent expedition to Lhasa was full of interest, not only on account
+of the political issues involved and the physical difficulties overcome,
+but owing to the many dramatic incidents which attended the Mission's
+progress. It was my good fortune to witness nearly all these stirring
+events, and I have written the following narrative of what I saw in the
+hope that a continuous story of the affair may interest readers who have
+hitherto been able to form an idea of it only from the telegrams in the
+daily Press. The greater part of the book was written on the spot, while
+the impressions of events and scenery were still fresh. Owing to wounds
+I was not present at the bombardment and relief of Gyantse, but this
+phase of the operations is dealt with by Mr. Henry Newman, _Reuter's_
+correspondent, who was an eye-witness. I am especially indebted to him
+for his account, which was written in Lhasa, and occupied many mornings
+that might have been devoted to well-earned rest.
+
+My thanks are also due to the Proprietors of the _Daily Mail_ for
+permission to use material of which they hold the copyright; and I am
+indebted to the Editors of the _Graphic_ and _Black and White_ for
+allowing me to reproduce certain photographs by Lieutenant Bailey.
+
+The illustrations are from sketches by Lieutenant Rybot, and photographs
+by Lieutenants Bailey, Bethell, and Lewis, to whom I owe my cordial
+thanks.
+
+                                                    EDMUND CANDLER.
+
+        LONDON,
+    _January, 1905._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
+
+PAGES
+
+  A retrospect--Early visitors to Lhasa--The Jesuits--The
+      Capuchins--Van der Putte--Thomas Manning--The Lazarist
+      fathers--Policy of exclusion due to Chinese
+      influence--The Nepalese invasion--Bogle and Turner--The
+      Macaulay Mission--Tibetans invade Indian territory--The
+      expedition of 1888--The convention with China--British
+      blundering--Our treatment of the Shata Shape--The
+      Yatung trade mart--Tibetans repudiate the
+      convention--Fiction of the Chinese suzerainty--A policy
+      of drift--Tibetan Mission to the Czar--Dorjieff and his
+      intrigues--The Dalai Lama and Russian designs--Our
+      great countermove--Boycotted at Khamba Jong--The
+      advance sanctioned--Winter quarters at Tuna               1-21
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OVER THE FRONTIER
+
+  From the base to Gnatong--A race to Chumbi--A perilous
+      night ride--Forest scenery--Gnatong three years ago and
+      now--Gnatong in action--A mountain lake--The Jelap la
+      and beyond--Undefended barriers--Yatung and its Customs
+      House--Chumbi--The first Press message from
+      Tibet--Arctic clothing--Scenes in camp--A very
+      uncomfortable 'picnic'                                   22-34
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHUMBI VALLEY
+
+  The Tomos--A hardy race--Their habits and
+      diversions--Chinamen in exile--A prosperous valley--But
+      a cheerless clime--Kasi and his statistics--Trade
+      figures--Tibetan cruelties--Kasi as general
+      provider--Mountain scenery--The spirit of the
+      Himalayas--A glorious flora--The Himalayas and the
+      Alps--The wall of Gob-sorg--Chinamen and Tomos--A
+      future hill-station--Lingmathang--A cosy cave--The
+      Mounted Infantry Corps--Two famous regiments--Sport at
+      Lingmathang--The Sikkim stag--Gamebirds and
+      wildfowl--Gautsa camp                                    35-61
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHARI JONG
+
+  Gautsa to Phari Jong--A wonderful old fortress--Tibetan
+      dirt--A medical armoury--The Lamas' library--Roadmaking
+      and sport--The Tibetan gazelle and other
+      animals--Evening diversions--Cold, grime, and
+      misery--Manning's journal--Bogle's account of
+      Phari--History of the fortress--The town and its
+      occupants--The mystery of Tibet--The significance of
+      the frescoes--Departure from Phari--The monastery of
+      the Red Lamas--Chumulari--The Tibetan New Year--Bogle's
+      narrative--The Tang la and the road to Lhasa             62-82
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
+
+  A transport 'show'--Difficulties of the way--Vicissitudes
+      of climate--Frozen heights and sweltering
+      valleys--Disease amongst transport animals--A tale of
+      disaster--The stricken Yak Corps--Troubles of the
+      transport officer--Mules to the rescue--The coolie
+      transport corps--Carrying power of the transport
+      items--The problem and its solution--The ekka and the
+      yak--A providentially ascetic beast--Splendid work of
+      the transport service--Courage and endurance of
+      officers and men--The 12th Mule Corps benighted in a
+      blizzard--Rifle-bolts and Maxims
+      frost-jammed--Difficulties of a Russian advance on
+      Lhasa--The new Ammo Chu cart-road                        83-98
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
+
+  The deadlock at Tuna--Discomforts of the garrison--The
+      Lamas' curse--The attitude of Bhutan--A diplomatic
+      triumph--Tedious delays--A welcome move forward--The
+      Tibetan camp at Hot Springs--The Lhasa Depon meets
+      Colonel Younghusband--Futile conferences--The Tibetan
+      position surrounded--Coolness of the Sikhs and
+      Gurkhas--The disarming--A sudden outbreak--A desperate
+      struggle--The action of the Lhasa General--The rabble
+      disillusioned in their gods--A beaten and bewildered
+      enemy--Reflections after the event--Tibetans in
+      hospital--Three months afterwards                       99-114
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A HUMAN MISCELLANY
+
+  In a doolie to the base--Tibetan bearers--A retrospect--A
+      reverie and a reminiscence--Snow-bound at Phari--The
+      Bhutia as bearer--The Lepchas and their
+      humours--Mongolian odours--The road at last--Platitudes
+      in epigram--Lucknow doolie-wallahs--Their hymn of the
+      obvious--Meetings on the road--A motley of
+      races--Through a tropical forest--The Tista and
+      civilization                                           115-126
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
+
+  The Tibetans responsible for hostilities--Their version of
+      the Hot Springs affair--Treacherous attack at
+      Samando--Wall-building--The Red Idol Gorge action--A
+      stiff climb--The enemy outflanked--Impressed
+      peasants--First phase of the opposition--Bad
+      generalship--Lack of enterprise--Erratic shooting--All
+      quiet at Gyantse--Enemy occupy Karo la--A booby
+      trap--Colonel Brander's sortie--Frontal attack
+      repulsed--Captain Bethune killed--Failure of flanking
+      movement--A critical moment--Sikhs turn the
+      position--Flight and pursuit--Second phase of the
+      opposition--Advanced tactics--Danger of being cut
+      off--The attack on Kangma--Desperate gallantry of the
+      enemy--Patriots or fanatics?                           127-151
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GYANTSE (BY HENRY NEWMAN)
+
+  A happy valley--Devastated by war--Why the Jong was
+      evacuated--The lull before the storm--Tibetans
+      massing--The attack on the mission--A hot ten
+      minutes--Pyjamaed warriors--Wounded to the rescue--The
+      Gurkhas' rally--The camp bombarded--The labour of
+      defence work--Hadow's Maxim--Life during the
+      siege--Tibetans reinforced--They enfilade our
+      position--The taking of the 'Gurkha Post'--Terrible
+      carnage                                                152-169
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GYANTSE--_continued_
+
+  Attack on the postal riders--Brilliant exploit of the
+      Mounted Infantry--Communications threatened--Clearing
+      the villages--A narrow shave--Arrival of
+      reinforcements--The storming of
+      Palla--House-fighting--Capture of the post--A fantastic
+      display--Night attacks--Seven miles of front--Advance
+      of the relief column--The Tibetans cornered--Naini
+      monastery taken--Capture of Tsaden--Our losses--The
+      armistice--Tibetans refuse to surrender the Jong--A
+      bristling fortress--The attack at dawn--The
+      breach--Gallantry of Lieutenant Grant and his
+      Gurkhas--Capture of the Jong                           170-194
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT
+
+  A garden in the forest--A jeremiad on transport--The
+      servant question--Jung Bir--British
+      Bhutan--Kalimpong--'The Bhutia tat'--Father
+      Desgodins--An adventurous career--A lost
+      opportunity--Chinese duplicity--Phuntshog--New arms and
+      new friends for Tibet--A mysterious Lama--Dorjieff
+      again--The inscrutable Tibetan                         195-206
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TO THE GREAT RIVER
+
+  Failure of peace negociations--Opposition expected--Details
+      of force--March to the Karo la--Villages deserted--The
+      second Karo la action--The Gurkhas' climb--The Tibetan
+      rout--The Kham prisoners--Hopelessness of the Tibetans'
+      struggle--Their troops disheartened--Arrival at
+      Nagartse--Tedious delegates--The victory of a
+      personality--Brush with Tibetan cavalry--The last
+      shot--The Shapes despoiled--Modern rifles--Exaggerated
+      reports of Russian assistance--The Yamdok Tso--Dorje
+      Phagmo--Legends of the lake--The incubus of an
+      army--Why men travel--Wildfowl--Pehte--View from the
+      Khamba Pass--From the desert to Arcadia--The Tibetan of
+      the tablelands--The Tuna plateau--Homely scenes--A mood
+      of indolence--The course of the Tsangpo--The
+      Brahmaputra Irawaddy controversy--The projected Tsangpo
+      trip--Legendary geography--Lost opportunities          207-238
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY
+
+  The passage of the river--Major Bretherton drowned--The Kyi
+      Chu valley--Tropical heat--Atisa's tomb--Foraging in
+      holy places--First sight of the Potala--Hidden
+      Lhasa--Symbols of remonstrance--Prophecies of
+      invasion--And decay of Buddhism--Medieval
+      Tibet--Spiritual terrorism--Lamas' fears of
+      enlightenment--The last mystery unveiled--Arrival at
+      Lhasa--View from the Chagpo Ri--Entry into the
+      city--Apathy of the people--The Potala--Magnificence
+      and squalor--The secret of romance--A vanished
+      deity--'Thou shalt not kill'--Secret assassinations--A
+      marvellous disappearance--The Dalai Lama joins
+      Dorjieff--His personality and character--The verdict of
+      the Nepalese Resident--The voice without a soul--The
+      wisdom of his flight--A romantic picture--The place of
+      the dead                                               239-264
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES
+
+  Sullen monks--A Lama runs amok--The environs of Lhasa--The
+      Lingkhor--The Ragyabas--The cathedral--Service before
+      the Great Buddhas--The Lamas' chant--Vessels of
+      gold--'Hell'--White mice--The many-handed
+      Buddha--Silence and abstraction--The bazaar--Hats--The
+      Mongolians--Curio-hunting--The Ramo-che--Sorcery--The
+      adventures of a soul--Lamaism and Roman
+      Catholicism--The decay of Buddhism--The three great
+      monasteries--Their political influence--Depung--An
+      ecclesiastical University--The 'impossible' Tibetan--An
+      ultimatum--Consternation at Depung--Temporizing and
+      evasion--An ugly mob--A political deadlock             265-285
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SETTLEMENT
+
+  An irresponsible administration--An insolent reply--Tibetan
+      haggling--Release of the Lachung men--Social relations
+      with the Tibetans--A guarded ultimatum--A diplomatic
+      triumph--The signing of the treaty--Colonel
+      Younghusband's speech--The terms--Political prisoners
+      liberated--Deposition of the Dalai Lama--The Tashe
+      Lama--Prospect of an Anglophile Pope--The practical
+      results of the expedition--Russia discredited--Why a
+      Resident should be left at Lhasa--China hesitates to
+      sign the Treaty--The 'vicious circle' again--Her
+      acquiescence not of vital importance--The attitude of
+      Tibet to Great Britain--Fear and respect the only
+      guarantee of future good conduct                       286-304
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  A COLD DAY IN TIBET                                     _frontispiece_
+
+  HEADQUARTERS OF THE MISSION AT LHASA                  _to face p._   6
+
+  CHORTEN                                                     "       12
+
+  PANORAMA OF A CONVENT                                       "       12
+
+  TUNA VILLAGE                                                "       20
+
+  CHINESE GENERAL MA                                          "       30
+
+  ON THE ROAD TO GAUTSA                                       "       30
+
+  ROCK SCULPTURES                                                     41
+
+  PRAYING-FLAGS AND MANI WALL                           _to face p._  54
+
+  OFFICERS' TENTS, MOUNTED INFANTRY CAMP, LINGMATHANG         "       54
+
+  SUBADAR SANGAT SINGH, 1ST MOUNTED INFANTRY                  "       60
+
+  WOUNDED KYANG                                               "       70
+
+  GOA, OR TIBETAN GAZELLE                                     "       70
+
+  THE TANG LA                                                 "       76
+
+  PHARI JONG                                                  "       76
+
+  MOUNTED INFANTRY PONIES, TUNA CAMP                          "       94
+
+  YAK IN EKKA                                                 "       94
+
+  THE DEPON'S LAST CONFERENCE WITH COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND _to face p._ 102
+
+  TIBETANS RETREATING FROM SANGARS                            "      106
+
+  TURNING TIBETANS OUT OF THE SANGARS ON THE HILLSIDE         "      106
+
+  DIAGRAMMATIC VIEW OF HOT SPRINGS ACTION                     "      110
+
+  THE TIBETAN DEAD                                            "      118
+
+  FIELD-HOSPITAL DOOLIE WITH TIBETAN BEARERS                  "      118
+
+  TIBETAN SOLDIERS                                            "      124
+
+  WOUNDED TIBETAN                                             "      130
+
+  WOUNDED TIBETAN IN BRITISH HOSPITAL                         "      130
+
+  PIONEERS DESTROYING KANGMA WALL                             "      142
+
+  GYANTSE JONG                                                "      154
+
+  GOLDEN-ROOFED TEMPLE, GYANTSE                               "      182
+
+  BUDDHAS IN PALKHOR CHOIDE                                   "      182
+
+  TSACHEN MONASTERY                                           "      198
+
+  GROUP OF SHAPES PARLEYING                                   "      198
+
+  SKETCH OF THE KARO LA                                              213
+
+  KHAM PRISONERS                                        _to face p._ 214
+
+  GURKHAS CLIMBING AT THE KARO LA                             "      214
+
+  PEHTE JONG                                                  "      222
+
+  GUBCHI JONG                                                 "      230
+
+  OLD CHAIN-BRIDGE AT CHAKSAM                                 "      236
+
+  CROSSING THE TSANGPO                                        "      236
+
+  THE POTALA                                                  "      244
+
+  ENTRY INTO LHASA                                            "      250
+
+  CORNER OF COURTYARD OF ASTROLOGER'S TEMPLE, NECHANG   _to face p._ 250
+
+  THE POTALA, WEST FRONT                                      "      260
+
+  MOUNTED INFANTRY GUARD AT THE POTALA                        "      260
+
+  METAL BOWLS OUTSIDE THE JOKHANG                             "      268
+
+  STREET SCENE IN LHASA                                       "      268
+
+  THE TSARUNG SHAPE                                           "      274
+
+  MONGOLIANS IN LHASA                                         "      274
+
+  THE TA LAMA                                                 "      286
+
+  SOLDIER OF THE AMBAN'S ESCORT                               "      286
+
+  COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND AND THE AMBAN AT THE RACES             "      290
+
+  THE TSARUNG SHAPE AND THE SECHUNG SHAPE LEAVING
+      LHALU HOUSE AFTER THE DURBAR                      _to face p._ 294
+
+  TIBETAN DRAMA PLAYED IN THE COURTYARD OF LHALU HOUSE        "      298
+
+
+
+
+THE UNVEILING OF LHASA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+The conduct of Great Britain in her relations with Tibet puts me in mind
+of the dilemma of a big boy at school who submits to the attacks of a
+precocious youngster rather than incur the imputation of 'bully.' At
+last the situation becomes intolerable, and the big boy, bully if you
+will, turns on the youth and administers the deserved thrashing. There
+is naturally a good deal of remonstrance from spectators who have not
+observed the byplay which led to the encounter. But sympathy must be
+sacrificed to the restitution of fitting and respectful relations.
+
+The aim of this record of an individual's impressions of the recent
+Tibetan expedition is to convey some idea of the life we led in Tibet,
+the scenes through which we passed, and the strange people we fought and
+conquered. We killed several thousand of these brave, ill-armed men; and
+as the story of the fighting is not always pleasant reading, I think it
+right before describing the punitive side of the expedition to make it
+quite clear that military operations were unavoidable--that we were
+drawn into the vortex of war against our will by the folly and obstinacy
+of the Tibetans.
+
+The briefest review of the rebuffs Great Britain has submitted to during
+the last twenty years will suffice to show that, so far from being to
+blame in adopting punitive measures, she is open to the charge of
+unpardonable weakness in allowing affairs to reach the crisis which made
+such punishment necessary.
+
+It must be remembered that Tibet has not always been closed to
+strangers. The history of European travellers in Lhasa forms a
+literature to itself. Until the end of the eighteenth century only
+physical obstacles stood in the way of an entry to the capital. Jesuits
+and Capuchins reached Lhasa, made long stays there, and were even
+encouraged by the Tibetan Government. The first[1] Europeans to visit
+the city and leave an authentic record of their journey were the Fathers
+Grueber and d'Orville, who penetrated Tibet from China in 1661 by the
+Sining route, and stayed in Lhasa two months. In 1715 the Jesuits
+Desideri and Freyre reached Lhasa; Desideri stayed there thirteen years.
+In 1719 arrived Horace de la Penna and the Capuchin Mission, who built
+a chapel and a hospice, made several converts, and were not finally
+expelled till 1740.[2] The Dutchman Van der Putte, first layman to
+penetrate to the capital, arrived in 1720, and stayed there some years.
+After this we have no record of a European reaching Lhasa until the
+adventurous journey in 1811 of Thomas Manning, the first and only
+Englishman to reach the city before this year. Manning arrived in the
+retinue of a Chinese General whom he had met at Phari Jong, and whose
+gratitude he had won for medical services. He remained in the capital
+four months, and during his stay he made the acquaintance of several
+Chinese and Tibetan officials, and was even presented to the Dalai Lama
+himself. The influence of his patron, however, was not strong enough to
+insure his safety in the city. He was warned that his life was
+endangered, and returned to India by the same way he came. In 1846 the
+Lazarist missionaries Huc and Gabet reached Lhasa in the disguise of
+Lamas after eighteen months' wanderings through China and Mongolia,
+during which they must have suffered as much from privations and
+hardships as any travellers who have survived to tell the tale. They
+were received kindly by the Amban and Regent, but permission to stay
+was firmly refused them on the grounds that they were there to subvert
+the religion of the State. Despite the attempts of several determined
+travellers, none of whom got within a hundred miles of Lhasa, the
+Lazarist fathers were the last Europeans to set foot in the city until
+Colonel Younghusband rode through the Pargo Kaling gate on August 4,
+1904.
+
+  [1] Friar Oderic of Portenone is supposed to have visited Lhasa in
+      1325, but the authenticity of this record is open to doubt.
+
+  [2] When in Lhasa I sought in vain for any trace of these buildings.
+      The most enlightened Tibetans are ignorant, or pretend to be so,
+      that Christian missionaries have resided in the city. In the
+      cathedral, however, we found a bell with the inscription, 'TE
+      DEUM LAUDAMUS,' which is probably a relic of the Capuchins.
+
+The records of these travellers to Lhasa, and of others who visited
+different parts of Tibet before the end of the eighteenth century, do
+not point to any serious political obstacles to the admission of
+strangers. Two centuries ago, Europeans might travel in remote parts of
+Asia with greater safety than is possible to-day. Suspicions have
+naturally increased with our encroachments, and the white man now
+inspires fear where he used only to awake interest.[3]
+
+  [3] Suspicion and jealousy of foreigners seems to have been the
+      guiding principle both of Tibetans and Chinese even in the
+      earlier history of the country. The attitude is well illustrated
+      by a letter written in 1774 by the Regent at Lhasa to the Teshu
+      Lama with reference to Bogle's mission: 'He had heard of two
+      Fringies being arrived in the Deb Raja's dominions, with a great
+      retinue of servants; that the Fringies were fond of war, and
+      after insinuating themselves into a country raised disturbances
+      and made themselves masters of it; that as no Fringies had ever
+      been admitted into Tibet, he advised the Lama to find some method
+      of sending them back, either on account of the violence of the
+      small-pox or on any other pretence.'
+
+The policy of strict exclusion in Tibet seems to have been synchronous
+with Chinese ascendancy. At the end of the eighteenth century the
+Nepalese invaded and overran the country. The Lamas turned to China for
+help, and a force of 70,000 men was sent to their assistance. The
+Chinese drove the Gurkhas over their frontier, and practically
+annihilated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu. From this date
+China has virtually or nominally ruled in Lhasa, and an important result
+of her intervention has been to sow distrust of the British. She
+represented that we had instigated the Nepalese invasion, and warned the
+Lamas that the only way to obviate our designs on Tibet was to avoid all
+communication with India, and keep the passes strictly closed to
+foreigners.
+
+Shortly before the Nepalese War, Warren Hastings had sent the two
+missions of Bogle and Turner to Shigatze. Bogle was cordially received
+by the Grand Teshu Lama, and an intimate friendship was established
+between the two men. On his return to India he reported that the only
+bar to a complete understanding with Tibet was the obstinacy of the
+Regent and the Chinese agents at Lhasa, who were inspired by Peking. An
+attempt was arranged to influence the Chinese Government in the matter,
+but both Bogle and the Teshu Lama died before it could be carried out.
+Ten years later Turner was despatched to Tibet, and received the same
+welcome as his predecessor. Everything pointed to the continuance of a
+steady and consistent policy by which the barrier of obstruction might
+have been broken down. But Warren Hastings was recalled in 1785, and
+Lord Cornwallis, the next Governor-General, took no steps to approach
+and conciliate the Tibetans. It was in 1792 that the Tibetan-Nepalese
+War broke out, which, owing to the misrepresentations of China,
+precluded any possibility of an understanding between India and Tibet.
+Such was the uncompromising spirit of the Lamas that, until Lord
+Dufferin sanctioned the commercial mission of Mr. Colman Macaulay in
+1886, no succeeding Viceroy after Warren Hastings thought it worth while
+to renew the attempt to enter into friendly relations with the country.
+
+The Macaulay Mission incident was the beginning of that weak and
+abortive policy which lost us the respect of the Tibetans, and led to
+the succession of affronts and indignities which made the recent
+expedition to Lhasa inevitable. The escort had already advanced into
+Sikkim, and Mr. Macaulay was about to join it, when orders were received
+from Government for its return. The withdrawal was a concession to the
+Chinese, with whom we were then engaged in the delimitation of the
+Burmese frontier. This display of weakness incited the Tibetans to such
+a pitch of vanity and insolence that they invaded our territory and
+established a military post at Lingtu, only seventy miles from
+Darjeeling.
+
+We allowed the invaders to remain in the protected State of Sikkim two
+years before we made any reprisal. In 1888, after several vain appeals
+to China to use her influence to withdraw the Tibetan troops, we
+reluctantly decided on a military expedition. The Tibetans were driven
+from their position, defeated in three separate engagements, and pursued
+over the frontier as far as Chumbi. We ought to have concluded a treaty
+with them on the spot, when we were in a position to enforce it, but we
+were afraid of offending the susceptibilities of China, whose suzerainty
+over Tibet we still recognised, though she had acknowledged her
+inability to restrain the Tibetans from invading our territory. At the
+conclusion of the campaign, in which the Tibetans showed no military
+instincts whatever, we returned to our post at Gnatong, on the Sikkim
+frontier.
+
+After two years of fruitless discussion, a convention was drawn up
+between Great Britain and China, by which Great Britain's exclusive
+control over the internal administration and foreign relations of Sikkim
+was recognised, the Sikkim-Tibet boundary was defined, and both Powers
+undertook to prevent acts of aggression from their respective sides of
+the frontier. The questions of pasturage, trade facilities, and the
+method in which official communications should be conducted between the
+Government of India and the authorities at Lhasa were deferred for
+future discussion. Nearly three more years passed before the trade
+regulations were drawn up in Darjeeling--in December, 1903. The
+negociations were characterized by the same shuffling and equivocation
+on the part of the Chinese, and the same weak-kneed policy of
+forbearance and conciliation on the part of the British. Treaty and
+regulations were alike impotent, and our concessions went so far that we
+exacted nothing as the fruit of our victory over the Tibetans--not even
+a fraction of the cost of the campaign.
+
+Our ignorance of the Tibetans, their Government, and their relations
+with China was at this time so profound that we took our cue from the
+Chinese, who always referred to the Lhasa authorities as 'the
+barbarians.' The Shata Shape, the most influential of the four members
+of Council, attended the negociations on behalf of the Tibetans. He was
+officially ignored, and no one thought of asking him to attach his
+signature to the treaty. The omission was a blunder of far-reaching
+consequences. Had we realized that Chinese authority was practically
+non-existent in Lhasa, and that the temporal affairs of Tibet were
+mainly directed by the four Shapes and the Tsong-du (the very existence
+of which, by the way, was unknown to us), we might have secured a
+diplomatic agent in the Shata Shape who would have proved invaluable to
+us in our future relations with the country. Unfortunately, during his
+stay in Darjeeling the Shape's feelings were lacerated by ill-treatment
+as well as neglect. In an unfortunate encounter with British youth,
+which was said to have arisen from his jostling an English lady off the
+path, he was taken by the scruff of the neck and ducked in the public
+fountain. So he returned to Tibet with no love for the English, and
+after certain courteous overtures from the agents of 'another Power,'
+became a confirmed, though more or less accidental, Russophile. Though
+deposed,[4] he has at the present moment a large following among the
+monks of the Gaden monastery.
+
+  [4] The Shata Shape and his three colleagues were deposed by the
+      Dalai Lama in October, 1903.
+
+In the regulations of 1893 it was stipulated that a trade mart should be
+established at Yatung, a small hamlet six miles beyond our frontier. The
+place is obviously unsuitable, situated as it is in a narrow pine-clad
+ravine, where one can throw a stone from cliff to cliff across the
+valley. No traders have ever resorted there, and the Tibetans have
+studiously boycotted the place. To show their contempt for the treaty,
+and their determination to ignore it, they built a wall a quarter of a
+mile beyond the Customs House, through which no Tibetan or British
+subject was allowed to pass, and, to nullify the object of the mart, a
+tax of 10 per cent. on Indian goods was levied at Phari. Every attempt
+was made by Sheng Tai, the late Amban, to induce the Tibetans to
+substitute Phari for Yatung as a trade mart. But, as an official report
+admits, 'it was found impossible to overcome their reluctance. Yatung
+was eventually accepted both by the Chinese and British Governments as
+the only alternative to breaking off the negociations altogether.' This
+confession of weakness appears to me abject enough to quote as typical
+of our attitude throughout. In deference to Tibetan wishes, we allowed
+nearly every clause of the treaty to be separately stultified.
+
+The Tibetans, as might be expected, met our forbearance by further
+rebuffs. Not content with evading their treaty obligations in respect to
+trade, they proceeded to overthrow our boundary pillars, violate grazing
+rights, and erect guard-houses at Giagong, in Sikkim territory. When
+called to question they repudiated the treaty, and said that it had
+never been shown them by the Amban. It had not been sealed or confirmed
+by any Tibetan representative, and they had no intention of observing
+it.
+
+Once more the 'solemn farce' was enacted of an appeal to China to use
+her influence with the Lhasa authorities. And it was only after repeated
+representations had been made by the Indian Government to the Secretary
+of State that the Home Government realized the seriousness of the
+situation, and the hopelessness of making any progress through the
+agency of China. 'We seem,' said Lord Curzon, 'in respect to our policy
+in Tibet, to be moving in a vicious circle. If we apply to Tibet we
+either receive no reply or are referred to the Chinese Resident; if we
+apply to the latter, he excuses his failure by his inability to put any
+pressure upon Tibet.' In the famous despatch of January 8, 1903, the
+Viceroy described the Chinese suzerainty as 'a political fiction,' only
+maintained because of its convenience to both parties. China no doubt is
+capable of sending sufficient troops to Lhasa to coerce the Tibetans.
+But it has suited her book to maintain the present elusive and anomalous
+relations with Tibet, which are a securer buttress to her western
+dependencies against encroachment than the strongest army corps. For
+many years we have been the butt of the Tibetans, and China their
+stalking-horse.
+
+The Tibetan attitude was clearly expressed by the Shigatze officials at
+Khamba Jong in September last year, when they openly boasted that 'where
+Chinese policy was in accordance with their own views they were ready
+enough to accept the Amban's advice; but if this advice ran counter in
+any respect to their national prejudices, the Chinese Emperor himself
+would be powerless to influence them.' China has on several occasions
+confessed her inability to coerce the Tibetans. She has proved herself
+unable to enforce the observance of treaties or even to restrain her
+subjects from invading our territory, and during the recent attempts at
+negociations she had to admit that her representative in Lhasa was
+officially ignored, and not even allowed transport to travel in the
+country. In the face of these facts her exceedingly shadowy suzerainty
+may be said to have entirely evaporated, and it is unreasonable to
+expect us to continue our relations with Tibet through the medium of
+Peking.
+
+It was not until nine years after the signing of the convention that we
+made any attempt to open direct communications with the Tibetans
+themselves. It is astonishing that we allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked
+so long. But this policy of drift and waiting is characteristic of our
+foreign relations all over the world. British Cabinets seem to believe
+that cure is better than prevention, and when faced by a dilemma have
+seldom been known to act on the initiative, or take any decided course
+until the very existence of their dependency is imperilled.
+
+In 1901 Lord Curzon was permitted to send a despatch to the Dalai Lama
+in which it was pointed out that his Government had consistently defied
+and ignored treaty rights; and in view of the continued occupation of
+British territory, the destruction of frontier pillars, and the
+restrictions imposed on Indian trade, we should be compelled to resort
+to more practical measures to enforce the observance of the treaty,
+should he remain obstinate in his refusal to enter into friendly
+relations. The letter was returned unopened, with the verbal excuse that
+the Chinese did not permit him to receive communications from any
+foreign Power. Yet so great was our reluctance to resort to military
+coercion that we might even at this point have let things drift, and
+submitted to the rebuffs of these impossible Tibetans, had not the
+Dalai Lama chosen this moment for publicly flaunting his relations with
+Russia.
+
+The second[5] Tibetan Mission reached St. Petersburg in June, 1901,
+carrying autograph letters and presents to the Czar from the Dalai Lama.
+Count Lamsdorff declared that the mission had no political significance
+whatever. We were asked to believe that these Lamas travelled many
+thousand miles to convey a letter that expressed the hope that the
+Russian Foreign Minister was in good health and prosperous, and informed
+him that the Dalai Lama was happy to be able to say that he himself
+enjoyed excellent health.
+
+  [5] A previous mission had been received by the Czar at Livadia in
+      October, 1900.
+
+It is possible that the mission to St. Petersburg was of a purely
+religious character, and that there was no secret understanding at the
+time between the Lhasa authorities and Russia. Yet the fact that the
+mission was despatched in direct contradiction to the national policy of
+isolation that had been respected for over a century, and at a time when
+the Tibetans were aware of impending British activity to exact
+fulfilment of the treaty obligations so long ignored by them, points to
+some secret influence working in Lhasa in favour of Russia, and opposed
+to British interests. The process of Russification that has been carried
+on with such marked success in Persia and Turkestan, Merv and Bokhara,
+was being applied in Tibet. It has long been known to our Intelligence
+Department that certain Buriat Lamas, subjects of the Czar, and educated
+in Russia, have been acting as intermediaries between Lhasa and St.
+Petersburg. The chief of these, one Dorjieff, headed the so-called
+religious mission of 1901, and has been employed more than once as the
+Dalai Lama's ambassador to St. Petersburg. Dorjieff is a man of
+fifty-eight, who has spent some twenty years of his life in Lhasa, and
+is known to be the right-hand adviser of the Dalai Lama. No doubt
+Dorjieff played on the fears of the Buddhist Pope until he really
+believed that Tibet was in danger of an invasion from India, in which
+eventuality the Czar, the great Pan-Buddhist Protector, would descend on
+the British and drive them back over the frontier. The Lamas of Tibet
+imagine that Russia is a Buddhist country, and this belief has been
+fostered by adventurers like Dorjieff, Tsibikoff, and others, who have
+inspired dreams of a consolidated Buddhist church under the spiritual
+control of the Dalai Lama and the military aegis of the Czar of All the
+Russias.
+
+These dreams, full of political menace to ourselves, have, I think, been
+dispelled by Lord Curzon's timely expedition to Lhasa. The presence of
+the British in the capital and the helplessness of Russia to lend any
+aid in such a crisis are facts convincing enough to stultify the effects
+of Russian intrigue in Buddhist Central Asia during the last
+half-century.
+
+The fact that the first Dalai Lama who has been allowed to reach
+maturity has plunged his country into war by intrigue with a foreign
+Power proves the astuteness of the cold-blooded policy of removing the
+infant Pope, and the investiture of power in the hands of a Regent
+inspired by Peking. It is believed that the present Dalai Lama was
+permitted to come of age in order to throw off the Chinese yoke. This
+aim has been secured, but it has involved other issues that the Lamas
+could not foresee.
+
+And here it must be observed that the Dalai Lama's inclination towards
+Russia does not represent any considerable national movement. The desire
+for a rapprochement was largely a matter of personal ambition inspired
+by that arch-intriguer Dorjieff, whose ascendancy over the Dalai Lama
+was proved beyond a doubt when the latter joined him in his flight to
+Mongolia on hearing the news of the British advance on Lhasa. Dorjieff
+had a certain amount of popularity with the priest population of the
+capital, and the monks of the three great monasteries, amongst whom he
+is known to have distributed largess royally. But the traditional policy
+of isolation is so inveterately ingrained in the Tibetan character that
+it is doubtful if he could have organized a popular party of any
+strength.
+
+It may be asked, then, What is, or was, the nature of the Russian menace
+in Tibet? It is true that a Russian invasion on the North-East frontier
+is out of the question. For to reach the Indian passes the Russians
+would have to traverse nearly 1,500 miles of almost uninhabited country,
+presenting difficulties as great as any we had to contend with during
+the recent campaign. But the establishment of Russian influence in Lhasa
+might mean military danger of another kind. It would be easy for her to
+stir up the Tibetans, spread disaffection among the Bhutanese, send
+secret agents into Nepal, and generally undermine our prestige. Her aim
+would be to create a diversion on the Tibet frontier at any time she
+might have designs on the North-West. The pioneers of the movement had
+begun their work. They were men of the usual type--astute, insidious, to
+be disavowed in case of premature discovery, or publicly flaunted when
+they had prepared any ground on which to stand.
+
+Our countermove--the Tibet Expedition--must have been a crushing and
+unexpected blow to Russia. For the first time in modern history Great
+Britain had taken a decisive, almost high-handed, step to obviate a
+danger that was far from imminent. We had all the best cards in our
+hands. Russia's designs in Lhasa became obvious at a time when we could
+point to open defiance on the part of the Tibetans, and provocation such
+as would have goaded any other European nation to a punitive expedition
+years before. We could go to Lhasa, apparently without a thought of
+Russia, and yet undo all the effects of her scheming there, and deal
+her prestige a blow that would be felt throughout the whole of Central
+Asia. Such was Lord Curzon's policy. It was adopted in a half-hearted
+way by the Home Government, and eventually forced on them by the conduct
+of the Tibetans themselves. Needless to say, the discovery of Russian
+designs was the real and prime cause of the despatch of the mission,
+while Tibet's violation of treaty rights and refusal to enter into any
+relations with us were convenient as ostensible motives. It cannot be
+denied that these grievances were valid enough to justify the strongest
+measures.
+
+In June, 1903, came the announcement of Colonel Younghusband's mission
+to Khamba Jong. I do not think that the Indian Government ever expected
+that the Tibetans would come to any agreement with us at Khamba Jong. It
+is to their credit that they waited patiently several months in order to
+give them every chance of settling things amicably. However, as might
+have been expected, the Commission was boycotted. Irresponsible
+delegates of inferior rank were sent by the Tibetans and Chinese, and
+the Lhasa delegates, after some fruitless parleyings, shut themselves up
+in the fort, and declined all intercourse, official or social, with the
+Commissioners.[6]
+
+  [6] Their attitude was thus summed up by Captain O'Connor, secretary
+      to the mission: 'We cannot accept letters; we cannot write
+      letters; we cannot let you into our zone; we cannot let you
+      travel; we cannot discuss matters, because this is not the proper
+      place; go back to Giogong and send away all your soldiers, and we
+      will come to an agreement' (Tibetan Blue-Book).
+
+At the end of August news came that the Tibetans were arming. Colonel
+Younghusband learnt that they had made up their minds to have no
+negociations with us _inside_ Tibet. They had decided to leave us alone
+at Khamba Jong, and to oppose us by force if we attempted to advance
+further. They believed themselves fully equal to the English, and far
+from our getting anything out of them, they thought that they would be
+able to force something out of us. This is not surprising when we
+consider the spirit of concession in which we had met them on previous
+occasions.
+
+At Khamba Jong the Commissioners were informed by Colonel Chao, the
+Chinese delegate, that the Tibetans were relying on Russian assistance.
+This was confirmed later at Guru by the Tibetan officials, who boasted
+that if they were defeated they would fall back on another Power.
+
+In September the Tibetans aggravated the situation by seizing and
+beating at Shigatze two British subjects of the Lachung Valley in
+Sikkim. These men were not restored to liberty until we had forced our
+way to Lhasa and demanded their liberation, twelve months afterwards.
+
+The mission remained in its ignominious position at Khamba Jong until
+its recall in November. Almost at the same time the expedition to
+Gyantse was announced.[7]
+
+  [7] The situation was thus eloquently summarized by the Government of
+      India in a despatch to Mr. Brodrick, November 5, 1903: 'It is not
+      possible that the Tibet Government should be allowed to ignore
+      its treaty obligations, thwart trade, encroach upon our
+      territory, destroy our boundary pillars, and refuse even to
+      receive our communications. Still less do we think that when an
+      amicable conference has been arranged for the settlement of these
+      difficulties we should acquiesce in our mission being boycotted
+      by the very persons who have been deputed to meet it, our
+      officers insulted, our subjects arrested and ill-used, and our
+      authority despised by a petty Power which only mistakes our
+      forbearance for weakness, and which thinks that by an attitude of
+      obstinate inertia it can once again compel us, as it has done in
+      the past, to desist from our intentions.'
+
+In the face of the gross and deliberate affront to which we had been
+subjected at Khamba Jong it was now, of course, impossible to withdraw
+from Tibetan territory until we had impressed on the Lamas the necessity
+of meeting us in a reasonable spirit. It was clear that the Tibetans
+meant fighting, and the escort had to be increased to 2,500 men. The
+patience of Government was at last exhausted, and it was decided that
+the mission was to proceed into Tibet, dictate terms to the Lamas, and,
+if necessary, enforce compliance. The advance to Gyantse was sanctioned
+in the first place. But it was quite expected that the obstinacy of the
+Tibetans would make it necessary to push on to Lhasa.
+
+Colonel Younghusband crossed the Jelap la into Tibet on December 13,
+meeting with no opposition. Phari Jong was reached on the 20th, and the
+fort surrendered without a shot being fired. Thence the mission
+proceeded on January 7 across the Tang Pass, and took up its quarters on
+the cold, wind-swept plateau of Tuna, at an elevation of 15,300 feet.
+Here it remained for three months, while preparations were being made
+for an advance in the spring. Four companies of the 23rd Pioneers, a
+machine-gun section of the Norfolk Regiment, and twenty Madras sappers,
+were left to garrison the place, and General Macdonald, with the
+remainder of the force, returned to Chumbi for winter quarters. Chumbi
+(10,060 feet) is well within the wood belt, but even here the
+thermometer falls to 15 deg. below zero.
+
+A more miserable place to winter in than Tuna cannot be imagined. But
+for political reasons, it was inadvisable that the mission should spend
+the winter in the Chumbi Valley, which is not geographically a part of
+Tibet proper. A retrograde movement from Khamba Jong to Chumbi would be
+interpreted by the Tibetans as a sign of yielding, and strengthen them
+in their opinion that we had no serious intention of penetrating to
+Gyantse.
+
+With this brief account of the facts that led to the expedition I
+abandon politics for the present, and in the succeeding chapters will
+attempt to give a description of the Chumbi Valley, which, I believe,
+was untrodden by any European before Colonel Younghusband's arrival in
+December, 1903.
+
+I was in India when I received permission to join the force. I took the
+train to Darjeeling without losing a day, and rode into Chumbi in less
+than forty-eight hours, reaching the British camp on January 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+OVER THE FRONTIER
+
+
+    CHUMBI,
+      _January 13._
+
+From Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles. These, as in the dominions of
+Namgay Doola's Raja, are mostly on end. The road crosses the Tibetan
+frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty miles to the north-east.
+From Observatory Hill in Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
+ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and north-west lie
+Kinchenjunga and the tremendous chain of mountains that embraces
+Everest. To the north-east stretches a lower line of dazzling rifts and
+spires, in which one can see a thin gray wedge, like a slice in a
+Christmas cake. That is the Jelap. Beyond it lies Tibet.
+
+There is a good military road from Siliguri, the base station in the
+plains to Rungpo, forty-eight miles along the Teesta Valley. By
+following the river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents to Kalimpong and
+Ari. The new route saves at least a day, and conveys one to Rungli,
+nearly seventy miles from the base, without compassing a single tedious
+incline. It has also the advantage of being practicable for
+bullock-carts and ekkas as far as Rungpo. After that the path is a
+6-foot mule-track, at its best a rough, dusty incline, at its worst a
+succession of broken rocks and frozen puddles, which give no foothold to
+transport animals. From Rungpo the road skirts the stream for sixteen
+miles to Rungli, along a fertile valley of some 2,000 feet, through
+rice-fields and orange-groves and peaceful villages, now the scene of
+military bustle and preparation. From Rungli it follows a winding
+mountain torrent, whose banks are sometimes sheer precipitous crags.
+Then it strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a ladder of stone
+steps over which no animal in the world can make more than a mile and a
+half an hour. From the valley to Gnatong is a climb of some 10,000 feet
+without a break. The scenery is most magnificent, and I doubt if it is
+possible to find anywhere in the same compass the characteristics of the
+different zones of vegetation--from tropical to temperate, from
+temperate to alpine--so beautifully exhibited.
+
+At ordinary seasons transport is easy, and one can take the road in
+comfort; but now every mule and pony in Sikkim and the Terai is employed
+on the lines of communication, and one has to pay 300 rupees for an
+animal of the most modest pretensions. It is reckoned eight days from
+Darjeeling to Chumbi, but, riding all day and most of the night, I
+completed the journey in two. Newspaper correspondents are proverbially
+in a hurry. To send the first wire from Chumbi I had to leave my kit
+behind, and ride with poshteen[8] and sleeping-bag tied to my saddle. I
+was racing another correspondent. At Rungpo I found that he was five
+hours ahead of me, but he rested on the road, and I had gained three
+hours on him before he left the next stage at Rora Thang. Here I learnt
+that he intended to camp at Lingtam, twelve miles further on, in a tent
+lent him by a transport officer. I made up my mind to wait outside
+Lingtam until it was dark, and then to steal a march on him unobserved.
+But I believed no one. Wayside reports were probably intended to deceive
+me, and no doubt my informant was his unconscious confederate.
+
+  [8] Sheepskin.
+
+Outside Rungli, six miles further on, I stopped at a little Bhutia's
+hut, where he had been resting. They told me he had gone on only half an
+hour before me. I loitered on the road, and passed Lingtam in the dark.
+The moon did not rise till three, and riding in the dark was exciting.
+At first the white dusty road showed clearly enough a few yards ahead,
+but after passing Lingtam it became a narrow path cut out of a
+thickly-wooded cliff above a torrent, a wall of rock on one side, a
+precipice on the other. Here the darkness was intense. A white stone a
+few yards ahead looked like the branch of a tree overhead. A dim
+shapeless object to the left might be a house, a rock, a
+bear--anything. Uphill and downhill could only be distinguished by the
+angle of the saddle. Every now and then a firefly lit up the white
+precipice an arm's-length to the right. Once when my pony stopped
+panting with exhaustion I struck a match and found that we had come to a
+sharp zigzag. Part of the revetment had fallen; there was a yard of
+broken path covered with fern and bracken, then a drop of some hundred
+feet to the torrent below. After that I led my beast for a mile until we
+came to a charcoal-burner's hut. Two or three Bhutias were sitting round
+a log fire, and I persuaded one to go in front of me with a lighted
+brand. So we came to Sedongchen, where I left my beast dead beat, rested
+a few hours, bought a good mule, and pressed on in the early morning by
+moonlight. The road to Gnatong lies through a magnificent forest of oak
+and chestnut. For five miles it is nothing but the ascent of stone steps
+I have described. Then the rhododendron zone is reached, and one passes
+through a forest of gnarled and twisted trunks, writhing and contorted
+as if they had been thrust there for some penance. The place suggested a
+scene from Dante's 'Inferno.' As I reached the saddle of Lingtu the moon
+was paling, and the eastern sky-line became a faint violet screen. In a
+few minutes Kinchenjunga and Kabru on the north-west caught the first
+rays of the sun, and were suffused with the delicate rosy glow of dawn.
