Full text of "The opening of Tibet; an account of Lhasa and the country and people of central Tibet and of the progress of the mission sent there by the English government in the year 1903-4;"

GIFT OF
W. A. Setchell

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THE OPENING OF TIBET

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THE OPENING
OF TIBET

AN ACCOUNT OF LHASA AND THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

OF CENTRAL TIBET AND OF THE PROGRESS OF THE'

MISSION SENT THERE BY THE ENGLISH

GOVERNMENT IN THE YEAR 1903-4

WRITTEN, WITH THE HELP OF ALL THE PRINCIPAL
PERSONS OF THE MISSION, BY

PERCEVAL LANDON

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE ««TIMES"

INTRODUCTION BY

COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND

irap <r laav uaeavov re poag koI XevKctSa irirpjjv
i]6h Tzap^ 'ijeTuoio TrdAcf mi Sijfiov bveipuv
Tiusav.

NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.

1905

,"9

^Vi^.a.^DQyu.

Published February ^ ^9^S

THE AMERICAN EDITION OF THIS BOOK

IS DEDICATED TO

W. W. ROCKHILL, ESQ^,

HIS country's foremost REPRESENTATIVE IN

THE FIELD OF TIBETAN EXPLORATION

46446G

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Former Explorations of Tibet 3 .

•in The Reasons for the Expedition 18

III Crossing the Himalayas 40

IV The Tibetans of the Chumbi Valley 62

^ V The Fight at the Wall 75

VI Forcing the Way to Gyantse 86

VII Life in a Tibetan Town 99

VIII Attacked by the Tibetans ' 123

i IX The Dalai Lama shows his Hand 143

X Life in the Besieged Post 169

XI Religion: Manners and Customs: Art 184

'4x11 Internal History of Lhasa 1902-4 210

xiii Lamaism 232

ixiv The Relief of the Mission 253

XV The Advance to Lhasa 272

XVI The Last Stage 297

XVII Lhasa, I 319

XVIII The Environs of Lhasa 348

XIX The Potala and the Cathedral 372

XX The Ride from Lhasa to India 397

Appendices 417

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Turquoise Bridge in Lhasa Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

A Tibetan Monk with his Prayer-wheel 24

A Road in the Himalayas 42

Encamped under the Shadow of the Himalayas 44

Member of the Expedition 68

Outfitted to cross the high passes of the Himalayas in July

The Two Abbots of a Tibetan Monastery 72

Awaiting an Attack by the Tibetans 80

Just Before the Fight at the Wall 82

The Gurkha scouts deployed on the hillside; the Sikhs beginning to disarm the
Tibetans at the further end of the wall

A Few Minutes Later 84

The British force still firing at the retreating Tibetans

The Expedition Halting for the Night •. * , . 90

The High Priest at Gyantse 92

"^ " Who looks like a saddened Falstaff "

A Valley near Samonda 94

East End of the Jong, or Fortress, at Gyantse 94

The Town of Gyantse 100

Mural Paintings in the Lamasery of Palkhor Choide 102

Images of Some of the Great Buddhist Teachers Worshiped by the
Tibetans 104

In the Palkhor Choide

SJaily Bedecked Yaks Drawing a Plow , 106

A Long-haired Monk at his Monastery 108

The Window of a Hermit Cell at Nyen-de-kyi-buk . iio

Prisoners Captured by the Mission in the Karola Fight 140

Examples of Tibetan-Chinese Workmanship 204

Specimens of Chinese-Tibetan Work in Silver 206

\Cibetan Children Characteristically Employed in a Gyantse Street 208

A Tibetan Political Agent 216

The Ta Lama at Taski-tse 218

X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Monks Walking on a Terrace beneath Lines of Prayer-flags . , . 234
The Chinese Wall across the Ammo chu at Chorten Karpo . . . 268

The Mountains that Surround Lhasa 300

Chak-sam Monastery 300

The March to Lhasa 304

The omnipresent prayer-flags and cairns beside the road to exorcise evil spirits

The Western Gate of Lhasa 322

Lhasa, Dominated by the Towering Bulk of the Potala 324

■»

The Amban, the Chinese Representative in Lhasa, Coming to Con-
fer with Colonel Younghusband , 326

The Chinese Representatives in Lhasa Meeting Colonel Young-
husband FOR the First Time 328

The Amban Coming out from Lhasa on his Way to Meet the Mission 330

A Street Scene in Lhasa : Near the Chinese Quarter 332

The Entrance to the Chinese Amban's Residence at Lhasa . . • . . 334

Ornaments of a Tibetan Altar 336

A Horn Hut 336

The Lukang Garden 338

The Sacred Elephant in the Lukang Gardens in Lhasa 340

Tibetan Woods and Meadows near Lhasa 348

The Elaborate Detail of Tibetan Architecture 350

In the Grounds of the Lha-lu House, the Headquarters of the Mis-
sion IN Lhasa 352

^ Street Scene in the Wizard Community of the Na-chung Chos-
:yong at Lhasa 356

A Close View of the Potala 372

The Mission Entering Lhasa 374

The Potala, the Home of the Grand Lama 376

The Potala at Lhasa, an Architectural Marvel 378

The Exterior of the Jo-kang Temple, the Holy of Holies of all
^A.SIA 384

The Jo-kang, with the Most Gorgeous Interior of all the Tibetan
Temples, has Practically no Exterior 386

The Great Buddha in the Holy of Holies at Lhasa 392

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

We of the Tibet Mission and its escort were honored with the
conduct of a task which for fascination of interest could hardly
be surpassed. Few, if any, of us doubted the wisdom of the great
and far-seeing statesman who initiated the enterprise and in-
spired it throughout. But, whether the policy was wise or un-
wise, we determined that it should not suffer in the execution.
On us, we felt, were fixed the eyes of many millions, not in India
alone, nor in England alone, but all over Europe and America
also, and in many an Asiatic country besides.

We who work in India know what prestige means. Through-
out the expedition we felt that our national honor was at stake,
and down to the latest- joined sepoy we bent ourselves to uphold
and raise higher the dignity of our Sovereign and the good name
of our country: to show that not even the rigors of a Tibetan
winter nor the 'obstinacy and procrastination of the two most
stolid nations in the world could deter us from our purpose;
above all, to try to effect that purpose without resorting to force.
If, as unfortunately proved to be the case, fighting were inevi-
table, we were determined still to show moderation in the hour
of victory, and to let the ignorant Tibetan leaders see that we
would respect them as we demanded they should respect us, and,
in place of distrust, to establish a confidence between us which
would prove the surest foundation for future relations.

A loss of life was indeed necessitated which every one of us
regretted; yet I for one believe that at any rate some good will

xii INTRODUCTORY NOTE

come to the Tibetans as the result of our work. War does not
always mean oppression. Nor does the breaking of the power
of a despotic Government mean the down-treading of the people.

From the first the Tibetan peasantry showed good-will toward
us. They were especially anxious to trade— no keener traders
could be found. We have, as one result, partially freed the
people from the terrible incubus of priestly control, and there are
unmistakable signs that we left them better disposed toward
us after our advance to Lhasa than they were before. Owing to
the magnificent behavior of the troops, the confidence of the peo-
ple was entirely gained. Villagers and traders thronged to our
camps. Soldiers went about unmolested in every part of the
Lhasa bazaar. Officers were admitted to the most sacred shrines.
Captain O'Connor, my right-hand man in dealing with the