+
+I reached Gnatong in time to breakfast with the 8th Gurkhas. The camp
+lies in a little cleft in the hills at an elevation of 12,200 feet. When
+I last visited the place I thought it one of the most desolate spots I
+had seen. My first impressions were a wilderness of gray stones and
+gray, uninhabited houses, felled tree-trunks denuded of bark, white and
+spectral on the hillside. There was no life, no children's voices or
+chattering women, no bazaar apparently, no dogs barking, not even a
+pariah to greet you. If there was a sound of life it was the bray of
+some discontented mule searching for stray blades of grass among the
+stones. There were some fifty houses nearly all smokeless and vacant.
+Some had been barracks at the time of the last Sikkim War, and of the
+soldiers who inhabited them fifteen still lay in Gnatong in a little
+gray cemetery, which was the first indication of the nearness of human
+life. The inscriptions over the graves were all dated 1888, 1889, or
+1890, and though but fourteen years had passed, many of them were barely
+decipherable. The houses were scattered about promiscuously, with no
+thought of neighbourliness or convenience, as though the people were
+living there under protest, which was very probably the case. But the
+place had its picturesque feature. You might mistake some of the houses
+for tumbledown Swiss chalets of the poorer sort were it not for the
+miniature fir-trees planted on the roofs, with their burdens of prayers
+hanging from the branches like parcels on a Christmas-tree.
+
+These were my impressions a year or two ago, but now Gnatong is all life
+and bustle. In the bazaar a convoy of 300 mules was being loaded. The
+place was crowded with Nepalese coolies and Tibetan drivers, picturesque
+in their woollen knee-boots of red and green patterns, with a white star
+at the foot, long russet cloaks bound tightly at the waist and bulging
+out with cooking-utensils and changes of dress, embroidered caps of
+every variety and description, as often as not tied to the head by a
+wisp of hair. In Rotten Row--the inscription of 1889 still remains--I
+met a subaltern with a pair of skates. He showed me to the mess-room,
+where I enjoyed a warm breakfast and a good deal of chaff about
+correspondents who 'were in such a devil of a hurry to get to a
+God-forsaken hole where there wasn't going to be the ghost of a show.'
+
+I left Gnatong early on a borrowed pony. A mile and a half from the camp
+the road crosses the Tuko Pass, and one descends again for another two
+miles to Kapup, a temporary transport stage. The path lies to the west
+of the Bidang Tso, a beautiful lake with a moraine at the north-west
+side. The mountains were strangely silent, and the only sound of wild
+life was the whistling of the red-billed choughs, the commonest of the
+_Corvidae_ at these heights. They were flying round and round the lake in
+an unsettled manner, whistling querulously, as though in complaint at
+the intrusion of their solitude.
+
+I reached the Jelap soon after noon. No snow had fallen. The approach
+was over broken rock and shale. At the summit was a row of cairns, from
+which fluttered praying-flags and tattered bits of votive raiment.
+Behind us and on both sides was a thin mist, but in front my eyes
+explored a deep narrow valley bathed in sunshine. Here, then, was Tibet,
+the forbidden, the mysterious. In the distance all the land was that
+yellow and brick-dust colour I had often seen in pictures and thought
+exaggerated and unreal. Far to the north-east Chumulari (23,930 feet),
+with its magnificent white spire rising from the roof-like mass behind,
+looked like an immense cathedral of snow. Far below on a yellow hillside
+hung the Kanjut Lamasery above Rinchengong. In the valley beneath lay
+Chumbi and the road to Lhasa.
+
+There is a descent of over 4,000 feet in six miles from the summit of
+the Jelap. The valley is perfectly straight, without a bend, so that one
+can look down from the pass upon the Kanjut monastery on the hillside
+immediately above Yatung. The pass would afford an impregnable military
+position to a people with the rudiments of science and martial spirit. A
+few riflemen on the cliffs that command it might annihilate a column
+with perfect safety, and escape into Bhutan before any flanking movement
+could be made. Yet miles of straggling convoy are allowed to pass daily
+with the supplies that are necessary for the existence of the force
+ahead. The road to Phari Jong passes through two military walls. The
+first at Yatung, six miles below the pass, is a senseless obstruction,
+and any able-bodied Tommy with hobnailed boots might very easily kick it
+down. It has no block-houses, and would be useless against a flank
+attack. Before our advance to Chumbi the wall was inhabited by three
+Chinese officials, a dingpon, or Tibetan sergeant, and twenty Tibetan
+soldiers. It served as a barrier beyond which no British subject was
+allowed to pass. The second wall lies across the valley at Gob-sorg,
+four miles beyond our camp at Chumbi. It is roofed and loop-holed like
+the Yatung barrier, and is defended by block-houses. This fortification
+and every mile of valley between the Jelap and Gautsa might be held by a
+single company against an invading force. Yet there are not half a dozen
+Chinese or Tibetan soldiers in the valley. No opposition is expected
+this side of the Tang la, but nondescript troops armed with matchlocks
+and bows hover round the mission on the open plateau beyond. Our
+evacuation of Khamba Jong and occupation of Chumbi were so rapid and
+unexpected that it is thought the Tibetans had no time to bring troops
+into the valley; but to anyone who knows their strategical incompetence,
+no explanation is necessary.
+
+Yatung is reached by one of the worst sections of road on the march; one
+comes across a dead transport mule at almost every zigzag of the
+descent. For ten years the village has enjoyed the distinction of being
+the only place in Southern Tibet accessible to Europeans. Not that many
+Europeans avail themselves of its accessibility, for it is a dreary
+enough place to live in, shrouded as it is in cloud more than half the
+year round, and embedded in a valley so deep and narrow that in
+winter-time the sun has hardly risen above one cliff when it sinks
+behind another. The privilege of access to Yatung was the result of the
+agreement between Great Britain and China with regard to trade
+communications between India and Tibet drawn up in Darjeeling in 1893,
+subsequently to the Sikkim Convention. It was then stipulated that there
+should be a trade mart at Yatung to which British subjects should have
+free access, and that there should be special trade facilities between
+Sikkim and Tibet. It is reported that the Chinese Amban took good care
+that Great Britain should not benefit by these new regulations, for
+after signing the agreement which was to give the Indian tea-merchants a
+market in Tibet, he introduced new regulations the other side of the
+frontier, which prohibited the purchase of Indian tea. Whether the story
+is true or not, it is certainly characteristic of the evasion and
+duplicity which have brought about the present armed mission into Tibet.
+
+To-day, as one rides through the cobbled street of Yatung, the only
+visible effects of the Convention are the Chinese Customs House with its
+single European officer, and the residence of a lady missionary, or
+trader, as the exigencies of international diplomacy oblige her to term
+herself. The Customs House, which was opened on May 1, 1894, was first
+established with the object of estimating the trade between India and
+Tibet--traffic is not permitted by any other route than the Jelap--and
+with a view to taxation when the trade should make it worth while. It
+was stipulated that no duties should be levied for the period of five
+years. Up to the present no tariff has been imposed, and the only
+apparent use the Customs House serves is to collect statistics, and
+perhaps to remind Tibet of the shadowy suzerainty of China. The natives
+have boycotted the place, and refuse to trade there, and no European or
+native of India has thought it worth while to open a market. Phari is
+the real trade mart on the frontier, and Kalimpong, in British Bhutan,
+is the foreign trade mart. But the whole trade between India and Tibet
+is on such a small scale that it might be in the hands of a single
+merchant.
+
+The Customs House, the missionary house, and the houses of the clerks
+and servants of the Customs and of the headman, form a little block.
+Beyond it there is a quarter of a mile of barren stony ground, and then
+the wall with military pretensions. I rode through the gate
+unchallenged.
+
+At Rinchengong, a mile beyond the barrier, the Yatung stream flows into
+the Ammo Chu. The road follows the eastern bank of the river, passing
+through Cheuma and Old Chumbi, where it crosses the stream. After
+crossing the bridge, a mile of almost level ground takes one into Chumbi
+camp. I reached Chumbi on the evening of January 12, and was able to
+send the _Daily Mail_ the first cable from Tibet, having completed the
+journey from Darjeeling in two days' hard riding.
+
+The camp lies in a shallow basin in the hills, and is flanked by brown
+fir-clad hills which rise some 1,500 feet above the river-bed, and
+preclude a view of the mountains on all sides. The situation is by no
+means the best from the view of comfort, but strategic reasons make it
+necessary, for if the camp were pitched half a mile further up the
+valley, the gorge of the stream which debouches into the Ammo River to
+the north of Chumbi would give the Tibetans an opportunity of attacking
+us in the rear. Despite the protection of almost Arctic clothing, one
+shivers until the sun rises over the eastern hill at ten o'clock, and
+shivers again when it sinks behind the opposite one at three. Icy winds
+sweep the valley, and hurricanes of dust invade one's tent. Against this
+cold one clothes one's self in flannel vest and shirt, sweater,
+flannel-lined coat, poshteen or Cashmere sheepskin, wool-lined Gilgit
+boots, and fur or woollen cap with flaps meeting under the chin. The
+general effect is barbaric and picturesque. In after-days the trimness
+of a military club may recall the scene--officers clad in
+gold-embroidered poshteen, yellow boots, and fur caps, bearded like
+wild Kerghizes, and huddling round the camp fire in this black
+cauldron-like valley under the stars.
+
+Officers are settling down in Chumbi as comfortably as possible for
+winter quarters. Primitive dens have been dug out of the ground, walled
+up with boulders, and roofed in with green fir-branches. In some cases a
+natural rock affords a whole wall. The den where I am now writing is
+warmed by a cheerful pinewood blaze, a luxury after the _angeiti_ in
+one's tent. I write at an operating-table after a dinner of minal
+(pheasant) and yak's heart. A gramophone is dinning in my ears. It is
+destined, I hope, to resound in the palace of Potala, where the Dalai
+Lama and his suite may wonder what heathen ritual is accompanied by 'A
+jovial monk am I,' and 'Her golden hair was hanging down her back.'
+
+Both at home and in India one hears the Tibet Mission spoken of
+enviously as a picnic. There is an idea of an encampment in a smiling
+valley, and easy marches towards the mysterious city. In reality, there
+is plenty of hard and uninteresting work. The expedition is attended
+with all the discomforts of a campaign, and very little of the
+excitement. Colonel Younghusband is now at Tuna, a desolate hamlet on
+the Tibetan plateau, exposed to the coldest winds of Asia, where the
+thermometer falls to 25 deg. below zero. Detachments of the escort are
+scattered along the line of communications in places of varying cold
+and discomfort, where they must wait until the necessary supplies have
+been carried through to Phari. It is not likely that Colonel
+Younghusband will be able to proceed to Gyantse before March. In the
+meanwhile, imagine the Pioneers and Gurkhas, too cold to wash or shave,
+shivering in a dirty Tibetan fort, half suffocated with smoke from a
+yak-dung fire. Then there is the transport officer shut up in some
+narrow valley of Sikkim, trying to make half a dozen out of three with
+his camp of sick beasts and sheaf of urgent telegrams calling for
+supplies. He hopes there will be 'a show,' and that he may be in it.
+Certainly if anyone deserves to go to Lhasa and get a medal for it, it
+is the supply and transport man. But he will be left behind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHUMBI VALLEY
+
+
+    CHUMBI,
+      _February, 1904._
+
+The Chumbi Valley is inhabited by the Tomos, who are said to be
+descendants of ancient cross-marriages between the Bhutanese and
+Lepchas. They only intermarry among themselves, and speak a language
+which would not be understood in other parts of Tibet. As no Tibetan
+proper is allowed to pass the Yatung barrier, the Tomos have the
+monopoly of the carrying trade between Phari and Kalimpong. They are
+voluntarily under the protection of the Tibetans, who treat them
+liberally, as the Lamas realize the danger of their geographical
+position as a buffer state, and are shrewd enough to recognise that any
+ill treatment or oppression would drive them to seek protection from the
+Bhutanese or British.
+
+The Tomos are merry people, hearty, and good-natured. They are
+wonderfully hardy and enduring. In the coldest winter months, when the
+thermometer is 20 deg. below zero, they will camp out at night in the snow,
+forming a circle of their loads, and sleep contentedly inside with no
+tent or roofing. The women would be comely if it were not for the cutch
+that they smear over their faces. The practice is common to the Tibetans
+and Bhutanese, but no satisfactory reason has been found for it. The
+Jesuit Father, Johann Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
+custom to a religious whim:--'The women, out of a religious whim, never
+wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only
+causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and
+deformed.' A hundred and eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
+habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the Dalai Lama early in
+the seventeenth century. 'The women of Tibet in those days were much
+given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the Lamas to a degree to
+bring their holy order into a bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of
+the Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the women should never
+appear in public without smearing their faces with a black disfiguring
+paste. Huc recorded that though the order was still obeyed, the practice
+was observed without much benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or
+Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this
+unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu,
+that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes.
+
+The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive cap, with a red badge in
+the front, which harmonizes with their complexion--a coarse, brick red,
+of which the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously called
+pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness of a healthy outdoor life in a
+cold climate. A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque--at
+a hundred yards. They wrap themselves round and round with a thick
+woollen blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear on their feet
+high woollen boots with leather or rope soles. If it was not for their
+disfiguring toilet many of them would be handsome. The children are
+generally pretty, and I have seen one or two that were really beautiful.
+When we left a camp the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
+come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles, string, and cardboard
+boxes were treasured prizes. We threw these out of our cave, and the
+children scrambled for them, and even the women made dives at anything
+particularly tempting. My last impression of Lingmathang was a group of
+women giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates and
+advertisements in a number of the _Lady_, which somebody's _memsahib_
+had used for the packing of a ham.
+
+The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness, realize the
+hygienic value of their hot springs. There are resorts in the
+neighbourhood of Chumbi as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
+mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes. These healthy folk are not
+morbidly conscious of sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
+are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not hot enough, the Tomos
+bake large boulders in the ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the
+water to increase the temperature.
+
+Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They dry the leaves of the wild
+rhubarb, and mix them with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called
+_dopta_, and was the favourite blend of the country. Now hundreds of
+thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a
+lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a
+pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari.
+Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them,
+and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three
+appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
+strewn with the empty boxes.
+
+There is a considerable Chinese element in the Chumbi Valley--a frontier
+officer, with the local rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of
+the Customs House, and troops numbering from one to two hundred. These,
+of course, were not in evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
+The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives, but take to themselves
+women of the country, whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
+villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in the country after his
+term of office. Life at Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
+looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages. He is as unhappy as a
+Frenchman in Tonquin, cut off from all the diversions of social and
+intellectual life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me that he
+had brought his wife with him, and the poor lady had never left the
+house, but cried incessantly for China and civilization. Yet to the
+uninitiated the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang might have
+been taken from the far East and plumped down on the Indian frontier.
+There is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house, the same
+hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper over the lintels of the doors,
+and the same red and green abortions on the walls.
+
+Much has been written and duly contradicted about the fertility of the
+Chumbi Valley. If one does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
+12,000 feet, it must be admitted that the valley is, relatively
+speaking, fertile--that is to say, its produce is sufficient to support
+its three or four thousand inhabitants.
+
+The lower valley produces buckwheat, turnips, potatoes, radishes, and
+barley. The latter, the staple food of the Tibetans, has, when ground,
+an appetizing smell very like oatmeal. The upper valley is quite
+sterile, and produces nothing but barley, which does not ripen; it is
+gathered for fodder when green, and the straw is sold at high prices to
+the merchants who visit Phari from Tibet and Bhutan. This year the
+Tibetan merchants are afraid to come, and the commissariat benefits by
+a very large supply of fodder which ought to see them through the
+summer.
+
+The idea that the valley is unusually fertile probably arose from the
+well-to-do appearance of the natives of Rinchengong and Chumbi, and
+their almost palatial houses, which give evidence of a prosperity due to
+trade rather than agriculture.
+
+The hillsides around Chumbi produce wild strawberries, raspberries,
+currants, and cherries; but these are quite insipid in this sunless
+climate.
+
+The Chinese Custom's officer at Yatung tells me that the summer months,
+though not hot, are relaxing and enervating. The thermometer never rises
+above 70 deg.. The rainfall does not average quite 50 inches; but almost
+daily at noon a mist creeps up from Bhutan, and a constant drizzle
+falls. In June, July, and August, 1901, there were only three days
+without rain.
+
+At Phari I met a venerable old gentleman who gave me some statistics.
+The old man, Katsak Kasi by name, was a Tibetan from the Kham province,
+acting at Phari as trade agent for the Bhutanese Government. His face
+was seared and parchment-like from long exposure to cold winds and rough
+weather. His features were comparatively aquiline--that is to say, they
+did not look as if they had been flattened out in youth. He wore a very
+large pair of green spectacles, with a gold bulb at each end and a red
+tassel in the middle, which gave him an air of wisdom and distinction.
+He answered my rather inquisitive questions with courtesy and
+decision, and yet with such a serious care for details that I felt quite
+sure his figures must be accurate.
+
+[Illustration: ROCK SCULPTURES.]
+
+If statistics were any gauge of the benefits Indian trade would derive
+from an open market with Tibet, the present mission, as far as
+commercial interests are concerned, would be wasted. According to Kasi's
+statistics, the cost of two dozen or thirty mules would balance the
+whole of the annual revenue on Indian imports into the country. The idea
+that duties are levied at the Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers is a mistake.
+The only Customs House is at Phari, where the Indian and Bhutanese
+trade-routes meet. The Customs are under the supervision of the two
+jongpens, who send the revenue to Lhasa twice a year.
+
+The annual income on imports from India, Kasi assured me, is only 6,000
+rupees, whereas the income on exports amounts to 20,000. Tibetan trade
+with India consists almost entirely of wool, yaks'-tails, and ponies.
+There is a tax of 2 rupees 8 annas on ponies, 1 rupee a maund on wool,
+and 1 rupee 8 annas a maund on yaks'-tails. Our imports into Tibet,
+according to Kasi's statistics, are practically nil. Some piece goods,
+iron vessels, and tobacco leaves find their way over the Jelap, but it
+is a common sight to see mules returning into Tibet with nothing but
+their drivers' cooking utensils and warm clothing.[9]
+
+  [9] The only articles imported to the value of L1,000 are cotton
+      goods, woollen cloths, metals, chinaware, coral, indigo, maize,
+      silk, fur, and tobacco.
+
+      The only exports to the value of L1,000 are musk, ponies, skins,
+      wool, and yaks'-tails.
+
+      Appended are the returns for the years 1895-1902:
+
+        Year.  Value of Articles  Value of Articles  Total Value of
+                 Imported into     Exported from     Imports and
+                    Tibet.            Tibet.           Exports.
+                     Rs.               Rs.                Rs.
+        1895       416,218           634,086          1,050,304
+        1896       561,395           781,269          1,342,664
+        1897       674,139           820,300          1,494,436
+        1898       718,475           817,851          1,536,326
+        1899       962,637           822,760          1,785,397
+        1900       730,502           710,012          1,440,514
+        1901       734,075           783,480          1,517,555
+        1902       761,837           805,338          1,567,075
+
+      _Customs House Returns, Yatung._
+
+At present no Indian tea passes Yatung. That none is sold at Phari
+confirms the rumour I mentioned that the Chinese Amban, after signing
+the trade regulations between India and Tibet in Darjeeling, 1893,
+crossed the frontier to introduce new laws, virtually annulling the
+regulations. Indian tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
+Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and treaty obligations.
+She has placed every obstacle in the way of Indian trade, and insulted
+our Commissioners; yet the despatch of the present mission with its
+armed escort has been called an act of aggression.
+
+When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be angry with him for helping
+us, he said they would certainly cut off his head if he remained in the
+fort after we had left. There is some foundation in travellers' stories
+about the punishment inflicted on the guards of the passes and other
+officials who fail to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
+towards Lhasa.
+
+Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when we entered the valley are
+still detained there, as far as I can gather, as hostages for the good
+behaviour of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does not fit the
+crime. The guards of a pass are punished for letting white men through,
+quite irrespective of the opposing odds.
+
+The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging, but the ordeal is so
+severe that it often proves fatal. I asked Kasi some questions about the
+magisterial powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
+remained in the fort some days after we occupied it. He told me that
+they could not pass capital sentence, but they might flog the prisoners,
+and if they died, nothing was said. Several victims have died of
+flogging at Phari.
+
+The natives in Darjeeling have a story of Tibetan methods, which have
+always seemed to me the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say, the
+criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he cannot tell whether it is
+night or day. Cobras and scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of
+venom are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness, for it is
+still enough, and seek or avoid as he has courage. Food is sometimes
+thrown in to tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his agony. I
+asked Kasi if there were any truth in the tale. He told me that there
+were no venomous snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a dark
+prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes died of scorpion bites; he
+added that only the worst offenders were punished in this way. The
+modified version of the story is gruesome enough.
+
+It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials to receive their pay in
+grain, it being understood that their position puts them in the way of
+obtaining the other necessaries of life, and perhaps a few of its
+luxuries. Kasi, being an important official, receives from the Bhutan
+Government forty maunds of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
+receives, in addition, a commission on the trade disputes that he
+decides in proportion to their importance. He is now an invaluable
+servant of the British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes round
+Phari are wakening into life. From the fort bastions one sees sometimes
+on the hills opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
+gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks coming from some blind
+valley which no one but a hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
+exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported from Bhutan and sold
+to the mutual gratification of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
+hired and employed on the line of communications.
+
+It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they hear of our good prices,
+will send supplies over the frontier to hasten our advance. But we must
+take care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good services. When I asked
+him how he stood with the Tibetan Government, he laid his hand in a
+significant manner across his throat.
+
+
+    LINGMATHANG,
+      _February._
+
+Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau of Tibet, the road to
+Lhasa winds through seven miles of pine forest, which recalls some of
+the most beautiful valleys of Switzerland.
+
+The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there is nothing but barrenness
+and desolation. The country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
+There are long strips of arable land on each side of the road, and
+villages every two or three miles. The fields are terraced and enclosed
+within stone walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built houses,
+with low, over-hanging eaves, and long wooden tiles, each weighed down
+with a gray boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg or
+Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags and _mani_-walls brightly
+painted with Buddhistic pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.
+
+There is no lack of colour. In the winter months a brier with large red
+berries and a low, foxy-brown thornbush, like a young osier in March,
+lend a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills the withered
+grass is yellow, and the blending of these quiet tints, russet, brown,
+and yellow, gives the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
+sombre enough.
+
+Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In springtime there is a
+profusion of colour. The valley is beautiful, beyond the beauty of the
+grandest Alpine scenery, carpeted underfoot with spring flowers, and
+ablaze overhead with flowering rhododendrons. To try to describe
+mountains and forests is a most unprofitable task; all the adjectives of
+scenic description are exhausted; the coinage has been too long debased.
+For my own part, it has been almost a pain to visit the most beautiful
+parts of the earth and to know that one's sensations are incommunicable,
+that it is impossible to make people believe and understand. To those
+who have not seen, scenery is either good, bad, or indifferent; there
+are no degrees. Ruskin, the greatest master of description, is most
+entertaining when he is telling us about the domestic circle at Herne
+Hill. But mountain scenery is of all the most difficult to describe. The
+sense of the Himalayas is intangible. There are elusive lights and
+shades, and sounds and whispers, and unfamiliar scents, and a thousand
+fleeting manifestations of the genius of the place that are impossible
+to arrest. Magnificent, majestic, splendid, are weak, colourless words
+that depict nothing. It is the poets who have described what they have
+not seen who have been most successful. Milton's hell is as real as any
+landscape of Byron's, and the country through which Childe Roland rode
+to the Dark Tower is more vivid and present to us than any of
+Wordsworth's Westmoreland tarns and valleys. So it is a poem of the
+imagination--'Kubla Khan'--that seems to me to breathe something of the
+spirit of the Yatung and Chumbi Valleys, only there is a little less of
+mystery and gloom here, and a little more of sunshine and brightness
+than in the dream poem. Instead of attempting to describe the
+valley--Paradise would be easier to describe--I will try to explain as
+logically as possible why it fascinated me more than any scenery I have
+seen.
+
+I had often wondered if there were any place in the East where flowers
+grow in the same profusion as in Europe--in England, or in Switzerland.
+The nearest approach I had seen was in the plateau of the Southern Shan
+States, at about 4,000 feet, where the flora is very homelike. But the
+ground is not _carpeted_; one could tread without crushing a blossom.
+Flowers are plentiful, too, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and
+on the hills on the Siamese side of the Tennasserim frontier, but I had
+seen nothing like a field of marsh-marigolds and cuckoo-flowers in May,
+or a meadow of buttercups and daisies, or a bank of primroses, or a wood
+carpeted with bluebells, or a hillside with heather, or an Alpine slope
+with gentians and ranunculus. I had been told that in Persia in
+springtime the valleys of the Shapur River and the Karun are covered
+profusely with lilies, also the forests of Manchuria in the
+neighbourhood of the Great White Mountain; but until I crossed the
+Jelapla and struck down the valley to Yatung I thought I would have to
+go West to see such things again. Never was such profusion. Besides the
+primulas[10]--I counted eight different kinds of them--and gentians and
+anemones and celandines and wood sorrel and wild strawberries and
+irises, there were the rhododendrons glowing like coals through the pine
+forest. As one descended the scenery became more fascinating; the valley
+narrowed, and the stream was more boisterous. Often the cliffs hung
+sheer over the water's edge; the rocks were coated with green and yellow
+moss, which formed a bed for the dwarf rhododendron bushes, now in full
+flower, white and crimson and cream, and every hue between a dark
+reddish brown and a light sulphury yellow--not here and there, but
+everywhere, jostling one another for nooks and crannies in the rock.[11]
+
+  [10] Between Gnatong and Gautsa, thirteen different species of
+      primulas are found. They are: _Primula Petiolaris_, _P. glabra_,
+      _P. Sapphirina_, _P. pusilia_, _P. Kingii_, _P. Elwesiana_, _P.
+      Capitata_, _P. Sikkimensis_, _P. Involucra_, _P. Denticulata_,
+      _P. Stuartii_, _P. Soldanelloides_, _P. Stirtonia_.
+
+  [11] The species are: _Rhododendron campanulatum_, purple flowers;
+      _R. Fulgens_, scarlet; _R. Hodgsonii_, rose-coloured; _R.
+      Anthopogon_, white; _R. Virgatum_, purple; _R. Nivale_, rose-red;
+      _R. Wightii_, yellow; _R. Falconeri_, cream-coloured; _R.
+      cinndbarinum_, brick-red ('The Gates of Tibet,' Appendix I., J.
+      A. H. Louis).
+
+These delicate flowers are very different from their dowdy cousin, the
+coarse red rhododendron of the English shrubbery. At a little distance
+they resemble more hothouse azaleas, and equal them in wealth of
+blossom.
+
+The great moss-grown rocks in the bed of the stream were covered with
+equal profusion. Looking behind, the snows crowned the pine-trees, and
+over them rested the blue sky. And here is the second reason--as I am
+determined to be logical in my preference--why I found the valley so
+fascinating. In contrasting the Himalayas with the Alps, there is always
+something that the former is without. Never the snows, and the water,
+and the greenery at the same time; if the greenery is at your feet, the
+snows are far distant; where the Himalayas gain in grandeur they lose in
+beauty. So I thought the wild valley of Lauterbrunnen, lying at the foot
+of the Jungfrau, the perfection of Alpine scenery until I saw the valley
+of Yatung, a pine-clad mountain glen, green as a hawthorn hedge in May,
+as brilliantly variegated as a beechwood copse in autumn, and
+culminating in the snowy peak that overhangs the Jelapla. The valley has
+besides an intangible fascination, indescribable because it is
+illogical. Certainly the light that played upon all these colours seemed
+to me softer than everyday sunshine; and the opening spring foliage of
+larch and birch and mountain ash seemed more delicate and varied than on
+common ground. Perhaps it was that I was approaching the forbidden land.
+But what irony, that this seductive valley should be the approach to
+the most bare and unsheltered country in Asia!
+
+Even now, in February, I can detect a few salmon-coloured leaf-buds,
+which remind me that the month of May will be a revelation to the
+mission force, when their veins are quickened by the unfamiliar warmth,
+and their eyes dazzled by this unexpected treasure which is now
+germinating in the brown earth.
+
+Four miles beyond Chumbi the road passes through the second military
+wall at the Chinese village of Gob-sorg. Riding through the quiet
+gateway beneath the grim, hideous figure of the goddess Dolma carved on
+the rock above, one feels a silent menace. One is part of more than a
+material invasion; one has passed the gate that has been closed against
+the profane for centuries; one has committed an irretrievable step.
+Goddess and barrier are symbols of Tibet's spiritual and material
+agencies of opposition. We have challenged and defied both. We have
+entered the arena now, and are to be drawn into the vortex of all that
+is most sacred and hidden, to struggle there with an implacable foe, who
+is protected by the elemental forces of nature.
+
+Inside the wall, above the road, stands the Chinese village of Gob-sorg.
+The Chinamen come out of their houses and stand on the revetment to
+watch us pass. They are as quiet and ugly as their gods. They gaze down
+on our convoys and modern contrivances with a silent contempt that
+implies a consciousness of immemorial superiority. Who can tell what
+they think or what they wish, these undivinable creatures? They love
+money, we know, and they love something else that we cannot know. It is
+not country, or race, or religion, but an inscrutable something that may
+be allied to these things, that induces a mental obstinacy, an
+unfathomable reserve which may conceal a wisdom beyond our philosophy or
+mere callousness and indifference. The thing is there, though it has no
+European name or definition. It has caused many curious and unexplained
+outbreaks in different parts of the world, and it is no doubt symbolized
+in their inexpressibly hideous flag. The element is non-conductive, and
+receives no current from progress, and it is therefore incommunicable to
+us who are wrapped in the pride of evolution. The question here and
+elsewhere is whether the Chinese love money more or this inscrutable
+dragon element. If it is money, their masks must have concealed a
+satisfaction at the prospect of the increased trade that follows our
+flag; if the dragon element, a grim hope that we might be cut off in the
+wilderness and annihilated by Asiatic hordes.
+
+Unlike the Chinese, the Tomos are unaffectedly glad to see us in the
+valley. The humblest peasant is the richer by our presence, and the
+landowners and traders are more prosperous than they have been for many
+years. Their uncompromising reception of us makes a withdrawal from the
+Chumbi Valley impossible, for the Tibetans would punish them
+relentlessly for the assistance they have given their enemies.
+
+A mile beyond Gob-sorg is the Tibetan village of Galing-ka, where the
+praying-flags are as thick as masts in a dockyard, and streams of paper
+prayers are hung across the valley to prevent the entrance of evil
+spirits. Chubby little children run out and salute one with a cry of
+'Backsheesh!' the first alien word in their infant vocabulary.
+
+A mile further a sudden turn in the valley brings one to a level
+plain--a phenomenally flat piece of ground where one can race two miles
+along the straight. No one passes it without remarking that it is the
+best site for a hill-station in Northern India. Where else can one find
+a racecourse, polo-ground, fishing, and shooting, and a rainfall that is
+little more than a third of that of Darjeeling? Three hundred feet above
+the stream on the west bank is a plateau, apparently intended for
+building sites. The plain in the valley was naturally designed for the
+training of mounted infantry, and is now, probably for the first time,
+being turned to its proper use.
+
+
+    LINGMATHANG,
+      _March 18._
+
+I have left the discomforts of Phari, and am camping now on the
+Lingmathang Plain. I am writing in a natural cave in the rock. The
+opening is walled in by a sangar of stones 5 feet high, from which
+pine-branches support a projecting roof. On fine days the space between
+the roof and wall is left open, and called the window; but when it
+snows, gunny-bags are let down as purdahs, and the den becomes very warm
+and comfortable. There is a natural hearth, a natural chimney-piece, and
+a natural chimney that draws excellently. The place is sheltered by high
+cliffs, and it is very pleasant to look out from this snugness on a
+wintry landscape, and ground covered deep with snow.
+
+Outside, seventy shaggy Tibetan ponies, rough and unshod, averaging 12.2
+hands, are tethered under the shelter of a rocky cliff. They are being
+trained according to the most approved methods of modern warfare. The
+Mounted Infantry Corps, mostly volunteers from the 23rd and 32nd
+Pioneers and 8th Gurkhas, are under the command of Captain Ottley of the
+23rd. The corps was raised at Gnatong in December, and though many of
+the men had not ridden before, after two months' training they cut a
+very respectable figure in the saddle. A few years ago a proposal was
+made to the military authorities that the Pioneers, like other
+regiments, should go in for a course of mounted infantry training. The
+reply caused much amusement at the time. The suggestion was not adopted,
+but orders were issued that 'every available opportunity should be taken
+of teaching the Pioneers to ride in carts.' A wag in the force naturally
+suggests that the new Ekka Corps, now running between Phari and Tuna,
+should be utilized to carry out the spirit of this order. Certainly on
+the road beyond the Tangla the ekkas would require some sitting.
+
+The present mission is the third 'show' on which the 23rd and 32nd have
+been together during the last nine years. In Chitral and Waziristan they
+fought side by side. It is no exaggeration to say that these regiments
+have been on active service three years out of five since they were
+raised in 1857. The original draft of the 32nd, it will be remembered,
+was the unarmed volunteer corps of Mazbi Sikhs, who offered themselves
+as an escort to the convoy from Lahore to Delhi during the siege. The
+Mazbis were the most lawless and refractory folk in the Punjab, and had
+long been the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi they were
+employed in the trenches, rushing in to fill up the places of the killed
+and wounded as fast as they fell. It will be remembered that they formed
+the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags to blow up the Cashmere
+Gate. A hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed during the siege.
+With this brilliant opening it is no wonder that they have been on
+active service almost continually since.
+
+A frontier campaign would be incomplete without the 32nd or 23rd. It was
+the 32nd who cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and carried the
+battery guns to the relief of Chitral. The 23rd Pioneers were also
+raised from the Mazbi Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
+history of the two regiments is very similar. The 23rd distinguished
+themselves in China, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and numerous frontier
+campaigns. One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with the Gordon
+Highlanders under Major (now Sir George) White, they captured the Afghan
+guns at Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments meet again as
+members of the same corps on the Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most
+cordial relations exist between the men, and one can hear them
+discussing old campaigns as they sit round their pinewood fires in the
+evenings. They and the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur fame)
+turn out together every morning for exercise on their diminutive steeds.
+They ride without saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
+horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at the jumps. The other
+day, when a Mazbi Sikh took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
+reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise riding in carts.'
+
+At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of sport of a desultory kind.
+The neighbouring forests are the home of that very rare and little-known
+animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal of the species to
+fall to a European gun was shot by Major Wallace Dunlop on the
+Lingmathang Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley wounded a
+buck which he was not able to follow up on account of a heavy fall of
+snow. Lately one or two shao--does in all cases--have come down to visit
+the plain. While we were breakfasting on the morning of the 16th, we
+heard a great deal of shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
+up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village dogs, had broken
+through the jungle on the hillside and emerged on the plain a hundred
+yards from our camp. We mounted at once, and Ottley deployed the mounted
+infantry, who were ready for parade, to head the beast from the hills.
+The shao jinked like a hare, and crossed and recrossed the stream
+several times, but the poor beast was exhausted, and, after twenty
+minutes' exciting chase, we surrounded it. Captain Ottley threw himself
+on the animal's neck and held it down until a sepoy arrived with ropes
+to bind its hind-legs. The chase was certainly a unique incident in the
+history of sport--a field of seventy in the Himalayas, a clear spurt in
+the open, no dogs, and the quarry the rarest zoological specimen in the
+world. The beast stood nearly 14 hands, and was remarkable for its long
+ears and elongated jaw. The sequel was sad. Besides the fright and
+exhaustion, the captured shao sustained an injury in the loin; it pined,
+barely nibbled at its food, and, after ten days, died.
+
+Sikkim stags are sometimes shot by native shikaris, and there is great
+rivalry among members of the mission force in buying their heads. They
+are shy, inaccessible beasts, and they are not met with beyond the wood
+limit.
+
+The shooting in the Chumbi Valley is interesting to anyone fond of
+natural history, though it is a little disappointing from the
+sportsman's point of view. When officers go out for a day's shooting,
+they think they have done well if they bring home a brace of pheasants.
+When the sappers and miners began to work on the road below Gautsa, the
+blood-pheasants used to come down to the stream to watch the operations,
+but now one sees very few game-birds in the valley. The minal is
+occasionally shot. The cock-bird, as all sportsmen know, is, with the
+exception of the Argus-eye, the most beautiful pheasant in the world.
+There is a lamasery in the neighbourhood, where the birds are almost
+tame. The monks who feed them think that they are inhabited by the
+spirits of the blest. Where the snow melts in the pine-forests and
+leaves soft patches and moist earth, you will find the blood-pheasant.
+When you disturb them they will run up the hillside and call
+vociferously from their new hiding-place, so that you may get another
+shot. Pheasant-shooting here is not sport; the birds seldom rise, and
+when they do it is almost impossible to get a shot at them in the thick
+jungle. One must shoot them running for the pot. Ten or a dozen is not a
+bad bag for one gun later in the year, when more snow has fallen.
+
+At a distance the blood-pheasant appears a dowdy bird. The hen is quite
+insignificant, but, on a closer acquaintance, the cock shows a delicate
+colour-scheme of mauve, pink, and green, which is quite different from
+the plumage of any other bird I have seen. The skins fetch a good price
+at home, as fishermen find them useful for making flies. A sportsman
+who has shot in the Yatung Valley regularly for four years tells me that
+the cock-bird of this species is very much more numerous than the hen.
+Another Chumbi pheasant is the tracopan, a smaller bird than the minal,
+and very beautifully marked. I have not heard of a tracopan being shot
+this season; the bird is not at all common anywhere on this side of the
+Himalayas.
+
+Snow-partridge sometimes come down to the Lingmathang hills; in the
+adjacent Kongbu Valley they are plentiful. These birds are gregarious,
+and are found among the large, loose boulders on the hill-tops. In
+appearance they are a cross between the British grouse and the
+red-legged partridge, having red feet and legs uncovered with feathers,
+and a red bill and chocolate breast. The feathers of the back and rump
+are white, with broad, defined bars of rich black.
+
+Another common bird is the snow-pigeon. Large flocks of them may be seen
+circling about the valley anywhere between Phari and Chumbi. Sometimes,
+when we are sitting in our cave after dinner, we hear the tweek of
+solitary snipe flying overhead, but we have never flushed any. Every
+morning before breakfast I stroll along the river bank with a gun, and
+often put up a stray duck. I have frequently seen goosanders on the
+river, but not more than two or three in a party. They never leave the
+Himalayas. The only migratory duck I have observed are the common teal
+and Brahminy or ruddy sheldrake, and these only in pairs. The latter,
+though despised on the plains, are quite edible up here. I discredit the
+statement that they feed on carrion, as I have never seen one near the
+carcasses of the dead transport animals that are only too plentiful in
+the valley just now. After comparing notes with other sportsmen, I
+conclude that the Ammo Chu Valley is not a regular route for migratory
+duck. The odd teal that I shot in February were probably loiterers that
+were not strong enough to join in the flight southwards.
+
+Near Lingmathang I shot the ibis bill (_Ibidorhynchus Struthersi_), a
+bird which is allied to the oyster catchers. This was the first Central
+Asian species I met.
+
+
+    GAUTSA,
+      _February._
+
+Gautsa, which lies five miles north of Lingmathang, nearly half-way
+between Chumbi and Phari, must be added to the map. A week or two ago
+the place was deserted and unnamed; it did not boast a single cowherd's
+hut. Now it is a busy camp, and likely to be a permanent halting-place
+on the road to Phari. The camp lies in a deep, moss-carpeted hollow,
+with no apparent egress. On three sides it is flanked by rocky cliffs,
+densely forested with pine and silver birch; on the fourth rises an
+abrupt wall of rock, which is suffused with a glow of amber light an
+hour before sunset. The Ammo Chu, which is here nothing but a 20-foot
+stream frozen over at night, bisects the camp. The valley is warm and
+sheltered, and escapes much of the bitter wind that never spares Chumbi.
+After dinner one prefers the open-air and a camp fire. Officers who have
+been up the line before turn into their tents regretfully, for they know
+that they are saying good-bye to comfort, and will not enjoy the genial
+warmth of a good fire again until they have crossed the bleak Tibetan
+tablelands and reached the sparsely-wooded Valley of Gyantse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PHARI JONG
+
+
+    _February 15._
+
+Icy winds and suffocating smoke are not conducive to a literary style,
+though they sometimes inspire a rude eloquence that is quite unfit for
+publication. As I write we are huddling over the mess-room brazier--our
+youngest optimist would not call it a fire. Men drop in now and then
+from fatigue duty, and utter an incisive phrase that expresses the
+general feeling, while we who write for an enlightened public must
+sacrifice force for euphemism. A week at Phari dispels all illusions;
+only a bargee could adequately describe the place. Yet the elements,
+which 'feelingly persuade us' what we are, sometimes inspire us with the
+eloquence of discomfort.
+
+At Gautsa the air was scented with the fragrance of warm pine-trees, and
+there was no indication of winter save the ice on the Ammo Chu. The
+torrent roared boisterously beneath its frozen surface, and threw up
+little tentacles of frozen spray, which glistened fantastically in the
+sun. Three miles further up the stream the wood-belt ends abruptly;
+then, after another three miles, one passes the last stunted bush; after
+that there is nothing but brown earth and yellow withered grass.
+
+Five miles above Gautsa is Dotah, the most cheerless camp on the march.
+The wind blows through the gorge unceasingly, and penetrates to the
+bone. On the left bank of the stream is the frozen waterfall, which
+might be worshipped by the fanciful and superstitious as embodying the
+genius of the place, hard and resistless, a crystallized monument of the
+implacable spirit of Nature in these high places.
+
+At Kamparab, where we camped, two miles higher up the stream, the
+thermometer fell to 14 deg. below zero. Close by is the meeting-place of the
+sources of the Ammo Chu. All the plain is undermined with the warrens of
+the long-haired marmots and voles, who sit on their thresholds like a
+thousand little spies, and curiously watch our approach, then dive down
+into their burrows to tell their wives of the strange bearded invaders.
+They are the despair of their rivals, the sappers and miners, who are
+trying to make a level road for the new light ekkas. One envies them
+their warmth and snugness as one rides against the bitter penetrating
+winds.
+
+Twelve miles from Gautsa a turn in the valley brings one into view of
+Phari Jong. At first sight it might be a huge isolated rock, but as one
+approaches the bastions and battlements become more distinct. Distances
+are deceptive in this rarefied air, and objects that one imagines to be
+quite close are sometimes found to be several miles distant.
+
+The fort is built on a natural mound in the plain. It is a huge rambling
+building six stories high, surrounded by a courtyard, where mules and
+ponies are stabled. As a military fortification Phari Jong is by no
+means contemptible. The walls are of massive stonework which would take
+heavy guns to demolish. The angles are protected from attacking parties
+by machicolated galleries, and three enormous bastions project from each
+flank. These are crumbling in places, and the Pioneers might destroy the
+bastion and breach the wall with a bag or two of guncotton. On the
+eastern side there is a square courtyard like an Arab caravanserai,
+where cattle are penned. The fortress would hold the whole Tibetan army,
+with provisions for a year. It was evacuated the night before we
+reconnoitred the valley.
+
+The interior of the Jong is a warren of stairs, landings, and dark
+cavernous rooms, which would take a whole day to explore. The walls are
+built of stone and mud, and coated with century-old smoke. There are no
+chimneys or adequate windows, and the filth is indescribable. When Phari
+was first occupied, eighty coolies were employed a whole week clearing
+away refuse. Judging by the accretion of dirt, a new-comer might class
+the building as medieval; but filth is no criterion of age, for
+everything left in the same place becomes quickly coated with grime an
+inch thick. The dust that invades one's tent at Chumbi is clean and
+wholesome compared to the Phari dirt, which is the filth of human
+habitation, the secretion of centuries of foul living. It falls from the
+roof on one's head, sticks to one's clothes as one brushes against the
+wall, and is blown up into one's eyes and throat from the floor.
+
+The fort is most insanitary, but a military occupation is necessary. The
+hacking coughs which are prevalent among officers and men are due to
+impurities of the air which affect the lungs. Cartloads of dirt are
+being scraped away every day, but gusts of wind from the lower stories
+blow up more dust, which penetrates every nook and cranny of the
+draughty rooms, so that there is a fresh layer by nightfall. To clear
+the lower stories and cellars would be a hopeless task; even now rooms
+are found in unexpected places which emit clouds of dust whenever the
+wind eddies round the basement.
+
+I explored the ground-floor with a lantern, and was completely lost in
+the maze of passages and dark chambers. When we first occupied the fort,
+they were filled with straw, gunpowder, and old arms. A hundred and
+forty maunds of inferior gunpowder was destroyed, and the arms now
+litter the courtyard. These the Tibetans themselves abandoned as
+rubbish. The rusty helmets, shields, and breastplates are made of the
+thinnest iron plates interlaced with leathern thongs, and would not
+stop an arrow. The old bell-mouthed matchlocks, with their wooden
+ground-rests, would be more dangerous to the Tibetan marksmen than the
+enemy. The slings and bows and arrows are reckoned obsolete even by
+these primitive warriors. Perhaps they attribute more efficacy to the
+praying-wheels which one encounters at every corner of the fort. The
+largest are in niches in the wall to left and right of the gateway; rows
+of smaller ones are attached to the banisters on the landings and to the
+battlements of the roof. The wheels are covered with grime--the grime of
+Lamas' hands. Dirt and religion are inseparable in Tibet. The Lamas
+themselves are the most filthy and malodorous folk I have met in the
+country. From this it must not be inferred that one class is more
+cleanly in its habits than another, for nobody ever thinks of washing.
+Soap is not included in the list of sundries that pass the Customs House
+at Yatung. If the Lamas are dirtier than the yak-herds and itinerant
+merchants it is because they lead an indoor life, whereas the pastoral
+folk are continually exposed to the purifying winds of the tablelands,
+which are the nearest equivalent in Tibet to a cold bath.
+
+I once read of a Tibetan saint, one of the pupils of Naropa, who was
+credited with a hundred miraculous gifts, one of which was that he could
+dive into the water like a fish. Wherein the miracle lay had often
+puzzled me, but when I met the Lamas of the Kanjut Gompa I understood
+at once that it was the holy man's contact with the water.
+
+Phari is eloquent of piety, as it is understood in Tibet. The better
+rooms are frescoed with Buddhistic paintings, and on the third floor is
+a library, now used as a hospital, where xylograph editions of the
+Lamaist scriptures and lives of the saints are pigeon-holed in lockers
+in the wall. The books are printed on thin oblong sheets of Chinese
+paper, enclosed in boards, and illuminated with quaint coloured
+tailpieces of holy men in devotional attitudes. Phari fort, with its
+casual blending of East and West, is full of incongruous effects, but
+the oddest and most pathetic incongruity is the chorten on the roof,
+from which, amidst praying-flags and pious offerings of coloured
+raiment, flutters the Union Jack.
+
+
+    _February 18._
+
+The troops are so busy making roads that they have very little time for
+amusements. The 8th Gurkhas have already constructed some eight miles of
+road on each side of Phari for the ekka transport. Companies of the 23rd
+Pioneers are repairing the road at Dotah, Chumbi, and Rinchengong. The
+32nd are working at Rinchengong, and the sappers and miners on the
+Nathula and at Gautsa.
+
+We have started football, and the Gurkhas have a very good idea of the
+game. One loses one's wind completely at this elevation after every
+spurt of twenty yards, but recovers it again in a wonderfully short
+time. Other amusements are sliding and tobogganing, which are a little
+disappointing to enthusiasts. The ice is lumpy and broken, and the
+streamlets that run down to the plain are so tortuous that fifty yards
+without a spill is considered a good run for a toboggan. The funniest
+sight is to see the Gurkha soldiers trying to drag the toboggan uphill,
+slipping and tumbling and sprawling on the ice, and immensely enjoying
+one another's discomfiture.
+
+To clear the dust from one's throat and shake off the depression caused
+by weeks of waiting in the same place, there is nothing like a day's
+shooting or exploring in the neighbourhood of Phari. I get up sometimes
+before daybreak, and spend the whole day reconnoitring with a small
+party of mounted infantry. Yesterday we crossed a pass which looked down
+into the Kongbu Valley--a likely camping-ground for the Tibetan troops.
+The valley is connected to the north with the Tuna plateau, and is
+almost as fertile in its lower stretches as Chumbi. A gray fortress
+hangs over the cliff on the western side of the valley, and above it
+tower the glaciers of Shudu-Tsenpa and the Gora Pass into Sikkim. On the
+eastern side, at a creditable distance from the fort, we could see the
+Kongbu nunnery, which looked from where we stood like an old Roman
+viaduct. The nuns, I was told, are rarely celibate; they shave the head
+and wear no ornaments.
+
+Riding back we saw some burrhel on the opposite hills, too far off to
+make a successful stalk possible. The valley is full of them, and a week
+later some officers from Phari on a yak-collecting expedition got
+several good heads. The Tibetan gazelle, or goa (_Gazella
+hirticaudata_), is very common on the Phari plateau, and we bagged two
+that afternoon. When the force first occupied the Jong, they were so
+tame that a sportsman could walk up to within 100 yards of a herd, and
+it was not an uncommon thing for three buck to fall to the same gun in a
+morning. Now one has to manoeuvre a great deal to get within 300 yards
+of them.
+
+Sportsmen who have travelled in other parts of Tibet say the goa are
+very shy and inaccessible. Perhaps their comparative tameness near Phari
+may be accounted for by the fact that the old trade route crosses the
+plateau, and they have never been molested by the itinerant merchants
+and carriers. Gazelle meat is excellent. It has been a great resource
+for the garrison. No epicure could wish for anything better.
+
+Another unfamiliar beast that one meets in the neighbourhood of Phari is
+the kyang, or Tibetan wild ass (_Equus hemionus_), one or two of which
+have been shot for specimens. The kyang is more like a zebra than a
+horse or donkey. Its flesh, I believe, is scorned even by
+camp-followers. Hare are fairly plentiful, but they are quite
+flavourless. A huge solitary gray wolf (_Canis laniger_) was shot the
+other day, the only one of its kind I have seen. Occasionally one puts
+up a fox. The Tibetan species has a very fine brush that fetches a fancy
+price in the bazaar. At present there is too much ice on the plain to
+hunt them, but they ought to give good sport in the spring.
+
+It was dark when we rode into the Jong. After a long day in the saddle,
+dinner is good, even though it is of yak's flesh, and it is good to sit
+in front of a fire even though the smoke chokes you. I went so far as to
+pity the cave-dwellers at Chumbi. Phari is certainly very much colder,
+but it has its diversions and interests. There is still some shooting to
+be had, and the place has a quaint old-world individuality of its own,
+which seasons the monotony of life to a contemplative man. One is on the
+borderland, and one has a Micawber-like feeling that something may turn
+up. After dinner there is bridge, which fleets the time considerably,
+but at Chumbi there were no diversions of any kind--nothing but dull,
+blank, uninterrupted monotony.
+
+
+    _February 20._
+
+For two days half a blizzard has been blowing, and expeditions have been
+impossible. Everything one eats and drinks has the same taste of argol
+smoke. At breakfast this morning we had to put our _chapatties_ in our
+pockets to keep them clean, and kept our meat covered with a soup-plate,
+making surreptitious dives at it with a fork. After a few seconds'
+exposure it was covered with grime. Sausages and bully beef, which had
+just been boiled, were found to be frozen inside. The smoke in the
+mess-room was suffocating. So to bed, wrapped in sheepskins and a
+sleeping-bag. Under these depressing conditions I have been reading the
+narratives of Bogle and Manning, old English worthies who have left on
+record the most vivid impressions of the dirt and cold and misery of
+Phari.
+
+It is ninety years since Thomas Manning passed through Phari on his way
+to Lhasa. Previously to his visit we only know of two Englishmen who
+have set foot in Phari--Bogle in 1774, and Turner in 1783, both
+emissaries of Warren Hastings. Manning's journal is mostly taken up with
+complaints of his Chinese servant, who seems to have gained some
+mysterious ascendancy over him, and to have exercised it most
+unhandsomely. As a traveller Manning had a genius for missing effects;
+it is characteristic of him that he spent sixteen days at Phari, yet
+except for a casual footnote, evidently inserted in his journal after
+his return, he makes no mention of the Jong. Were it not for Bogle's
+account of thirty years before, we might conclude that the building was
+not then in existence.
+
+On October 21, 1811, Manning writes in his diary: 'We arrived at Phari
+Jong. Frost. Frost also two days before. I was lodged in a strange
+place, but so were the natives.' On the 27th he summarized his
+impressions of Phari:--'Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke, misery, but good
+mutton.'
+
+Manning's journal is expressive, if monosyllabic. He was of the class
+of subjective travellers, who visit the ends of the earth to record
+their own personal discomforts. Sensitive, neurotic, ever on the
+look-out for slights, he could not have been a happy vagabond. A dozen
+lines record the impressions of his first week at Phari. He was cheated;
+he was treated civilly; he slighted the magistrates, mistaking them for
+idle fellows; he was turned out of his room to make way for Chinese
+soldiers; he quarrelled with his servant. A single extract portrays the
+man to the life, as if he were sitting dejectedly by his yak-dung fire
+at this hour brooding over his wrongs:--
+
+"The Chinaman was cross again." Says I, "Was that a bird at the
+magistrate's that flapped so loud?" Answer: "What signifies whether it
+was a bird or not?" Where he sat I thought he might see; and I was
+curious to know if such large birds frequented the _building_. These are
+the answers I get. He is always discontented and grumbling, and takes no
+trouble off my hands. Being younger, and, like all Asiatics, able to
+stoop and crouch without pain or difficulty, he might assist me in many
+things without trouble to himself. A younger brother or any English
+young gentleman would in his place of course lay the cloth, and do other
+little services when I am tired; but he does not seem to have much of
+the generous about him, nor does he in any way serve me, or behave to me
+with any show of affection or goodwill: consequently I grow no more
+attached to him than the first day I saw him. I could not have thought
+it possible for me to have lived so long with anyone without either
+disliking him or caring sixpence for him. He has good qualities, too.
+The strangeness of his situation may partly excuse him. (I am more
+attached to my guide, with all his faults, who has been with me but a
+few days.) My guide has behaved so damnably ill since I wrote that, that
+I wish it had not come into my mind.'
+
+I give the extract at length, not only as an illuminating portrait of
+Manning, but as an incidental proof that he visited the Jong, and that
+it was very much the same building then as it is to-day. But had it not
+been for the flapping of the bird which occasioned the quarrel with his
+Chinese servant, Manning would have left Phari without a reference to
+the wonderful old fortress which is the most romantic feature on the
+road from India to Gyantse. Appended to the journal is this footnote to
+the word _building_, which I have italicized in the extract: 'The
+building is immensely large, six or more stories high, a sort of
+fortress. At a distance it appears to be all Phari Jong. Indeed, most of
+it consists of miserable galleries and holes.'
+
+Members of the mission force who have visited Phari will no doubt
+attribute Manning's evident ill-humour and depression during his stay
+there to the environments of the place, which have not changed much in
+the last ninety years. But his spirits improved as he continued his
+journey to Gyantse and Lhasa, and he reveals himself the kindly,
+eccentric, and affectionate soul who was the friend and intimate of
+Charles Lamb.
+
+Bogle arrived at Phari on October 23, 1774. He and Turner and Manning
+all entered Tibet through Bhutan. 'As we advanced,' he wrote in his
+journal, 'we came in sight of the castle of Phari Jong, which cuts a
+good figure from without. It rises into several towers with the
+balconies, and, having few windows, has the look of strength; it is
+surrounded by the town.' The only other reference he makes to the Jong
+shows us that the fortress was in bad repair so long ago as 1774. 'The
+two Lhasa officers who have the government of Phari Jong sent me some
+butter, tea, etc., the day after my arrival; and letting me know that
+they expected a visit from me, I went. The inside of the castle did not
+answer the notion I had formed of it. The stairs are ladders worn to the
+bone, and the rooms are little better than garrets.'
+
+The origin of the fort is unknown. Some of the inhabitants of Phari say
+that it was built more than a hundred years ago, when the Nepalese were
+overrunning Sikkim. But this is obviously incorrect, as the
+Tibetan-Nepalese War, in which the Chinese drove the Gurkhas out of
+Tibet, and defeated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu, took
+place in 1788-1792, whereas Bogle's description of the Jong was written
+fourteen years earlier. A more general impression is that centuries ago
+orders came from Lhasa to collect stones on the hillsides, and the
+building was constructed by forced labour in a few months. That is a
+tale of endurance and suffering that might very likely be passed from
+father to son for generations.
+
+Bogle's description of the town might have been written by an officer of
+the garrison to-day, only he wrote from the inmate's point of view. He
+noticed the houses 'so huddled together that one may chance to overlook
+them,' and the flat roofs covered with bundles of straw. He knocked his
+head against the low ceilings, and ran against the pillars that
+supported the beams. 'In the middle of the roof,' he wrote, 'is a hole
+to let out smoke, which, however, departs not without making the whole
+room as black as a chimney. The opening serves also to let in the light;
+the doors are full of holes and crevices, through which the women and
+children keep peeping.' Needless to say nothing has changed in the last
+hundred and thirty years, unless it is that the women are bolder. I
+looked down from the roof this morning on Phari town, lying like a
+rabbit-warren beneath the fort. All one can see from the battlement are
+the flat roofs of low black houses, from which smoke issues in dense
+fumes. The roofs are stacked with straw, and connected by a web of
+coloured praying-flags running from house to house, and sometimes over
+the narrow alleys that serve as streets. Enormous fat ravens perch on
+the wall, and innumerable flocks of twittering sparrows. For warmth's
+sake most of the rooms are underground, and in these subterranean dens
+Tibetans, black as coal-heavers, huddle together with yaks and mules.
+Tibetan women, equally dirty, go about, their faces smeared and blotched
+with caoutchouc, wearing a red, hoop-like head-dress, ornamented with
+alternate turquoises and ruby-coloured stones.
+
+In the fort the first thing one meets of a morning is a troop of these
+grimy sirens, climbing the stairs, burdened with buckets of chopped ice
+and sacks of yak-dung, the two necessaries of life. The Tibetan coolie
+women are merry folk; they laugh and chatter over their work all day
+long, and do not in the least resist the familiarities of the Gurkha
+soldiers. Sometimes as they pass one they giggle coyly, and put out the
+tongue, which is their way of showing respect to those in high places;
+but when one hears their laughter echoing down the stairs it is
+difficult to believe that it is not intended for saucy impudence. Their
+merriment sounds unnatural in all this filth and cold and discomfort.
+Certainly if Bogle returned to Phari he would find the women very much
+bolder, though, I am afraid, not any cleaner. Could he see the
+Englishmen in Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.
+
+Often in civilized places I shall think of the group at Phari in the
+mess-room after dinner--a group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a
+blackened, smut-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from head to foot,
+bearded like wild men of the woods, and sitting round a yak-dung fire,
+drinking rum. After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might qualify
+for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one day in Piccadilly one may
+encounter a half-remembered face, and something familiar in walk or gait
+may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in 'Jimmy's,' memories of
+argol-smoke and frozen moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune
+or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was once dreamed of among the
+unattainable luxuries of life.
+
+
+    _March 26-28._
+
+Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong. It seems impossible,
+unnatural, that we are going on. After a week or two the place becomes
+part of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there. It is difficult
+to imagine life anywhere else. One feels as if one could never again be
+cold or dirty, or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of that gray
+fortress with its strange unknown history, standing alone in the
+desolate plain. For my own part, speaking figuratively--and unfigurative
+language is impotent on an occasion like this--the place will leave an
+indelible black streak--very black indeed--on a kaleidoscopic past.
+There can be no faint impressions in one's memories of Phari Jong. The
+dirt and smoke and dust are elemental, and the cold is the cold of the
+Lamas' frigid hell.
+
+All the while I was in Phari I forgot the mystery of Tibet. I have felt
+it elsewhere, but in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable folk
+who had lived in the rooms where we slept, and fled in the night, were
+content with their smut-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and
+chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these murky environments
+any spiritual instincts could survive to inspire the religious
+frescoings on the wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of
+designs is significant and symbolical. One's first impression is that
+these allegories and metaphysical abstractions must have been
+meaningless to the inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot
+dissociate the artistic expression of religious feeling from cleanliness
+and refinement, or at least pious care. One feels that they must be the
+relics of a decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but in
+ignorant superstition, like other fetishes all over the world. Yet this
+feeling of scepticism is not so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At
+first one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely animal and
+sensual, and to attribute their religious observances to the fear of
+demons who will punish the most trivial omission in ritual.
+
+Next one begins to wonder if they really believe in the efficacy of
+mechanical prayer, if they take the trouble to square their conscience
+with their inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to be
+absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there may come a suspicion that
+the better classes, though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma
+and definite convictions about things spiritual and natural that are
+not easily upset. Perhaps before we turn our backs on the mystery of
+Tibet we will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross materialists
+and philistines--we who are always groping and grasping after the
+particular, while they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.
+
+After all, devious and unscrupulous as their policy may have been, the
+Tibetans have had one definite aim in view for centuries--the
+preservation of their Church and State by the exclusion of all foreign
+and heretical influences. When we know that the Mongol cannot conceive
+of the separation of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is only
+natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual or otherwise, to a
+foreign Court should introduce the first elements of dissolution in a
+system of Government that has held the country intact for centuries. And
+let it be remarked that Great Britain is not responsible for this
+deviation in a hitherto inveterate policy.
+
+But to return to Phari. My last impression of the place as I passed out
+of its narrow alleys was a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of
+yak-dung over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel, and muttering
+the sacred formula that was to release him from all rebirth in this
+suffering world. The wish seemed natural enough.
+
+It was a bright, clear morning when we turned our backs on the old fort
+and started once more on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we
+passed the miserable little village of Chuggya, which is apparently
+inhabited by ravens and sparrows, and a diminutive mountain-finch that
+looks like a half-starved robin. A mile to the right before entering the
+village is the monastery of the Red Lamas, which was the lodging-place
+of the Bhutanese Envoy during his stay at Phari. The building, which is
+a landmark for miles, is stone-built, and coated over with red earth,
+which gives it the appearance of brick. Its overhanging gables,
+mullioned windows without glass, that look like dominoes in the
+distance, the pendent bells, and the gay decorations of Chinese paper,
+look quaint and mystical, and are in keeping with the sacred character
+of the place. Bogle stopped here on October 27, 1774, and drank tea with
+the Abbot. It is very improbable that any other white man has set foot
+in the monastery since, until the other day, when some of the garrison
+paid it a visit and took photographs of the interior. The Lamas were a
+little deprecatory, but evidently amused. I did not expect them to be so
+tolerant of intrusion, and their clamour for backsheesh on our departure
+dispelled one more illusion.
+
+At Chuggya we were at the very foot of Chumulari (23,930 feet), which
+seems to rise sheer from the plain. The western flank is an abrupt wall
+of rock, but, as far as one can see, the eastern side is a gradual
+ascent of snow, which would present no difficulties to the trained
+mountaineer. One could ride up to 17,000 feet, and start the climb from
+a base 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Chumulari is the most sacred
+mountain in Tibet, and it is usual for devout Buddhists to stop and
+offer a sacrifice as they pass. Bogle gives a detailed account of the
+service, the rites of which are very similar to some I witnessed at
+Galingka on the Tibetan New Year, February 16.
+
+'Here we halted,' he wrote in his journal, 'and the servants gathering
+together a parcel of dried cow-dung, one of them struck fire with his
+tinder-box and lighted it. When the fire was well kindled, Parma took
+out a book of prayers, one brought a copper cup, another filled it with
+a kind of fermented liquor out of a new-killed sheep's paunch, mixing in
+some rice and flour; and after throwing some dried herbs and flour into
+the flame, they began their rites. Parma acted as chaplain. He chanted
+the prayers in a loud voice, the others accompanying him, and every now
+and then the little cup was emptied towards the rock, about eight or ten
+of these libations being poured forth. The ceremony was finished by
+placing upon the heap of stones the little ensign which my fond
+imagination had before offered up to my own vanity.'
+
+Most of the flags and banners one sees to-day on the chortens and roofs
+of houses, and cairns on the mountain-tops, must be planted with some
+such inaugural ceremony.
+
+Facing Chumulari on the west, and apparently only a few miles distant,
+are the two Sikkim peaks of Powhunri (23,210 feet) and Shudu-Tsenpa
+(22,960 feet). From Chuggya the Tangla is reached by a succession of
+gradual rises and depressions. The pass is not impressive, like the
+Jelap, as a passage won through a great natural barrier. One might cross
+it without noticing the summit, were it not for the customary cairns and
+praying-flags which the Lamas raise in all high places.
+
+From a slight rise on the east of the pass one can look down across the
+plateau on Tuna, an irregular black line like a caterpillar, dotted with
+white spots, which glasses reveal to be tents. The Bamtso lake lies
+shimmering to the east beneath brown and yellow hills. At noon objects
+dance elusively in the mirage. Distances are deceptive. Yaks grazing are
+like black Bedouin tents. Here, then, is the forbidden land. The
+approach is as it should be. One's eyes explore the road to Lhasa dimly
+through a haze. One would not have it laid out with the precision of a
+diagram.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
+
+
+To write of any completed phase of the expedition at this stage, when I
+have carried my readers only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity
+that requires an apology. My excuse is that to all transport officers,
+and everyone who was in touch with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will
+be remembered as the very backbone of resistance, the most implacable
+barriers to our advance.
+
+The expedition was essentially a transport 'show.' It is true that the
+Tibetans proved themselves brave enemies, but their acquired military
+resources are insignificant when compared with the obstacles Nature has
+planted in the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the passes, the
+severity of the climate, the sterility of the mountains and tablelands,
+make the interior of the country almost inaccessible to an invading
+army. That we went through these obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was
+a matter of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to many members of
+the expeditionary force.
+
+To appreciate the difficulties the mission force had to contend with,
+one must first realize the extraordinary changes of climate that are
+experienced in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna. Choose the coldest day
+in the year at Kew Gardens, expose yourself freely to the wind, and then
+spend five minutes in the tropical house, and you may gather some idea
+of the sensation of sleeping in the Rungpo Valley the night after
+crossing the Jelapla.
+
+When I first made the journey in early January, even the Rungpo Valley
+was chilly, and the vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the
+change very keenly in March, when I made a hurried rush into Darjeeling
+for equipment and supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the
+pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was warm and sunny in the
+daytime, in places where there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were
+beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw, migratory duck were coming
+up the valley in twos and threes from the plains of India--even a few
+vultures had arrived to fatten on the carcasses of the dead transport
+animals. The morning after leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at
+13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale and rock. When I
+crossed the Jelapla half a hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet
+of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take advantage of every
+protuberance in the rock to prevent myself from being blown over the
+_khud_. The road was impassable for mules and ponies. The cold was
+numbing. The next evening, in a valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was
+suffering from the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and vegetation
+is equally striking--from glaciers and moraines to tropical forests
+brilliant with the scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet I
+had not seen an insect of any kind for two months, but in the Sikkim
+valleys the most gorgeous butterflies were abundant, and the rest-house
+at Rungpo was invested by a plague of flies. In the hot weather the
+climate of the Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most stations
+in the plains of India. The valleys are close and shut in, and the heat
+is intensified by the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders. In
+the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious. The Supply and
+Transport Corps, who were left behind at stages like Rungpo through the
+hot weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time on the whole than the
+half-frozen troops at the front, and they were left out of all the fun.
+
+Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the severity of climate,
+and the scarcity of fodder and fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend
+with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest,
+foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
+precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst
+fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
+with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred
+buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven
+camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died
+by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
+was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally
+purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they
+reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected;
+the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no
+precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and
+at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were massed on
+the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after
+much patient care, the disease was stamped out.
+
+Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted
+struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
+the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superstitious
+natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
+As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were
+attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left
+the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in
+climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the
+Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds
+from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female
+yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases,
+the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The
+epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
+fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried
+off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven
+through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous
+mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were
+formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.
+Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high
+altitudes, where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless corps. The
+few survivors were exterminated by pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January
+23, the 3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437; two months
+afterwards all but 70 had died. On March 21, 80 exhausted beasts
+straggled into Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and 2nd Yak
+Corps, which originally numbered 2,300 heads. The officers, who, bearded
+and weather-beaten, deserted by many of their followers, after months of
+wandering, reached our camp with the remnants of the corps, told a story
+of hardship and endurance that would provide a theme for an epic.
+
+The epic of the yaks does not comprise the whole tale of disaster.
+Rinderpest carried off 77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps
+was segregated for two months with foot and mouth disease. Amongst other
+casualties there were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony corps, and
+the Tibet pony corps raised locally. The animals were hastily mobilized
+and incompletely equipped, overworked and underfed. Cheap and inferior
+saddlery was issued, which gave the animals sore backs within a week.
+The transport officer was in a constant dilemma. He had to overwork his
+animals or delay the provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently
+needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no rest, but worked till they
+dropped. Of the original draft of mules that were employed on the line
+to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per cent. died. It is no good trying to blink
+the fact that the expedition was unpopular, and that at the start many
+economical shifts were attempted which proved much more expensive in the
+end. Our party system is to blame. The Opposition must be appeased,
+expenses kept down, and the business is entered into half-heartedly. In
+the usual case a few companies are grudgingly sent to the front, and
+then, when something like a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps
+at the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade follows, and
+Government wakes to the necessity of grappling with the situation
+seriously.
+
+But to return to the spot where the evil effects of the system were
+felt, and not merely girded at. To replace and supplement the local
+drafts of animals that were dying, trained Government mule corps were
+sent up from the plains, properly equipped and under experienced
+officers. These did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in Lhasa on
+August 3 in as good condition as one could wish. Of all transport
+animals, the mule is the hardiest and most enduring. He does not
+complain when he is overloaded, but will go on all day, and when he
+drops there is no doubt that he has had enough. Nine times out of ten
+when he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent to extremes of
+heat and cold. On the road from Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules
+fell over a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally submerged.
+Their drivers could not pull them out, and, to solve the dilemma, went
+on and reported them dead. The next day an officer found them and
+extricated them alive. They had been exposed to 46 deg. of frost. They still
+survive.
+
+Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in good condition, unless it
+is the Balti and Ladaki coolie. Several hundred of these hardy
+mountaineers were imported from the North-West frontier to work on the
+most dangerous and difficult sections of the road. They can bear cold
+and fatigue and exposure better than any transport animal on the line,
+and they are surer-footed. Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but
+were afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are excellent workers
+at high altitudes, and sing cheerily as they toil up the mountains with
+their loads. I have seen them throw down their packs when they reached
+the summit of a pass, make a rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer
+lustily like school-boys. But the coolies were not all equally
+satisfactory. Those indented from the Nepal durbar were practically an
+impressed gang. Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm clothing did
+not seem to reconcile them to hard work, and after a month or two they
+became discontented and refractory. Their officers, however, were men of
+tact and decision, and they were able to prevent what might have been a
+serious mutiny. The discontented ones were gradually replaced by Baltis,
+Ladakis, and Garwhalis, and the coolies became the most reliable
+transport corps on the line.
+
+Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression current at the time,
+was got into working order, and a system was gradually developed by
+which the right animal, man, or conveyance was working in the right
+place, and supplies were sent through at a pace that was very creditable
+considering the country traversed.
+
+From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a distance of sixty miles,
+the ascent in the road is scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a
+few contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this section of the
+line was worked by bullock-carts. Government carts are built to carry 11
+maunds (880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs with 15 or 16
+maunds. As the carrying power of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is
+only 2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport in a mountainous
+country, where there can be no road for vehicles, is nearly five times
+as difficult and complicated as in the plains. And this is without
+making any allowance for the inevitable mortality among transport
+animals at high elevations, or taking into account the inevitable
+congestion on mountain-paths, often blocked by snow, carried away by the
+rains, and always too narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.
+
+In the beginning of March, when the line was in its best working order,
+from 1,500 to 2,000 maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of these, only
+400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the rest was stored at Gantok or
+consumed on the road. Later, when the line was extended to Gyantse, not
+more than 100 maunds a day reached the front.
+
+In the first advance on Gyantse, our column was practically launched
+into the unknown. As far as we knew, no local food or forage could be
+obtained. It was too early in the season for the spring pasturage. We
+could not live on the country. The ever-lengthening line of
+communication behind us was an artery, the severing of which would be
+fatal to our advance.
+
+One can best realize the difficulties grappled with by imagining the
+extreme case of an army entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it
+must be remembered, can only carry its own food for ten days. That is
+to say, in a country where there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can
+make at the most nine marches. On the ninth day beasts and drivers will
+have consumed all the supplies taken with them. Supposing on the tenth
+day no supply-base has been reached, the convoy is stranded, and can
+neither advance nor retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary
+convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed nothing to the
+advance of the army. Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding,
+guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still await transport at the
+base.
+
+Fortunately, the country between our frontier and Lhasa is not all
+desert. Yet it is barren enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with
+such short preparation, we were able to push through troops to Gyantse
+in April, when there was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in Lhasa
+in August with a force of more than 4,000 fighting men and followers.
+
+Before the second advance to Gyantse the spring crops had begun to
+appear. Without them we could not have advanced. All other local produce
+on the road was exhausted. That is to say, for 160 miles, with the
+important exception of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our own
+supplies. The mules carried their own grain, and no more. Gyantse once
+reached, the Tibetan Government granaries and stores from the
+monasteries produced enough to carry us on. But besides the transport
+mules, there were 100 Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200
+mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers' mounts, to be fed,
+and these carried nothing--contributed nothing to the stomach of the
+army.
+
+How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an
+army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal
+was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two
+possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and
+impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not
+require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and
+fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that
+providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.
+
+The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from
+the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab on
+the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400
+pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth
+to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved
+the situation.
+
+The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu
+Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.
+
+The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the
+transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes
+nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of grass, tamarisk, and
+tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and
+wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy
+disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation.
+The red and white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the Tibetans hang
+about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and
+frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.
+
+If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced
+to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in
+their passage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did
+better. Yet I have often passed the Lieutenant in command of the corps
+lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning.
+Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of
+spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in
+adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think
+it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.
+
+The final advance from Gyantse to Lhasa was a comparatively easy matter.
+Crops were plentiful, and large supplies of grain were obtained from the
+monasteries and jongs on the road. We found, contrary to anticipation,
+that the produce in this part of Tibet was much greater than the
+consumption. In many places we found stores that would last a village
+three or four years. Our transport animals lived on the country. We
+arrived at Lhasa with 2,600 mules and 400 coolies. The yak and donkey
+corps were left at the river for convoy work. It would have been
+impossible to have pushed through in the winter.
+
+All the produce we consumed on the road was paid for. In this way the
+expense of the army's keep fell on the Lhasa Government, who had to pay
+the indemnity, and our presence in the country was not directly, at any
+rate, a burden on the agricultural population of the villages through
+which we passed.
+
+Looking back on the splendid work accomplished by the transport, it is
+difficult to select any special phase more memorable than another. The
+complete success of the organization and the endurance and grit
+displayed by officers and men are equally admirable. I could cite the
+coolness of a single officer in a mob of armed and mutinous coolies,
+when the compelling will of one man and a few blows straight from the
+shoulder kept the discontented harnessed to their work and quelled a
+revolt; or the case of another who drove his diseased yaks over the snow
+passes into Chumbi, and after two days' rest started with a fresh corps
+on ten months of the most tedious labour the mind of man can imagine,
+rising every day before daybreak in an almost Arctic cold, traversing
+the same featureless tablelands, and camping out at night cheerfully in
+the open plain with his escort of thirty rifles. There was always the
+chance of a night attack, but no other excitement to break the eternal
+monotony. But it was all in the day's work, and the subaltern took it
+like a picnic. Another supreme test of endurance in man and beast were
+the convoys between Chumbi and Tuna in the early part of the year, which
+for hardships endured remind me of Skobeleff's dash through the Balkans
+on Adrianople. Only our labours were protracted, Skobeleff's the
+struggle of a few days. Even in mid-March a convoy of the 12th Mule
+Corps, escorted by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, were overtaken by
+a blizzard on their march between Phari and Tuna, and camped in two feet
+of snow with the thermometer 18 deg. below zero. A driving hurricane made it
+impossible to light a fire or cook food. The officers were reduced to
+frozen bully beef and neat spirits, while the sepoys went without food
+for thirty-six hours. The fodder for the mules was buried deep in snow.
+The frozen flakes blowing through the tents cut like a knife. While the
+detachment was crossing a stream, the mules fell through the ice, and
+were only extricated with great difficulty. The drivers arrived at Tuna
+frozen to the waist. Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten,
+and thirty men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had
+to be carried in on mules. On the same day there were seventy cases of
+snow-blindness among the 8th Gurkhas.
+
+Until late in April all the plain was intersected by frozen streams.
+Blankets were stripped from the mules to make a pathway for them over
+the ice. Often they went without water at night, and at mid-day, when
+the surface of the ice was melted, their thirst was so great that many
+died from overdrinking.
+
+Had the Tibetans attacked us in January, they would have taken us at a
+great disadvantage. The bolts of our rifles jammed with frozen oil. Oil
+froze in the Maxims, and threw them out of gear. More often than not the
+mounted infantry found the butts of their rifles frozen in the buckets,
+and had to dismount and use both hands to extricate them.
+
+I think these men who took the convoys through to Tuna; the 23rd, who
+wintered there and supplied most of the escort; and the 8th Gurkhas, who
+cut a road in the frost-bound plain, may be said to have broken the back
+of the resistance to our advance. They were the pioneers, and the troops
+who followed in spring and summer little realized what they owed to
+them.
+
+The great difficulties we experienced in pushing through supplies to
+Tuna, which is less than 150 miles from our base railway-station at
+Siliguri, show the absurdity of the idea of a Russian advance on Lhasa.
+The nearest Russian outpost is over 1,000 miles distant, and the country
+to be traversed is even more barren and inhospitable than on our
+frontier.
+
+Up to the present the route to Chumbi has been via Siliguri and the
+Jelap and Nathu Passes, but the natural outlet of the valley is by the
+Ammo Chu, which flows through Bhutan into the Dooars, where it becomes
+the Torsa. The Bengal-Dooars Railway now extends to Madhari Hat, fifteen
+miles from the point where the Torsa crosses the frontier, whence it is
+only forty-eight miles as the crow flies to Rinchengong in the Chumbi
+Valley. When the projected Ammo Chu cart-road is completed, all the
+difficulty of carrying stores into Chumbi will be obviated. Engineers
+are already engaged on the first trace, and the road will be in working
+order within a few months. It avoids all snow passes, and nowhere
+reaches an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. The direct route will
+shorten the journey to Chumbi by several days, bring Lhasa within a
+month's journey of Calcutta, and considerably improve trade facilities
+between Tibet and India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
+
+
+The village of Tuna, which lies at the foot of bare yellow hills,
+consists of a few deserted houses. The place is used mainly as a
+halting-stage by the Tibetans. The country around is sterile and
+unproductive, and wood is a luxury that must be carried from a distance
+of nearly fifty miles.
+
+It was in these dismal surroundings that Colonel Younghusband's mission
+spent the months of January, February, and March. The small garrison
+suffered all the discomforts of Phari. The dirt and grime of the squalid
+little houses became so depressing that they pitched their tents in an
+open courtyard, preferring the numbing cold to the filth of the Tibetan
+hovels. Many of the sepoys fell victims to frost-bite and pneumonia, and
+nearly every case of pneumonia proved fatal, the patient dying of
+suffocation owing to the rarefied air.
+
+Colonel Younghusband had not been at Tuna many days before it became
+clear that there could be no hope of a peaceful solution. The Tibetans
+began to gather in large numbers at Guru, eight miles to the east, on
+the road to Lhasa. The Depon, or Lhasa General, whom Colonel
+Younghusband met on two occasions, repeated that he was only empowered
+to treat on condition that we withdrew to Yatung. Messages were sent
+from the Tibetan camp to Tuna almost daily asking us to retire, and
+negociations again came to a deadlock. After a month the tone of the
+Tibetans became minatory. They threatened to invest our camp, and an
+attack was expected on March 1, the Tibetan New Year. The Lamas,
+however, thought better of it. They held a Commination Service instead,
+and cursed us solemnly for five days, hoping, no doubt, that the British
+force would dwindle away by the act of God. Nobody was 'one penny the
+worse.'
+
+Though we made no progress with the Tibetans during this time, Colonel
+Younghusband utilized the halt at Tuna in cementing a friendship with
+Bhutan. The neutrality of the Bhutanese in the case of a war with Tibet
+was a matter of the utmost importance. Were these people unfriendly or
+disposed to throw in their lot with their co-religionists, the Tibetans,
+our line of communications would be exposed to a flank attack along the
+whole of the Tuna Plain, which is conterminous with the Bhutan frontier,
+as well as a rear attack anywhere in the Chumbi Valley as far south as
+Rinchengong. The Bhutanese are men of splendid physique, brave, warlike,
+and given to pillage. Their hostility would have involved the despatch
+of a second force, as large as that sent to Tibet, and might have
+landed us, if unprepared, in a serious reverse. The complete success of
+Colonel Younghusband's diplomacy was a great relief to the Indian
+Government, who were waiting with some anxiety to see what attitude the
+Bhutanese would adopt. Having secured from them assurances of their good
+will, Colonel Younghusband put their friendship to immediate test by
+broaching the subject of the Ammo Chu route to Chumbi through Bhutanese
+territory. Very little time was lost before the concession was obtained
+from the Tongsa Penlop, ruler of Bhutan, who himself accompanied the
+mission as far as Lhasa in the character of mediator between the Dalai
+Lama and the British Government. The importance of the Ammo Chu route in
+our future relations with Tibet I have emphasized elsewhere.
+
+I doubt if ever an advance was more welcome to waiting troops than that
+which led to the engagement at the Hot Springs.
+
+For months, let it be remembered, we had been marking time. When a move
+had to be made to escort a convoy, it was along narrow mountain-paths,
+where the troops had to march in single file. There was no possibility
+of an attack this side of Phari. The ground covered was familiar and
+monotonous. One felt cooped in, and was thoroughly bored and tired of
+the delay, so that when General Macdonald marched out of Phari with his
+little army in three columns, a feeling of exhilaration communicated
+itself to the troops.
+
+Here was elbow-room at last, and an open plain, where all the army corps
+of Europe might manoeuvre. At Tuna, on the evening of the 29th, it was
+given out in orders that a reconnaissance in force was to be made the
+next morning, and two companies of the 32nd Pioneers would be left at
+Guru. The Tibetan camp at the Hot Springs lay right across our line of
+march, and the hill that flanked it was lined with their sangars. They
+must either fight or retire. Most of us thought that the Tibetans would
+fade away in the mysterious manner they have, and build another futile
+wall further on. The extraordinary affair that followed must be a unique
+event in military history.
+
+The morning of the 30th was bitterly cold. An icy wind was blowing, and
+snow was lying on the ground. I put on my thick sheepskin for the first
+time for two months, and I owe my life to it.
+
+About an hour after leaving Tuna, two or three Tibetan messengers rode
+out from their camp to interview Colonel Younghusband. They got down
+from their ponies and began chattering in a very excited manner, like a
+flock of frightened parrots. It was evident to us, not understanding the
+language, that they were entreating us to go back, and the constant
+reference to Yatung told us that they were repeating the message that
+had been sent into the Tuna camp almost daily during the past few
+months--that if we retired to Yatung the Dalai Lama would send an
+accredited envoy to treat with us. Being met with the usual answer,
+they mounted dejectedly and rode off at a gallop to their camp.
+
+Soon after they had disappeared another group of horsemen were seen
+riding towards us. These proved to be the Lhasa Depon, accompanied by an
+influential Lama and a small escort armed with modern rifles. The rifles
+were naturally inspected with great interest. They were of different
+patterns--Martini-Henri, Lee-Metford, Snider--but the clumsily-painted
+stocks alone were enough to show that they were shoddy weapons of native
+manufacture. They left no mark on our troops.
+
+According to Tibetan custom, a rug was spread on the ground for the
+interview between Colonel Younghusband and the Lhasa Depon, who
+conferred sitting down. Captain O'Connor, the secretary of the mission,
+interpreted. The Lhasa Depon repeated the entreaty of the messengers,
+and said that there would be trouble if we proceeded. Colonel
+Younghusband's reply was terse and to the point.
+
+'Tell him,' he said to Captain O'Connor, 'that we have been negociating
+with Tibet for fifteen years; that I myself have been waiting for eight
+months to meet responsible representatives from Lhasa, and that the
+mission is now going on to Gyantse. Tell him that we have no wish to
+fight, and that he would be well advised if he ordered his soldiers to
+retire. Should they remain blocking our path, I will ask General
+Macdonald to remove them.'
+
+The Lhasa Depon was greatly perturbed. He said that he had no wish to
+fight, and would try and stop his men firing upon us. But before he left
+he again tried to induce Colonel Younghusband to turn back. Then he rode
+away to join his men. What orders he gave them will never be known.
+
+I do not think the Tibetans ever believed in our serious intention to
+advance. No doubt they attributed our evacuation of Khamba Jong and our
+long delay in Chumbi to weakness and vacillation. And our forbearance
+since the negociations of 1890 must have lent itself to the same
+interpretation.
+
+As we advanced we could see the Tibetans running up the hill to the left
+to occupy the sangars. To turn their position, General Macdonald
+deployed the 8th Gurkhas to the crest of the ridge; at the same time the
+Pioneers, the Maxim detachment of the Norfolks, and Mountain Battery
+were deployed on the right until the Tibetan position was surrounded.
+
+The manoeuvre was completely successful. The Tibetans on the hill,
+finding themselves outflanked by the Gurkhas, ran down to the cover of
+the wall by the main camp, and the whole mob was encircled by our
+troops.
+
+It was on this occasion that the Sikhs and Gurkhas displayed that
+coolness and discipline which won them a European reputation. They had
+orders not to fire unless they were fired upon, and they walked right
+up to the walls of the sangars until the muzzles and prongs of the
+Tibetan matchlocks were almost touching their chests. The Tibetans
+stared at our men for a moment across the wall, and then turned and
+shambled down sulkily to join their comrades in the redan.
+
+No one dreamed of the sanguinary action that was impending. I
+dismounted, and hastily scribbled a despatch on my saddle to the effect
+that the Tibetan position had been taken without a shot being fired. The
+mounted orderly who carried the despatch bore a similar message from the
+mission to the Foreign Office. Then the disarming began. The Tibetans
+were told that if they gave up their arms they would be allowed to go
+off unmolested. But they did not wish to give up their arms. It was a
+ridiculous position, Sikh and Mongol swaying backwards and forwards as
+they wrestled for the possession of swords and matchlocks. Perhaps the
+humour of it made one careless of the underlying danger. Accounts differ
+as to how this wrestling match developed into war, how, to the delight
+of the troops, the toy show became the 'real thing.' Of one thing I am
+certain, that a rush was made in the south-east corner before a shot was
+fired. If there had been any firing, I would not have been wandering
+about by the Tibetan flank without a revolver in my hand. As it was, my
+revolver was buried in the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket under my
+poshteen.
+
+I have no excuse for this folly except a misplaced contempt for Tibetan
+arms and courage--a contempt which accounted for our only serious
+casualty in the affair of 1888.[12] Also I think there was in the margin
+of my consciousness a feeling that one individual by an act of rashness
+might make himself responsible for the lives of hundreds. Hemmed in as
+the Tibetans were, no one gave them credit for the spirit they showed,
+or imagined that they would have the folly to resist. But we had to deal
+with the most ignorant and benighted people on earth, most of whom must
+have thought our magazine rifles and Maxims as harmless as their own
+obsolete matchlocks, and believed that they bore charms by which they
+were immune from death.
+
+  [12] When Colonel Bromhead pursued a Tibetan unarmed. Called upon to
+      surrender, the Tibetan turned on Colonel Bromhead, cut off his
+      right arm, and badly mutilated the left.
+
+The attack on the south-east corner was so sudden that the first man was
+on me before I had time to draw my revolver.[13] He came at me with his
+sword lifted in both hands over his head. He had a clear run of ten
+yards, and if I had not ducked and caught him by the knees he must have
+smashed my skull open. I threw him, and he dragged me to the ground.
+Trying to rise, I was struck on the temple by a second swordsman, and
+the blade glanced off my skull. I received the rest of my wounds, save
+one or two, on my hands--as I lay on my face I used them to protect my
+head. After a time the blows ceased; my assailants were all shot down or
+had fled. I lay absolutely still for a while until I thought it safe to
+raise my head. Then I looked round, and, seeing no Tibetans near in an
+erect position, I got up and walked out of the ring between the rifles
+of the Sikhs. The firing line had been formed in the meantime on a mound
+about thirty yards behind me, and I had been exposed to the bullets of
+our own men from two sides, as well as the promiscuous fire of the
+Tibetans.
+
+  [13] The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs affair were
+      inaccurate as to the manner in which I was wounded, and also
+      Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only European anywhere near me
+      at the time. Major Dunlop shot his own man, but at such close
+      quarters that the Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his
+      rifle and cut off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald
+      and Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers,
+      were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined
+      house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.
+
+The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more fatal for their stand--a
+bluff hill to the north, a marsh and stream on the east, and to the west
+a stone wall built across the path, which they had to scale in their
+attempted assault on General Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got
+over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground, packed so thickly with
+seething humanity that the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in
+offered little danger to their own men.
+
+The Lhasa General must have fired off his revolver after I was struck
+down. I cannot credit the rumour that his action was a signal for a
+general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed themselves to be herded
+together as a ruse to get us at close quarters. To begin with, the
+demand that they should give up their arms, and the assurance that they
+might go off unmolested, must have been quite unexpected by them, and I
+doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack at close quarters.
+
+My own impression is that the shot was the act of a desperate man,
+ignorant and regardless of what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his
+army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot having been fired, must
+have meant ruin to him, and probably death. When we reached Gyantse we
+heard that his property had been confiscated from his family on account
+of his failure to prevent our advance.
+
+The Depon was a man of fine presence and bearing. I only saw him once,
+in his last interview with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot dissociate
+from him a personal courage and a pride that must have rankled at the
+indignity of his position. Probably he knew that his shot was suicidal.
+
+The action has been described as one of extreme folly. But what was left
+him if he lived except shame and humiliation? And what Englishman with
+the same prospect to face, caught in this dark eddy of circumstance,
+would not have done the same thing? He could only fire, and let his men
+take their chance, God help them!
+
+And the rabble? They have been called treacherous. Why, I don't know.
+They were mostly impressed peasants. They did not wish to give up their
+arms. Why should they? They knew nothing of the awful odds against them.
+They were being hustled by white men who did not draw knives or fire
+guns. Amid that babel of 1,500 men, many of them may not have heard the
+command; they may not have believed that their lives would have been
+spared.
+
+Looking back on the affair with all the sanity of experience, nothing is
+more natural than what happened. It was folly and suicide, no doubt; but
+it was human nature. They were not going to give in without having a
+fling. I hope I shall not be considered a pro-Tibetan when I say that I
+admire their gallantry and dash.
+
+As my wounds were being dressed I peered over the mound at the rout.
+They were walking away! Why, in the name of all their Bodhisats and
+Munis, did they not run? There was cover behind a bend in the hill a few
+hundred yards distant, and they were exposed to a devastating hail of
+bullets from the Maxims and rifles, that seemed to mow down every third
+or fourth man. Yet they walked!
+
+It was the most extraordinary procession I have ever seen. My friends
+have tried to explain the phenomenon as due to obstinacy or ignorance,
+or Spartan contempt for life. But I think I have the solution. They
+were bewildered. The impossible had happened.
+
+Prayers, and charms, and mantras, and the holiest of their holy men, had
+failed them. I believe they were obsessed with that one thought. They
+walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned in their
+gods.
+
+After the last of the retiring Tibetans had disappeared round the corner
+of the Guru road, the 8th Gurkhas descended from the low range of hills
+on the right of the position, and crossed the Guru Plain in extended
+order with the 2nd Mounted Infantry on their extreme left. Orders were
+then received by Major Row, commanding the detachment, to take the left
+of the two houses which were situated under the hills at the further
+side of the plain. This movement was carried out in conjunction with the
+mounted infantry. The advance was covered by the 7-pounder guns of the
+Gurkhas under Captain Luke, R.A. The attacking force advanced in
+extended order by a series of small rushes. Cover was scanty, but the
+Tibetans, though firing vigorously, fired high, and there were no
+casualties. At last the force reached the outer wall of the house, and
+regained breath under cover of it. A few men of the Gurkhas then climbed
+on to the roof and descended into the house, making prisoners of the
+inmates, who numbered forty or fifty. Shortly afterwards the door, which
+was strongly barricaded, was broken in, and the remainder of the force
+entered the house.
+
+During the advance a number of the Tibetans attempted to escape on mules
+and ponies, but the greater number of these were followed up and killed.
+The Tibetan casualties were at least 700.
+
+Perhaps no British victory has been greeted with less enthusiasm than
+the action at the Hot Springs. Certainly the officers, who did their
+duty so thoroughly, had no heart in the business at all. After the first
+futile rush the Tibetans made no further resistance. There was no more
+fighting, only the slaughter of helpless men.
+
+It is easy to criticise after the event, but it seems to me that the
+only way to have avoided the lamentable affair at the Hot Springs would
+have been to have drawn up more troops round the redan, and, when the
+Tibetans were hemmed in with the cliff in their rear, to have given them
+at least twenty minutes to lay down their arms. In the interval the
+situation might have been made clear to everyone. If after the
+time-limit they still hesitated, two shots might have brought them to
+reason. Then, if they were mad enough to decide on resistance, their
+suicide would be on their own heads. But to send two dozen sepoys into
+that sullen mob to take away their arms was to invite disaster. Given
+the same circumstances, and any mob in the world of men, women, or
+children, civilized or savage, and there would be found at least one
+rash spirit to explode the mine and set a spark to a general
+conflagration.
+
+It was thought at the time that the lesson would save much future
+bloodshed. But the Tibetan is so stubborn and convinced of his
+self-sufficiency that it took many lessons to teach him the disparity
+between his armed rabble and the resources of the British Raj. In the
+light of after-events it is clear that we could have made no progress
+without inflicting terrible punishment. The slaughter at Guru only
+forestalled the inevitable. We were drawn into the vortex of war by the
+Tibetans' own folly. There was no hope of their regarding the British as
+a formidable Power, and a force to be reckoned with, until we had killed
+several thousand of their men.
+
+After the action the Tibetan wounded were brought into Tuna, and an
+abandoned dwelling-house was fitted up as a hospital. An empty cowshed
+outside served as an operating-theatre. The patients showed
+extraordinary hardihood and stoicism. After the Dzama Tang engagement
+many of the wounded came in riding on yaks from a distance of fifty or
+sixty miles. They were consistently cheerful, and always ready to
+appreciate a joke. One man, who lost both legs, said: 'In my next battle
+I must be a hero, as I cannot run away.' Some of the wounded were
+terribly mutilated by shell. Two men who were shot through the brain,
+and two who were shot through the lungs, survived. For two days
+Lieutenant Davys, Indian Medical Service, was operating nearly all day.
+I think the Tibetans were really impressed with our humanity, and looked
+upon Davys as some incarnation of a medicine Buddha. They never
+hesitated to undergo operations, did not flinch at pain, and took
+chloroform without fear. Their recuperative power was marvellous. Of the
+168 who were received in hospital, only 20 died; 148 were sent to their
+homes on hired yaks cured. Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna
+left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months after the action I found the Tibetans still lying where
+they fell. One shot through the shoulder in retreat had spun as he fell
+facing our rifles. Another tore at the grass with futile fingers through
+which a delicate pink primula was now blossoming. Shrunk arms and shanks
+looked hideously dwarfish. By the stream the bodies lay in heaps with
+parched skin, like mummies, rusty brown. A knot of coarse black hair,
+detached from a skull, was circling round in an eddy of wind. Everything
+had been stripped from the corpses save here and there a wisp of cloth,
+looking more grim than the nakedness it covered, or round the neck some
+inexpensive charm, which no one had thought worth taking for its occult
+powers. Nature, more kindly, had strewn round them beautiful spring
+flowers--primulas, buttercups, potentils. The stream 'bubbled oilily,'
+and in the ruined house bees were swarming.
+
+Ten miles beyond the Springs an officer was watering his horse in the
+Bamtso Lake. The beast swung round trembling, with eyes astare. Among
+the weeds lay the last victim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A HUMAN MISCELLANY
+
+
+The Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses like a row of
+cormorants, and watched the doolie pass underneath. At a little distance
+it was hard to distinguish the children, so motionless were they, from
+the squat praying-flags wrapped in black skin and projecting from the
+parapets of the roof. The very babes were impassive and inscrutable.
+Beside them perched ravens of an ebony blackness, sleek and well
+groomed, and so consequential that they seemed the most human element of
+the group.
+
+My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with a woman on the roof who wore
+a huge red hoop in her hair, which was matted and touzled like a
+negress's. A child behind was searching it, with apparent success. The
+woman asked a question, and the bearers jerked out a few guttural
+monosyllables, which she received with indifference. She was not visibly
+elated when she heard that the doolie contained the first victim of the
+Tibetan arms. I should like to have heard her views on the political
+situation and the question of a settlement. Some of her relatives,
+perhaps, were killed in the melee at the Hot Springs. Others who had
+been taken prisoners might be enlisted in the new doolie corps, and
+receiving an unexpected wage; others, perhaps, were wounded and being
+treated in our hospitals with all the skill and resources of modern
+science; or they were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or setting
+booby-traps for them, and lying in wait behind sangars to snipe them in
+the Red Idol Gorge.
+
+The bearers started again; the hot sun and the continued exertion made
+them stink intolerably. Every now and then they put down the doolie, and
+began discussing their loot--ear-rings and charms, rough turquoises and
+ruby-coloured stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and wounded. For
+the moment I was tired of Tibet.
+
+I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted with the country. I had
+been allured across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of the snows. I
+had escaped the Avernus of the plains, and I might have been content,
+but there was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an upper story,
+but I must climb on to the roof. Every morning the Sun-god threw open
+the magnificent portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and spires, black
+cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga--
+
+    'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work
+      Of subtlest jewellery.'
+
+One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace was clear and cloudless,
+but about its base hung little clouds of snow-dust, as though the
+Olympians had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen in the tracks
+of their chariots. All this was seen over galvanized iron roofs. The
+Sun-god had thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch and toss
+on the steps. While I was so engrossed I looked up. Columns of white
+cloud were rising to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft of
+sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid flash, a dazzle of
+jewel-work, and the portals closed. I was covered with bashfulness and
+shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some excuse to my companion,
+said I had an engagement, went straight to my rooms, and packed.
+
+But while the aroma of my carriers insulted the pure air, and their
+chatter over their tawdry spoil profaned the silent precincts of
+Chumulari, their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment
+of that earlier visit. I remembered sitting on a hillside near a
+lamasery, which was surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses.
+Outside the temple a priest was operating on a yak for vaccine. He had
+bored a large hole in the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his
+forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A hideous yellow trickle
+beneath indicated that the poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd
+of admiring little boys and girls looked on with relish. The smell of
+the poor yak was distressing, but the smell of the Lama was worse. I
+turned away in disgust--turned my back contentedly and without regret on
+the mysterious land and the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment,
+if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise with a dozen outriders
+and implored me to come, I would not have visited him, not for a
+thousand yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my eyes; the spirit
+of unrest died within me. I had a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white
+linen, fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed men.
+
+And here again I was returning very slowly to civilization; but I was
+coming back with half an army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his
+throne--or if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do what? I wondered
+if the gentlemen sitting snugly in Downing Street had any idea.
+
+At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and there were no doolie-bearers.
+The Darjeeling dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where they were
+most wanted, as the trained army doolie corps are plainsmen, who can
+barely breathe, much less work, at these high elevations. At last we
+secured some Bhutias who were returning to the front.
+
+The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though not in the capacity of
+bearer. These men regarded the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece
+of baggage that had to be conveyed from one camp to another, no matter
+how. Of the art of their craft they knew nothing, but they battled with
+the elements so stoutly that one forgave them their awkwardness. They
+carried me along mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find no
+foothold, through snow so deep and clogging that with all their toil
+they could make barely half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once
+from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick head-covering might
+have been fatal. Often they dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of
+a precipice, in places where one perspired with fright; they collided
+quite unnecessarily with stones and rocks; but they got through, and
+that was the main point. Men who have carried a doolie over a difficult
+mountain-pass (14,350 feet), slipping and stumbling through snow and ice
+in the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of the great Raj which
+they serve.
+
+On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the absence of trained
+doolie-bearers, I met a human miscellany that I am not likely to forget.
+Eight miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong, whence there is a
+continual descent to the plains of India. The neighbouring hills and
+valleys had been searched for men; high wages were offered, and at last
+from some remote village in Sikkim came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in
+appearance, and of uncouth speech, who understood no civilized tongue.
+They had never seen a doolie, but in default of better they were
+employed. It was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and the
+profession was unpopular. I was their 'first job.' I settled myself
+comfortably, all unconscious of my impending fate. They started off with
+a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air, caught it on their
+shoulders, and played cup and ball with the contents until they were
+tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was
+small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had
+neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the _khud_. My
+orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they
+would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army
+regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew,
+he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten
+miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a
+hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.
+
+There is a certain Mongol smell which is the most unpleasant human odour
+I know. It is common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans, but it is
+found in its purest essence in these low-country, cross-bred Lepchas,
+who were my close companions for two days. When we reached the heat of
+the valley, they jumped into the stream and bathed, but they emerged
+more unsavoury than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule. At the
+next village they got drunk, after which they developed an amazing
+surefootedness, and carried me in without mishap.
+
+After two days with my Lepchas we reached Rungli (2,000 feet), whence
+the road to the plains is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to a
+Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.
+
+'He writes all about our soldiers and the fighting in Tibet,' he said.
+'It all goes home to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at home
+are reading what he says an hour or two after he has given _khubber_ to
+the office here.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and if things are well the
+people in England will be very glad; and if we are ill and die, and
+there is too much cold, they will be very sorry.'
+
+The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere and sympathetic. If an
+Englishman had said the same thing, he would have been thought
+half-witted, but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes as if they
+were epigrams.
+
+The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point that it called up a little
+picture in my mind of the London Underground and a liveried official
+dealing out _Daily Mails_ to crowds of inquirers anxious for news of
+Tibet. Only the sun blazed overhead and the stream made music at our
+feet.
+
+I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned to the inevitable
+jolting, and expecting another promiscuous collection of humanity to do
+duty as _kahars_. But, to my great joy, I found twelve Lucknow
+doolie-wallahs waiting by the veranda, lithe and erect, and part of a
+drilled corps. Drill discipline is good, but in the art of their trade
+these men needed no teaching. For centuries their ancestors had carried
+palanquins in the plains, bearing Rajas and ladies of high estate,
+perhaps even the Great Mogul himself. The running step to their strange
+rhythmic chants must be an instinct to them. That morning I knew my
+troubles were at an end. They started off with steps of velvet,
+improvising as they went a kind of plaintive song like an intoned
+litany.
+
+The leading man chanted a dimeter line, generally with an iambus in the
+first foot; but when the road was difficult or the ascent toilsome, the
+metre became trochaic, in accordance with the best traditions of
+classical poetry. The hind-men responded with a sing-song trochaic
+dimeter which sounded like a long-drawn-out monosyllable. They never
+initiated anything. It was not custom; it had never been done. The laws
+of Nature are not so immutable as the ritual of a Hindu guild.
+
+We sped on smoothly for eight miles, and when I asked the _kahars_ if
+they were tired, they said they would not rest, as relays were waiting
+on the road. All the way they chanted their hymn of the obvious:--
+
+    'Mountains are steep;
+          _Chorus_: Yes, they are.
+    The road is narrow;
+          Yes, it is.
+    The sahib is wounded;
+          That is so.
+    With many wounds;
+          They are many.
+    The road goes down;
+          Yes, it does.
+    Now we are hurrying;
+          Yes, we are.'
+
+Here they ran swiftly till the next rise in the hill.
+
+Waiting in the shade for relays, I heard two Englishmen meet on the
+road. One had evidently been attached, and was going down to join his
+regiment; the other was coming up on special service. I caught fragments
+of our crisp expressive argot.
+
+_Officer going down_ (_apparently disillusioned_): 'Oh, it's the same
+old bald-headed maidan we usually muddle into.'
+
+_Officer coming up_: '... Up above Phari ideal country for native
+cavalry, isn't it?... A few men with lances prodding those fellows in
+the back would soon put the fear of God into them. Why don't they send
+up the --th Light Cavalry?'
+
+_Officer going down_: 'They've Walers, and you can't feed 'em, and the
+--th are all Jats. They're no good; can't do without a devil of a lot of
+milk. They want bucketsful of it. Well, bye-bye; you'll soon get fed up
+with it.'
+
+The doolie was hitched up, and the _kahars_ resumed their chant:
+
+    'A sahib goes up;
+          Yes, he does.
+    A sahib goes down;
+          That is so.'
+
+The heat and the monotonous cadence induced drowsiness, and one fell to
+thinking of this odd motley of men, all of one genus, descended from the
+anthropoid ape, and exhibiting various phases of evolution--the
+primitive Lepcha, advanced little further than his domestic dog; the
+Tibetan _kahar_ caught in the wheel of civilization, and forming part of
+the mechanism used to bring his own people into line; the Lucknow
+doolie-bearer and the Jemadar Sahib, products of a hoary civilization
+that have escaped complexity and nerves; and lord of all these, by
+virtue of his race, the most evolved, the English subaltern. All these
+folk are brought together because the people on the other side of the
+hills will insist on being obsolete anachronisms, who have been asleep
+for hundreds of years while we have been developing the sense of our
+duty towards our neighbour. They must come into line; it is the will of
+the most evolved.
+
+The next day I was carried for miles through a tropical forest. The damp
+earth sweated in the sun after last night's thunder-storm, and the
+vegetation seemed to grow visibly in the steaming moisture. Gorgeous
+butterflies, the epicures of a season, came out to indulge a love of
+sunshine and suck nectar from all this profusion. Overhead, birds
+shrieked and whistled and beat metal, and did everything but sing. The
+cicadas raised a deafening din in praise of their Maker, seeming to
+think, in their natural egoism, that He had made the forest, oak, and
+gossamer for their sakes. We were not a thousand feet above the sea.
+Thousands of feet above us, where we were camping a day or two ago, our
+troops were marching through snow.
+
+The next morning we crossed the Tista River, and the road led up through
+sal forests to a tea-garden at 3,500 feet. Here we entered the most
+perfect climate in the world, and I enjoyed genial hospitality and a
+foretaste of civilization: a bed, sheets, a warm bath, clean linen,
+fruit, sparkling soda, a roomy veranda with easy-chairs, and outside
+roses and trellis-work, and a garden bright with orchids and
+wild-turmeric and a profusion of semi-tropical and English flowers--all
+the things which the spoilt children of civilization take as a matter of
+course, because they have never slept under the stars, or known what it
+is to be hungry and cold, or exhausted by struggling against the forces
+of untamed Nature.
+
+At noon next day, in the cantonments at Jelapahar, an officer saw a
+strange sight--a field-hospital doolie with the red cross, and twelve
+_kahars_, Lucknow men, whose plaintive chant must have recalled old days
+on the North-West frontier. Behind on a mule rode a British orderly of
+the King's Own Scottish Borderers, bearded and weather-stained, and
+without a trace of the spick-and-spanness of cantonments. I saw the
+officer's face lighten; he became visibly excited; he could not restrain
+himself--he swung round, rode after my orderly, and began to question
+him without shame. Here was civilization longing for the wilderness, and
+over there, beyond the mist, under that snow-clad peak, were men in the
+wilderness longing for civilization.
+
+A cloud swept down and obscured the Jelap, as if the chapter were
+closed. But it is not. That implacable barrier must be crossed again,
+and then, when we have won the most secret places of the earth, we may
+cry with Burton and his Arabs, 'Voyaging is victory!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
+
+
+The intention of the Tibetans at the Hot Springs has not been made
+clear. They say that their orders were to oppose our advance, but to
+avoid a battle, just as our orders were to take away their arms, if
+possible, without firing a shot. The muddle that ensued lends itself to
+several interpretations, and the Tibetans ascribe their loss to British
+treachery. They say that we ordered them to destroy the fuses of their
+matchlocks, and then fired on them. This story was taken to Lhasa, with
+the result that the new levies from the capital were not deterred by the
+terrible punishment inflicted on their comrades. Orders were given to
+oppose us on the road to Gyantse, and an armed force, which included
+many of the fugitives from Guru, gathered about Kangma.
+
+The peace delegates always averred that we fired the first shot at Guru.
+But even if we give the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt, and admit
+that the action grew out of the natural excitement of two forces
+struggling for arms, both of whom were originally anxious to avoid a
+conflict, there is still no doubt that the responsibility of continuing
+the hostilities lies with the Tibetans.
+
+On the morning of April 7 ten scouts of the 2nd Mounted Infantry, under
+Captain Peterson, found the Tibetans occupying the village of Samando,
+seventeen miles beyond Kalatso. As our men had orders not to fire or
+provoke an attack, they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one of
+the Tibetans to come out and parley. They said they would send for a
+man, and invited us to come nearer. When we had ridden up to within a
+hundred yards of the village, they opened a heavy fire on us with their
+matchlocks. Our scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards, and
+took cover behind stones. Not a man or pony was hit. Before retiring,
+the mounted infantry fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who were lining
+the roofs of two large houses and a wall that connected them, their
+heads only appearing above the low turf parapets. Twice the Tibetans
+sent off a mounted man for reinforcements, but our shooting was so good
+that each time the horse returned riderless. The next morning we found
+the village unoccupied, and discovered six dead left on the roofs, most
+of whom were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had penetrated the two
+feet of turf and killed the man behind. Putting aside the question of
+Guru, the Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility directed
+against the mission.
+
+After Samando there was no longer any doubt that the Tibetans intended
+to oppose our advance. On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a wall
+built across the valley and up the hills just this side of Kangma, which
+they reported as occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late to
+attack that night, we formed camp. The next morning we found the wall
+evacuated, and the villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired to
+the gorge below. This habit of building formidable barriers across a
+valley, stretching from crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a
+well-known trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built in the
+night and abandoned the next morning. One would imagine that, after
+toiling all night to make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
+their wall if they intended to make a stand anywhere. But they do not
+grudge the labour. Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
+Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot resist placing one on
+the top of the other. So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
+studded with these monuments of wasted labour, erected to propitiate the
+genii of the place, or from mere force of habit to while away an idle
+hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this practice of strengthening
+and abandoning positions more than anything else which gained the
+Tibetans the reputation of cowardice, which they have since shown to be
+totally undeserved.
+
+On April 8, owing to the delay in reconnoitring the wall, we made only
+about eight miles, and camped. The next morning we had marched about
+two miles, when we found the high ridge on the left flank occupied by
+the enemy, and the mounted infantry reported them in the gorge beyond.
+Two companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Major Row were sent up to the
+hill on the left to turn the enemy's right flank, and the mountain
+battery (No. 7) came into action on the right at over 3,000 yards. The
+enemy kept up a continuous but ineffectual fire from the ridge, none of
+their jingal bullets falling anywhere near us. The Gurkhas had a very
+difficult climb. The hill was quite 2,000 feet above the valley; the
+lower and a good deal of the other slopes were of coarse sand mixed with
+shale, and the rest nothing but slippery rock. The summit of the hill
+was approached by a number of step-like shale terraces covered with
+snow. When only a short way up, a snowstorm came on and obscured the
+Gurkhas from view. The cold was intense, and the troops in the valley
+began to collect the sparse brushwood, and made fires to keep themselves
+warm.
+
+On account of the nature of the hillside and the high altitude, the
+progress of the Gurkhas was very slow, and it took them nearly three
+hours to reach the ridge held by the enemy. When about two-thirds of the
+way up, they came under fire from the ridge, but all the shots went
+high. The jingals carried well over them at about 1,200 yards. The enemy
+also sent a detachment to meet them on the top, but these did not fire
+long, and retired as the Gurkhas advanced. When the 8th reached the
+summit, the Tibetans were in full flight down the opposite slope, which
+was also snow-covered. Thirty were shot down in the rout, and fifty-four
+who were hiding in the caves were made prisoners.
+
+In the meanwhile the battery had been making very good practice at 3,000
+yards. Seven men were found dead on the summit, and four wounded,
+evidently by their fire.
+
+But to return to the main action in the gorge. The Tibetans held a very
+strong position among some loose boulders on the right, two miles beyond
+the gully which the Gurkhas had ascended to make their flank attack. The
+rocks extended from the bluff cliff to the path which skirted the
+stream. No one could ask for better cover; it was most difficult to
+distinguish the drab-coated Tibetans who lay concealed there. To attack
+this strong position General Macdonald sent Captain Bethune with one
+company of the 32nd Pioneers, placing Lieutenant Cook with his Maxim on
+a mound at 500 yards to cover Bethune's advance. Bethune led a frontal
+attack. The Tibetans fired wildly until the Sikhs were within eighty
+yards, and then fled up the valley. Not a single man of the 32nd was hit
+during the attack, though one sepoy was wounded in the pursuit by a
+bullet in the hand from a man who lay concealed behind a rock within a
+few yards of him. While the 32nd were dislodging the Tibetans from the
+path and the rocks above it, the mounted infantry galloped through them
+to reconnoitre ahead and cut off the fugitives in the valley. They also
+came through the enemy's fire at very close quarters without a casualty.
+On emerging from the gorge the mounted infantry discovered that the
+ridge the Tibetans had held was shaped like the letter S, so that by
+doubling back along an almost parallel valley they were able to
+intercept the enemy whom the Gurkhas had driven down the cliffs. The
+unfortunate Tibetans were now hemmed in between two fires, and hardly a
+man of them escaped.
+
+The Tibetan casualties, as returned at the time, were much exaggerated.
+The killed amounted to 100, and, on the principle that the proportion of
+wounded must be at least two to one, it was estimated that their losses
+were 300. But, as a matter of fact, the wounded could not have numbered
+more than two dozen.
+
+The prisoners taken by the Gurkhas on the top of the ridge turned out to
+be impressed peasants, who had been compelled to fight us by the Lamas.
+They were not soldiers by inclination or instinct, and I believe their
+greatest fear was that they might be released and driven on to fight us
+again.
+
+The action at the Red Idol Gorge may be regarded as the end of the first
+phase of the Tibetan opposition. We reached Gyantse on April 11, and the
+fort was surrendered without resistance. Nothing had occurred on the
+march up to disturb our estimate of the enemy. Since the campaign of
+1888 no one had given the Tibetans any credit for martial instincts, and
+until the Karo la action and the attack on Gyantse they certainly
+displayed none. It would be hard to exaggerate the strategical
+difficulties of the country through which we had to pass. The progress
+of the mission and its escort under similar conditions would have been
+impossible on the North-West frontier or in any country inhabited by a
+people with the rudiments of sense or spirit. The difficulties of
+transport were so great that the escort had to be cut down to the finest
+possible figure. There were barely enough men for pickets, and many of
+the ordinary precautions of field manoeuvres were out of the question.
+But the Tibetan failed to realize his opportunities. He avoided the
+narrow forest-clad ravines of Sikkim and Chumbi, and made his first
+stand on the open plateau at Guru. Fortunately for us, he never learnt
+what transport means to a civilized army. A bag of barley-meal, some
+weighty degchies, and a massive copper teapot slung over the saddle are
+all he needs; evening may produce a sheep or a yak. His movements are
+not hampered by supplies. If the importance of the transport question
+had ever entered his head, he would have avoided the Tuna camp, with its
+Maxims and mounted infantry, and made a dash upon the line of
+communications. A band of hardy mountaineers in their own country might
+very easily surprise and annihilate an ill-guarded convoy in a narrow
+valley thickly forested and flanked by steep hills. To furtively cut an
+artery in your enemy's arm and let out the blood is just as effective as
+to knock him on the head from in front. But in this first phase of the
+operations the Tibetans showed no strategy; they were badly led, badly
+armed, and apparently devoid of all soldier-like qualities. Only on one
+or two occasions they displayed a desperate and fatal courage, and this
+new aspect of their character was the first indication that we might
+have to revise the views we had formed sixteen years ago of an enemy who
+has seemed to us since a unique exception to the rule that a hardy
+mountain people are never deficient in courage and the instinct of
+self-defence.
+
+The most extraordinary aspect of the fighting up to our arrival at
+Gyantse was that we had only one casualty from a gunshot wound--the Sikh
+who was shot in the hand at the Dzama Tang affair by a Tibetan whose
+jezail was almost touching him. Yet at the Hot Springs the Tibetans
+fired off their matchlocks and rifles into the thick of us, and at Guru
+an hour afterwards the Gurkhas walked right up to a house held by the
+enemy, under heavy fire, and took it without a casualty. The mounted
+infantry were exposed to a volley at Samando at 100 yards, and again in
+the Red Idol Gorge they rode through the enemy's fire at an even
+shorter range. In the same action the 32nd made a frontal attack on a
+strong position which was held until they were within eighty yards, and
+not a man was hit. No wonder we had a contempt for the Tibetan arms.
+Their matchlocks, weapons of the rudest description, must have been as
+dangerous to their own marksmen as to the enemy; their artillery fire,
+to judge by our one experience of it at Dzama Tang, was harmless and
+erratic; and their modern Lhasa-made rifles had not left a mark on our
+men. The Tibetans' only chance seemed to be a rush at close quarters,
+but they had not proved themselves competent swordsmen. My own
+individual case was sufficient to show that they were bunglers. Besides
+the twelve wounds I received at the Hot Springs, I found seven
+sword-cuts on my poshteen, none of which were driven home. During the
+whole campaign we had only one death from sword-wounds.
+
+Arrived at Gyantse, we settled down with some sense of security. A
+bazaar was held outside the camp. The people seemed friendly, and
+brought in large quantities of supplies. Colonel Younghusband, in a
+despatch to the Foreign Office, reported that with the surrender of
+Gyantse Fort on April 12 resistance in that part of Tibet was ended. A
+letter was received from the Amban stating that he would certainly reach
+Gyantse within the next three weeks, and that competent and trustworthy
+Tibetan representatives would accompany him. The Lhasa officials, it
+was said, were in a state of panic, and had begged the Amban to visit
+the British camp and effect a settlement.
+
+On April 20 General Macdonald's staff, with the 10-pounder guns, three
+companies of the 23rd Pioneers, and one and a half companies of the 8th
+Gurkhas, returned to Chumbi to relieve the strain on the transport and
+strengthen the line of communications. Gyantse Jong was evacuated, and
+we occupied a position in a group of houses, as we thought, well out of
+range of fire from the fort.
+
+Everything was quiet until the end of April, when we heard that the
+Tibetans were occupying a wall in some strength near the Karo la,
+forty-two miles from Gyantse, on the road to Lhasa. Colonel Brander, of
+the 32nd Pioneers, who was left in command at Gyantse, sent a small
+party of mounted infantry and pioneers to reconnoitre the position. They
+discovered 2,000 of the enemy behind a strong loopholed wall stretching
+across the valley, a distance of nearly 600 yards. As the party explored
+the ravine they had a narrow escape from a booby-trap, a formidable
+device of Tibetan warfare, which was only employed against our troops on
+this occasion. An artificial avalanche of rocks and stones is so
+cunningly contrived that the removal of one stone sends the whole engine
+of destruction thundering down the hillside. Luckily, the Tibetans did
+not wait for our main body, but loosed the machine on an advance guard
+of mounted infantry, who were in extended order and able to take shelter
+behind rocks.
+
+On the return of the reconnaissance Colonel Brander decided to attack,
+as he considered the gathering threatened the safety of the mission. The
+Karo Pass is an important strategical position, lying as it does at the
+junction of the two roads to India, one of which leads to Kangma, the
+other to Gyantse. A strong force holding the pass might at any moment
+pour troops down the valley to Kangma, cut us off in the rear, and
+destroy our line of communications. When Colonel Brander led his small
+force to take the pass, it was not with the object of clearing the road
+to Lhasa. The measure was purely defensive: the action was undertaken to
+keep the road open for convoys and reinforcements, and to protect
+isolated posts on the line. The force with the mission was still an
+'escort,' and so far its operations had been confined to dispersing the
+armed levies that blocked the road.
+
+On May 3 Colonel Brander left Gyantse with his column of 400 rifles,
+comprising three companies of the 32nd Pioneers, under Captains Bethune
+and Cullen and Lieutenant Hodgson; one company of the 8th, under Major
+Row and Lieutenant Coleridge, with two 7-pounder guns; the Maxim
+detachment of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow; and forty-five of
+the 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley. On the first day the
+column marched eighteen miles, and halted at Gobshi. On the second day
+they reached Ralung, eleven miles further, and on the third marched up
+the pass and encamped on an open spot about two miles from where the
+Tibetans had built their wall. A reconnaissance that afternoon estimated
+the enemy at 2,000, and they were holding the strongest position on the
+road to Lhasa. They had built a wall the whole length of a narrow spur
+and up the hill on the other side of the stream, and in addition held
+detached sangars high up the steep hills, and well thrown forward. Their
+flanks rested on very high and nearly precipitous rocks. It was only
+possible to climb the ridge on our right from a mile behind, and on the
+left from nearly three-quarters of a mile. Colonel Brander at first
+considered the practicability of delaying the attack on the main wall
+until the Gurkhas had completed their flanking movements, cleared the
+Tibetans out of the sangars that enfiladed our advance in the valley,
+and reached a position on the hills beyond the wall, whence they could
+fire into the enemy's rear. But the cliffs were so sheer that the ascent
+was deemed impracticable, and the next morning it was decided to make a
+frontal attack without waiting for the Gurkhas to turn the flank. No one
+for a moment thought it could be done.
+
+The troops marched out of camp at ten o'clock. One company of the 32nd
+Pioneers, under Captain Cullen, was detailed to attack on the right,
+and a second company, under Captain Bethune, to follow the river-bed,
+where they were under cover of the high bank until within 400 yards of
+the wall, and then rush the centre of the position. The 1st Mounted
+Infantry, under Captain Ottley, were to follow this company along the
+valley. The guns, Maxims, and one company of the 32nd in reserve,
+occupied a small plateau in the centre. Half a company of the 8th
+Gurkhas were left behind to guard the camp. A second half-company, under
+Major Row, were sent along the hillside on the left to attack the
+enemy's extreme right sangar, but their progress over the shifting shale
+slopes and jagged rocks was so slow that the front attack did not wait
+for them.
+
+The fire from the wall was very heavy, and the advance of Cullen's and
+Bethune's companies was checked. Bethune sent half a company back, and
+signalled to the mounted infantry to retire. Then, compelled by some
+fatal impulse, he changed his mind, and with half a company left the
+cover of the river-bed and rushed out into the open within forty yards
+of the main wall, exposed to a withering fire from three sides. His
+half-company held back, and Bethune fell shot through the head with only
+four men by his side--a bugler, a store-office babu, and two devoted
+Sikhs. What the clerk was doing there no one knows, but evidently the
+soldier in the man had smouldered in suppression among the office files
+and triumphed splendidly. It was a gallant reckless charge against
+uncounted odds. Poor Bethune had learnt to despise the Tibetans' fire,
+and his contempt was not unnatural. On the march to Gyantse the enemy
+might have been firing blank cartridges for all the effect they had left
+on our men. At Dzama Tang Bethune had made a frontal attack on a strong
+position, and carried it without losing a man. Against a similar rabble
+it might have been possible to rush the wall with his handful of Sikhs,
+but these new Kham levies who held the Karo la were a very different
+type of soldier.
+
+The frontal attack was a terrible mistake, as was shown four hours
+afterwards, when the enemy were driven from their position without
+further loss to ourselves by a flanking movement on the right.
+
+At twelve o'clock Major Row, after a laborious climb, reached a point on
+a hillside level with the sangars, which were strongly held on a narrow
+ledge 200 yards in front of him. Here he sent up a section of his men
+under cover of projecting rocks to get above the sangars and fire down
+into them. In the meanwhile some of the enemy scrambled on to the rocks
+above, and began throwing down boulders at the Gurkhas, but these either
+broke up or fell harmless on the shale slopes above. After waiting an
+hour, Major Row went back himself and found his section checked half-way
+by the stone-throwing and shots from above; they had tried another way,
+but found it impracticable.
+
+Keeping a few men back to fire on any stone-throwers who showed
+themselves, Row dribbled his men across the difficult place, and in half
+an hour reached the rocky ledge above the sangars and looked right down
+on the enemy. At the first few shots from the Gurkhas they began to
+bolt, and, coming into the fire of the men below, who now rushed
+forward, nearly every man--forty in all--was killed. One or two who
+escaped the fire found their flight cut off by a precipice, and in an
+abandonment of terror hurled themselves down on the rocks below. After
+clearing the sangar, the Gurkhas had only to surmount the natural
+difficulties of the rocky and steep hill; for though the enemy fired on
+them from the wall, their shooting was most erratic. When at last they
+reached a small spur that overlooked the Tibetan main position, they
+found, to their disgust, that each man was protected from their fire by
+a high stone traverse, on the right-hand of which he lay secure, and
+fired through loopholes barely a foot from the ground.
+
+The Gurkhas had accomplished a most difficult mountaineering feat under
+a heavy fire; they had turned the enemy out of their sangars, and after
+four hours' climbing they had scaled the heights everyone thought
+inaccessible. But their further progress was barred by a sheer cliff;
+they had reached a cul-de-sac. Looking up from the valley, it appeared
+that the spot where they stood commanded the enemy's position, but we
+had not reckoned on the traverses. This amazing advance in the enemy's
+defensive tactics had rendered their position unassailable from the
+left, and made the Gurkhas' flanking movement a splendid failure.
+
+It was now two o'clock, and, except for the capture of the enemy's right
+sangars, we had done nothing to weaken their opposition. The frontal and
+flanking attacks had failed. Bethune was killed, and seventeen men. Our
+guns had made no impression on their wall. Looking down from the spur
+which overlooked the Tibetan camp and the valley beyond, the Gurkhas
+could see a large reinforcement of at least 500 men coming up to join
+the enemy. The situation was critical. In four hours we had done
+nothing, and we knew that if we could not take the place by dusk we
+would have to abandon the attack or attempt to rush the camp at night.
+That would have been a desperate undertaking--400 men against 3,000, a
+rush at close quarters with the bayonet, in which the superiority of our
+modern rifles would be greatly discounted.
+
+Matters were at this crisis, when we saw the Tibetans running out of
+their extreme left sangars. At twelve o'clock, when the front attack had
+failed and the left attack was apparently making no progress, fifteen
+men of the 32nd who were held in reserve were sent up the hill on the
+right. They had reached a point above the enemy's left forward sangar,
+and were firing into it with great effect. Twice the Tibetans rushed
+out, and, coming under a heavy Maxim fire, bolted back again. The third
+time they fled in a mass, and the Maxims mowed down about thirty. The
+capture of the sangars was a signal for a general stampede. From the
+position they had won the Sikhs could enfilade the main wall itself. The
+Tibetans only waited a few shots; then they turned and fled in three
+huge bodies down the valley. Thus the fifteen Sikhs on the right saved
+the situation. The tension had been great. In no other action during the
+campaign, if we except Palla, did the success of our arms stand so long
+in doubt. Had we failed to take the wall by daylight, Colonel Brander's
+column would have been in a most precarious position. We could not
+afford to retire, and a night attack could only have been pushed home
+with heavy loss.
+
+Directly the flight began, the 1st Mounted Infantry--forty-two men,
+under Captain Ottley--rode up to the wall. They were ten minutes making
+a breach. Then they poured into the valley and harassed the flying
+masses, riding on their flanks and pursuing them for ten miles to within
+sight of the Yamdok Tso. It showed extraordinary courage on the part of
+this little band of Masbis and Gurkhas that they did not hesitate to
+hurl themselves on the flanks of this enormous body of men, like
+terriers on the heels of a flock of cattle, though they had had
+experience of their stubborn resistance the whole day long, and rode
+through the bodies of their fallen comrades. Not a man drew rein. The
+Tibetans were caught in a trap. The hills that sloped down to the valley
+afforded them little cover. Their fate was only a question of time and
+ammunition. The mounted infantry returned at night with only three
+casualties, having killed over 300 men.
+
+The sortie to the Karo la was one of the most brilliant episodes of the
+campaign. We risked more then than on any other occasion. But the safety
+of the mission and many isolated posts on the line was imperilled by
+this large force at the cross-roads, which might have increased until it
+had doubled or trebled if we had not gone out to disperse it. A weak
+commander might have faltered and weighed the odds, but Colonel Brander
+saw that it was a moment to strike, and struck home. His action was
+criticised at the time as too adventurous. But the sortie is one of the
+many instances that our interests are best cared for by men who are
+beyond the telegraph-poles, and can act on their own initiative without
+reference to Government offices in Simla.
+
+As the column advanced to the Karo la, a message was received that the
+mission camp at Gyantse had been attacked in the early morning of the
+5th, and that Major Murray's men--150 odd rifles--had not only beaten
+the enemy off, but had made three sorties from different points and
+killed 200.
+
+With the action at the Karo la and the attack on the mission at Gyantse
+began the second phase of the operations, during which we were
+practically besieged in our own camp, and for nine weeks compelled to
+act on the defensive. The courage of the Tibetans was now proved beyond
+a doubt. The new levies from Kham and Shigatze were composed of very
+different men from those we herded like sheep at Guru. They were also
+better armed than our previous assailants, and many of them knew how to
+shoot. At the same time they were better led. The primitive ideas of
+strategy hitherto displayed by the Tibetans gave place to more advanced
+tactics. The usual story got wind that the Tibetans were being led by
+trained Russian Buriats. But there was no truth in it. The altered
+conditions of the campaign, as we may call it, after it became necessary
+to begin active operations, were due to the force of circumstances--the
+arrival of stouter levies from the east, the great numerical superiority
+of the enemy, and their strongly fortified positions.
+
+The operations at Gyantse are fully dealt with in another chapter, and I
+will conclude this account of the opposition to our advance with a
+description of the attack on the Kangma post, the only attempt on the
+part of the enemy to cut off our line of communications. Its complete
+failure seems to have deterred the Tibetans from subsequent ventures of
+the kind.
+
+From Ralung, ten miles this side of the Karo la, two roads branch off to
+India. The road leading to Kangma is the shortest route; the other road
+makes a detour of thirty miles to include Gyantse. Ralung lies at the
+apex of the triangle, as shown in this rough diagram. Gyantse and Kangma
+form the two base angles.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If it had been possible, a strong post would have been left at the Karo
+la after the action of May 6. But our small force was barely sufficient
+to garrison Gyantse, and we had to leave the alternative approach to
+Kangma unguarded. An attack was expected there; the post was strongly
+fortified, and garrisoned by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, under
+Captain Pearson.
+
+The attack, which was made on June 7, was unexpectedly dramatic. We have
+learnt that the Tibetan has courage, but in other respects he is still
+an unknown quantity. In motive and action he is as mysterious and
+unaccountable as his paradoxical associations would lead us to imagine.
+In dealing with the Tibetans one must expect the unexpected. They will
+try to achieve the impossible, and shut their eyes to the obvious. They
+have a genius for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Their elan,
+their dogged courage, their undoubted heroism, their occasional
+acuteness, their more general imbecile folly and vacillation and
+inability to grasp a situation, make it impossible to say what they will
+do in any given circumstances. A few dozen men will hurl themselves
+against hopeless odds, and die to a man fighting desperately; a handful
+of impressed peasants will devote themselves to death in the defence of
+a village, like the old Roman patriots. At other times they will forsake
+a strongly sangared position at the first shot, and thousands will prowl
+round a camp at night, shouting grotesquely, but too timid to make a
+determined attack on a vastly outnumbered enemy.
+
+The uncertainty of the enemy may be accounted for to some extent by the
+fact that we are not often opposed by the same levies, which would imply
+that theirs is greatly the courage of ignorance. Yet in the face of the
+fighting at Palla, Naini, and Gyantse Jong, this is evidently no fair
+estimate of the Tibetan spirit. The men who stood in the breach at
+Gyantse in that hell of shrapnel and Maxim and rifle fire, and dropped
+down stones on our Gurkhas as they climbed the wall, met death
+knowingly, and were unterrified by the resources of modern science in
+war, the magic, the demons, the unseen, unimagined messengers of death.
+
+But the men who attacked the Kangma post, what parallel in history have
+we for these? They came by night many miles over steep mountain cliffs
+and rocky ravines, perhaps silently, with determined purpose, weighing
+the odds; or, as I like to think, boastfully, with song and jest,
+saying, 'We will steal in upon these English at dawn before they wake,
+and slay them in their beds. Then we will hold the fort, and kill all
+who come near.'
+
+They came in the gray before dawn, and hid in a gully beside our camp.
+At five the reveille sounded and the sentry left the bastions. Then they
+sprang up and rushed, sword in hand, their rifles slung behind their
+backs, to the wall. The whole attack was directed on the south-east
+front, an unscalable wall of solid masonry, with bastions at each corner
+four feet thick and ten feet high. They directed their attack on the
+bastions, the only point on that side they could scramble over. They
+knew nothing of the fort and its tracing. Perhaps they had expected to
+find us encamped in tents on the open ground. But from the shallow
+nullah where they lay concealed, not 200 yards distant, and watched our
+sentry, they could survey the uncompromising front which they had set
+themselves to attack with the naked sword. They had no artillery or
+guncotton or materials for a siege, but they hoped to scale the wall and
+annihilate the garrison that held it. They had come from Lhasa to take
+Kangma, and they were not going to turn back. They came on undismayed,
+like men flushed with victory. The sepoys said they must be drunk or
+drugged. They rushed to the bottom of the wall, tore out stones, and
+flung them up at our sepoys; they leapt up to seize the muzzles of our
+rifles, and scrambled to gain a foothold and lift themselves on to the
+parapet; they fell bullet-pierced, and some turned savagely on the wall
+again. It was only a question of time, of minutes, and the cool
+mechanical fire of the 23rd Pioneers would have dropped every man. One
+hundred and six bodies were left under the wall, and sixty more were
+killed in the pursuit. Never was there such a hopeless, helpless
+struggle, such desperate and ineffectual gallantry.
+
+Almost before it was light the yak corps with their small escort of
+thirty rifles of the 2nd Gurkhas were starting on the road to Kalatso.
+They had passed the hiding-place of the Tibetans without noticing the
+500 men in rusty-coloured cloaks breathing quietly among the brown
+stones. Then the Tibetans made their charge, just as the transport had
+passed, and a party of them made for the yaks. Two Tibetan drivers in
+our service stood directly in their path. 'Who are you?' cried one of
+the enemy. 'Only yak-drivers,' was the frightened answer. 'Then, take
+that,' the Tibetan said, slashing at his arm with no intent to kill. The
+Gurkha escort took up a position behind a sangar and opened fire--all
+save one man, who stood by his yak and refused to come under cover,
+despite the shouts and warnings of his comrades. He killed several, but
+fell himself, hacked to pieces with swords. The Tibetans were driven
+off, and joined the rout from the fort. The whole affair lasted less
+than ten minutes.
+
+Our casualties were: the isolated Gurkha killed, two men in the fort
+wounded by stones, and three of the 2nd Gurkhas severely wounded--two by
+sword-cuts, one by a bullet in the neck.
+
+But what was the flame that smouldered in these men and lighted them to
+action? They might have been Paladins or Crusaders. But the Buddhists
+are not fanatics. They do not stake eternity on a single existence. They
+have no Mahdis or Juggernaut cars. The Tibetans, we are told, are not
+patriots. Politicians say that they want us in their country, that they
+are priest-ridden, and hate and fear their Lamas. What, then, drove them
+on? It was certainly not fear. No people on earth have shown a greater
+contempt for death. Their Lamas were with them until the final assault.
+Twenty shaven polls were found hiding in the nullah down which the
+Tibetans had crept in the dark, and were immediately despatched. What
+promises and cajoleries and threats the holy men used no one will ever
+know. But whatever the alternative, their simple followers preferred
+death.
+
+The second phase of the operations, in which we had to act on the
+defensive in Gyantse, and the beginning of the third phase, which saw
+the arrival of reinforcements and the collapse of the Tibetan
+opposition, are described by an eye-witness in the next two chapters.
+During the whole of these operations I was invalided in Darjeeling,
+owing to a second operation which had to be performed on my amputation
+wound.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GYANTSE
+
+[BY HENRY NEWMAN]
+
+
+Gyantse Plain lies at the intersection of four great valleys running
+almost at right angles to one another. In the north-eastern corner there
+emerge two gigantic ridges of sandstone. On one is built the jong, and
+on the other the monastery. The town fringes the base of the jong, and
+creeps into the hollow between the two ridges. The plain, about six
+miles by ten, is cultivated almost to the last inch, if we except a few
+stony patches here and there. There are, I believe, thirty-three
+villages in the plain. These are built in the midst of groves of poplar
+and willow. At one time, no doubt, the waters from the four valleys
+united to form a lake. Now they have found an outlet, and flow
+peacefully down Shigatze way. High up on the cold mountains one sees the
+cold bleached walls of the Seven Monasteries, some of them perched on
+almost inaccessible cliffs, whence they look sternly down on the warmth
+and prosperity below.
+
+For centuries the Gyantse folk had lived self-contained and happy,
+practising their simple arts of agriculture, and but dimly aware of any
+world outside their own. Then one day there marched into their midst a
+column of British troops--white-faced Englishmen, dark, lithe Gurkhas,
+great, solemn, bearded Sikhs--and it was borne in upon the wondering
+Gyantse men that beyond their frontiers there existed great nations--so
+great, indeed, that they ventured to dispute on equal terms with the
+awful personage who ruled from Lhasa. It is true that from time to time
+there must have passed through Gyantse rumours of war on the distant
+frontier. The armies that we defeated at Guru and in the Red Idol Gorge
+had camped at Gyantse on their way to and fro. Gyantse saw and wondered
+at the haste of Lhasa despatch-riders. But I question whether any
+Gyantse man realized that events, great and shattering in his world,
+were impending when the British column rounded the corner of Naini
+Valley.
+
+At first we were received without hostility, or even suspicion. The
+ruined jong, uninhabited save for a few droning Lamas, was surrendered
+as soon as we asked for it. A clump of buildings in a large grove near
+the river was rented without demur--though at a price--to the
+Commission. And when the country-people found that there was a sale for
+their produce, they flocked to the camp to sell. The entry of the
+British troops made no difference to the peace of Gyantse till the
+Lamas of Lhasa embarked on the fatal policy of levying more troops in
+Lhasa, Shigatze, and far-away Kham, and sending them down to fight. Then
+there entered the peaceful valley all the horrors of war--dead and
+maimed men in the streets and houses, burning villages, death and
+destruction of all kinds. Gyantse Plain and the town became scenes of
+desolation. To the British army in India war, unfortunately, is nothing
+new, but one can imagine what an upheaval this business of which I am
+about to write meant to people who for generations had lived in peace.
+
+The incidents connected with the arrival of the mission with its escort
+at Gyantse need not be described in detail. On the day of arrival we
+camped in the midst of some fallow fields about two miles from the jong.
+The same afternoon a Chinese official, who called himself 'General' Ma,
+came into camp with the news that the jong was unoccupied, and that the
+local Tibetans did not propose to offer any resistance. The next morning
+we took quiet possession of the jong, placing two companies of Pioneers
+in garrison. The General with a small escort visited the monastery
+behind the fort, and was received with friendliness by the venerable
+Abbot. Neither the villagers nor the towns-people showed any signs of
+resentment at our presence. The Jongpen actively interested himself in
+the question of procuring an official residence for Colonel Younghusband
+and the members of the mission. There were reports of the Dalai Lama's
+representatives coming in haste to treat. Altogether the outlook was so
+promising that nobody was surprised when, after a stay of a week,
+General Macdonald, bearing in mind the difficulty of procuring supplies
+for the whole force, announced his intention of returning to Chumbi with
+the larger portion of the escort, leaving a sufficient guard with the
+mission.
+
+The guard left behind consisted of four companies of the 32nd Pioneers,
+under Colonel Brander; four companies of the 8th Gurkhas, under Major
+Row; the 1st Mounted Infantry, under Captain Ottley; and the machine-gun
+section of the Norfolks, under Lieutenant Hadow. Mention should also be
+made of the two 7-pounder mountain-guns attached to the 8th Gurkhas,
+under the command of Captain Luke.
+
+Before the General left for Chumbi he decided to evacuate the jong. The
+grounds on which this decision was come to were that the whole place was
+in a ruinous and dangerous condition, the surroundings were insanitary,
+there was only one building fit for human habitation, the water-supply
+was bad and deficient, and there seemed to be no prospect of further
+hostilities. Besides, from the military point of view there was some
+risk in splitting up the small guard to be left behind between the jong
+and the mission post. However, the precaution was taken of further
+dismantling the jong. The gateways and such portions as seemed capable
+of lending themselves to defence were blown up.
+
+The house, or, rather, group of houses, rented by Colonel Younghusband
+for the mission was situated about 100 yards from a well-made stone
+bridge over the river. A beautiful grove, mostly of willow, extended
+behind the post along the banks of the river to a distance of about 500
+yards. The jong lay about 1,800 yards to the right front. There were two
+houses in the intervening space, built amongst fields of iris and
+barley. Small groups of trees were dotted here and there. Altogether,
+the post was located in a spot as pleasant as one could hope to find in
+Tibet.
+
+For some days before the General left, all the troops were engaged in
+putting the post in a state of defence. It was found that the force to
+be left behind could be easily located within the perimeter of a wall
+built round the group of houses. There was no room, however, for 200
+mules and their drivers, needed for convoy purposes. These were placed
+in a kind of hornwork thrown out to the right front.
+
+After the departure of the General we resigned ourselves to what we
+conceived would be a monotonous stay at Gyantse of two or three months,
+pending the signing of the treaty. The people continued to be perfectly
+friendly. A market was established outside the post, to which
+practically the whole bazaar from Gyantse town was removed. We were able
+to buy in the market, very cheap, the famous Gyantse carpets, for which
+enormous prices are demanded at Darjeeling and elsewhere in India.
+Unarmed officers wandered freely about Gyantse town, and the monks of
+Palkhor Choide, the monastery behind the fort, willingly conducted
+parties over the most sacred spots. They even readily sold some of the
+images before the altars, and the silk screens which shrouded the forms
+of the gigantic Buddhas. I mention these facts about the carpets and
+images because, when hereafter they adorned Simla and Darjeeling
+drawing-rooms, unkind people began to say that British officers had
+wantonly looted Palkhor Choide, one of the most famous monasteries in
+Tibet.
+
+A little shooting was to be had, and officers wandered about the plain,
+gun in hand, bringing home mountain-hare--a queer little beast with a
+blue rump--duck, and pigeon. Occasionally an excursion up one of the
+side valleys would result in the shooting of a burhel or of a Tibetan
+gazelle. The country-people met with were all perfectly friendly.
+
+Another feature of those first few peaceful days at Gyantse was the
+eagerness with which the Tibetans availed themselves of the skilled
+medical attendance with the mission. At first only one or two men
+wounded at the Red Idol Gorge were brought in, but the skill of Captain
+Walton, Indian Medical Service, soon began to be noised abroad, and
+every morning the little outdoor dispensary was crowded with sufferers
+of all kinds.
+
+But during the last week in May reports began to reach Colonel
+Younghusband that, so far from attempting to enter into negociations,
+the Lhasa Government was levying an army in Kham, and that already five
+or six hundred men were camped on the other side of the Karo la, and
+were busily engaged in building a wall. Lieutenant Hodgson with a small
+force was sent to reconnoitre. He came back with the news that the wall
+was already built, stretching from one side of the valley to the other,
+and that there were several thousand well-armed men behind it. Both
+Colonel Younghusband and Colonel Brander considered it highly necessary
+that this gathering should be immediately dispersed, for it is a
+principle in Indian frontier warfare to strike quickly at any tribal
+assembly, in order to prevent it growing into dangerous proportions. The
+possibly exciting effect the force on the Karo la might have on the
+inhabitants of Gyantse had particularly to be considered. Accordingly,
+on May 3 Colonel Brander led the major portion of the Gyantse garrison
+towards the Karo la, leaving behind as a guard to the post two companies
+of Gurkhas, a company of the 32nd Pioneers, and a few mounted infantry,
+all under the command of Major Murray.
+
+I accompanied the Karo la column, and must rely on hearsay as to my
+facts with regard to the attack on the mission. We heard about the
+attack the night before Colonel Brander drove the Tibetans from their
+wall on the Karo la, after a long fight which altered all our previous
+conceptions of the fighting qualities of the Tibetans. The courage shown
+by the enemy naturally excited apprehension about the safety of the
+mission. Colonel Brander did not stay to rest his troops after their day
+of arduous fighting, but began his return march next morning, arriving
+at Gyantse on the 9th.
+
+The column had been warned that it was likely to be fired on from the
+jong if it entered camp by the direct Lhasa road. Accordingly, we
+marched in by a circuitous route, moving in under cover of the grove
+previously mentioned. The Maxims and guns came into action at the edge
+of the grove to cover the baggage. But, though numbers of Tibetans were
+seen on the walls of the jong, not a shot was fired.
+
+We then learnt the story of the attack on the post. It appears that the
+day after Colonel Brander left for the Karo la (May 3) certain wounded
+and sick Tibetans that we had been attending informed the mission that
+about 1,000 armed men had come down towards Gyantse from Shigatze, and
+were building a wall about twelve miles away. It was added that they
+might possibly attack the post if they got to know that the garrison had
+been largely depleted. This news seemed to be worth inquiring into, and,
+accordingly, next day Major Murray sent some mounted infantry to
+reconnoitre up the Shigatze road. The latter returned with the
+information that they had gone up the valley some seven or eight miles,
+but had found no signs of any enemy.
+
+The very next morning the post was attacked at dawn. It appears that the
+Shigatze force, about 1,000 strong, was really engaged in building a
+wall twelve miles away. Hearing that very few troops were guarding the
+mission, its commander--who, I hear, was none other than Khomba Bombu,
+the very man who arrested Sven Hedin's dash to Lhasa--determined to make
+a sudden attack on the post. He marched his men during the night, and
+about an hour before sunrise had them crouching behind trees and inside
+ditches all round the post.
+
+The attack was sudden and simultaneous. A Gurkha sentry had just time to
+fire off his rifle before the Tibetans rushed to our walls and had their
+muskets through our loopholes. The enemy did not for the moment attempt
+to scale, but contented themselves with firing into the post through the
+loopholes they had taken. This delay proved fatal to their plans, for it
+gave the small garrison time to rise and arm. The brunt of the Tibetan
+fire was directed on the courtyard of the house where the tents of the
+members of the mission were pitched. Major Murray, who had rushed out of
+bed half clad, first directed his attention to this spot. The Sikhs,
+emerging from their tents with bandolier and rifle, in extraordinary
+costumes, were directed towards the loopholes. Some were sent on the
+roof of the mission-house, whence they could enfilade the attackers.
+Elsewhere various junior officers had taken command. Captain Luke, who,
+owing to sickness, had not gone on with the Karo la column, took charge
+of the Gurkhas on the south and west fronts. Lieutenant Franklin, the
+medical officer of the 8th Gurkhas, rallied Gurkhas and Pioneers to the
+loopholes on the east and north. Lieutenant Lynch, the treasure-chest
+officer, who had a guard of about twenty Gurkhas, took his men to the
+main gate to the south. There were at this time in hospital about a
+dozen Sikhs, who had been badly burnt in a lamentable gunpowder
+explosion a few days previously. These men, bandaged and crippled as
+they were, rose from their couches, made their painful way to the tops
+of the houses, and fired into the enemy below. About a dozen Tibetans
+had just begun to scramble over the wall by the time the defenders had
+manned the whole position, which was now not only held by fighting men,
+but by various members of the mission, including Colonel Younghusband,
+who had emerged with revolvers and sporting guns. A few of the enemy got
+inside the defences, and were immediately shot down.
+
+Our fire was so heavy and so well directed that it is supposed that not
+more than ten minutes elapsed from the time the first shot was fired to
+the time the enemy began to withdraw. The withdrawal, however, was only
+to the shelter of trees and ditches a few hundred yards away, whence a
+long but almost harmless fusillade was kept up on the post. After about
+twenty minutes of this firing, Major Murray determined on a rally.
+Lieutenant Lynch with his treasure guard dashed out from the south gate.
+Some five-and-twenty Tibetans were discovered hiding in a small refuse
+hut about fifteen yards from the gate. The furious Gurkhas rushed in
+upon them and killed them all, and then dashed on through the long
+grove, clearing the enemy in front of them. Returning along the banks of
+the river, the same party discovered another body of Tibetans hiding
+under the arches of the bridge. Twenty or thirty were shot down, and
+about fifteen made prisoners. Similar success attended a rally from the
+north-east gate made by Major Murray and Lieutenant Franklin. The enemy
+fled howling from their hiding-places towards the town and jong as soon
+as they saw our men issue. They were pursued almost to the very walls of
+the fort. Indeed, but for the fringe of houses and narrow streets at the
+base of the jong, Major Murray would have gone on. The Tibetans,
+however, turned as soon as they reached the shelter of walls, and it
+would have been madness to attack five or six hundred determined men in
+a maze of alleys and passages with only a weak company. Major Murray
+accordingly made his way back to the post, picking up a dozen prisoners
+_en route_.
+
+In this affair our casualties only amounted to five wounded and two
+killed. One hundred and forty dead of the enemy were counted outside
+the camp.
+
+During the course of the day Major Murray sent a flag of truce to the
+jong with an intimation to the effect that the Tibetans could come out
+and bury their dead without fear of molestation. The reply was that we
+could bury the dead ourselves without fear of molestation. As it was
+impossible to leave all the bodies in the vicinity of the camp, a heavy
+and disagreeable task was thrown on the garrison.
+
+Towards sundown the enemy in the jong began to fire into the camp, and
+our troops became aware of the unpleasant fact that the Tibetans
+possessed jingals, which could easily range from 1,800 to 2,000 yards.
+It was also realized that the jong entirely dominated the post; that our
+walls and stockades, protection enough against a direct assault from the
+plain, were no protection against bullets dropped from a height. So for
+the next four days, pending the return of the Karo la column, the little
+garrison toiled unceasingly at improving the defences. Traverses were
+built, the walls raised in height, the gates strengthened. It was
+discovered that the Tibetan fire was heaviest when we attempted to
+return it by sniping at figures seen on the jong. Accordingly, pending
+the completion of the traverses and other new protective works, Major
+Murray forbade any return fire.
+
+Such was the position of affairs when the Karo la column returned. One
+of Colonel Brander's first acts, after his weary troops had rested for
+an hour or two, was to turn the Maxim on the groups who could be seen
+wandering about the jong. They quickly disappeared under cover, but only
+to man their jingals. Then began the bombardment of the post, which we
+had to endure for nearly seven weeks.
+
+This is the place to speak of the bombardment generally, for it would be
+tedious to recapitulate in the form of a diary incidents which, however
+exciting at the time, now seem remarkable only for their monotony. It
+may be said at once that the bombardment was singularly ineffective.
+From first to last only fifteen men in the post were hit. Of these
+twelve were either killed or died of the wound. Of course, I exclude the
+casualties in the fighting, of which I will presently speak, outside the
+post. But the futility of the bombardment must not be entirely put down
+to bad marksmanship on the part of the Tibetans. That our losses were
+not heavier is largely due to the fact that the garrison laboured
+daily--and at first at night also--in erecting protecting walls and
+traverses. Practically every tent had a traverse built in front of it.
+It was found that the hornwork in which the mules were located came
+particularly under fire of the jong. This was pulled down one dark
+night, and the mules transferred to a fresh enclosure at the back of the
+post. Strong parapets of sand-bags were built on the roofs of the
+houses. Every window facing the jong was securely blocked with mud
+bricks. It will be realized how considerable was the labour involved in
+building the traverses when it is remembered that the jong looked down
+into the post. The majority of the walls had to be considerably higher
+than the tents themselves. They were mostly built of stakes cut from the
+grove, with two feet of earth rammed in between. After the first week or
+so the enemy brought to bear on the post several brass cannon, throwing
+balls weighing four or five pounds, and travelling with a velocity which
+enabled them to penetrate our traverses--when they struck them, for the
+majority of shots from the cannon whistled harmlessly over our heads.
+
+Practically, we did not return the fire from the jong. All that was done
+in this direction was to place one of Lieutenant Hadow's Maxims on the
+roof of the house occupied by the mission, and thence to snipe during
+the daylight hours at any warriors who showed themselves above the walls
+of the jong. Hadow was very patient and persistent with his gun, and
+quickly made it clear to the Tibetans that, if we were obliged to keep
+under cover, so were they. But our fire from the post was probably as
+ineffective as that of the enemy from the jong, for the Tibetans build
+walls with extraordinary rapidity. Working mostly at night in order to
+avoid the malignant Maxim, the enemy within a few days almost altered
+the face of the jong. New walls, traverses, and covered ways seemed to
+spring up with the rapidity of mushrooms.
+
+Our life during the siege, if so the bombardment can be called, was
+hardly as unpleasant as people might imagine. To begin with, we were
+never short of food--that is to say, of Tibetan barley and meat. The
+commissariat stock of tea--a necessity in Tibet--also never gave out.
+From time to time also convoys and parcel-posts with little luxuries
+came through. Again, the longest period for which we were without a
+letter-post was eight days. Socially, the relations of the officers with
+one another and with the members of the Commission were most harmonious.
+I make a point of mentioning this fact, because all those who have had
+any experience of sieges, or of similar conditions where small
+communities are shut up together in circumstances of hardship and
+danger, know how apt the temper is to get on edge, how often small
+differences are likely to give rise to bitter animosities. But we had in
+the Gyantse garrison men of such vast experience and geniality as
+Colonel Brander, of such high culture and attainment as Colonel
+Younghusband, Captain O'Connor, and Mr. Perceval Landon--the
+correspondent of _The Times_; men whose spirits never failed, and who
+found humour in everything, such as Major Row, Captain Luke, Captain
+Coleridge, Lieutenant Franklin. Amongst the besieged was Colonel
+Waddell, I.M.S., an Orientalist and Sinologist of European fame. Hence,
+in some of its aspects the Gyantse siege was almost a delightful
+episode. In the later days, when all the outpost fighting occurred, our
+spirits were somewhat damped, for we had to mourn brave men killed and
+sympathize with others dangerously wounded.
+
+Of course, one of the first questions for consideration when the Karo la
+column returned to Gyantse was whether the enemy could or could not be
+turned out of the jong. To make a frontal attack on the frowning face
+overlooking the post would have been foolhardy, but Colonel Brander
+decided to make a reconnaissance to a monastery on the high hills to our
+right, whence the jong itself could be overlooked. A subsidiary reason
+for visiting this monastery was that it was known to have afforded
+shelter to a number of those who had fled from the attack on the post.
+The hill was climbed with every military precaution, but only a few old
+monks were found in occupation of the buildings. More disappointing was
+the fact that an examination through telescopes of the rear of the jong
+showed that the Tibetans had been also building indefatigably there. A
+strong loopholed wall ran zigzagging up the side of the rock. It was
+clear that nothing could be done till the General returned from Chumbi
+with more troops and guns.
+
+For more than two weeks our rear remained absolutely open. The post,
+carried by mounted infantry, came in and went out regularly. Two large
+convoys reached us unopposed. The only danger lay in the fact that
+people seen entering or leaving the post came under a heavy fire from
+the jong. To minimize risks, departures from the post were always made
+before dawn.
+
+During the two weeks streams of men could be seen entering the jong from
+both the Shigatze and Lhasa roads. Emboldened by numbers, and also by
+our non-aggressive attitude, the enemy began to cast about for means of
+taking the post. One of the first steps taken by the Tibetan General in
+pursuance of this policy was to occupy during the night a small house
+surrounded by trees, lying to our left front, almost midway between the
+jong and the post. On the morning of the 18th bullets from a new
+direction were whizzing in amongst us, and partly enfilading our
+traverses. This was not to be tolerated, and the same night arrangements
+were made for the capture of the position.
+
+Five companies stole out during the hours of darkness and surrounded the
+house. The rush, delivered at dawn, was left to the Gurkhas. But the
+entrance was found blocked with stones, and the enemy was thoroughly
+awake by the time the Gurkhas were under the wall. Luckily, the
+loopholes were not so constructed as to allow the Tibetans to fire their
+jingals down upon our men, who had only to bear the brunt of showers of
+stones thrown upon them from the roof. The shower was well directed
+enough to bruise a good many Gurkhas. Three officers were struck--
+Major Murray, Lieutenant Lynch, and Lieutenant Franklin, I.M.S. Whilst
+the Gurkhas were striving to effect an entrance, the Pioneer companies
+deployed on the flanks came under a heavy fire from the jong. We had
+three men hit. One fell on a bit of very exposed ground, and was
+gallantly dragged under cover by Colonel Brander and Captain Minogue,
+Staff officer.
+
+It was soon evident that the Gurkhas would never get in without
+explosives. Accordingly, Lieutenant Gurdon, 32nd Pioneers, was sent to
+join them with a box of guncotton. Gurdon speedily blew a hole through
+the wall, and the Gurkhas dashed in yelling. The Tibetans on the roof
+could easily at this time have jumped off and escaped towards the jong.
+But they chose a braver part. They slid down into the middle of the
+courtyard, and, drawing their swords, awaited the Gurkha onset. I must
+not describe the pitiful struggle that followed. The Tibetans--about
+fifty in number--herded themselves together as if to meet a bayonet
+charge, but our troops, rushing through the door, extended themselves
+along the edges of the courtyard, and emptied their magazines into the
+mob. Within a minute all the fifty were either dead or mortally wounded.
+
+The house was hereafter held by a company of Gurkhas all through the
+bombardment, and proved a great thorn in the side of the enemy; for the
+Gurkhas often used to sally out at night and ambuscade parties of men
+and convoys on the Shigatze road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GYANTSE--_continued_
+
+[BY HENRY NEWMAN]
+
+
+On the afternoon of the day on which the house was taken we were
+provided with a new excitement--continuous firing was heard to the rear
+of the post about a mile away. Captain Ottley galloped out with his
+mounted infantry, and was only just in time to save a party of his men
+who were coming up from Kangma with the letter-bags. These Sikhs--eight
+in number--were riding along the edge of the river, when they were met
+by a fusillade from a number of the enemy concealed amongst sedges on
+the opposite bank. Before the Sikhs could take cover, one man was
+killed, three wounded, and seven out of the eight horses shot down. The
+remaining men showed rare courage. They carried their wounded comrades
+under cover of a ditch, untied and brought to the same place the
+letter-bags, and then lay down and returned the fire of the enemy. The
+Tibetans, however, were beginning to creep round, and the ammunition of
+the Sikhs was running low, when Captain Ottley dashed up to the rescue.
+Without waiting to consider how many of the enemy might be hiding in the
+sedge, Ottley took his twenty men splashing through the river. Nearly
+300 Tibetans bolted out in all directions like rabbits from a cover. The
+mounted infantry, shooting and smiting, chased them to the very edge of
+the plain. On reaching hilly ground the enemy, who must have lost about
+fifty of their number, began to turn, having doubtless realized that
+they were running before a handful of men. At the same time shots were
+fired from villages, previously thought unoccupied, on Ottley's left,
+and a body of matchlock men were seen running up to reinforce from a
+large village on the Lhasa road. Under these conditions it would have
+been madness to continue the fight, and Ottley cleverly and skilfully
+withdrew without having lost a single man. In the meanwhile a company of
+Pioneers had brought in the men wounded in the attack on the postal
+riders.
+
+This affair was even more significant than the occupation by the enemy
+of the position taken by the Gurkhas in the early morning. It showed
+that the Tibetan General had at last conceived a plan for cutting off
+our line of communications. This was a rude shock. It implied that the
+enemy had received reinforcements which were to be utilized for
+offensive warfare of the kind most to be feared by an invader. We knew
+that so long as our ammunition lasted there was absolutely no danger of
+the post being captured. But an enemy on the lines would certainly
+cause the greatest annoyance to, and might even cut off, our convoys. As
+it would be very difficult to get messages through, apprehensions as to
+our safety would be excited in the outer world. Further, General
+Macdonald's arrangements for the relief of the mission would have to be
+considerably modified if he were obliged to fight his way through to us.
+
+With the same prompt decision that marked his action with regard to the
+gathering on the Karo la, Colonel Brander determined on the very next
+day to clear the villages found occupied by the mounted infantry. As far
+as could be discovered, the villages were five in number, all on the
+right bank of the river, and occupying a position which could be roughly
+outlined as an equilateral triangle. Captain Ottley was sent round to
+the rear of the villages to cut off the retreat of the enemy; Captain
+Luke took his two mountain-guns, under cover of the right bank of the
+river, to a position whence he could support the infantry attack, if
+necessary, by shell fire. Two companies of Pioneers with one in reserve
+were sent forward to the attack.
+
+The first objective was two villages forming the base of the triangle of
+which I have spoken. The troops advanced cautiously, widely extended,
+but both villages were found deserted. They were set on fire. Then
+Captain Hodgson with a company went forward to the village forming the
+apex of the triangle. He came under a flanking fire from the villages
+on the left, and had one man severely wounded. The houses in front
+seemed to be unoccupied, and our right might have been swung round to
+face this fire; but Colonel Brander was determined to do the work
+thoroughly, and Hodgson was directed to move on and burn the village
+ahead of him before changing front. The troops accordingly took no
+notice of the flanking fire, and moved on till they were under the walls
+of the two houses of which the village was composed.
+
+Suddenly fire was opened on our soldiers from the upper windows of the
+two houses. All the doors were found blocked with bricks and stones. Two
+Sikhs dropped, and for the moment it seemed as if we would lose heavily.
+But Lieutenant Gurdon with half a dozen men rushed up with a box of
+explosives, and blew a breach in the wall. Two of the party helping to
+lay the fuse were killed by shots fired from a loophole a few feet
+above. Captain Hodgson was the first man through the breach. He was
+confronted by a swordsman, who cut hard just as Hodgson fired his
+revolver. The man fell dead, but Hodgson received a severe wound on the
+wrist. But this was the only man who stood after the explosion. About
+thirty others in the village rushed to the roofs of the houses, jumped
+off, and fled to the left. They came, however, under a very heavy fire
+as they were running away, and the majority dropped.
+
+Preparations were now made for taking the remaining village. This was
+protected by a high loopholed embankment, which sheltered about five or
+six hundred of the enemy. The Pioneers had just extended, and were
+advancing, when someone who happened to be looking at the jong through
+his glasses suddenly uttered a loud exclamation. Turning round, we all
+saw a dense stream of men, several thousands in number, forming up at
+the base of the rock, evidently with the intention of rushing the
+mission post whilst the majority of the garrison and the guns were
+engaged elsewhere. Colonel Brander immediately gave the order for the
+whole force to retire into the post at the double. The withdrawal was
+effected before the Tibetans made their contemplated rush, but we all
+felt that it was rather a narrow shave.
+
+Troops were to have gone out again the next day to clear the village we
+had left untaken, but the mounted infantry reconnoitring in the morning
+reported that the enemy had fled, and that the lines of communication
+were again clear.
+
+On the succeeding day a large convoy and reinforcements under Major
+Peterson, 32nd Pioneers, came safely through. The additional troops
+included a section of No. 7 (British) Mountain Battery, under Captain
+Easton; one and a half companies of Sappers and Miners, under Captain
+Shepherd and Lieutenant Garstin; and another company of the 32nd
+Pioneers. Major Peterson reported that his convoy had come under a
+heavy fire from the village and monastery of Naini. This monastery lies
+about seven miles from Gyantse in an opening of the valley just before
+the road turns into Gyantse Plain. It holds about 5,000 monks. When the
+column first passed by it, the monks were extremely friendly, bringing
+out presents of butter and eggs, and readily selling flour and meat. The
+monastery is surrounded by a wall thirty feet high, and at least ten
+feet thick. The buildings inside are also solidly built of stone.
+Altogether the position was a very difficult one to tackle, but Colonel
+Brander, following his usual policy, decided that the enemy must be
+turned out of it at all costs. Accordingly, on the 24th a column, which
+included Captain Easton's two guns, marched out to Naini. But the
+monastery and the group of buildings outside it were found absolutely
+deserted. The walls were far too heavy and strong to be destroyed by a
+small force, which had to return before nightfall, but Captain Shepherd
+blew up the four towers at the corners and a portion of the hall in
+which the Buddhas were enthroned.
+
+The 27th provided a new excitement. About 1,000 yards to the right of
+the post stood what was known as the Palla House, the residence of a
+Tibetan nobleman of great wealth. The building consisted of a large
+double-storied house, surrounded by a series of smaller buildings, each
+within a courtyard of its own. During the night the Tibetans in the jong
+built a covered way extending about half the distance between the jong
+and Palla. In the morning the latter place was seen to be swarming with
+men, busily occupied in erecting defences, making loopholes, and
+generally engaged in work of a menacing character. The enemy could less
+be tolerated in Palla than in the Gurkha outpost, for fire from the
+former would have taken us absolutely in the flank, and the garrison was
+not strong enough to provide the labour necessary for building an
+entirely new series of traverses.
+
+That very night Colonel Brander detailed the troops that were to take
+Palla by assault at dawn. The storming-party was composed of three
+companies of the 32nd under Major Peterson, assisted by the Sappers and
+Miners with explosives under Captain Shepherd. Our four mountain-guns,
+the 7-pounders under Captain Luke, and the 10-pounders under Captain
+Easton, escorted by a company of Gurkhas, were detailed to occupy a
+position on a ridge which overlooked Palla. The troops fell in at two in
+the morning. The night was pitch-dark, but with such care were the
+operations conducted that the troops had made a long detour, and got
+into their respective positions before dawn, without an alarm being
+raised.
+
+Daylight was just breaking when Captain Shepherd crept up to the wall of
+the house on the extreme left, where it was believed the majority of the
+enemy were located, and laid his explosives. A tremendous explosion
+followed, the whole side of the house falling in. A minute afterwards,
+and Palla was alarmed and firing furiously all round, and even up in the
+air. The jong also awoke, and from that time till the village was
+finally ours poured a continuous storm of bullets into Palla, regardless
+whether friend or foe was hit. Our guns on the ridge did their best to
+quiet the jong, but without much effect. Against Tibetan walls, provided
+as they are with head cover, our experience showed shrapnel to be almost
+entirely useless.
+
+A company of Pioneers followed Captain Shepherd into the breach he had
+made. But they found themselves only in a small courtyard, with no means
+of entering the rest of the village, except over or through high walls
+lined by the enemy. All that could be done was to blow in another
+breach. The preparations for doing this were attended with a good deal
+of danger. Of three men who attempted to rush across the courtyard, two
+were killed and the third mortally wounded. However, by creeping along
+under cover of the wall, Captain Shepherd and Lieutenant Garstin were
+able to lay the guncotton and light the fuse for another explosion. They
+were fired at from a distance of a few yards, but escaped being hit by a
+miracle. But the second explosion only led into another courtyard, from
+which there was also no exit. There was the same fire to be faced from
+the next house whilst the needful preparations were being made for
+making a third breach.
+
+During the time Shepherd with his gallant lieutenants and equally
+gallant sepoys was working his way in from the left, the companies of
+Pioneers lining ditches and banks outside Palla were exposed to a
+persistent fire from about a hundred of the enemy inside the big
+two-storied house mentioned above. The men in this house--all Kham
+warriors--seemed to be filled with an extraordinary fury. Many exposed
+themselves boldly at the windows, calling to our men to come on. A dozen
+or so even climbed to the roof of the house, and danced about thereon in
+what seemed frantic derision. There was a Maxim on the ridge with the
+mountain-guns, the fire from which put an end to the fantastic display.
+Our rifle fire, however, seemed totally unable to check the Tibetan
+warriors in the loopholed windows. They kept up a fusillade which made a
+rush impossible. Major Peterson finally, with great daring, led a few
+men into the dwelling on the extreme right. The escalade was managed by
+means of a ruined tree which projected from the wall. But Peterson, like
+Shepherd, found himself in a courtyard with high walls which baffled
+further progress.
+
+The fight now began to drag. Hours passed without any signal incident.
+The Tibetans were greatly elated at the failure of our troops to make
+progress. They shouted and yelled, and were encouraged by answering
+cheers from the jong. Then about mid-day the jong Commandant conceived
+the idea of reinforcing Palla. A dozen men mounted on black mules,
+followed by about fifty infantry, suddenly dashed out from the
+half-completed covered way mentioned above, and made for the village.
+This party was absolutely annihilated. As soon as it emerged from the
+covered way it came under the fire, not only of the troops round the
+village and on the hill, but of the Maxim on the roof of the
+mission-house. In three minutes every single man and mule was down,
+except one animal with a broken leg, gazing disconsolately at the body
+of its master.
+
+This disaster evidently shook the Tibetans in Palla. Their fire
+slackened. Captain Luke on the ridge was then directed to put some
+common shell into the roof of the double-storied house. He dropped the
+shells exactly where they were wanted, and so disconcerted the enemy
+that Shepherd was able to resume his preparations for making a way into
+the Tibetan stronghold. But he still had to face an awkward fire, and
+the three further breaches he made were attended by the loss of several
+men, including Lieutenant Garstin, shot through the head. But the last
+explosion led our troops into the big house. Tibetan resistance then
+practically ceased. About twenty or thirty men made an attempt to get
+away to the jong, but the majority were shot down before they could
+reach the covered way.
+
+In this affair our total casualties were twenty-three. In addition to
+Lieutenant Garstin, we had seven men killed. The wounded included
+Captain O'Connor, R.A., secretary to the mission, and Lieutenant
+Mitchell, 32nd Pioneers. The enemy must have lost quite 250 in killed
+and wounded. The position at Palla was too important to be abandoned,
+and for the rest of the bombardment it was held by a company of Sikhs.
+In order to provide free communication both day and night, Captain
+Shepherd, with his usual energy, dug a covered way from the post to the
+village.
+
+The fight at Palla was the last affair of any importance in which the
+garrison was engaged pending the arrival of the relieving force. The
+Tibetans had received such a shock that in future they confined
+themselves practically to the defensive, if we except five half-hearted
+night attacks which were never anywhere near being pushed home. There
+were no more attempts to interrupt our lines of communication, though
+later on Naini was again occupied as part of the Tibetan scheme for
+resisting General Macdonald's advance. The jong Commandant devoted his
+energies chiefly to strengthening his already strong position.
+
+The night attacks were all very similar in character, and may be summed
+up and dismissed in a paragraph. Generally about midnight, bands of
+Tibetans would issue from the jong and take up their position about four
+or five hundred yards from the post. Then they would shout wildly, and
+fire off their matchlocks and Martini rifles. The troops would
+immediately rush to their loopholes, clad in impossible garments, and
+wait shivering in the cold, finger on trigger, for the rush that never
+came. After shouting and firing for about an hour, the Tibetans would
+retire to the jong and our troops creep back to their beds. On no
+occasion did the enemy come close enough to be seen in the dark. We
+never fired a single shot from the post. Twice, however, the Gurkha
+outpost and the Sikhs at Palla were enabled to get in a few volleys at
+Tibetans as they slunk past. During the night attacks the jong remained
+silent, except on one occasion, when there was so much firing from the
+Gurkha outpost that the enemy thought we were about to make a
+counter-attack. Every jingal, musket, and rifle in the jong was then
+loosed off in any and every direction. We even heard firing in the rear
+of the monastery. Although no one was hit in this wild fire, the volume
+of it was ominously indicative of the strength in which the jong was
+held.
+
+But even more ominous against the day when our troops should be called
+upon to take the jong were the defensive preparations mentioned above.
+Nearly every morning we found that during the night the enemy had built
+up a new wall or covered way somewhere on the jong or about the village
+that fringed the base of the rock. When the fortress was fortified as
+strongly as Tibetan wit could devise, the jong Commandant began to
+fortify and place in a position of defence the villages and monasteries
+on his right and left. It was calculated that, from the small monastery
+perched on the hills to his left to Tsechen Monastery on a ridge to his
+right, the Tibetan General had occupied and fortified a position with
+nearly seven miles of front.
+
+Whilst the Tibetans were engaged in making these preparations, our
+garrison was busy collecting forage for the enormous number of animals
+coming up with the relief column. Our rear being absolutely open, small
+parties with mules were able to collect quantities of hay from villages
+within a radius of seven miles behind us. It was the fire opened on
+these parties when they attempted to push to the right or left of the
+jong which first revealed to us the full extent of the defensive
+position occupied by the enemy.
+
+On June 6 Colonel Younghusband left the post with a returning convoy, in
+order to confer with the General at Chumbi. This convoy was attacked
+whilst halting at the entrenched post at Kangma. The enemy in this
+instance came down from the Karo la, and it is for this reason that I do
+not include the Kangma attack amongst the operations at and around
+Gyantse.
+
+It was not till June 15 that we got definite news of the approaching
+advance of the relief column. Reinforcements had come up to Chumbi from
+India in the interval, and the General was accompanied by the 2nd
+Mounted Infantry under Captain Peterson, No. 7 British Mountain Battery
+under Major Fuller, a section of No. 30 Native Mountain Battery under
+Captain Marindin, four companies of the Royal Fusiliers under Colonel
+Cooper, four companies of the 40th Pathans under Colonel Burn, five
+companies of the 23rd Pioneers under Colonel Hogge, and the two
+remaining companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Colonel Kerr, together with
+the usual medical and other details.
+
+The force arrived at Kangma on June 23. On the 25th a party of mounted
+infantry from Gyantse met Captain Peterson's mounted infantry
+reconnoitring at the monastery of Naini, previously mentioned. Whilst
+greetings were being exchanged a sudden fire was opened on our men from
+the monastery, which the enemy had apparently occupied and fortified
+during the night. The position was apparently held in strength, and the
+mounted infantry had no other course except to retire to their
+respective camps. Captain Peterson had one man mortally wounded.
+
+On the evening of the 26th the sentries at the mission post saw about
+twenty mounted men, followed by two or three hundred infantry, issue
+from the rear of the jong and creep up the hills on our left in the
+direction of Naini. It was evident that a determined effort was to be
+made at the monastery to check the advance of the relief column, which
+was expected at Gyantse next day. Colonel Brander came to the conclusion
+that he had found an opportunity for catching the Tibetans in a trap.
+He determined to send out a force which would block the retreat of the
+enemy when they retired before the advance of the relief column.
+Accordingly, before dawn four companies of Pioneers, four guns, and the
+Maxim gun left the post, and ascended the hills overlooking the
+monastery. Captain Ottley's mounted infantry were directed to close the
+road leading directly from Gyantse to the monastery.
+
+Colonel Brander's forces were in position some hours before the mounted
+infantry of the relief column appeared in sight. It was discovered that
+the enemy not only held the monastery, but some ruined towers on the
+hill above, and a cluster of one-storied dwellings in a grove below.
+Captain Peterson with his mounted infantry appeared in front of the
+monastery at eleven o'clock. He had with him a company of the 40th
+Pathans, and his orders were to clear the monastery with this small
+force, if the enemy made no signs of a stubborn resistance. Otherwise he
+was to await the arrival of more troops with the mountain-guns.
+
+Peterson delivered his attack from the left, having dismounted his
+troopers, who, together with the 40th Pathans, were soon very hotly
+engaged. The troops came under a heavy fire both from the monastery and
+from a ruined tower above it, but advanced most gallantly. When under
+the walls of the monastery, they were checked for some time by the
+difficulty of finding a way in. In the meanwhile, hearing the heavy
+firing, the General and his Staff, followed by Major Fuller's battery
+and the rest of the 40th, had hastened up. The battery came into action
+against the tower, and the 40th rushed up in support of their comrades.
+Colonel Brander's guns and Maxim on the top of the hill were also
+brought into play. For nearly an hour a furious cannonade and fusillade
+raged. Then the Pathans and Peterson's troopers, circling round the
+walls of the monastery, found a ramp up which they could climb. They
+swarmed up, and were quickly inside the building. But the Tibetans had
+realized that their retreat was cut off, and, instead of making a clean
+bolt for it, only retired slowly from room to room and passage to
+passage. Two companies of the 23rd were sent up to assist in clearing
+the monastery. It proved a perfect warren of dark cells and rooms. The
+Tibetan resistance lasted for over two hours. Bands of desperate
+swordsmen were found in knots under trap-doors and behind sharp
+turnings. They would not surrender, and had to be killed by rifle shots
+fired at a distance of a few feet.
+
+While the monastery was being cleared, another fight had developed in
+the cluster of dwellings outside it to the right. From this spot Tibetan
+riflemen were enfilading our troops held in reserve. The remaining
+companies of the 23rd were sent to clear away the enemy. They took three
+houses, but could not effect an entrance into the fourth, which was very
+strongly barricaded. Lieutenant Turnbull, walking up to a window with a
+section, had three men hit in a few seconds. One man fell directly under
+the window. Turnbull carried him into safety in the most gallant
+fashion. Then the General ordered up the guns, which fired into the
+house at a range of a few hundred yards. But not till it was riddled
+with great gaping holes made by common shell did the fire from the house
+cease.
+
+At about three o'clock the Tibetan resistance had completely died away,
+and the column resumed its march towards Gyantse, which was not reached
+till dark. But as the transport was making its slow way past Naini,
+about half a dozen Tibetans who had remained in hiding in the monastery
+and village opened fire on it. The Gurkha rearguard had a troublesome
+task in clearing these men out, and lost one man killed.
+
+In this affair at Naini our casualties were six killed and nine wounded,
+including Major Lye, 23rd Pioneers, who received a severe sword-cut in
+the hand.
+
+The General's camp was pitched about a mile from the mission post, well
+out of range of the jong, though our troops whilst crossing the river
+came under fire from some of the bigger jingals. The next day was one of
+rest, which the troops badly needed after their long march from Chumbi.
+The Tibetans in the jong also refrained from firing. On the 29th the
+General began the operations intended to culminate in the capture of the
+jong. His objective was Tsechen Monastery, on the extreme left. But
+before the monastery could be attacked, some twelve fortified villages
+between it and the river had to be cleared. It proved a difficult task,
+not so much on account of the resistance offered by the enemy--for after
+a few idle shots the Tibetans quickly retired on the monastery--as
+because of the nature of the ground that had to be traversed. The whole
+country was a network of deep irrigation channels and water-cuts, in the
+fording and crossing of which the troops got wet to the skin. However,
+by four in the afternoon all the villages had been cleared, and the
+Fusiliers were lying in a long grove under the right front of the
+monastery.
+
+It was then discovered that not only was Tsechen very strongly held, but
+that masses of the enemy were lying behind the rocks on the top of the
+ridge, on the summit of which there was a ruined tower, also held by
+fifty or sixty men. The General sent two companies of Gurkhas to scale
+the ridge from the left, whilst the 40th Pathans were ordered to make a
+direct assault on the monastery. A hundred mounted infantry made their
+way to the rear to cut off the retreat of the enemy. Fuller and Marindin
+with their guns covered the advance of the infantry. Four Maxims were
+also brought into action. Our guns made splendid practice on the top of
+the ridge, and time and again we could see the enemy bolting from cover.
+But with magnificent bravery they would return to oppose the advance of
+the Gurkhas creeping round their flank. The guns had presently to cease
+fire to enable the Gurkhas to get nearer. A series of desperate little
+fights then took place on the top of the ridge, the Tibetans slinging
+and throwing stones when they found they could not load their muskets
+quickly enough. But as the Gurkhas would not be stopped, the Tibetans
+had to move. In the meanwhile the Pathans worked through the monastery
+below, only meeting with small resistance from a band of men in one
+house. The Tibetans fled in a mass over the right edge of the ridge into
+the jaws of the mounted infantry lying in wait below. Slaughter
+followed.
+
+It was now quite dark, and the troops made their way back to camp. Next
+morning a party went up to Tsechen, found it entirely deserted, and set
+fire to it. The taking of the monastery cost us the lives of Captain
+Craster, 40th Pathans, and two sepoys. Our wounded numbered ten,
+including Captains Bliss and Humphreys, 8th Gurkhas.
+
+On July 1 the General intended assaulting the jong, but in the interval
+the jong Commandant sent in a flag of truce. He prayed for an armistice
+pending the arrival of three delegates who were posting down from Lhasa
+with instructions to make peace. As Colonel Younghusband had been
+directed to lose no opportunity of bringing affairs to an end at
+Gyantse, the armistice was granted, and two days afterwards the
+delegates, all Lamas, were received in open durbar in a large room in
+the mission post. Colonel Younghusband, after having satisfied himself
+that the delegates possessed proper credentials, made them a speech. He
+reviewed the history of the mission, pointing out that we had only come
+to Gyantse because of the obstinacy and evasion of the Tibetan
+officials, who could easily have treated with us at Khamba Jong and
+again at Tuna, had they cared to. We were perfectly willing to come to
+terms here, and it rested with the peace delegates whether we went on to
+Lhasa or not. Younghusband then informed the delegates that he was
+prepared to open negociations on the next day. The delegates were due at
+eleven next morning, but they did not put in an appearance till three.
+They were then told that as a preliminary they must surrender the jong
+by noon on the succeeding day. They demurred a great deal, but the
+Commissioner was quite firm, and they went away downcast, with the
+assurance that if the jong was not surrendered we should take it by
+force. Younghusband, however, added that after the capture of the fort
+he was perfectly willing to open negociations again.
+
+Next day, shortly after noon, a signal gun was fired to indicate that
+the armistice was at an end, and the General forthwith began his
+preparations to storm the formidable hill fortress. The Tibetans had
+taken advantage of the armistice to build more walls and sangars. No one
+could look at the bristling jong without realizing how difficult was
+the task before our troops, and without anxiety as to the outcome of the
+assault in killed and wounded. But we all knew that the jong had to be
+taken, whatever the cost.
+
+Operations began in the afternoon, the General making a demonstration
+against the left face of the jong and Palkhor Choide Monastery. Fuller's
+battery took up a position about 1,600 yards from the jong. Five
+companies of infantry were extended on either flank. Both the jong and
+monastery opened fire on our troops, and we had one man mortally
+wounded. The General's intention, however, was only to deceive the
+Tibetans into thinking that we intended to assault from that side. As
+soon as dusk fell, the troops were withdrawn and preparations made for
+the real assault.
+
+The south-eastern face of the rock on which the jong is built is most
+precipitous, yet this was exactly the face which the General decided to
+storm. His reasons, I imagine, were that the fringe of houses at the
+base of the rock was thinnest on this side, and that the very
+multiplicity of sangars and walls that the enemy had built prevented
+their having the open field of fire necessary to stop a rush. Moreover,
+down the middle of the rock ran a deep fissure or cleft, which was
+commanded, the General noticed, by no tower or loopholed wall. At two
+points, however, the Tibetans had built walls across the fissure. The
+first of these the General believed could be breached by our artillery.
+Our troops through that could work their way round to either flank, and
+so into the heart of the jong.
+
+The plan of operations was very simple. Before dawn three columns were
+to rush the fringe of houses at the base. Then was to follow a storm of
+artillery fire directed on all the salient points of the jong, after
+which our guns were to make a breach in the lower wall across the cleft
+up which the storming-party was later on to climb.
+
+The action turned out exactly as was planned, with the exception that
+the fighting lasted much longer than was expected, for the Tibetans made
+a heroic resistance. The troops were astir shortly after midnight. The
+night was very dark, and the necessary deployment of the three columns
+took some hours. However, an hour before dawn the troops had begun their
+cautious advance, the General and his Staff taking up their position at
+Palla. The alarm was not given till our leading files were within twenty
+yards of the fringe of houses at the base of the rock. The storm of fire
+which then burst from the jong was an alarming indication of the
+strength in which it was held. The heavy jingals were all directed on
+Palla, and the General and his Staff had many narrow escapes. As on the
+previous occasion when the jong bombarded us at night, there were
+moments when every building in it seemed outlined in flame.
+
+Of the three columns, only that on the extreme left, Gurkhas under
+Major Murray, was able to get in at once. The other two columns were for
+the time being checked, so bullet-swept was the open space they had to
+cross. From time to time small parties of two or three dashed across in
+the dark, and gained the shelter of the walls of the houses in front.
+There were barely twenty men and half a dozen officers across when
+Captain Shepherd blew in the walls of the house most strongly held. The
+storming-party came under a most heavy fire from the jong above. Among
+those hit was Lieutenant Gurdon, of the 32nd. He was shot through the
+head, and died almost immediately. The breach made by Shepherd was the
+point to which most of the men of the centre and right columns made, but
+their progress became very slow when daylight appeared and the Tibetans
+could see what they were firing at. It was not till nearly nine o'clock
+that the whole fringe of houses at the base of the front face of the
+rock was in our possession.
+
+Then followed several hours of cannonading and small-arms fire. The
+position the troops had now won was commanded almost absolutely from the
+jong. It was found impossible to return the Tibetan fire from the roofs
+of the houses we had occupied without exposing the troops in an
+unnecessary degree, but loopholes were hastily made in the walls of the
+rooms below, and the 40th Pathans were sent into a garden on the extreme
+right, where some cover was to be had. Colonel Campbell, commanding the
+first line, was able to show the enemy that our marksmen were still in a
+position to pick off such Tibetans as were rash enough to unduly expose
+themselves. In the meanwhile, Luke's guns on the extreme right, Fuller's
+battery at Palla, and Marindin's guns at the Gurkha outpost threw a
+stream of shrapnel on all parts of the jong.
+
+But it was not till four o'clock in the afternoon that the General
+decided that the time had come to make the breach aforementioned. The
+reserve companies of Gurkhas and Fusiliers were sent across from Palla
+in the face of very heavy jingal and rifle fire, and took cover in the
+houses we had occupied. In the meanwhile Fuller was directed to make the
+breach. So magnificent was the shooting made by his guns that a dozen
+rounds of common shell, planted one below the other, had made a hole
+large enough for active men to clamber through. The enemy quickly saw
+the purport of the breach. Dozens of men could be distinctly seen
+hurrying to the wall above it.
+
+Then the Gurkhas and Fusiliers began their perilous ascent. The nimble
+Gurkhas, led by Lieutenant Grant, soon outpaced the Fusiliers, and in
+ten brief minutes forty or fifty of them were crouching under the
+breach. The Tibetans, finding their fire could not stop us, tore great
+stones from the walls and rolled them down the cleft. Dozens of men were
+hit and bruised. Presently Grant was through the breach, followed by
+fifteen or twenty flushed and shouting men. The breach won, the only
+thought of the enemy was flight. They made their way by the back of the
+jong into the monastery. By six o'clock every building in the great
+fortress was in our possession.
+
+Our casualties in this affair were forty-three--Lieutenant Gurdon and
+seven men killed, and twelve officers, including the gallant Grant, and
+twenty-three men wounded. These casualties exclude a number of men cut
+and bruised with stones.
+
+Next morning the monastery was found deserted. It was reported that the
+bulk of the enemy had fled to Dongtse, about ten miles up the Shigatze
+road. A column was sent thither, but found the place empty, except for a
+very humble and submissive monk.
+
+On the 14th, having waited for over a week in the hope of the peace
+delegates putting in an appearance, the force started on its march to
+Lhasa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT
+
+
+    ARI, SIKKIM,
+      _June 24._
+
+I write in an old forest rest-house on the borders of British Bhutan.
+
+The place is quiet and pastoral; climbing roses overhang the roof and
+invade the bedrooms; martins have built their nests in the eaves;
+cuckoos are calling among the chestnuts down the hill. Outside is a
+flower-garden, gay with geraniums and petunias and familiar English
+plants that have overrun their straggling borders and scattered
+themselves in the narrow plot of grass that fringes the forest. Some
+Government officer must have planted them years ago, and left them to
+fight it out with Nature and the caretaker.
+
+The forest has encroached, and it is hard to say where Nature's hand or
+Art's begins and ends. Beside a rose-bush there has sprung up the solid
+pink club of the wild ginger, and from a bed of amaryllis a giant arum
+raises itself four feet in its dappled, snake-like sheath. Gardens have
+most charm in spots like this, where their mingled trimness and neglect
+contrast with the insolent unconcern of an encroaching forest.
+
+At Ari I am fifty miles from Darjeeling, on the road to Lhasa.
+
+On June 21 I set my face to Lhasa for the second time. I took another
+route to Chumbi, via Kalimpong and Pedong in British Bhutan. The road is
+no further, but it compasses some arduous ascents. On the other hand it
+avoids the low, malarious valleys of Sikkim, where the path is
+constantly carried away by slips. There is less chance of a block, and
+one is above the cholera zone. The Jelap route, which I strike
+to-morrow, is closed, owing to cholera and land-slips, so that I shall
+not touch the line of communications until within a few miles of Chumbi,
+in which time my wound will have had a week longer to heal before I risk
+a medical examination and the chance of being sent back. The relief
+column is due at Gyantse in a few days; it depends on the length of the
+operations there whether I catch the advance to Lhasa.
+
+Through avoiding the Nathu-la route to Chumbi I had to arrange my own
+transport. In Darjeeling my coolies bolted without putting a pack on
+their backs. More were secured; these disappeared in the night at
+Kalimpong without waiting to be paid. Pack-ponies were hired to replace
+them, but these are now in a state of collapse. Arguing, and haggling,
+and hectoring, and blarneying, and persuading are wearisome at all
+times, but more especially in these close steamy valleys, where it is
+too much trouble to lift an eyelid, and the air induces an almost
+immoral state of lassitude, in which one is tempted to dole out silver
+indifferently to anyone who has it in his power to oil the wheels of
+life. I could fill a whole chapter with a jeremiad on transport, but it
+is enough to indicate, to those who go about in vehicles, that there are
+men on the road to Tibet now who would beggar themselves and their
+families for generations for a macadamized highway and two hansom cabs
+to carry them and their belongings smoothly to Lhasa. Before I reached
+Kalimpong I wished I had never left the 'radius.' No one should embark
+on Asiatic travel who is not thoroughly out of harmony with
+civilization.
+
+The servant question is another difficulty. No native bearer wishes to
+join the field force. Why should he? He has to cook and pack and do the
+work of three men; he has to make long, exhausting marches; he is
+exposed to hunger, cold, and fatigue; he may be under fire every day;
+and he knows that if he falls into the hands of the Tibetans, like the
+unfortunate servants of Captain Parr at Gyantse, he will be brutally
+murdered and cut up into mincemeat. In return for which he is fed and
+clothed, and earns ten rupees more a month than he would in the security
+of his own home. After several unsuccessful trials, I have found one
+Jung Bir, a Nepali bearer, who is attached to me because I forget
+sometimes to ask for my bazaar account, and do not object to his being
+occasionally drunk. In Tibet the poor fellow will have little chance of
+drinking.
+
+My first man lost his nerve altogether, and, when told to work, could
+only whine out that his father and mother were not with him. My next
+applicant was an opium-eater, prematurely bent and aged, with the dazed
+look of a toad that has been incarcerated for ages in a rock, and is at
+last restored to light and the world by the blow of a mason's hammer. He
+wanted money to buy more dreams, and for this he was willing to expose
+his poor old body to hardships that would have killed him in a month.
+Jung Bir was a Gurkha and more martial. His first care on being engaged
+was to buy a long and heavy chopper--'for making mince,' he said; but I
+knew it was for the Tibetans.
+
+To reach Ari one has to descend twice, crossing the Teesta at 700 feet,
+and the Russett Chu at 1,500 feet. These valleys are hotter than the
+plains of India. The streams run east and west, and the cliffs on both
+sides catch the heat of the early morning sun and hold it all day. The
+closeness, the refraction from the rocks, and the evaporation of the
+water, make the atmosphere almost suffocating, and one feels the heat
+the more intensely by the change from the bracing air above. Crossing
+the Teesta, one enters British Bhutan, a strip of land of less than 300
+square miles on the left bank of the river. It was ceded to us with
+other territories by the treaty of 1865; or, in plain words, it was
+annexed by us as a punishment for the outrage on Sir Ashley Eden, the
+British Envoy, who was captured and grossly insulted by the Bhutanese at
+Punakha in the previous year. The Bhutanese were as arrogant, exclusive,
+and impossible to deal with, in those days, as the Tibetans are to-day.
+Yet they have been brought into line, and are now our friends. Why
+should not the Tibetans, who are of the same stock, yield themselves to
+enlightenment? Their evolution would be no stranger.
+
+Nine miles above the Teesta bridge is Kalimpong, the capital of British
+Bhutan, and virtually the foreign mart for what trade passes out of
+Tibet. The Tomos of the Chumbi Valley, who have the monopoly of the
+carrying, do not go further south than this. At Kalimpong I found a
+horse-dealer with a good selection of 'Bhutia tats.' These excellent
+little beasts are now well known to be as strong and plucky a breed of
+mountain ponies as can be found anywhere. I discovered that their fame
+is not merely modern when I came across what must be the first reference
+to them in history in the narrative of Master Ralph Fitch, England's
+pioneer to India. 'These northern merchants,' says Fitch, speaking of
+the Bhutia, 'report that in their countrie they haue very good horses,
+but they be litle.' The Bhutias themselves, equally ubiquitous in the
+Sikkim Himalayas, but not equally indispensable, Fitch describes to the
+letter. At Kalimpong I found them dirty, lazy, good-natured, independent
+rascals, possessed, apparently, of wealth beyond their deserts, for hard
+work is as alien to their character as straight dealing. Even the
+drovers will pay a coolie good wages to cut grass for them rather than
+walk a mile downhill to fetch it themselves.
+
+The main street of Kalimpong is laid out in the correct boulevard style,
+with young trees protected by tubs and iron railings. It is dominated by
+the church of the Scotch Mission, whose steeple is a landmark for miles.
+The place seems to be overrun with the healthiest-looking English
+children I have seen anywhere, whose parents are given over to very
+practical good works.
+
+I took the Bhutan route chiefly to avoid running the gauntlet of the
+medicals; but another inducement was the prospect of meeting Father
+Desgodins, a French Roman Catholic, Vicar Apostolic of the Roman
+Catholic Mission to Western Tibet, who, after fifty years' intimacy with
+various Mongol types, is probably better acquainted with the Tibetans
+than any other living European.
+
+I met Father Desgodins at Pedong. The rest-house here looks over the
+valley to his symmetrical French presbytery and chapel, perched on the
+hillside amid waving maize-fields, whose spring verdure is the greenest
+in the world. Scattered over the fields are thatched Lamas' houses and
+low-storied gompas, with overhanging eaves and praying-flags--'horses
+of the wind,' as the Tibetans picturesquely call them, imagining that
+the prayers inscribed on them are carried to the good god, whoever he
+may be, who watches their particular fold and fends off intruding
+spirits as well as material invaders.
+
+Behind the presbytery are terraced rice-fields, irrigated by perennial
+streams, and bordered by thick artemisia scrub, which in the hot sun,
+after rain, sends out an aromatic scent, never to be dissociated in
+travellers' dreams and reveries from these great southern slopes of the
+Himalayas.
+
+Pere Desgodins is an erect old gentleman with quiet, steely gray eyes
+and a tawny beard now turning gray. He is known to few Englishmen, but
+his adventurous travels in Tibet and his devoted, strenuous life are
+known throughout Europe.
+
+He was sent out from France to the Tibet Mission shortly after the
+murder of Krick and Bourry by the Mishmis. Failing to enter Tibet from
+the south through Sikkim, he made preparations for an entry by Ladak.
+His journey was arrested by the Indian Mutiny, when he was one of the
+besieged at Agra. He afterwards penetrated Western Tibet as far as
+Khanam, but was recalled to the Chinese side, where he spent twenty-two
+perilous and adventurous years in the establishment of the mission at
+Batang and Bonga. The mission was burnt down and the settlement expelled
+by the Lamas. In 1888 Father Desgodins was sent to Pedong, his present
+post, as Pro-vicar of the Mission to Western Tibet.
+
+With regard to the present situation in Tibet, Father Desgodins
+expressed astonishment at our policy of folded arms.
+
+'You have missed the occasion,' he said; 'you should have made your
+treaty with the Tibetans themselves in 1888. You could have forced them
+to treat then, when they were unprepared for a military invasion. You
+should have said to them'--here Pere Desgodins took out his watch--'"It
+is now one o'clock. Sign that treaty by five, or we advance to-morrow."
+What could they have done? Now you are too late. They have been
+preparing for this for the last fifteen years.'
+
+Father Desgodins was right. It is the old story of ill-advised
+conciliation and forbearance. We were afraid of the bugbear of China.
+The British Government says to her victim after the chastisement:
+'You've had your lesson. Now run off and be good.' And the spoilt child
+of arrested civilization runs off with his tongue in his cheek and
+learns to make new arms and friends. The British Government in the
+meantime sleeps in smug complacency, and Exeter Hall is appeased.
+
+'But why did you not treat with the Tibetans themselves?' Pere Desgodins
+asked. 'China!'--here he made an expressive gesture--'I have known China
+for fifty years. She is not your friend.' Of course it is to the
+interest of China to keep the tea monopoly, and to close the market to
+British India. Travellers on the Chinese borders are given passports and
+promises of assistance, but the natives of the districts they traverse
+are ordered to turn them back and place every obstacle in their way.
+Nobody knows this better than Father Desgodins. China's policy is the
+same with nations as with individuals. She will always profess
+willingness to help, but protest that her subjects are unmanageable and
+out of hand. Why, then, deal with China at all? We can only answer that
+she had more authority in Lhasa in 1888. Moreover, we were more afraid
+of offending her susceptibilities. But that bubble has burst.
+
+Others who hold different views from Pere Desgodins say that this very
+unruliness of her vassal ought to make China welcome our intervention in
+Tibet, if we engage to respect her claims there when we have subdued the
+Lamas. This policy might certainly point a temporary way out of the
+muddle, whereby we could save our face and be rid of the Tibet incubus
+for perhaps a year. But the plan of leaving things to the suzerain Power
+has been tried too often.
+
+As I rode down the Pedong street from the presbytery someone called me
+by name, and a little, smiling, gnome-like man stepped out of a
+whitewashed office. It was Phuntshog, a Tibetan friend whom I had known
+six years previously on the North-East frontier. I dismounted,
+expecting entertainment.
+
+The office was bare of furniture save a new writing-table and two
+chairs, but heaped round the walls were piles of cast steel and iron
+plates and files and pipes for bellows. Phuntshog explained that he was
+frontier trade examiner, and that the steel had been purchased in
+Calcutta by a Lama last year, and was confiscated on the frontier as
+contraband. It was material for an armoury. The spoilt child was making
+new arms, like the schoolboy who exercises his muscle to avenge himself
+after a beating.
+
+'Do you get much of this sort of thing?' I asked.
+
+'Not now,' he said; 'they have given up trying to get it through this
+way.'
+
+A few years ago eight Mohammedans, experts in rifle manufacture, had
+been decoyed from a Calcutta factory to Lhasa. Two had died there, and
+one I traced at Yatung. His wife had not been allowed to pass the
+barrier, but he was given a Tibetan helpmate. The wife lived some months
+at Yatung, and used to receive large instalments from her husband; once,
+I was told, as much as Rs. 1,400. But he never came back. The Tibetans
+have learned to make rifles for themselves now. Phuntshog had a story
+about another suspicious character, a mysterious Lama who arrived in
+Darjeeling in 1901 from Calcutta with 5,000 alms bowls for Tibet, which
+he said he had purchased in Germany. The man was detained in Darjeeling
+five months under police espionage, and finally sent back to Calcutta.
+
+Our Intelligence Department on this frontier is more alert than it used
+to be. Dorjieff, Phuntshog told me, had been to Darjeeling twice, and
+stayed in a trader's house at Kalimpong several days. He wore the dress
+of a Lama. The ostensible object of his journey was to visit the sacred
+Chorten at Khatmandu and the shrines of Benares. He visited these, and
+was known to spend some time in Calcutta. On the occasion of the mission
+to St. Petersburg Dorjieff and his colleagues entered India through
+Nepal, took train to Bombay, and shipped thence to Odessa. The discovery
+of the Lamas' visit to India was almost simultaneous with their
+departure from Bombay.
+
+Phuntshog is not an admirer of our Tibetan policy. We ought to have laid
+ourselves out, he said, to influence the Lamas by secret agents, as
+Russia did. There was no chance of a compromise now; they would fight to
+the death. Phuntshog said much more which I suspected was inspired by
+the daily newspapers, so I questioned him as to the feelings of the
+natives of the district.
+
+'The feeling of patriotism is extinct,' he said; and he looked at his
+stomach, showing that he spoke the truth. 'We Tibetan British subjects
+are fed well and paid well by your Government. We want nothing more. My
+family are here. Now I have no trade to examine.' His eyes slowly
+surveyed the room, glanced over his office table, with its pen and ink
+and blank paper, lit on the 150 maunds of cast-steel, and finally rested
+on two volumes by his elbow.
+
+'Do you read much?' I asked.
+
+'Sometimes,' he said. 'I have learnt a good deal from these books.'
+
+They were the Holy Bible and Miss Braddon's 'Dead Men's Shoes.'
+
+'Phuntshog,' I said, 'you are a psychological enigma. Your mind is like
+that cast-iron huddled in the corner there, bought in an enlightened
+Western city and destined for your benighted Lhasa, but stuck halfway.
+Only it was going the other way. You don't understand? Neither do I.'
+
+And here at Ari, as I look across the valley of the Russett Chu to
+Pedong, and hear the vesper bell, I cannot help thinking of that strange
+conflict of minds--the devotee who, seeing further than most men, has
+cared nothing for the things of this incarnation, and Phuntshog, the
+strange hybrid product of restless Western energies, stirring and
+muddying the shallows of the Eastern mind. Or are they depths?
+
+Who knows? I know nothing, only that these men are inscrutable, and one
+cannot see into their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+TO THE GREAT RIVER
+
+
+I reached Gyantse on July 12. The advance to Lhasa began on the 14th. As
+might be expected from the tone of the delegates, peace negociations
+fell through. The Lhasa Government seemed to be chaotic and conveniently
+inaccessible. The Dalai Lama remained a great impersonality, and the
+four Shapes or Councillors disclaimed all responsibility. The Tsong-du,
+or National Assembly, who virtually governed the country, had sent us no
+communication. The delegates' attitude of _non possumus_ was not
+assumed. Though these men were the highest officials in Tibet, they
+could not guarantee that any settlement they might make with us would be
+faithfully observed. There seemed no hope of a solution to the deadlock
+except by absolute militarism. If the Tibetans had fought so stubbornly
+at Gyantse, what fanaticism might we not expect at Lhasa! Most of us
+thought that we could only reach the capital through the most awful
+carnage. We pictured the 40,000 monks of Lhasa hurling themselves
+defiantly on our camp. We saw them mown down by Maxims, lanes of dead.
+A hopeless struggle, and an ugly page in military history. Still, we
+must go on; there was no help for it. The blood of these people was on
+their own heads.
+
+We left Gyantse on the 14th, and plunged into the unknown towards Lhasa,
+which we had reason to believe lay in some hidden valley 150 miles to
+the north, beyond the unexplored basin of the Tsangpo. Every position on
+the road was held. The Karo la had been enormously strengthened, and was
+occupied by 2,000 men. The enemy's cavalry, which we had never seen,
+were at Nagartse Jong. Gubshi, a dilapidated fort, only nineteen miles
+on the road, was held by several hundred. The Tibetans intended to
+dispute the passage of the Brahmaputra, and there were other strong
+positions where the path skirted the Kyi-chu for miles beneath
+overhanging rocks, which were carefully prepared for booby-traps. We had
+to launch ourselves into this intensely hostile region and compel some
+people--we did not know whom--to attach their signatures and seals to a
+certain parchment which was to bind them to good behaviour in the
+future, and a recognition of obligations they had hitherto disavowed.
+
+Our force consisted of eight companies of the 8th Gurkhas, five
+companies of the 32nd Pioneers, four companies of the 40th Pathans, four
+companies of the Royal Fusiliers, two companies of Mounted Infantry,
+No. 30 British Mountain Battery, a section of No. 7 Native Mountain
+Battery, 1st Madras Sappers and Miners, machine-gun section of the
+Norfolks, and details.[14] The 23rd Pioneers, to their disgust, were
+left to garrison Gyantse. The transport included mule, yak, donkey, and
+coolie corps.
+
+  [14] Companies of Pathans and Gurkhas were left to garrison Ralung,
+      Nagartse, Pehte, Chaksam, and Toilung Bridge.
+
+The first three marches to Ralung were a repetition of the country
+between Kalatso and Gyantse--in the valley a strip of irrigated land,
+green and gold, with alternate barley and mustard fields between
+hillsides bare and verdureless save for tufts of larkspur, astragalus,
+and scattered yellow poppies. To Gyantse one descends 2,000 feet from a
+country entirely barren of trees to a valley of occasional willow and
+poplar groves; while from Gyantse, as one ascends, the clusters of trees
+become fewer, until one reaches the treeless zone again at Ralung
+(15,000 feet). The last grove is at Gubchi.
+
+I quote some notes of the march from my diary:
+
+'_July 14._--The villages by the roadside are deserted save for old
+women and barking dogs. The Tibetans came down from the Karo la and
+impressed the villagers. Many have fled into the hills, and are hiding
+among the rocks and caves. Our pickets fired on some to-night. Seeing
+their heads bobbing up and down among the rocks, they thought they were
+surrounded. Many of the fugitives were women. Luckily, none were hit.
+They were brought into camp whimpering and salaaming, and became
+embarrassingly grateful when it was made clear to them that they were
+not to be tortured or killed, but set free. They were called back,
+however, to give information about grain, and thought their last hour
+had come.'
+
+'_July 16._--All the houses between Gubchi and Ralung are decorated with
+diagonal blue, red, and white stripes, characteristic of the Ning-ma
+sect of Buddhists. They remind me of the walls of Damascus after the
+visit of the German Emperor. Heavy rain falls every day. Last night we
+camped in a wet mustard-field. It is impossible to keep our bedding
+dry.'
+
+From Ralung the valley widens out, and the country becomes more bleak.
+We enter a plateau frequented by gazelle. Cultivation ceases. The ascent
+to the Karo Pass is very gradual. The path takes a sudden turn to the
+east through a narrow gorge.
+
+On the 17th we camped under the Karo la in the snow range of Noijin Kang
+Sang, at an elevation of 1,000 feet above Mont Blanc. The pass was free
+of snow, but a magnificent glacier descended within 500 feet of the
+camp. We lay within four miles of the enemy's position. Most of us
+expected heavy fighting the next morning, as we knew the Tibetans had
+been strengthening their defences at the Karo la for some days. Volleys
+were fired on our scouts on the 16th and 17th. The old wall had been
+extended east and west until it ended in vertical cliffs just beneath
+the snow-line. A second barrier had been built further on, and sangars
+constructed on every prominent point to meet flank attacks. The wall
+itself was massively strong, and it was approached by a steep cliff, up
+which it was impossible to make a sustained charge, as the rarefied air
+at this elevation (16,600 feet) leaves one breathless after the
+slightest exertion. The Karo la was the strongest position on the road
+to Lhasa. If the Tibetans intended to make another stand, here was their
+chance.
+
+In the messes there was much discussion as to the seriousness of the
+opposition we were likely to meet with. The flanking parties had a long
+and difficult climb before them that would take them some hours, and the
+general feeling was that we should be lucky if we got the transport
+through by noon. But when one of us suggested that the Tibetans might
+fail to come up to the scratch, and abandon the position without firing
+a shot, we laughed at him; but his conjecture was very near the mark.
+
+At 7 a.m. the troops forming the line of advance moved into position.
+The disposition of the enemy's sangars made a turning movement extremely
+difficult, but a frontal attack on the wall, if stubbornly resisted,
+could not be carried without severe loss. General Macdonald sent
+flanking parties of the 8th Gurkhas on both sides of the valley to scale
+the heights and turn the Tibetan position, and despatched the Royal
+Fusiliers along the centre of the valley to attack the wall when the
+opposition had been weakened.
+
+Stretched on a grassy knoll on the left, enjoying the sunshine and the
+smell of the warm turf, we civilians watched the whole affair with our
+glasses. It might have been a picnic on the Surrey downs if it were not
+for the tap-tap of the Maxim, like a distant woodpecker, in the valley,
+and the occasional report of the 10-pounders by our side, which made the
+valleys and cliffs reverberate like thunder.
+
+The Tibetans' ruse was to open fire from the wall directly our troops
+came into view, and then evacuate the position. They thus delayed the
+pursuit while we were waiting for the scaling-party to ascend the
+heights.
+
+At nine o'clock the Gurkhas on the left signalled that no enemy were to
+be seen. At the same time Colonel Cooper, of the Royal Fusiliers,
+heliographed that the wall was unoccupied and the Tibetans in full
+retreat. The mounted infantry were at once called up for the pursuit.
+Meanwhile one or two jingals and some Tibetan marksmen kept up an
+intermittent fire on the right flanking party from clefts in the
+overhanging cliffs. A battery replied with shrapnel, covering our
+advance. These pickets on the left stayed behind and engaged our right
+flanking party until eleven o'clock. To turn the position the Gurkhas
+climbed a parallel ridge, and were for a long time under fire of their
+jingals. The last part of the ascent was along the edge of a glacier,
+and then on to the shoulder of the ridge by steps which the Gurkhas cut
+in the ice with their _kukris_, helping one another up with the butts of
+their rifles. They carried rope scaling-ladders, but these were for the
+descent. At 11.30 Major Murray and his two companies of Gurkhas appeared
+on the heights, and possession was taken of the pass. The ridge that the
+Tibetans had held was apparently deserted, but every now and then a man
+was seen crouching in a cave or behind a rock, and was shot down. One
+Kham man shot a Gurkha who was looking into the cave where he was
+hiding. He then ran out and held up his thumbs, expecting quarter. He
+was rightly cut down with _kukris_. The dying Gurkha's comrades rushed
+the cave, and drove six more over the precipice without using steel or
+powder. They fell sheer 300 feet. Another Gurkha cut off a Tibetan's
+head with his own sword. On several occasions they hesitated to soil
+their _kukris_ when they could despatch their victims in any other way.
+
+[Illustration: KARO LA]
+
+On a further ridge, a heart-breaking ascent of shale and boulders, we
+saw two or three hundred Tibetans ascending into the clouds. We had
+marked them at the beginning of the action, before we knew that the wall
+was unoccupied. Even then it was clear that the men were fugitives, and
+had no thought of holding the place. We could see them hours afterwards,
+with our glasses, crouching under the cliffs. We turned shrapnel and
+Maxims on them; the hillsides began to move. Then a company of Pathans
+was sent up, and despatched over forty. It was at this point I saw an
+act of heroism which quite changed my estimate of these men. A group of
+four were running up a cliff, under fire from the Pathans at a distance
+of about 500 yards. One was hit, and his comrade stayed behind to carry
+him. The two unimpeded Tibetans made their escape, but the rescuer could
+only shamble along with difficulty. He and his wounded comrade were both
+shot down.
+
+The 18th was a disappointing day to our soldiers. But the action was of
+great interest, owing to the altitude in which our flanking parties had
+to operate. There is a saying on the Indian frontier: 'There is a hill;
+send up a Gurkha.' These sturdy little men are splendid mountaineers,
+and will climb up the face of a rock while the enemy are rolling down
+stones on them as coolly as they will rush a wall under heavy fire on
+the flat. Their arduous climb took three and a half hours, and was a
+real mountaineering feat. The cave fighting, in which they had three
+casualties, took place at 19,000 feet, and this is probably the highest
+elevation at which an action has been fought in history.
+
+A few of the Tibetans fled by the highroad, along which the mounted
+infantry pursued, killing twenty and taking ten prisoners. I asked a
+native officer how he decided whom to spare or kill, and he said he
+killed the men who ran, and spared those who came towards him. The
+destiny that preserved the lives of our ten Kham prisoners when nearly
+the whole of the levy perished reminded me in its capriciousness of
+Caliban's whim in Setebos:
+
+    'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
+    Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'
+
+These Kham men were in our mounted infantry camp until the release of
+the prisoners in Lhasa, and made themselves useful in many ways--loading
+mules, carrying us over streams, fetching wood and water, and fodder for
+our horses. They were fed and cared for, and probably never fared better
+in their lives. When they had nothing to do, they would sit down in a
+circle and discuss things resignedly--the English, no doubt, and their
+ways, and their own distant country. Sometimes they would ask to go
+home; their mothers and wives did not know if they were alive or dead.
+But we had no guarantee that they would not fight us again. Now they
+knew the disparity of their arms they might shrink from further
+resistance, yet there was every chance that the Lamas would compel them
+to fight. They became quite popular in the camp, these wild, long-haired
+men, they were so good-humoured, gentle in manner, and ready to help.
+
+I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle was so hopeless. They
+were brave and simple, and none of us bore the slightest vindictiveness
+against them. Here was all the brutality of war, and none of the glory
+and incentive. These men were of the same race as the people I had been
+living amongst at Darjeeling--cheerful, jolly fellows--and I had seen
+their crops ruined, their houses burnt and shelled, the dead lying about
+the thresholds of what were their homes, and all for no fault of their
+own--only because their leaders were politically impossible, which, of
+course, the poor fellows did not know, and there was no one to tell
+them. They thought our advance an act of unprovoked aggression, and they
+were fighting for their homes.
+
+Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning to put the fear of
+God into them. We never saw a Tibetan within five miles who did not
+carry a huge white flag. The second action at the Karo la was the end of
+the Tibetan resistance. The fall of Gyantse Jong, which they thought
+unassailable, seems to have broken their spirit altogether. At the Karo
+la they had evidently no serious intention of holding the position, but
+fought like men driven to the front against their will, with no
+confidence or heart in the business at all. The friendly Bhutanese told
+us that the Tibetans would not stand where they had once been defeated,
+and that levies who had once faced us were not easily brought into the
+field again. These were casual generalizations, no doubt, but they
+contained a great deal of truth. The Kham men who opposed us at the
+first Karo la action, the Shigatze men who attacked the mission in May,
+and the force from Lhasa who hurled themselves on Kangma, were all new
+levies. Many of our prisoners protested very strongly against being
+released, fearing to be exposed again to our bullets and their own
+Lamas.
+
+On the 18th we reached Nagartse Jong, and found the Shapes awaiting us.
+They met us in the same impracticable spirit. We were not to occupy the
+jong, and they were not empowered to treat with us unless we returned to
+Gyantse. It was a repetition of Khamba Jong and Tuna. In the afternoon a
+durbar was held in Colonel Younghusband's tent, when the Tibetans showed
+themselves appallingly futile and childish. They did not seem to realize
+that we were in a position to dictate terms, and Colonel Younghusband
+had to repeat that it was now too late for any compromise, and the
+settlement must be completed at Lhasa.
+
+From Nagartse we held interviews with these tedious delegates at almost
+every camp. They exhausted everyone's patience except the
+Commissioner's. For days they did not yield a point, and refused even
+to discuss terms unless we returned to Gyantse. But their protests
+became more urgent as we went on, their tone less minatory. It was not
+until we were within fifty miles of Lhasa that the Tibetan Government
+deigned to enter into communication with the mission. At Tamalung
+Colonel Younghusband received the first communication from the National
+Assembly; at Chaksam arrived the first missive the British Government
+had ever received from the Dalai Lama. During the delay at the ferry the
+councillors practically threw themselves on Colonel Younghusband's
+mercy. They said that their lives would be forfeited if we proceeded,
+and dwelt on the severe punishment they might incur if they failed to
+conclude negociations satisfactorily. But Colonel Younghusband was equal
+to every emergency. It would be impossible to find another man in the
+British Empire with a personality so calculated to impress the Tibetans.
+He sat through every durbar a monument of patience and inflexibility,
+impassive as one of their own Buddhas. Priests and councillors found
+that appeals to his mercy were hopeless. He, too, had orders from his
+King to go to Lhasa; if he faltered, _his_ life also was at stake;
+decapitation would await _him_ on his return. That was the impression he
+purposely gave them. It curtailed palaver. How in the name of all their
+Buddhas were they to stop such a man?
+
+The whole progress of negociations put me in mind of the coercion of
+very naughty children. The Lamas tried every guile to reduce his
+demands. They would be cajoling him now if he had not given them an
+ultimatum, and if they had not learnt by six weeks' contact and
+intercourse with the man that shuffling was hopeless, that he never made
+a promise that was not fulfilled, or a threat that was not executed. The
+Tibetan treaty was the victory of a personality, the triumph of an
+impression on the least impressionable people in the world. But I
+anticipate.
+
+While the Shapes were holding Colonel Younghusband in conference at
+Nagartse, their cavalry were escorting a large convoy on the road to
+Lhasa. Our mounted infantry came upon them six miles beyond Nagartse,
+and as they were rounding them up the Tibetans foolishly fired on them.
+We captured eighty riding and baggage ponies and mules and fourteen
+prisoners, and killed several. They made no stand, though they were well
+armed with a medley of modern rifles and well mounted. This was actually
+the last shot fired on our side. The delegates had been full of
+assurances that the country was clear of the enemy, hoping that the
+convoy would get well away while they delayed us with fruitless protests
+and reiterated demands to go back. While they were palavering in the
+tent, they looked out and saw the Pathans go past with their rich yellow
+silks and personal baggage looted in the brush with the cavalry. Their
+consternation was amusing, and the situation had its element of humour.
+A servant rushed to the door of the tent and delivered the whole tale of
+woe. A mounted infantry officer arrived and explained that our scouts
+had been fired on. After this, of course, there was no talk of anything
+except the restitution of the loot. The Shapes deserved to lose their
+kit. I do not remember what was arranged, but if any readers of this
+record see a gorgeous yellow cloak of silk and brocade at a fancy-dress
+ball in London, I advise them to ask its history.
+
+This last encounter with the Tibetans is especially interesting, as they
+were the best-armed body of men we had met. The weapons we captured
+included a Winchester rifle, several Lhasa-made Martinis, a bolt rifle
+of an old Austrian pattern, an English-made muzzle-loading rifle, a
+12-bore breech-loading shot-gun, some Eley's ammunition, and an English
+gun-case. The reports of Russian arms found in Tibet have been very much
+exaggerated. During the whole campaign we did not come across more than
+thirty Russian Government rifles, and these were weapons that must have
+drifted into Tibet from Mongolia, just as rifles of British pattern
+found their way over the Indian frontier into Lhasa. Also it must be
+remembered that the weapons locally made in Lhasa were of British
+pattern, and manufactured by experts decoyed from a British factory.
+Had these men been Russian subjects, we should have regarded their
+presence in Lhasa as an unquestionable proof of Muscovite assistance.
+Jealousy and suspicion make nations wilfully blind. Russia fully
+believes that we are giving underhand assistance to the Japanese, and
+many Englishmen, who are unbiassed in other questions, are ready to
+believe, without the slightest proof, that Russia has been supplying
+Tibet with arms and generals. We had been informed that large quantities
+of Russian rifles had been introduced into the country, and it was
+rumoured that the Tibetans were reserving these for the defence of Lhasa
+itself. But it is hardly credible that they should have sent levies
+against us armed with their obsolete matchlocks when they were well
+supplied with weapons of a modern pattern. Russian intrigue was active
+in Lhasa, but it had not gone so far as open armament.
+
+At Nagartse we came across the great Yamdok or Palti Lake, along the
+shores of which winds the road to Lhasa. Nagartse Jong is a striking old
+keep, built on a bluff promontory of hill stretching out towards the
+blue waters of the lake. In the distance we saw the crag-perched
+monastery of Samding, where lives the mysterious Dorje Phagmo, the
+incarnation of the goddess Tara.
+
+The wild mountain scenery of the Yamdok Tso, the most romantic in Tibet,
+has naturally inspired many legends. When Samding was threatened by the
+Dzungarian invaders early in the eighteenth century, Dorje Phagmo
+miraculously converted herself and all her attendant monks and nuns into
+pigs. Serung Dandub, the Dzungarian chief, finding the monastery
+deserted, said that he would not loot a place guarded only by swine,
+whereupon Dorje Phagmo again metamorphosed herself and her satellites.
+The terrified invaders prostrated themselves in awe before the goddess,
+and presented the monastery with the most priceless gifts. Similarly,
+the Abbot of Pehte saved the fortress and town from another band of
+invaders by giving the lake the appearance of green pasturelands, into
+which the Dzungarians galloped and were engulfed. I quote these tales,
+which have been mentioned in nearly every book on Tibet, as typical of
+the country. Doubtless similar legends will be current in a few years
+about the British to account for the sparing of Samding, Nagartse, and
+Pehte Jong.
+
+Special courtesy was shown the monks and nuns of Samding, in recognition
+of the hospitality afforded Sarat Chandra Dass by the last incarnation
+of Dorje Phagmo, who entertained the Bengali traveller, and saw that he
+was attended to and cared for through a serious illness. A letter was
+sent Dorje Phagmo, asking if she would receive three British officers,
+including the antiquary of the expedition. But the present incarnation,
+a girl of six or seven years, was invisible, and the convent was
+reported to be bare of ornament and singularly disappointing. There
+were no pigs.
+
+If only one were without the incubus of an army, a month in the Noijin
+Kang Sang country and the Yamdok Plain would be a delightful experience.
+But when one is accompanying a column one loses more than half the
+pleasure of travel. One has to get up at a fixed hour--generally
+uncomfortably early--breakfast, and pack and load one's mules and see
+them started in their allotted place in the line, ride in a crowd all
+day, often at a snail's pace, and halt at a fixed place. Shooting is
+forbidden on the line of march. When alone one can wander about with a
+gun, pitch camp where one likes, make short or long marches as one
+likes, shoot or fish or loiter for days in the same place. The spirit
+which impels one to travel in wild places is an impulse, conscious or
+unconscious, to be free of laws and restraints, to escape conventions
+and social obligations, to temporarily throw one's self back into an
+obsolete phase of existence, amidst surroundings which bear little mark
+of the arbitrary meddling of man. It is not a high ideal, but men often
+deceive themselves when they think they make expeditions in order to add
+to science, and forsake the comforts of life, and endure hunger, cold,
+fatigue and loneliness, to discover in exactly what parallel of unknown
+country a river rises or bends to some particular point of the compass.
+How many travellers are there who would spend the same time in an
+office poring over maps or statistics for the sake of geography or any
+other science? We like to have a convenient excuse, and make a virtue
+out of a hobby or an instinct. But why not own up that one travels for
+the glamour of the thing? In previous wanderings my experience had
+always been to leave a base with several different objectives in view,
+and to take the route that proved most alluring when met by a choice of
+roads--some old deserted city or ruined shrine, some lake or marshland
+haunted by wild-fowl that have never heard the crack of a gun, or a
+strip of desert where one must calculate how to get across with just
+sufficient supplies and no margin. I like to drift to the magnet of
+great watersheds, lofty mountain passes, frontiers where one emerges
+among people entirely different in habit and belief from folk the other
+side, but equally convinced that they are the only enlightened people on
+earth. Often in India I had dreamed of the great inland waters of Tibet
+and Mongolia, the haunts of myriads of duck and geese--Yamdok Tso,
+Tengri Nor, Issik Kul, names of romance to the wild-fowler, to be
+breathed with reverence and awe. I envied the great flights of mallard
+and pochard winging northward in March and April to the unknown; and
+here at last I was camping by the Yamdok Tso itself--with an army.
+
+Yet I have digressed to grumble at the only means by which a sight of
+these hidden waters was possible. When we passed in July, there were no
+wild-fowl on the lake except the bar-headed geese and Brahminy duck. The
+ruddy sheldrake, or Brahminy, is found all over Tibet, and will be
+associated with the memory of nearly every march and camping-ground. It
+is distinctly a Buddhist bird. From it is derived the title of the
+established Church of the Lamas, the Abbots of which wear robes of ruddy
+sheldrake colour, Gelug-pa.[15] In Burmah the Brahminy is sacred to
+Buddhism as a symbol of devotion and fidelity, and it was figured on
+Asoka's pillars in the same emblematical character.[16] The Brahminy is
+generally found in pairs, and when one is shot the other will often
+hover round till it falls a victim to conjugal love. In India the bird
+is considered inedible, but we were glad of it in Tibet, and discovered
+no trace of fishy flavour.
+
+  [15] Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet,' p. 200.
+
+  [16] _Ibid._, p. 409.
+
+Early in April, when we passed the Bam Tso and Kala Tso we found the
+lakes frequented by nearly all the common migratory Indian duck; and
+again, on our return large flights came in. But during the summer months
+nothing remained except the geese and sheldrake and the goosander, which
+is resident in Tibet and the Himalayas. I take it that no respectable
+duck spends the summer south of the Tengri Nor. At Lhasa, mallard, teal,
+gadwall, and white-eyed pochard were coming in from the north as we
+were leaving in the latter half of September, and followed us down to
+the plains. They make shorter flights than I imagined, and longer stays
+at their fashionable Central Asian watering-places.
+
+We marched three days along the banks of the Yamdok Tso, and halted a
+day at Nagartse. Duck were not plentiful on the lake. Black-headed gulls
+and redshanks were common. The fields of blue borage by the villages
+were an exquisite sight. On the 22nd we reached Pehte. The jong, a
+medieval fortress, stands out on the lake like Chillon, only it is more
+crumbling and dilapidated. The courtyards are neglected and overgrown
+with nettles. Soldiers, villagers, both men and women, had run away to
+the hills with their flocks and valuables. Only an old man and two boys
+were left in charge of the chapel and the fort. The hide fishing-boats
+were sunk, or carried over to the other side. On July 24 we left the
+lake near the village of Tamalung, and ascended the ridge on our left to
+the Khamba Pass, 1,200 feet above the lake level. A sudden turn in the
+path brought us to the saddle, and we looked down on the great river
+that has been guarded from European eyes for nearly a century. In the
+heart of Tibet we had found Arcadia--not a detached oasis, but a
+continuous strip of verdure, where the Tsangpo cleaves the bleak hills
+and desert tablelands from west to east.
+
+All the valley was covered with green and yellow cornfields, with
+scattered homesteads surrounded by clusters of trees, not dwarfish and
+stunted in the struggle for existence, but stately and spreading--trees
+that would grace the valley of the Thames or Severn.
+
+We had come through the desert to Arcady. When we left Phari, months and
+months before, and crossed the Tang la, we entered the desert.
+
+Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time does not boast a blade
+of grass. Within a mile there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and
+sapless, which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and wild asses, beasts
+that from the beginning have chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans,
+who people the same waste, are content with spare diet so long as they
+are left alone.
+
+Every Tibetan of the tableland is a hermit by choice, or some strange
+hereditary instinct has impelled him to accept Nature's most niggard
+gifts as his birthright, so that he toils a lifetime to win by his own
+labour and in scanty measure the necessaries which Nature deals lavishly
+elsewhere, herding his yaks on the waste lands, tilling the unproductive
+soil for his meagre crop of barley, and searching the hillsides for
+yak-dung for fuel to warm his stone hut and cook his meal of flour.
+
+Yet north and south of him, barely a week's journey, are warm, fertile
+valleys, luxuriant crops, unstinted woodlands, where Mongols like
+himself accept Nature's largess philosophically as the most natural
+thing in the world.
+
+It seems as if some special and economical law of Providence, such a law
+as makes at least one man see beauty in every type of woman, even the
+most unlovely, had ordained it, so that no corner of the earth, not even
+the Sahara, Tadmor, Tuna, or Guru, should lack men who devote themselves
+blindly and without question to live there, and care for what one might
+think God Himself had forgotten and overlooked.
+
+These men--Bedouin, Tibetans, and the like--enjoy one thing, for which
+they forego most things that men crave for, and that is freedom. They do
+not possess the gifts that cause strife, and divisions, and law-making,
+and political parties, and changes of Government. They have too little
+to share. Their country is invaded only at intervals of centuries. On
+these occasions they fight bravely, as their one inheritance is at
+stake. But they are bigoted and benighted; they have not kept time with
+evolution, and so they are defeated. The conservatism, the
+exclusiveness, that has kept them free so long has shut the door to
+'progress,' which, if they were enlightened and introspective, they
+would recognise as a pestilence that has infected one half of the world
+at the expense of the other, making both unhappy and discontented.
+
+The Tuna Plain is like the Palmyra Desert at the point where one comes
+within view of the snows of Lebanon. It is not monotonous; there is too
+much play of light and shade for that. Everywhere the sun shines, the
+mirage dances; the white calcined plain becomes a flock of frightened
+sheep hurrying down the wind; the stunted sedge by the lakeside leaps up
+like a squadron in ambush and sweeps rapidly along without ever
+approaching nearer. Sometimes a herd of wild asses is mingled in the
+dance, grotesquely magnified; stones and nettles become walls and men.
+All the country is elusive and unreal.
+
+A few miles beyond Guru the road skirts the Bamtso Lake, which must once
+have filled the whole valley. Now the waters have receded, as the
+process of desiccation is going on which has entirely changed the
+geographical features of Central Asia, and caused the disappearance of
+great expanses of water like the Koko Nor, and the dwindling of lakes
+and river from Khotan to Gobi. The Roof of the World is becoming less
+and less inhabitable.
+
+From the desert to Arcady is not a long journey, but armies travel
+slowly. After months of waiting and delay we reached the promised land.
+It was all suddenly unfolded to our view when we stood on the Khamba la.
+Below us was a purely pastoral landscape. Beyond lay hills even more
+barren and verdureless than those we had crossed. But every mile or so
+green fan-shaped valleys, irrigated by clear streams, interrupted the
+barrenness, opening out into the main valley east and west with perfect
+symmetry. To the north-east flowed the Kyi Chu, the valley in which
+Lhasa lay screened, only fifty-six miles distant.
+
+To the south of the pass lay the great Yamdok Lake, wild and beautiful,
+its channels twining into the dark interstices of the hills--valleys of
+mystery and gloom, where no white man has ever trod. Lights and shadows
+fell caressingly on the lake and hills. At one moment a peak was ebony
+black, at another--as the heavy clouds passed from over it, and the
+sun's rays illumined it through a thin mist--golden as a field of
+buttercups. Often at sunset the grassy cones of the hills glow like
+gilded pagodas, and the Tibetans, I am told, call these sunlit plots the
+'golden ground.'
+
+In bright sunlight the lake is a deep turquoise blue, but at evening
+time transient lights and shades fleet over it with the moving clouds,
+light forget-me-not, deep purple, the azure of a butterfly's wing--then
+all is swept away, immersed in gloom, before the dark, menacing
+storm-clouds.
+
+On the 25th I crossed the river with the 1st Mounted Infantry and 40th
+Pathans. My tent is pitched on the roof of a rambling two-storied house,
+under the shade of a great walnut-tree. Crops, waist-deep, grow up to
+the walls--barley, wheat, beans, and peas. On the roof are garden
+flowers in pots, hollyhocks, and marigolds. The cornfields are bright
+with English wild-flowers--dandelions, buttercups, astragalus, and a
+purple Michaelmas daisy.
+
+There is no village, but farmhouses are dotted about the valley, and
+groves of trees--walnut and peach, and poplar and willow--enclosed
+within stone walls. Wild birds that are almost tame are nesting in the
+trees--black and white magpies, crested hoopoes, and turtle-doves. The
+groves are irrigated like the fields, and carpeted with flowers.
+Homelike butterflies frequent them, and honey-bees.
+
+Everything is homelike. There is no mystery in the valley, except its
+access, or, rather, its inaccessibility. We have come to it through snow
+passes, over barren, rocky wildernesses; we have won it with toil and
+suffering, through frost and rain and snow and blistering sun.
+
+And now that we had found Arcady, I would have stayed there. Lhasa was
+only four marches distant, but to me, in that mood of almost immoral
+indolence, it seemed that this strip of verdure, with its happy pastoral
+scenes, was the most impassable barrier that Nature had planted in our
+path. Like the Tibetans, she menaced and threatened us at first, then
+she turned to us with smiles and cajoleries, entreating us to stay, and
+her seduction was harder to resist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To trace the course of the Tsangpo River from Tibet to its outlet into
+Assam has been the goal of travellers for over a century. Here is one
+of the few unknown tracts of the world, where no white man has ever
+penetrated. Until quite recently there was a hot controversy among
+geographers as to whether the Tsangpo was the main feeder of the
+Brahmaputra or reappeared in Burmah as the Irawaddy. All attempts to
+explore the river from India have proved fruitless, owing to the intense
+hostility of the Abor and Passi Minyang tribes, who oppose all intrusion
+with their poisoned arrows and stakes, sharp and formidable as spears,
+cunningly set in the ground to entrap invaders; while the vigilance of
+the Lamas has made it impossible for any European to get within 150
+miles of the Tsangpo Valley from Tibet. It was not until 1882 that all
+doubt as to the identity of the Tsangpo and Brahmaputra was set aside by
+the survey of the native explorer A. K. And the course of the
+Brahmaputra, or Dihong, as it is called in Northern Assam, was never
+thoroughly investigated until the explorations of Mr. Needham, the
+Political Officer at Sadiya, and his trained Gurkhas, who penetrated
+northwards as far as Gina, a village half a day's journey beyond Passi
+Ghat, and only about seventy miles south of the point reached by A. K.
+from Tibet.
+
+The return of the British expedition from Tibet was evidently the
+opportunity of a century for the investigation of this unexplored
+country. We had gained the hitherto inaccessible base, and were
+provided with supplies and transport on the spot; we had no opposition
+to expect from the Tibetans, who were naturally eager to help us out of
+the country by whatever road we chose, and had promised to send
+officials with us to their frontier at Gyala Sendong, who would forage
+for us and try to impress the villagers into our service. The hostile
+tribes beyond the frontier were not so likely to resist an expedition
+moving south to their homes after a successful campaign as a force
+entering their country from our Indian frontier. In the latter case they
+would naturally be more suspicious of designs on their independence. The
+distance from Lhasa to Assam was variously estimated from 500 to 700
+miles. I think the calculations were influenced, perhaps unconsciously,
+by sympathy with, or aversion from, the enterprise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Shapes, it is true, though they promised to help us if we were
+determined on it, advised us emphatically not to go by the Tsangpo
+route. They said that the natives of their own outlying provinces were
+bandits and cut-throats, practically independent of the Lhasa
+Government, while the savages beyond the frontier were dangerous people
+who obeyed no laws. The Shapes' notions as to the course of the river
+were most vague. When questioned, they said there was a legend that it
+disappeared into a hole in the earth. The country near its mouth was
+inhabited by savages, who went about unclothed, and fed on monkeys and
+reptiles. It was rumoured that they were horned like animals, and that
+mothers did not know their own children. But this they could not vouch
+for.
+
+It was believed that tracks of a kind existed from village to village
+all along the route, but these, of course, after a time would become
+impracticable for pack transport. The mules would have to be abandoned,
+and sent back to Gyantse by our guides, or presented to the Tibetan
+officials who accompanied us. Then we were to proceed by forced marches
+through the jungle, with coolie transport if obtainable; if not, each
+man was to carry rice for a few days. The distance from the Tibet
+frontier to Sadiya is not great, and the unexplored country is reckoned
+not to be more than seven stages. The force would bivouac, and, if their
+advance were resisted, would confine themselves solely to defensive
+tactics. In case of opposition, the greatest difficulty would be the
+care of the wounded, as each invalid would need four carriers. Thus, a
+few casualties would reduce enormously the fighting strength of the
+escort.
+
+But opposition was unlikely. Mr. Needham, who has made the tribes of the
+Dihong Valley the study of a lifetime, and succeeded to some extent in
+gaining their confidence, considered the chances of resistance small. He
+would, he said, send messages to the tribes that the force coming
+through their country from the north were his friends, that they had
+been engaged in a punitive expedition against the Lamas (whom the Abors
+detested), that they were returning home by the shortest route to Assam,
+and had no designs on the territory they traversed. It was proposed that
+Mr. Needham should go up the river as far as possible and furnish the
+party with supplies.
+
+All arrangements had been made for the exploring-party, which was to
+leave the main force at Chaksam Ferry, and was expected to arrive in
+Sadiya almost simultaneously with the winding up of the expedition at
+Siliguri. Captain Ryder, R.E., was to command the party, and his escort
+was to be made up of the 8th Gurkhas, who had long experience of the
+Assam frontier tribes, and were the best men who could be chosen for the
+work. Officers were selected, supply and transport details arranged,
+everything was in readiness, when at the last moment, only a day or two
+before the party was to start, a message was received from Simla
+refusing to sanction the expedition. Colonel Younghusband was entirely
+in favour of it, but the military authorities had a clean slate; they
+had come through so far without a single disaster, and it seemed that no
+scientific or geographical considerations could have any weight with
+them in their determination to take no risks. Of course there were
+risks, and always must be in enterprises of the kind; but I think the
+circumstances of the moment reduced them to a minimum, and that the
+results to be obtained from the projected expedition should have
+entirely outweighed them.
+
+In European scientific circles much was expected of the Tibetan
+expedition. But it has added very little to science. The surveys that
+were made have done little more than modify the previous investigations
+of native surveyors.[17]
+
+  [17] The only expedition sanctioned is that which is now exploring
+      the little-known trade route between Gyantse and Gartok, where a
+      mart has been opened to us by the recent Tibetan treaty. The
+      party consists of Captain Ryder, R.E., in command, Captain Wood,
+      R.E., Lieutenant Bailey, of the 32nd Pioneers, and six picked men
+      of the 8th Gurkhas. They follow the main feeder of the Tsangpo
+      nearly 500 miles, then strike into the high lacustrine tableland
+      of Western Tibet, passing the great Mansarowar Lake to Gartok;
+      thence over the Indus watershed, and down the Sutlej Valley to
+      Simla, where they are expected about the end of January. The
+      party will be able to collect useful information about the trade
+      resources of the country; but the route has already been mapped
+      by Nain Singh, the Indian surveyor, and the geographical results
+      of the expedition will be small compared with what would have
+      been derived from the projected Tengri Nor and Brahmaputra trips.
+
+An expedition to the mountains bordering the Tengri Nor, only nine days
+north of Lhasa, would have linked all the unknown country north of the
+Tsang po with the tracts explored by Sven Hedin, and left the map
+without a hiatus in four degrees of longitude from Cape Comorin to the
+Arctic Ocean. But military considerations were paramount.
+
+For myself, the abandonment of the expedition was a great
+disappointment. I had counted on it as early as February, and had made
+all preparations to join it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY
+
+
+The passage of the river was difficult and dangerous. If we had had to
+depend on the four Berthon boats we took with us, the crossing might
+have taken weeks. But the good fortune that attended the expedition
+throughout did not fail us. At Chaksam we found the Tibetans had left
+behind their two great ferry-boats, quaint old barges with horses' heads
+at the prow, capacious enough to hold a hundred men. The Tibetan
+ferrymen worked for us cheerfully. A number of hide boats were also
+discovered. The transport mules were swum over, and the whole force was
+across in less than a week.
+
+But the river took its toll most tragically. The current is swift and
+boisterous; the eddies and whirlpools are dangerously uncertain. Two
+Berthon boats, bound together into a raft, capsized, and Major
+Bretherton, chief supply and transport officer, and two Gurkhas were
+drowned. It seemed as if the genius of the river, offended at our
+intrusion, had claimed its price and carried off the most valuable life
+in the force. It was Major Bretherton's foresight more than anything
+that enabled us to reach Lhasa. His loss was calamitous.
+
+We left our camp at the ferry on July 31, and started for Lhasa, which
+was only forty-three miles distant. It was difficult to believe that in
+three days we would be looking on the Potala.
+
+The Kyi Chu, the holy river of Lhasa, flows into the Tsangpo at Chushul,
+three miles below Chaksam ferry, where our troops crossed. The river is
+almost as broad as the Thames at Greenwich, and the stream is swift and
+clear. The valley is cultivated in places, but long stretches are bare
+and rocky. Sand-dunes, overgrown with artemisia scrub, extend to the
+margin of cultivation, leaving a well-defined line between the green
+cornfields and the barren sand. The crops were ripening at the time of
+our advance, and promised a plentiful harvest.
+
+For many miles the road is cut out of a precipitous cliff above the
+river. A few hundred men could have destroyed it in an afternoon, and
+delayed our advance for another week. Newly-built sangars at the
+entrance of the gorge showed that the Tibetans had intended to hold it.
+But they left the valley in a disorganized state the day we reached the
+Tsangpo. Had they fortified the position, they might have made it
+stronger than the Karo la.
+
+The heat of the valley was almost tropical. Summer by the Kyi Chu River
+is very different from one's first conceptions of Tibet. To escape the
+heat, I used to write my diary in the shade of gardens and willow
+groves. Hoopoes, magpies, and huge black ravens became inquisitive and
+confidential. I have a pile of little black notebooks I scribbled over
+in their society, dirty and torn and soiled with pressed flowers. For a
+picture of the valley I will go to these. One's freshest impressions are
+the best, and truer than reminiscences.
+
+
+    NETHANG.
+
+In the most fertile part of the Kyi Chu Valley, where the fields are
+intersected in all directions by clear-running streams bordered with
+flowers, in a grove of poplars where doves were singing all day long, I
+found Atisa's tomb.
+
+It was built in a large, plain, barn-like building, clean and
+sweet-smelling as a granary, and innocent of ornament outside and in. It
+was the only clean and simple place devoted to religion I had seen in
+Tibet.
+
+In every house and monastery we entered on the road there were gilded
+images, tawdry paintings, demons and she-devils, garish frescoes on the
+wall, hideous grinning devil-masks, all the Lama's spurious apparatus of
+terrorism.
+
+These were the outward symbols of demonolatry and superstition invented
+by scheming priests as the fabric of their sacerdotalism. But this was
+the resting-place of the Reformer, the true son of Buddha, who came
+over the Himalayas to preach a religion of love and mercy.
+
+I entered the building out of the glare of the sun, expecting nothing
+but the usual monsters and abortions--just as one is dragged into a
+church in some tourist-ridden land, where, if only for the sake of
+peace, one must cast an apathetic eye at the lions of the country. But
+as the tomb gradually assumed shape in the dim light, I knew that there
+was someone here, a priest or a community, who understood Atisa, who
+knew what he would have wished his last resting-place to be; or perhaps
+the good old monk had left a will or spoken a plain word that had been
+handed down and remembered these thousand years, and was now, no doubt,
+regarded as an eccentric's whim, that there must be no gods or demons by
+his tomb, nothing abnormal, no pretentiousness of any kind. If his
+teaching had lived, how simple and honest and different Tibet would be
+to-day!
+
+The tomb was not beautiful--a large square plinth, supporting layers of
+gradually decreasing circumference and forming steps two feet in height,
+the last a platform on which was based a substantial vat-like structure
+with no ornament or inscription except a thin line of black pencilled
+saints. By climbing up the layers of masonry I found a pair of slant
+eyes gazing at nothing and hidden by a curve in the stone from gazers
+below. This was the only painting on the tomb.
+
+Never in the thousand years since the good monk was laid to rest at
+Nethang had a white man entered this shrine. To-day the courtyard was
+crowded with mules and drivers; Hindus and Pathans in British uniform:
+they were ransacking the place for corn. A transport officer was
+shouting:
+
+'How many bags have you, babu?'
+
+'A hundred and seven, sir.'
+
+'Remember, if anyone loots, he will get fifty _beynt_' (stripes with the
+cat-o'-nine-tails).
+
+Then he turned to me.
+
+'What the devil is that old thief doing over there?' he said, and nodded
+at a man with archaeological interests, who was peering about in a dark
+corner by the tomb. 'There is nothing more here.'
+
+'He is examining Atisa's tomb.'
+
+'And who the devil is Atisa?'
+
+And who is he? Merely a name to a few dry-as-dust pedants. Everything
+human he did is forgotten. The faintest ripple remains to-day from that
+stone cast into the stagnant waters so many years ago. A few monks drone
+away their days in a monastery close by. In the courtyard there is a
+border of hollyhocks and snapdragon and asters. Here the unsavoury
+guardians of Atisa's tomb watch me as I write, and wonder what on earth
+I am doing among them, and what spell or mantra I am inscribing in the
+little black book that shuts so tightly with a clasp.
+
+
+    TOILUNG.
+
+To-morrow we reach Lhasa.
+
+A few hours ago we caught the first glimpse of the Potala Palace, a
+golden dome standing out on a bluff rock in the centre of the valley.
+The city is not seen from afar perched on a hill like the great
+monasteries and jongs of the country. It is literally 'hidden.' A rocky
+promontory projects from the bleak hills to the south like a screen,
+hiding Lhasa, as if Nature conspired in its seclusion. Here at a
+distance of seven miles we can see the Potala and the Lamas' Medical
+College.
+
+Trees and undulating ground shut out the view of the actual city until
+one is within a mile of it.
+
+To-morrow we camp outside. It is nearly a hundred years since Thomas
+Manning, the only Englishman (until to-day) who ever saw Lhasa, preceded
+us. Our journey has not been easy, but we have come in spite of
+everything.
+
+The Lamas have opposed us with all their material and spiritual
+resources. They have fought us with medieval weapons and a medley of
+modern firearms. They have held Commination Services, recited mantras,
+and cursed us solemnly for days. Yet we have come on.
+
+They have sent delegates and messengers of every rank to threaten and
+entreat and plead with us--emissaries of increasing importance as we
+have drawn nearer their capital, until the Dalai Lama despatched his own
+Grand Chamberlain and Grand Secretary, and, greater than these, the Ta
+Lama and Yutok Shape, members of the ruling Council of Five, whose
+sacred persons had never before been seen by European eyes. To-morrow
+the Amban himself comes to meet Colonel Younghusband. The Dalai Lama has
+sent him a letter sealed with his own seal.
+
+Every stretch of road from the frontier to Lhasa has had its symbol of
+remonstrance. Cairns and chortens, and _mani_ walls and praying-flags,
+demons painted on the rock, writings on the wall, white stones piled
+upon black, have emitted their ray of protest and malevolence in vain.
+
+The Lamas knew we must come. Hundreds of years ago a Buddhist saint
+wrote it in his book of prophecies, Ma-ong Lung-Ten, which may be bought
+to-day in the Lhasa book-shops. He predicted that Tibet would be invaded
+and conquered by the Philings (Europeans), when all of the true religion
+would go to Chang Shambula, the Northern Paradise, and Buddhism would
+become extinct in the country.
+
+And now the Lamas believe that the prophecy will be fulfilled by our
+entry into Lhasa, and that their religion will decay before foreign
+influence. The Dalai Lama, they say, will die, not by violence or
+sickness, but by some spiritual visitation. His spirit will seek some
+other incarnation, when he can no longer benefit his people or secure
+his country, so long sacred to Buddhists, from the contamination of
+foreign intrusion.
+
+The Tibetans are not the savages they are depicted. They are civilized,
+if medieval. The country is governed on the feudal system. The monks are
+the overlords, the peasantry their serfs. The poor are not oppressed.
+They and the small tenant farmers work ungrudgingly for their spiritual
+masters, to whom they owe a blind devotion. They are not discontented,
+though they give more than a tithe of their small income to the Church.
+It must be remembered that every family contributes at least one member
+to the priesthood, so that, when we are inclined to abuse the monks for
+consuming the greater part of the country's produce, we should remember
+that the laymen are not the victims of class prejudice, the plebeians
+groaning under the burden of the patricians, so much as the servants of
+a community chosen from among themselves, and with whom they are
+connected by family ties.
+
+No doubt the Lamas employ spiritual terrorism to maintain their
+influence and preserve the temporal government in their hands; and when
+they speak of their religion being injured by our intrusion, they are
+thinking, no doubt, of another unveiling of mysteries, the dreaded age
+of materialism and reason, when little by little their ignorant serfs
+will be brought into contact with the facts of life, and begin to
+question the justness of the relations that have existed between
+themselves and their rulers for centuries. But at present the people
+are medieval, not only in their system of government and their religion,
+their inquisition, their witchcraft, their incantations, their ordeals
+by fire and boiling oil, but in every aspect of their daily life.
+
+I question if ever in the history of the world there has been another
+occasion when bigotry and darkness have been exposed with such
+abruptness to the inroad of science, when a barrier of ignorance created
+by jealousy and fear as a screen between two peoples living side by side
+has been demolished so suddenly to admit the light of an advanced
+civilization.
+
+The Tibetans, no doubt, will benefit, and many abuses will be swept
+away. Yet there will always be people who will hanker after the medieval
+and romantic, who will say: 'We men are children. Why could we not have
+been content that there was one mystery not unveiled, one country of an
+ancient arrested civilization, and an established Church where men are
+still guided by sorcery and incantations, and direct their mundane
+affairs with one eye on a grotesque spirit world, which is the most real
+thing in their lives--a land of topsy-turvy and inverted proportions,
+where men spend half their lives mumbling unintelligible mantras and
+turning mechanical prayers, and when dead are cut up into mincemeat and
+thrown to the dogs and vultures?'
+
+To-morrow, when we enter Lhasa, we will have unveiled the last mystery
+the of the East. There are no more forbidden cities which men have not
+mapped and photographed. Our children will laugh at modern travellers'
+tales. They will have to turn again to Gulliver and Haroun al Raschid.
+And they will soon tire of these. For now that there are no real
+mysteries, no unknown land of dreams, where there may still be genii and
+mahatmas and bottle-imps, that kind of literature will be tolerated no
+longer. Children will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned,
+and there will be no sale for fairy-stories any more.
+
+But we ourselves are children. Why could we not have left at least one
+city out of bounds?
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 3._
+
+We reached Lhasa to-day, after a march of seven miles, and camped
+outside the city. As we approached, the road became an embankment across
+a marsh. Butterflies and dragon-flies were hovering among the rushes,
+clematis grew in the stonework by the roadside, cows were grazing in the
+rich pastureland, redshanks were calling, a flight of teal passed
+overhead; the whole scene was most homelike, save for the bare scarred
+cliffs that jealously preclude a distant view of the city.
+
+Some of us climbed the Chagpo Ri and looked down on the city. Lhasa lay
+a mile in front of us, a mass of huddled roofs and trees, dominated by
+the golden dome of the Jokhang Cathedral.
+
+It must be the most hidden city on earth. The Chagpo Ri rises bluffly
+from the river-bank like a huge rock. Between it and the Potala hill
+there is a narrow gap not more than thirty yards wide. Over this is
+built the Pargo Kaling, a typical Tibetan chorten, through which is the
+main gateway into Lhasa. The city has no walls, but beyond the Potala,
+to complete the screen, stretches a great embankment of sand right
+across the valley to the hills on the north.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 4._
+
+An epoch in the world's history was marked to-day when Colonel
+Younghusband entered the city to return the visit of the Chinese Amban.
+He was accompanied by all the members of the mission, the war
+correspondents, and an escort of two companies of the Royal Fusiliers
+and the 2nd Mounted Infantry. Half a company of mounted infantry, two
+guns, a detachment of sappers, and four companies of infantry were held
+ready to support the escort if necessary.
+
+In front of us marched and rode the Amban's escort--his bodyguard,
+dressed in short loose coats of French gray, embroidered in black, with
+various emblems; pikemen clad in bright red with black embroidery and
+black pugarees; soldiers with pikes and scythes and three-pronged
+spears, on all of which hung red banners with devices embroidered in
+black.
+
+We found the city squalid and filthy beyond description, undrained and
+unpaved. Not a single house looked clean or cared for. The streets after
+rain are nothing but pools of stagnant water frequented by pigs and dogs
+searching for refuse. Even the Jokhang appeared mean and squalid at
+close quarters, whence its golden roofs were invisible. There was
+nothing picturesque except the marigolds and hollyhocks in pots and the
+doves and singing-birds in wicker cages.
+
+The few Tibetans we met in the street were strangely incurious. A baker
+kneading dough glanced at us casually, and went on kneading. A woman
+weaving barely looked up from her work.
+
+The streets were almost deserted, perhaps by order of the authorities to
+prevent an outbreak. But as we returned small crowds had gathered in the
+doorways, women were peering through windows, but no one followed or
+took more than a listless interest in us. The monks looked on sullenly.
+But in most faces one read only indifference and apathy. One might think
+the entry of a foreign army into Lhasa and the presence of English
+Political Officers in gold-laced uniform and beaver hats were everyday
+events.
+
+The only building in Lhasa that is at all imposing is the Potala.
+
+It would be misleading to say that the palace dominated the city, as a
+comparison would be implied--a picture conveyed of one building standing
+out signally among others. This is not the case.
+
+The Potala is superbly detached. It is not a palace on a hill, but a
+hill that is also a palace. Its massive walls, its terraces and bastions
+stretch upwards from the plain to the crest, as if the great bluff rock
+were merely a foundation-stone planted there at the divinity's nod. The
+divinity dwells in the palace, and underneath, at the distance of a
+furlong or two, humanity is huddled abjectly in squalid smut-begrimed
+houses. The proportion is that which exists between God and man.
+
+If one approached within a league of Lhasa, saw the glittering domes of
+the Potala, and turned back without entering the precincts, one might
+still imagine it an enchanted city, shining with turquoise and gold. But
+having entered, the illusion is lost. One might think devout Buddhists
+had excluded strangers in order to preserve the myth of the city's
+beauty and mystery and wealth, or that the place was consciously
+neglected and defaced so as to offer no allurements to heretics, just
+as the repulsive women one meets in the streets smear themselves over
+with grease and cutch to make themselves even more hideous than Nature
+ordained.
+
+The place has not changed since Manning visited it ninety years ago, and
+wrote:--'There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing, in its appearance.
+The habitations are begrimed with smut and dirt. The avenues are full of
+dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide that lie about in
+profusion, and emit a charnel-house smell; others limping and looking
+livid; others ulcerated; others starved and dying, and pecked at by
+ravens; some dead and preyed upon. In short, everything seems mean and
+gloomy, and excites the idea of something unreal.' That is the Lhasa of
+to-day. Probably it was the same centuries ago.
+
+Above all this squalor the Potala towers superbly. Its golden roofs,
+shining in the sun like tongues of fire, are a landmark for miles, and
+must inspire awe and veneration in the hearts of pilgrims coming from
+the desert parts of Tibet, Kashmir, and Mongolia to visit the sacred
+city that Buddha has blessed.
+
+The secret of romance is remoteness, whether in time or space. If we
+could be thrown back to the days of Agincourt we should be enchanted at
+first, but after a week should vote everything commonplace and dull.
+Falstaff, the beery lout, would be an impossible companion, and Prince
+Hal a tiresome young cub who wanted a good dressing-down. In travel,
+too, as one approaches the goal, and the country becomes gradually
+familiar, the husk of romance falls off. Childe Roland must have been
+sadly disappointed in the Dark Tower; filth and familiarity very soon
+destroyed the romance of Lhasa.
+
+But romance still clings to the Potala. It is still remote. Like Imray,
+its sacred inmate has achieved the impossible. Divinity or no, he has at
+least the divine power of vanishing. In the material West, as we like to
+call it, we know how hard it is for the humblest subject to disappear,
+in spite of the confused hub of traffic and intricate network of
+communications. Yet here in Lhasa, a city of dreamy repose, a King has
+escaped, been spirited into the air, and nobody is any the wiser.
+
+When we paraded the city yesterday, we made a complete circuit of the
+Potala. There was no one, not even the humblest follower, so
+unimaginative that he did not look up from time to time at the frowning
+cliff and thousand sightless windows that concealed the unknown. Those
+hidden corridors and passages have been for centuries, and are, perhaps,
+at this very moment, the scenes of unnatural piety and crime.
+
+Within the precincts of Lhasa the taking of life in any form is
+sacrilege. Buddha's first law was, 'Thou shalt not kill'; and life is
+held so sacred by his devout followers that they are careful not to
+kill the smallest insect. Yet this palace, where dwells the divine
+incarnation of the Bodhisat, the head of the Buddhist Church, must have
+witnessed more murders and instigations to crime than the most
+blood-stained castle of medieval Europe.
+
+Since the assumption of temporal power by the fifth Grand Lama in the
+middle of the seventeenth century, the whole history of the Tibetan
+hierarchy has been a record of bloodshed and intrigue. The fifth Grand
+Lama, the first to receive the title of Dalai, was a most unscrupulous
+ruler, who secured the temporal power by inciting the Mongols to invade
+Tibet, and received as his reward the kingship. He then established his
+claim to the godhead by tampering with Buddhist history and writ. The
+sixth incarnation was executed by the Chinese on account of his
+profligacy. The seventh was deposed by the Chinese as privy to the
+murder of the regent. After the death of the eighth, of whom I can learn
+nothing, it would seem that the tables were turned: the regents
+systematically murdered their charge, and the crime of the seventh Dalai
+Lama was visited upon four successive incarnations. The ninth, tenth,
+eleventh, and twelfth all died prematurely, assassinated, it is
+believed, by their regents.
+
+There are no legends of malmsey-butts, secret smotherings, and hired
+assassins. The children disappeared; they were absorbed into the
+Universal Essence; they were literally too good to live. Their regents
+and protectors, monks only less sacred than themselves, provided that
+the spirit in its yearning for the next state should not be long
+detained in its mortal husk. No questions were asked. How could the
+devout trace the comings and goings of the divine Avalokita, the Lord of
+Mercy and Judgment, who ordains into what heaven or hell, demon, god,
+hero, mollusc, or ape, their spirits must enter, according to their
+sins?
+
+So, when we reached Lhasa the other day, and heard that the thirteenth
+incarnation had fled, no one was surprised. Yet the wonder remains. A
+great Prince, a god to thousands of men, has been removed from his
+palace and capital, no one knows whither or when. A ruler has
+disappeared who travels with every appanage of state, inspiring awe in
+his prostrate servants, whose movements, one would think, were watched
+and talked about more than any Sovereign's on earth. Yet fear, or
+loyalty, or ignorance keeps every subject tongue-tied.
+
+We have spies and informers everywhere, and there are men in Lhasa who
+would do much to please the new conquerors of Tibet. There are also
+witless men, who have eyes and ears, but, it seems, no tongues.
+
+But so far neither avarice nor witlessness has betrayed anything. For
+all we know, the Dalai Lama may be still in his palace in some hidden
+chamber in the rock, or maybe he has never left his customary
+apartments, and still performs his daily offices in the Potala,
+confident that there at least his sanctity is inviolable by unbelievers.
+
+The British Tommy in the meanwhile parades the streets as indifferently
+as if they were the New Cut or Lambeth Palace Road. He looks up at the
+Potala, and says: 'The old bloke's done a bunk. Wish we'd got 'im; we
+might get 'ome then.'
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August --._
+
+We had been in Lhasa nearly three weeks before we could discover where
+the Dalai Lama had fled. We know now that he left his palace secretly in
+the night, and took the northern road to Mongolia. The Buriat, Dorjieff
+met him at Nagchuka, on the verge of the great desert that separates
+inhabited Tibet from Mongolia, 100 miles from Lhasa. On the 20th the
+Amban told us that he had already left Nagchuka twelve days, and was
+pushing on across the desert to the frontier.
+
+I have been trying to find out something about the private life and
+character of the Grand Lama. But asking questions here is fruitless; one
+can learn nothing intimate. And this is just what one might expect. The
+man continues a bogie, a riddle, undivinable, impersonal, remote. The
+people know nothing. They have bowed before the throne as men come out
+of the dark into a blinding light. Scrutiny in their view would be vain
+and blasphemous. The Abbots, too, will reveal nothing; they will not and
+dare not. When Colonel Younghusband put the question direct to a head
+Lama in open durbar, 'Have you news of the Dalai Lama? Do you know where
+he is?' the monk looked slowly to left and right, and answered, 'I know
+nothing.' 'The ruler of your country leaves his palace and capital, and
+you know nothing?' the Commissioner asked. 'Nothing,' answered the monk,
+shuffling his feet, but without changing colour.
+
+From various sources, which differ surprisingly little, I have a fairly
+clear picture of the man's face and figure. He is thick-set, about five
+feet nine inches in height, with a heavy square jaw, nose remarkably
+long and straight for a Tibetan, eyebrows pronounced and turning upwards
+in a phenomenal manner--probably trained so, to make his appearance more
+forbidding--face pockmarked, general expression resolute and sinister.
+He goes out very little, and is rarely seen by the people, except on his
+annual visit to Depung, and during his migrations between the Summer
+Palace and the Potala. He was at the Summer Palace when the messenger
+brought the news that our advance was inevitable, but he went to the
+Potala to put his house in order before projecting himself into the
+unknown.
+
+His face is the index of his character. He is a man of strong
+personality, impetuous, despotic, and intolerant of advice in State
+affairs. He is constantly deposing his Ministers, and has estranged from
+himself a large section of the upper classes, both ecclesiastical and
+official, owing to his wayward and headstrong disposition. As a child he
+was so precociously acute and resolute that he survived his regent, and
+so upset the traditional policy of murder, being the only one out of the
+last five incarnations to reach his majority. Since he took the
+government of the country into his own hands he has reduced the Chinese
+suzerainty to a mere shadow, and, with fatal results to himself,
+consistently insulted and defied the British. His inclination to a
+rapprochement with Russia is not shared by his Ministers.
+
+The only glimpse I have had into the man himself was reflected in a
+conversation with the Nepalese Resident, a podgy little man, very ugly
+and good-natured, with the manners of a French comedian and a face
+generally expanded in a broad grin. He shook with laughter when I asked
+him if he knew the Dalai Lama, and the idea was really intensely funny,
+this mercurial, irreverent little man hobnobbing with the divine. 'I
+have seen him,' he said, and exploded again. 'But what does he do all
+day?' I asked. The Resident puckered up his brow, aping abstraction, and
+began to wave his hand in the air solemnly with a slow circular
+movement, mumbling '_Om man Padme om_' to the revolutions of an
+imaginary praying-wheel. He was immensely pleased with the effort and
+the effect it produced on a sepoy orderly. 'But has he no interests or
+amusements?' I asked. The Resident could think of none. But he told me a
+story to illustrate the dulness of the man, for whom he evidently had no
+reverence. On his return from his last visit to India, the Maharaja of
+Nepal had given him a phonograph to present to the Priest-King. The
+impious toy was introduced to the Holy of Holies, and the Dalai Lama
+walked round it uneasily as it emitted the strains of English band
+music, and raucously repeated an indelicate Bhutanese song. After
+sitting a long while in deep thought, he rose and said he could not live
+with this voice without a soul; it must leave his palace at once. The
+rejected phonograph found a home with the Chinese Amban, to whom it was
+presented with due ceremonial the same day. 'The Lama is _gumar_,' the
+Resident said, using a Hindustani word which may be translated,
+according to our charity, by anything between 'boorish' and
+'unenlightened.' I was glad to meet a man in this city of evasiveness
+whose views were positive, and who was eager to communicate them.
+Through him I tracked the shadow, as it were, of this impersonality, and
+found that to many strangers in Lhasa, and perhaps to a few Lhasans
+themselves, the divinity was all clay, a palpable fraud, a pompous and
+puritanical dullard masquerading as a god.
+
+For my own part, I think the oracle that counselled his flight wiser
+than the statesmen who object that it was a political mistake. He has
+lost his prestige, they say. But imagine him dragged into durbar as a
+signatory, gazed at by profane eyes, the subject of a few days' gossip
+and comment, then sunk into commonplace, stripped of his mystery like
+this city of Lhasa, through which we now saunter familiarly, wondering
+when we shall start again for the _wilds_.
+
+To escape this ordeal he has fled, and to us, at least, his flight has
+deepened the mystery that envelops him, and added to his dignity and
+remoteness; to thousands of mystical dreamers it has preserved the
+effulgence of his godhead unsoiled by contact with the profane world.
+
+From our camp here the Potala draws the eye like a magnet. There is
+nothing but sky and marsh and bleak hill and palace. When we look out of
+our tents in the morning, the sun is striking the golden roof like a
+beacon light to the faithful. Nearly every day in August this year has
+opened fine and closed with storm-clouds gathering from the west,
+through which the sun shines, bathing the eastern valley in a soft,
+pearly light. The western horizon is dark and lowering, the eastern
+peaceful and serene. In this division of darkness and light the Potala
+stands out like a haven, not flaming now, but faintly luminous with a
+restful mystic light, soothing enough to rob Buddhist metaphysics of its
+pessimism and induce a mood, even in unbelievers, in which one is
+content to merge the individual and become absorbed in the universal
+spirit of Nature.
+
+No wonder that, when one looks for mystery in Lhasa, one's thoughts
+dwell solely on the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwelling on
+the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It plunges us into
+medievalism. To my mind, there is no picture so romantic and engrossing
+in modern history as that exodus, when the spiritual head of the
+Buddhist Church, the temporal ruler of six millions, stole out of his
+palace by night and was borne away in his palanquin, no one knows on
+what errand or with what impotent rage in his heart. The flight was
+really secret. No one but his immediate confidants and retainers, not
+even the Amban himself, knew that he had gone. I can imagine the awed
+attendants, the burying of treasure, the locking and sealing of chests,
+faint lights flickering in the passages, hurried footsteps in the
+corridors, dogs barking intermittently at this unwonted bustle--I feel
+sure the Priest-King kicked one as he stepped on the terrace for the
+last time. Then the procession by moonlight up the narrow valley to the
+north, where the roar of the stream would drown the footsteps of the
+palanquin-bearers.
+
+A month afterwards I followed on his track, and stood on the Phembu Pass
+twelve miles north of Lhasa, whence one looks down on the huge belt of
+mountains that lie between the Brahmaputra and the desert, so packed
+and huddled that their crests look like one continuous undulating plain
+stretching to the horizon. Looking across the valley, I could see the
+northern road to Mongolia winding up a feeder of the Phembu Chu. They
+passed along here and over the next range, and across range after range,
+until they reached the two conical snow-peaks that stand out of the
+plain beside Tengri Nor, a hundred miles to the north. For days they
+skirted the great lake, and then, as if they feared the Nemesis of our
+offended Raj could pursue them to the end of the earth, broke into the
+desert, across which they must be hurrying now toward the great mountain
+chain of Burkhan Buddha, on the southern limits of Mongolia.
+
+
+    LHASA,
+      _August 19._
+
+The Tibetans are the strangest people on earth. To-day I discovered how
+they dispose of their dead.
+
+To hold life sacred and benefit the creatures are the laws of Buddha,
+which they are supposed to obey most scrupulously. And as they think
+they may be reborn in any shape of mammal, bird, or fish, they are kind
+to living things.
+
+During the morning service the Lamas repeat a prayer for the minute
+insects which they have swallowed inadvertently in their meat and drink,
+and the formula insures the rebirth of these microbes in heaven.
+Sometimes, when a Lama's life is despaired of, the monks will ransom a
+yak or a bullock from the shambles, and keep him a pensioner in their
+monastery, praying the good Buddha to spare the sick man's life for the
+life ransomed. Yet they eat meat freely, all save the Gelug-pa, or
+Reformed Church, and square their conscience with their appetite by the
+pretext that the sin rests with the outcast assassin, the public
+butcher, who will be born in the next incarnation as some tantalized
+spirit or agonized demon. That, however, is his own affair.
+
+But it is when a Tibetan dies that his charity to the creatures becomes
+really practical. Then, by his own tacit consent when living, his body
+is given as a feast to the dogs and vultures. This is no casual or
+careless gift to avoid the trouble of burial or cremation. All creatures
+who have a taste for these things are invited to the ceremony, and the
+corpse is carved to their liking by an expert, who devotes his life to
+the practice.
+
+When a Tibetan dies he is left three days in his chamber, and a slit is
+made in his skull to let his soul pass out. Then he is rolled into a
+ball, wrapped in a sack, or silk if he is rich, packed into a jar or
+basket, and carried along to the music of conch shells to the ceremonial
+stone. Here a Lama takes the corpse out of its vessel and wrappings, and
+lays it face downwards on a large flat slab, and the pensioners prowl or
+hop round, waiting for their dole. They are quite tame. The Lamas stand
+a little way apart, and see that strict etiquette is observed during
+the entertainment. The carver begins at the ankle, and cuts upwards,
+throwing little strips of flesh to the guests; the bones he throws to a
+second attendant, who pounds them up with a heavy stone.
+
+I passed the place to-day as I rode in from a reconnaissance. The slab
+lies a stone's-throw to the left of the great northern road to Tengri
+Nor and Mongolia, about two miles from the city.
+
+A group of stolid vultures, too demoralized to range in search of
+carrion, stood motionless on a rock above, waiting the next dispenser of
+charity.
+
+A few ravens hopped about sadly; they, too, were evidently pauperized.
+One magpie was prying round in suspicious proximity, and dogs conscious
+of shame slunk about without a bark in them, and nosed the ground
+diligently. They are always there, waiting.
+
+There was hardly a stain on the slab, so quick and eager are the
+applicants for charity. Only a few rags lay around, too poor to be
+carried away.
+
+I have not seen the ceremony, and I have no mind to. My companion this
+morning, a hardened young subaltern who was fighting nearly every day in
+April, May, and June, and has seen more bloodshed than most veterans,
+saw just as much as I have described. He then felt very ill, dug his
+spurs into his horse, and rode away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES
+
+
+By the first week in September I had visited all the most important
+temples and monasteries in Lhasa. We generally went in parties of four
+and five, and a company of Sikhs or Pathans was left in the courtyard in
+case of accidents. We were well armed, as the monks were sullen, though
+I do not think they were capable of any desperate fanaticism. If they
+had had the abandon of dervishes, they might have rushed our camp long
+before. They missed their chance at Gyantse, when a night attack pushed
+home by overwhelming numbers could have wiped out our little garrison.
+In Lhasa there was the one case of the Lama who ran amuck outside the
+camp with the coat of mail and huge paladin's sword concealed beneath
+his cloak, a medieval figure who thrashed the air with his brand like a
+flail in sheer lust of blood. He was hanged medievally the next day
+within sight of Lhasa. Since then the exploit has not been repeated, but
+no one leaves the perimeter unarmed.
+
+I have written of the squalor of the Lhasa streets. The environs of the
+city are beautiful enough--willow groves intersected by clear-running
+streams, walled-in parks with palaces and fish-ponds, marshes where the
+wild-duck flaunt their security, and ripe barley-fields stretching away
+to the hills. In September the trees were wearing their autumn tints,
+the willows were mostly a sulphury yellow, and in the pools beneath the
+red-stalked _polygonum_ and burnished dock-leaf glowed in brilliant
+contrast. Just before dusk there was generally a storm in the valley,
+which only occasionally reached the city; but the breeze stirred the
+poplars, and the silver under the leaves glistened brightly against the
+background of clouds. Often a rainbow hung over the Potala like a
+nimbus.
+
+On the Lingkhor, or circular road, which winds round Lhasa, we saw
+pilgrims and devotees moving slowly along in prayer, always keeping the
+Potala on their right hand. The road is only used for devotion. One
+meets decrepit old women and men, halting and limping and slowly
+revolving their prayer-wheels and mumbling charms. I never saw a healthy
+yokel or robust Lama performing this rite. Nor did I see the pilgrims
+whom one reads of as circumambulating the city on their knees by a
+series of prostrations, bowing their heads in the dust and mud. All the
+devotees are poor and ragged, and many blind. It seems that the people
+of Lhasa do not begin to think of the next incarnation until they have
+nothing left in this.
+
+When one leaves the broad avenues between the walls of the groves and
+pleasure-gardens, and enters the city, one's senses are offended by
+everything that is unsightly and unclean. Pigs and pariah dogs are
+nosing about in black oozy mud. The houses are solid but dirty. It is
+hard to believe that they are whitewashed every year.
+
+Close to the western entrance are the huts of the Ragyabas, beggars,
+outcasts, and scavengers, who cut up the dead. The outer walls of their
+houses are built of yak-horns.
+
+Some of the houses had banks of turf built up outside the doors, with
+borders of English flowers. The dwellings are mostly two or three
+storied. Bird-cages hang from the windows.
+
+The outside of the cathedral is not at all imposing. From the streets
+one cannot see the golden roof, but only high blank walls, and at the
+entrance a forest of dingy pillars beside a massive door. The door is
+thrown open by a sullen monk, and a huge courtyard is revealed with more
+dingy pillars that were once red. The entire wall is covered with
+paintings of Buddhist myth and symbolism. The colours are subdued and
+pleasing. In the centre of the yard are masses of hollyhocks, marigolds,
+nasturtiums, and stocks. Beside the flower-borders is a pyramidical
+structure in which are burnt the leaves of juniper and pine for
+sacrifice.
+
+The cloisters are two-storied; on the upper floor the monks have their
+cells. Looking up, one can see hundreds of them gazing at us with
+interest over the banisters. The upper story, as in every temple in
+Tibet, is coated with a dark red substance which looks like rough paint,
+but is really sacred earth, pasted on to evenly-clipped brushwood so as
+to seem like a continuation of the masonry. On the face of the wall are
+emblems in gilt, Buddhist symbols, like our Prince of Wales's feathers,
+sun and crescent moon, and various other devices. A heavy curtain of
+yak-hair hangs above the entrance-gate. On the roof are large cylinders
+draped in yak-hair cloth topped by a crescent or a spear. Every
+monastery and jong, and most houses in Tibet, are ornamented with these.
+When one first sees them in the distance they look like men walking on
+the roof.
+
+Generally one ascends steps from the outer courtyard to the temple, but
+in the Jokhang the floors are level. We enter the main temple by a dark
+passage. The great doorway that opens into the street has been closed
+behind us, but we leave a company of Pathans in the outer yard, as the
+monks are sullen. Our party of four is armed with revolvers.
+
+Service is being held before the great Buddhas as we enter, and a
+thunderous harmony like an organ-peal breaks the interval for
+meditation. The Abbot, who is in the centre, leans forward from his
+chair and takes a bundle of peacock-feathers from a vase by his side. As
+he points it to the earth there is a clashing of cymbals, a beating of
+drums, and a blowing of trumpets and conch shells.
+
+Then the music dies away like the reverberation of cannon in the hills.
+The Abbot begins the chant, and the monks, facing each other like
+singing-men in a choir, repeat the litany. They have extraordinary deep,
+devotional voices, at once unnatural and impressive. The deepest bass of
+the West does not approach it, and their sense of time is perfect.
+
+The voice of the thousand monks is like the drone of some subterranean
+monster, musically plaintive--the wail of the Earth God praying for
+release to the God of the Skies.
+
+The chant sounds like the endless repetition of the same formula; the
+monks sway to it rhythmically. The temple would be dark if it were not
+for the flickering of many thousands of votive candles and butter lamps.
+Rows upon rows of them are placed before every shrine.
+
+In an inner temple we found the three great images of the Buddhist
+trinity--the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. The images were
+greater than life-size, and set with jewels from foot to crown. As in
+the cloisters of an English cathedral, there were little side-chapels,
+which held sacred relics and shrines.
+
+There were lamps of gold, and solid golden bowls set on altars, and
+embossed salvers of copper and bronze.
+
+A hanging grille of chainwork protected the precincts from sacrilege,
+and an extended hand, bloody and menacing, was stretched from the wall,
+terrible enough when suddenly revealed in that dim light to paralyze and
+strike to earth with fright any profane thief who would dare to enter.
+
+In the upper story we found a place which we called 'Hell,' where some
+Lamas were worshipping the demon protectress of the Grand Lama. The
+music here was harsh and barbaric. There were displayed on the pillars
+and walls every freak of diabolical invention in the shape of scrolls
+and devil-masks. The obscene object of this worship was huddled in a
+corner--a dwarfish abortion, hideous and malignant enough for such
+rites.
+
+All about the Lamas' feet ran little white mice searching for grain.
+They are fed daily, and are scrupulously reverenced, as in their frail
+white bodies the souls of the previous guardians of the shrine are
+believed to be reincarnated.
+
+In another temple we found the Lamas holding service in worship of the
+many-handed Buddha, Avalokitesvara. The picture of the god hung from
+pillars by the altar. The chief Lamas were wearing peaked caps
+picturesquely coloured with subdued blue and gold, and vestments of the
+same hue. The lesser Lamas were bare-headed, and their hair was cropped.
+
+When we first entered, an acolyte was pouring tea out of a massive
+copper pot with a turquoise on the spout. Each monk received his tea in
+a wooden bowl, and poured in barley-flour to make a paste.
+
+During this interval no one spoke or whispered. The footsteps of the
+acolytes were noiseless. Only the younger ones looked up at us
+self-consciously as we watched them from a latticed window in the
+corridor above.
+
+Centuries ago this service was ordained, and the intervals appointed to
+further the pursuit of truth through silence and abstraction. The monks
+sat there quiet as stone. They had seen us, but they were seemingly
+oblivious.
+
+One wondered, were they pursuing truth or were they petrified by ritual
+and routine? Did they regard us as immaterial reflexes, unsubstantial
+and illusory, passing shadows of the world cast upon them by an
+instant's illusion, to pass away again into the unreal, while they were
+absorbed in the contemplation of changeless and universal truths? Or
+were we noted as food for gossip and criticism when their self-imposed
+ordeal was done?
+
+The reek of the candles was almost suffocating. 'Thank God I am not a
+Lama!' said a subaltern by my side. An Afridi Subadar let the butt of
+his rifle clank from his boot to the pavement.
+
+At these calls to sanity we clattered out of this unholy atmosphere of
+dreams as if by an unquestioned impulse into the bright sunshine
+outside.
+
+In the bazaar there is a gay crowd. The streets are thronged by as
+good-natured a mob as I have met anywhere. Sullenness and distrust have
+vanished. Officers and men, Tommies, Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Pathans, are
+stared at and criticised good-humouredly, and their accoutrements
+fingered and examined. It is a bright and interesting crowd, full of
+colour. In a corner of the square a street singer with a guitar and
+dancing children attracts a small crowd. His voice is a rich baritone,
+and he yodels like the Tyrolese. The crowd is parted by a Shape riding
+past in gorgeous yellow silks and brocades, followed by a mounted
+retinue whose head-gear would be the despair of an operatic hatter. They
+wear red lamp-shades, yellow motor-caps, exaggerated Gainsboroughs,
+inverted cooking-pots, coal-scuttles, and medieval helmets. And among
+this topsy-turvy, which does not seem out of place in Lhasa, the most
+eccentrically-hatted man is the Bhutanese Tongsa Penlop, who parades the
+streets in an English gray felt hat.
+
+The Mongolian caravan has arrived in Lhasa, after crossing a thousand
+miles of desert and mountain tracks. The merchants and drivers saunter
+about the streets, trying not to look too rustic. But they are easily
+recognisable--tall, sinewy men, very independent in gait, with faces
+burnt a dark brick red by exposure to the wind and sun. I saw one of
+their splendidly robust women, clad in a sheepskin cloak girdled at the
+waist, bending over a cloth stall, and fingering samples as if shopping
+were the natural business of her life.
+
+On fine days the wares are spread on the cobbles of the street, and the
+coloured cloth and china make a pretty show against the background of
+garden flowers. At the doors of the shops stand pale Nuwaris, whose
+ancestors from Nepal settled in Lhasa generations ago. They wear a flat
+brown cap, and a dull russet robe darker than that of the Lamas. The
+Cashmiri shopkeepers are turbaned, and wear a cloak of butcher's blue.
+They and the Nuwaris and the Chinese seem to monopolize the trade of the
+city.
+
+British officers haunt the bazaars searching for curios, but with very
+little success. Lhasa has no artistic industries; nearly all the
+knick-knacks come from India and China. Cloisonne ware is rare and
+expensive, as one has to pay for the 1,800 miles of transport from
+Peking. Religious objects are not sold. Turquoises are plentiful, but
+coarse and inferior. Hundreds of paste imitations have been bought.
+There is a certain sale for amulets, rings, bells, and ornaments for the
+hair, but these and the brass and copper work can be bought for half the
+price in the Darjeeling bazaar. The few relics we have found of the West
+must have histories. In the cathedral there was a bell with the
+inscription 'Te Deum laudamus,' probably a relic of the Capuchins. In
+the purlieus of the city we found a bicycle without tyres, and a
+sausage-machine made in Birmingham.
+
+With the exception of the cathedral, most of the temples and monasteries
+are on the outskirts of the city. There is a sameness about these places
+of worship that would make description tedious. Only the Ramo-che and
+Moru temples, which are solely devoted to sorcery, are different. Here
+one sees the other soul-side of the people.
+
+The Ramo-che is as dark and dingy as a vault. On each side of the
+doorway are three gigantic tutelary demons. In the vestibule is a
+collection of bows, arrows, chain-armour, stag-horns, stuffed animals,
+scrolls, masks, skulls, and all the paraphernalia of devil-worship. On
+the left is a dark recess where drums are being beaten by an unseen
+choir.
+
+A Lama stands, chalice in hand, before a deep aperture cut in the wall
+like a buttery hatch, and illumined by dim, flickering candles, which
+reveal a malignant female fiend. As a second priest pours holy water
+into a chalice, the Lama raises it solemnly again and again, muttering
+spells to propitiate the fury.
+
+In the hall there are neither ornaments, gods, hanging canopies, nor
+scrolls, as in the other temples. There is neither congregation nor
+priests. The walls are apparently black and unpainted, but here and
+there a lamp reveals a Gorgon's head, a fiend's eye, a square inch or
+two of pigment that time has not obscured.
+
+The place is immemorially old. There are huge vessels of carved metal
+and stone, embossed, like the roof, with griffins and skulls, which
+probably date back to before the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet,
+and are survivals of the old Bon religion. There is nothing bright here
+in colour or sound, nothing vivid or animated.
+
+Stricken men and women come to remove a curse, vindictive ones to
+inflict one, bereaved ones to pay the initiated to watch the adventures
+of the soul in purgatory and guide it on its passage to the new birth,
+while demons and furies are lurking to snatch it with fiery claws and
+drag it to hell.
+
+All these beings must be appeased by magic rites. So in the Ramo-che
+there is no rapture of music, no communion with Buddha, no beatitudes,
+only solitary priests standing before the shrines and mumbling
+incantations, dismal groups of two or three seated Buddha-fashion on the
+floor, and casting spells to exercise a deciding influence, as they
+hope, in the continual warfare which is being waged between the tutelary
+and malignant deities for the prize of a soul.
+
+In the chancel of the temple, behind the altar, is a massive pile of
+masonry stretching from floor to roof, under which, as folk believe, an
+abysmal chasm leads down to hell. Round this there is a dark and narrow
+passage which pilgrims circumambulate. The floor and walls are as
+slippery as ice, worn by centuries of pious feet and groping hands. One
+old woman in some urgent need is drifting round and round abstractedly.
+
+Elsewhere one might linger in the place fascinated, but here in Lhasa
+one moves among mysteries casually; for one cannot wonder, in this
+isolated land where the elements are so aggressive, among these deserts
+and wildernesses, heaped mountain chains, and impenetrable barriers of
+snow, that the children of the soil believe that earth, air, and water
+are peopled by demons who are struggling passionately over the destinies
+of man.
+
+I will not describe any more of the Lhasa temples. One shrine is very
+like another, and details would be tedious. Personally, I do not care
+for systematic sightseeing, even in Lhasa, but prefer to loiter about
+the streets and bazaars, and the gardens outside the city, watch the
+people, and enjoy the atmosphere of the place. The religion of Tibet is
+picturesque enough in an unwholesome way, but to inquire how the layers
+of superstition became added to the true faith, and trace the growth of
+these spurious accretions, I leave to archaeologists. Perhaps one reader
+in a hundred will be interested to know that a temple was built by the
+illustrious Konjo, daughter of the Emperor Tai-Tsung and wife of King
+Srong-btsan-gombo, but I think the other ninety and nine will be
+devoutly thankful if I omit to mention it.
+
+Yet one cannot leave the subject of the Lhasa monasteries without
+remarking on the striking resemblance between Tibetan Lamaism and the
+Romish Church. The resemblance cannot be accidental. The burning of
+candles before altars, the sprinkling of holy water, the chanting of
+hymns in alternation, the giving alms and saying Masses for the dead,
+must have their origin in the West. We know that for many centuries
+large Christian communities have existed in Western China near the
+Tibetan frontier, and several Roman Catholic missionaries have
+penetrated to Lhasa and other parts of Tibet during the last three
+centuries. As early as 1641 the Jesuit Father Grueber visited Lhasa, and
+recorded that the Lamas wore caps and mitres, that they used rosaries,
+bells, and censers, and observed the practice of confession, penance,
+and absolution. Besides these points common to Roman Catholicism, he
+noticed the monastic and conventual system, the tonsure, the vows of
+poverty, chastity, and obedience, the doctrine of incarnation and the
+Trinity, and the belief in purgatory and paradise.[18]
+
+  [18] It is interesting to compare Grueber's account with the journal
+      of Father Rubruquis, who travelled in Mongolia in the thirteenth
+      century. In 1253 he wrote of the Lamas:
+
+      'All their priests had their heads shaven quite over, and they are
+      clad in saffron-coloured garments. Being once shaven, they lead an
+      unmarried life from that time forward, and they live a hundred or
+      two of them in one cloister.... They have with them also,
+      whithersoever they go, a certain string, with a hundred or two
+      hundred nutshells thereupon, much like our beads which we carry
+      about with us; and they do always mutter these words, "Om mani
+      pectavi (om mani padme hom)"--"God, Thou knowest," as one of them
+      expounded it to me; and so often do they expect a reward at God's
+      hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance of God.... I
+      made a visit to their idol temple, and found certain priests
+      sitting in the outward portico, and those which I saw seemed, by
+      their shaven beards, as if they had been our countrymen; they wore
+      certain ornaments upon their heads like mitres made of paper.'
+
+We occasionally saw a monk with the refined ascetic face of a Roman
+Cardinal. Te Rinpoche, the acting regent, was an example. One or two
+looked as if they might be humane and benevolent--men who might make one
+accept the gentle old Lama in 'Kim' as a not impossible fiction; but
+most of them appeared to me to be gross and sottish. I must confess that
+during the protracted negociations at Lhasa I had little sympathy with
+the Lamas. It is a mistake to think that they keep their country closed
+out of any religious scruple. Buddhism in its purest form is not
+exclusive or fanatical. Sakya Muni preached a missionary religion. He
+was Christlike in his universal love and his desire to benefit all
+living creatures. But Buddhism in Tibet has become more and more
+degenerate, and the Lamaist Church is now little better than a political
+mechanism whose chief function is the uncompromising exclusion of
+foreigners. The Lamas know that intercourse with other nations must
+destroy their influence with the people.
+
+And Tibet is really ruled by the Lamas. Outside Lhasa are the three
+great monasteries of Depung, Sera, and Gaden, whose Abbots, backed by a
+following of nearly 30,000 armed and bigoted monks, maintain a
+preponderating influence in the national assembly.[19] These men wield a
+greater influence than the four Shapes or the Dalai Lama himself, and
+practically dictate the policy of the country.
+
+  [19] 'It may be asked how the monastic influence is brought to bear
+      on a Government in which three out of the four principal
+      Ministers (Shape) are laymen. The fact seems to be that lying
+      behind the Tak Lama, the Shapes, and all the machinery of the
+      Tibetan Government, as we have hitherto been acquainted with it,
+      there is an institution called the "Tsong-du-chembo," or
+      "Tsong-dugze-tsom," which may reasonably be compared with what we
+      call a "National Assembly," or, as the word implies, "Great
+      Assembly." It is constituted of the Kenpas or Abbots of the three
+      great monasteries, representatives from the four lings or small
+      monasteries actually in Lhasa city, and from all the other
+      monasteries in the province of U; and besides this, all the
+      officials of the Government are present--laymen and ecclesiastics
+      alike--to the number of several hundreds.'--Captain O'Connor's
+      Diary at Khamba Jong (Tibetan Blue-Book, 1904).
+
+The three great monasteries are of ancient foundation, and intimately
+associated with the history of the country. They are, in fact,
+ecclesiastical Universities,[20] and resemble in many ways our
+Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Universities are divided into
+colleges. Each has its own Abbot, or Master, and disciplinary staff. The
+undergraduates, or candidates for ordination, must attend lectures and
+chapels, and pass examinations in set books, which they must learn from
+cover to cover before they can take their degree. Failure in
+examination, as well as breaches in discipline and manners, are punished
+by flogging. Corporal punishment is also dealt out to the unfortunate
+tutors, who are held responsible for their pupils' omissions. If a
+candidate repeatedly fails to pass his examination, he is expelled from
+the University, and can only enter again on payment of increased fees.
+The three leading Universities are empowered to confer degrees which
+correspond to our Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity. The monks live in
+rooms in quadrangles, and have separate messing clubs, but meet for
+general worship in the cathedral. If their code is strictly observed,
+which I very much doubt, prayers and tedious religious observances must
+take up nearly their whole day. But the Lamas are adept casuists, and
+generally manage to evade the most irksome laws of their scriptures.
+
+  [20] I have derived most of my information regarding the discipline
+      and constitution of Depung from 'Lamaism in Tibet,' by Colonel
+      Augustine Waddell, who accompanied the expedition as Archaeologist
+      and Principal Medical Officer.
+
+Soon after our arrival in Lhasa we had occasion to visit Depung, which
+is probably the largest monastery in the world. It stands in a natural
+amphitheatre in the hillside two miles from the city, a huge collection
+of temples and monastic buildings, larger, and certainly more imposing,
+than most towns in Tibet.
+
+The University was founded in 1414, during the reign of the first Grand
+Lama of the Reformed Church. It is divided into four colleges, and
+contains nearly 8,000 monks, amongst whom there is a large Mongolian
+community. The fourth Grand Lama, a Mongolian, is buried within the
+precincts. The fifth and greatest Dalai Lama, who built the Potala and
+was the first to combine the temporal and spiritual power, was an Abbot
+of Depung. The reigning Dalai Lama visits Depung annually, and a palace
+in the university is reserved for his use. The Abbot, of course, is a
+man of very great political influence.
+
+All these facts I have collected to show that the monks have some reason
+to be proud of their monastery as the first in Tibet. One may forgive
+them a little pride in its historic distinctions. Even in our own alma
+mater we meet the best of men who seem to gather importance from old
+traditions and association with a long roll of distinguished names.
+What, then, can we expect of this Tibetan community, the most
+conservative in a country that has prided itself for centuries on its
+bigotry and isolation--men who are ignorant of science, literature,
+history, politics, everything, in fact, except their own narrow
+priestcraft and confused metaphysics? We call the Tibetan 'impossible.'
+His whole education teaches him to be so, and the more educated he is
+the more 'impossible' he becomes.
+
+Imagine, then, the consternation at Depung when a body of armed men rode
+up to the monastery and demanded supplies. We had refrained from
+entering the monasteries of Lhasa and its neighbourhood at the request
+of the Abbots and Shapes, but only on condition that the monks should
+bring in supplies, which were to be paid for at a liberal rate. The
+Abbots failed to keep their promise, supplies were not forthcoming, and
+it became necessary to resort to strong measures. An officer was sent to
+the gate with an escort of three men and a letter saying that if the
+provisions were not handed over within an hour we would break into the
+monastery and take them, if necessary, by force. The messengers were met
+by a crowd of excited Lamas, who refused to accept the letter, waved
+them away, and rolled stones towards them menacingly, as an intimation
+that they were prepared to fight. As the messengers rode away the tocsin
+was heard, warning the villagers, women and children, who were gathered
+outside with market produce, to depart.
+
+General Macdonald with a strong force of British and native troops drew
+up within 1,300 yards of the monastery, guns were trained on Depung, the
+infantry were deployed, and we waited the expiration of the period of
+grace intimated in the letter. An hour passed by, and it seemed as if
+military operations were inevitable, when groups of monks came out with
+a white flag, carrying baskets of eggs and a complimentary scarf.
+
+Even in the face of this military display they began to temporize. They
+bowed and chattered and protested in their usual futile manner, and
+condescended so far as to say they would talk the matter over if we
+retired at once, and send the supplies to our camp the next day, if they
+came to a satisfactory decision. The Lamas are trained to wrangle and
+dispute and defer and vacillate.[21] They seem to think that speech was
+made only to evade conclusions. The curt ultimatum was repeated, and the
+deputation was removed gently by two impassive sepoys, still chattering
+like a flock of magpies.
+
+  [21] The highest degree which is conferred on the Lamas by their
+      Universities is the Rabs-jam-pa (verbally overflowing
+      endlessly).--Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet.'
+
+In the meanwhile we sat and waited and smoked our pipes, and wondered if
+there were going to be another Guru. It seemed the most difficult thing
+in the world to save these poor fools from the effects of their
+obstinate folly. The time-limit had nearly expired, the two batteries
+were advanced 300 yards, the gunners took their sights again, and
+trained the 10-pounders on the very centre of the monastery.
+
+There were only five minutes more, and we were stirred, according to our
+natures, by pity or exasperation or the swift primitive instinct for the
+dramatic, which sweeps away the humanities, and leaves one to the
+conflict of elemental passions.
+
+At last a thin line of red-robed monks was seen to issue from the gate
+and descend the hill, each carrying a bag of supplies. The crisis was
+over, and we were spared the necessity of inflicting a cruel
+punishment. I waited to see the procession, a group of sullen
+ecclesiastics, who had never bowed or submitted to external influence in
+their lives, carrying on their backs their unwilling contribution to the
+support of the first foreign army that had ever intruded on their
+seclusion. It must have been the most humiliating day in the history of
+Depung.
+
+It must be admitted that it was not a moment when the monks looked their
+best. Yet I could not help comparing their appearance with that of the
+simple honest-looking peasantry. Many of them looked sottish and
+degraded; other faces showed cruelty and cunning; their brows were
+contracted as if by perpetual scheming; some were almost simian in
+appearance, and looked as if they could not harbour a thought that was
+not animal or sensual. They waddled in their walk, and their right arms,
+exposed from the shoulder, looked soft and flabby, as if they had never
+done an honest day's work in their life.
+
+One man had the face of an inquisitor--round, beady eyes, puffed cheeks,
+and thin, tightly-shut mouth.
+
+How they hated us! If one of us fell into their hands secretly, I have
+no doubt they would rack him limb from limb, or cut him into small
+pieces with a knife.
+
+The Depung incident shows how difficult it was to make any headway with
+the Tibetans without recourse to arms. We were present in the city to
+insist on compliance with our demands. But an amicable settlement seemed
+hopeless, and we could not stay in Lhasa indefinitely. What if these
+monks were to say, 'You may stay here if you like. We will not molest
+you, but we refuse to accept your terms'? We could only retire or train
+our guns on the Potala. Retreat was, of course, impossible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE SETTLEMENT
+
+
+The political deadlock continued until within a week of the signing of
+the treaty.
+
+For a long time no responsible delegates were forthcoming. The Shapes,
+who were weak men and tools of the fugitive Dalai Lama, protested that
+any treaty they might make with us would result in their disgrace. If,
+on the other hand, they made no treaty, and we were compelled to occupy
+the Potala, or take some other step offensive to the hierarchy, their
+ruin would be equally certain. Ruin, in fact, faced them in any case.
+
+The highest officials in Tibet visited Colonel Younghusband, expressed
+their eagerness to see differences amicably settled, and, when asked to
+arrange the simplest matter, said they were afraid to take on themselves
+the responsibility. And this was not merely astute evasiveness. It was
+really a fact that there was no one in Lhasa who dared commit himself by
+an action or assurance of any kind.
+
+Yet there existed some kind of irresponsible disorganized machine of
+administration which sometimes arrived at a decision about matters of
+the moment. The National Assembly was sufficiently of one mind to depose
+and imprison the Ta Lama, the ecclesiastical member of Council. His
+disgrace was due to his failure to persuade us to return to Gyantse.
+
+The National Assembly held long sessions daily, and after more than a
+week of discussion they began to realize that there was at least one aim
+that was common to them all--that the English should be induced to leave
+Lhasa. They then appointed accredited delegates, whose decisions, they
+said, would be entirely binding on the Dalai Lama, should he come back.
+The Dalai Lama had left his seal with Te Rinpoche, the acting regent,
+but with no authority to use it.
+
+The terms of the treaty were disclosed to the Amban, who communicated
+them to the Tsong-du. The Tsong-du submitted the draft of their reply to
+the Amban before it was presented to Colonel Younghusband. The first
+reply of the Assembly to our demands ought to be preserved as a historic
+epitome of national character. The indemnity, they said, ought to be
+paid by us, and not by them. We had invaded their territory, and spoiled
+their monasteries and lands, and should bear the cost. The question of
+trade marts they were obstinately opposed to; but, provided we carried
+out the other terms of the treaty to their satisfaction, they would
+consider the advisability of conceding us a market at Rinchengong, a
+mile and a half beyond the present one at Yatung. They would not be
+prepared, however, to make this concession unless we undertook to pay
+for what we purchased on the spot, to respect their women, and to
+refrain from looting. Road-making they could not allow, as the blasting
+and upheaval of soil offended their gods and brought trouble on the
+neighbourhood. The telegraph-wire was against their customs, and
+objectionable on religious grounds. With regard to foreign relations,
+they had never had any dealings with an outside race, and they intended
+to preserve this policy so long as they were not compelled to seek
+protection from another Power.
+
+The tone of the reply indicates the attitude of the Tibetans. Obstinacy
+could go no further. The document, however, was not forwarded officially
+to the Commissioner, but returned to the Assembly by the Amban as too
+impertinent for transmission. The Amban explained to Colonel
+Younghusband that the Tibetans regarded the negociations in the light of
+a huckster's bargain. They did not realize that we were in a position to
+enforce terms, and that our demands were unconditional, but thought that
+by opening negociations in an unconciliatory manner, and asking for more
+than they expected, they might be able to effect a compromise and escape
+the full exaction of the penalty.
+
+The first concession on the part of the Tibetans was the release of the
+two Lachung men, natives of Sikkim and British subjects, who had been
+captured and beaten at Tashilunpo in July, 1903, while the Commission
+was waiting at Khamba Jong. Their liberation was one of the terms of the
+treaty. Colonel Younghusband made the release the occasion of an
+impressive durbar, in which he addressed a solemn warning to the
+Tibetans on the sanctity of the British subject. The imprisonment of the
+two men from Sikkim, he said, was the most serious offence of which the
+Tibetans had been guilty. It was largely on that account that the Indian
+Government had decided to advance to Gyantse. The prisoners were brought
+straight from the dungeon to the audience-hall. They had been
+incarcerated in a dark underground cell for more than a year, and they
+knew nothing of the arrival of the English in Lhasa until the morning
+when Colonel Younghusband told them they were free by the command of the
+King-Emperor. I shall never forget the scene--the bewilderment and
+delight of the prisoners, their drawn, blanched features, and the sullen
+acquiescence of the Tibetans, who learnt for the first time the meaning
+of the old Roman boast, 'Civis Romanus sum.'
+
+On August 20 Colonel Younghusband received through the Amban the second
+reply to our demands. The tone of the delegates was still impossible,
+though slightly modified and more reasonable. Several durbars followed,
+but they did not advance the negociations. Instead of discussing matters
+vital to the settlement, the Tibetan representatives would arrive with
+all the formalities and ceremonial of durbar to beg us not to cut grass
+in a particular field, or to request the return of the empty grain-bags
+to the monasteries. The Amban said that he had met with nothing but
+shuffling from the 'barbarians' during his term of office. They were
+'dark and cunning adepts at prevarication, children in the conduct of
+affairs.'
+
+The counsellors, however, began to show signs of wavering. They were
+evidently eager to come to terms, though they still hoped to reduce our
+demands, and tried to persuade the Commissioner to agree to conditions
+proposed by themselves.
+
+Throughout this rather trying time our social relations with the
+Tibetans were of a thoroughly friendly character. The Shapes and one or
+two of the leading monks attended race-meetings and gymkanas, put their
+money on the totalizator, and seemed to enjoy their day out. When their
+ponies ran in the visitors' race, the members of Council temporarily
+forgot their stiffness, waddled to the rails to see the finish, and were
+genuinely excited. They were entertained at lunch and tea by Colonel
+Younghusband, and were invited to a Tibetan theatrical performance given
+in the courtyard of the Lhalu house, which became the headquarters of
+the mission. On these occasions they were genial and friendly, and
+appreciated our hospitality.
+
+The humbler folk apparently bore us no vindictiveness, and showed no
+signs of resenting our presence in the city. Merchants and storekeepers
+profited by the exaggerated prices we paid for everything we bought.
+Trade in Lhasa was never brisker. The poor were never so liberally
+treated. One day a merry crowd of them were collected on the plain
+outside the city, and largess was distributed to more than 11,000. Every
+babe in arms within a day's march of Lhasa was brought to the spot, and
+received its dole of a tanka (5d.).
+
+I think the Tibetans were genuinely impressed with our humanity during
+this time, and when, on the eve of our departure, the benign and
+venerable Te Rinpoche held his hands over General Macdonald in
+benediction, and solemnly blessed him for his clemency and moderation in
+sparing the monasteries and people, no one doubted his thankfulness was
+sincere. The golden Buddha he presented to the General was the highest
+pledge of esteem a Buddhist priest could bestow.
+
+When, on September 1, the Tibetans, after nearly a month's palaver, had
+accepted only two of the terms of the treaty,[22] Colonel Younghusband
+decided that the time had come for a guarded ultimatum. He told the
+delegates that, if the terms were not accepted in full within a week, he
+would consult General Macdonald as to what measures it would be
+necessary to take to enforce compliance. Their submission was complete,
+and immediate.
+
+  [22] The liberation of the Lachung men and the destruction of the
+      Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers.
+
+Colonel Younghusband had achieved a diplomatic triumph of the highest
+order. If the ultimatum had been given three weeks, or even a fortnight,
+earlier, I believe the Tibetans would have resisted. When we reached
+Lhasa on August 3, the Nepalese Resident said that 10,000 armed monks
+had been ready to oppose us if we had decided to quarter ourselves
+inside the city, and they had only dispersed when the Shapes who rode
+out to meet us at Toilung returned with assurances that we were going to
+camp outside. At one time it seemed impossible to make any progress with
+negociations without further recourse to arms. But patience and
+diplomacy conquered. We had shown the Tibetans we could reach Lhasa and
+yet respect their religion, and left an impression that our strength was
+tempered with humanity.
+
+The treaty was signed in the Potala on August 7, in the Dalai Lama's
+throne-room. The Tibetan signatories were the acting regent, who affixed
+the seal of the Dalai Lama; the four Shapes; the Abbots of the three
+great monasteries, Depung, Sera, and Gaden; and a representative of the
+National Assembly. The Amban was not empowered to sign, as he awaited
+'formal sanction' from Peking. Lest the treaty should be afterwards
+disavowed through a revolution in Government, the signatories included
+representatives of every organ of administration in Lhasa.
+
+On the afternoon of the 7th our troops lined the causeway on the west
+front of the Potala. Towards the summit the rough and broken road became
+an ascent of slippery steps, where one had to walk crabwise to prevent
+falling, and plant one's feet on the crevices of the age-worn
+flagstones, where grass and dock-leaves gave one a securer foothold.
+Then through the gateway and along a maze of slippery passages, dark as
+Tartarus, but illumined dimly by flickering butter lamps held by aged
+monks, impassive and inscrutable. In the audience-chamber Colonel
+Younghusband, General Macdonald, and the Chinese Amban sat beneath the
+throne of the Dalai Lama. On either side of them were the British
+Political Officer and Tibetan signatories. In another corner were the
+Tongsa Penlop of Bhutan and his lusty big-boned men, and the dapper
+little Nepalese Resident, wreathed in smiles. British officers sat round
+forming a circle. Behind them stood groups of Tommies, Sikhs, Gurkhas,
+and Pathans. In the centre the treaty, a voluminous scroll, was laid on
+a table, the cloth of which was a Union Jack.
+
+When the terms had been read in Tibetan, the signatories stepped forward
+and attached their seals to the three parallel columns written in
+English, Tibetan, and Chinese. They showed no trace of sullenness and
+displeasure. The regent smiled as he added his name.
+
+After the signing Colonel Younghusband addressed the Tibetans:
+
+'The convention has been signed. We are now at peace, and the
+misunderstandings of the past are over. The bases have been laid for
+mutual good relations in the future.
+
+'In the convention the British Government have been careful to avoid
+interfering in the smallest degree with your religion. They have annexed
+no part of your territory, have made no attempt to interfere in your
+internal affairs, and have fully recognised the continued suzerainty of
+the Chinese Government. They have merely sought to insure--
+
+'1. That you shall abide by the treaty made by the Amban in 1890.
+
+'2. That trade relations between India and Tibet, which are no less
+advantageous to you than to us, should be established as they have been
+with every other part of the Chinese Empire, and with every other
+country in the world except Tibet.
+
+'3. That British representatives should be treated with respect in
+future.
+
+'4. That you should not depart from your traditional policy in regard to
+political relations with other countries.
+
+'The treaty which has now been made I promise you on behalf of the
+British Government we will rigidly observe, but I also warn you that we
+will as rigidly enforce it. Any infringement of it will be severely
+punished in the end, and any obstruction of trade, any disrespect or
+injury to British subjects, will be noticed and reparation exacted.
+
+'We treat you well when you come to India. We do not take a single rupee
+in Customs duties from your merchants. We allow any of you to travel and
+reside wherever you will in India. We preserve the ancient buildings of
+the Buddhist faith, and we expect that when we come to Tibet we shall be
+treated with no less consideration and respect than we show you in
+India.
+
+'You have found us bad enemies when you have not observed your treaty
+obligations and shown disrespect to the British Raj. You will find us
+equally good friends if you keep the treaty and show us civility.
+
+'I hope that the peace which has at this moment been established between
+us will last for ever, and that we may never again be forced to treat
+you as enemies.
+
+'As the first token of peace I will ask General Macdonald to release all
+prisoners of war. I expect that you on your part will set at liberty all
+those who have been imprisoned on account of dealings with us.'
+
+At the conclusion of the speech, which was interpreted to the Tibetans
+sentence by sentence, and again in Chinese, the Shapes expressed their
+intention to observe the treaty faithfully.[23]
+
+  [23] The following is a draft of the terms as communicated by _The
+      Times_ Correspondent at Peking. The terms have not yet been
+      disclosed in their final form, but I understand that Dr.
+      Morrison's summary contains the gist of them:
+
+      '1. Tibetans to re-erect boundary-stones at the Tibet frontier.
+
+      '2. Tibetans to establish marts at Gyangtse, Yatung, Gartok, and
+      facilitate trade with India.
+
+      '3. Tibet to appoint a responsible official to confer with the
+      British officials regarding the alteration of any objectionable
+      features of the treaty of 1893.
+
+      '4. No further Customs duties to be levied upon merchandise after
+      the tariff shall have been agreed upon by Great Britain and the
+      Tibetans.
+
+      '5. No Customs stations to be established on the route between the
+      Indian frontier and the three marts mentioned above, where
+      officials shall be appointed to facilitate diplomatic and
+      commercial intercourse.
+
+      '6. Tibet to pay an indemnity of L500,000 in three annual
+      instalments, the first to be paid on January 1, 1906.
+
+      '7. British troops to occupy the Chumbi Valley for three years, or
+      until such time as the trading posts are satisfactorily
+      established and the indemnity liquidated in full.
+
+      '8. All forts between the Indian frontier on routes traversed by
+      merchants from the interior of Tibet to be demolished.
+
+      '9. Without the consent of Great Britain no Tibetan territory
+      shall be sold, leased, or mortgaged to any foreign Power
+      whatsoever; no foreign Power whatsoever shall be permitted to
+      concern itself with the administration of the government of Tibet,
+      or any other affairs therewith connected; no foreign Power shall
+      be permitted to send either official or non-official persons to
+      Tibet--no matter in what pursuit they may be engaged--to assist in
+      the conduct of Tibetan affairs; no foreign Power shall be
+      permitted to construct roads or railways or erect telegraphs or
+      open mines anywhere in Tibet.
+
+      'In the event of Great Britain's consenting to another Power
+      constructing roads or railways, opening mines, or erecting
+      telegraphs, Great Britain will make a full examination on her own
+      account for carrying out the arrangements proposed. No real
+      property or land containing minerals or precious metals in Tibet
+      shall be mortgaged, exchanged, leased, or sold to any foreign
+      Power.
+
+      '10. Of the two versions of the treaty, the English text to be
+      regarded as operative.'
+
+      The ninth clause, which precludes Russian interference and
+      consequent absorption, is of course the most vital article of the
+      treaty.
+
+The next day in durbar a scene was enacted which reminded one of a play
+before the curtain falls, when the characters are called on the stage
+and apprised of their changed fortunes, and everything ends happily.
+Among the mutual pledges and concessions and evidences of goodwill that
+followed we secured the release of the political captives who had been
+imprisoned on account of assistance rendered British subjects. An old
+man and his son were brought into the hall looking utterly bowed and
+broken. The old man's chains had been removed from his limbs that
+morning for the first time in twenty years, and he came in blinking at
+the unaccustomed light like a blind man miraculously restored to sight.
+He had been the steward of the Phalla estate near Dongste; his offence
+was hospitality shown to Sarat Chandra Das in 1884. An old monk of Sera
+was released next. He was so weak that he had to be supported into the
+room. His offence was that he had been the teacher of Kawa Guchi, the
+Japanese traveller who visited Lhasa in the disguise of a Chinese
+pilgrim. We who looked on these sad relics of humanity felt that their
+restitution to liberty was in itself sufficient to justify our advance
+to Lhasa.
+
+On August 14 the Amban posted in the streets of Lhasa a proclamation
+that the Dalai Lama was deposed by the authority of the Chinese Emperor,
+owing to the desertion of his trust at a national crisis. Temporal power
+was vested in the hands of the National Assembly and the regent, while
+the spiritual power was transferred to Panchen Rinpoche, the Grand Lama
+of Tashilunpo, who is venerated by Buddhists as the incarnation of
+Amitabha, and held as sacred as the Dalai Lama himself. The Tashe Lama,
+as he is called in Europe, has always been more accessible than the
+Dalai Lama. It was to the Tashe Lama that Warren Hastings despatched the
+missions of Bogle and Turner, and the intimate friendship that grew up
+between George Bogle and the reigning incarnation is perhaps the only
+instance of such a tie existing between an Englishman and a Tibetan. The
+officials of the Tsang province, where the Tashe Lama resides, are not
+so bigoted as the Lhasa oligarchy. It was a minister of the Tashe Lama
+who invited Sarat Chandra Das to Shigatze, learnt the Roman characters
+from him, and sat for hours listening to his talk about languages and
+scientific developments. The exile of this man, and the execution of the
+Abbot of Dongste, who was drowned in the Tsangpo, for hospitality shown
+to the Bengali explorer, are the most recent marks of the difference in
+attitude between the Lhasans and the people of Tsang.
+
+The present incarnation has not shown himself bitterly anti-foreign.
+During the operations in Tibet he remained as neutral and inactive as
+safety permitted, and it is not impossible that the hope of Mr. Ular may
+be realized, and an Anglophile Buddhist Pope established at Shigatze.
+Herein lies a possible simplification of the Tibetan problem, which has
+already lost some of its complexity by the flight of the Dalai Lama to
+Urga.
+
+In estimating the practical results of the Tibet Expedition, we should
+not attach too much importance to the exact observance of the terms of
+the treaty. Trade marts and roads, and telegraph-wires, and open
+communications are important issues, but they were never our main
+objective. What was really necessary was to make the Tibetans understand
+that they could not afford to trifle with us. The existence of a
+truculent race on our borders who imagined that they were beyond the
+reach of our displeasure was a source of great political danger. We
+went to Tibet to revolutionize the whole policy of the Lhasa oligarchy
+towards the Indian Government.
+
+The practical results of the mission are these: The removal of a ruler
+who threatened our security and prestige on the North-East frontier by
+overtures to a foreign Power; the demonstration to the Tibetans that
+this Power is unable to support them in their policy of defiance to
+Great Britain, and that their capital is not inaccessible to British
+troops.
+
+We have been to Lhasa once, and if necessary we can go there again. The
+knowledge of this is the most effectual leverage we could have in
+removing future obstruction. In dealing with people like the Tibetans,
+the only sure basis of respect is fear. They have flouted us for nearly
+twenty years because they have not believed in our power to punish their
+defiance. Out of this contempt grew the Russian menace, to remove which
+was the real object of the Tibet Expedition. Have we removed it? Our
+verdict on the success or failure of Lord Curzon's Tibetan policy
+should, I think, depend on the answer to this question.
+
+There can be no doubt that the despatch of British troops to Lhasa has
+shown the Tibetans that Russia is a broken reed, her agents utterly
+unreliable, and her friendship nothing but a hollow pretence. The
+British expedition has not only frustrated her designs in Tibet: it has
+made clear to the whole of Central Asia the insincerity of her pose as
+the Protector of the Buddhist Church.
+
+But the Tibetans are not an impressionable people. Their conduct after
+the campaign of 1888 shows us that they forget easily. To make the
+results of the recent expedition permanent, Lord Curzon's original
+policy should be carried out in full, and a Resident with troops left in
+Lhasa. It will be objected that this forward policy is too fraught with
+possibilities of political trouble, and too costly to be worth the end
+in view. But half-measures are generally more expensive and more
+dangerous in the long-run than a bold policy consistently carried out.
+
+We have left a trade agent at Gyantse with an escort of fifty men, as
+well as four or five companies at Chumbi and Phari Jong, at distances of
+100 and 130 miles. But no vigilance at Gyantse can keep the Indian
+Government informed of Russian or Chinese intrigue in Lhasa. Lhasa is
+Tibet, and there alone can we watch the ever-shifting pantomime of
+Tibetan politics and the manoeuvres of foreign Powers. If we are not
+to lose the ground we have gained, the foreign relations of Tibet must
+stand under British surveillance.
+
+But putting aside the question of vigilance, our prestige requires that
+there should be a British Resident in Lhasa. That we have left an
+officer at Gyantse, and none at Lhasa, will be interpreted by the
+Tibetans as a sign of weakness.
+
+Then, again, diplomatic relations with Tibet can only continue a farce
+while we are ignorant of the political situation in Lhasa. Influences in
+the capital grow and decay with remarkable rapidity. The Lamas are
+adepts in intrigue. When we left Lhasa, the best-informed of our
+political officers could not hazard a guess as to what party would be in
+power in a month's time, whether the Dalai Lama would come back, or in
+what manner his deposition would affect our future relations with the
+country. We only knew that our departure from Lhasa was likely to be the
+signal for a conflict of political factions that would involve a state
+of confusion. The Dalai Lama still commanded the loyalty of a large body
+of monks. Sera Monastery was known to support him, while Gaden, though
+it contained a party who favoured the deposed Shata Shape, numbered many
+adherents to his cause. The only political figure who had no following
+or influence of any kind was the unfortunate Amban.[24] Whatever party
+gains the upper hand, the position of the Chinese Amban is not enviable.
+
+  [24] The Amban or Chinese Resident in Lhasa is in the same position
+      as a British Resident in the Court of a protected chief in India.
+      Of late years, however, the Amban's authority has been little
+      more than nominal.
+
+At the moment of writing China has not signed the treaty; she may do so
+yet, but her signature is not of vital importance. The Tibetans will
+decide for themselves whether it is safe to provoke our hostility. If
+they decide to defy us, then of course trouble may arise from their
+refusing to recognise the treaty of 1904 on the pretext that it was not
+signed by the Amban.
+
+It will be remembered that after the campaign of 1888 the convention we
+drew up in Calcutta was signed by China, and afterwards repudiated by
+Tibet. For many years the Tibetans have ignored China's suzerainty, and
+refused to be bound by a convention drawn up by her in their behalf; but
+now the plea of suzerainty is convenient, they may use it as a pretext
+to escape their new obligations.
+
+It is even possible that the Amban advised the Tibetan delegates in
+Lhasa to agree to any terms we asked, if they wanted to be rid of us, as
+any treaty we might make with them would be invalid without the
+acquiescence of China. Thus the 'vicious circle' revolves, and a more
+admirable political device from the Chino-Tibetan point of view cannot
+be conceived.
+
+But the permanence of the new conditions in Tibet does not depend on
+China. If the Tibetans think they are still able to flout us, they will
+do so, and one pretext will serve as well as another. But if they have
+learnt that our displeasure is dangerous they will take care not to
+provoke it again.
+
+The success or failure of the recent expedition depends on the
+impression we have left on the Tibetans. If that impression is to be
+lasting, we must see that our interests are well guarded in Lhasa, or in
+a few months we may lose the ground we gained, with what cost and danger
+to ourselves only those who took part in the expedition can understand.
+
+THE END
+
+BILLING AND SONS LIMITED, GUILDFORD.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following modifications have been made to the text.
+
+ Contents, Chapter XII: 'Kalimpang' replaced with 'Kalimpong'.
+    British Bhutan--Kalimpong--'The Bhutia tat'
+
+ Page 46: The comma after 'services' replaced with a period.
+    for his good services. When I asked him how he stood with
+        the Tibetan Government
+
+ Page 248: 'the of' replaced with 'of the'.
+    mystery of the East.
+
+ Page 277: 'a' replaced with 'as'.
+    As early as 1641
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler
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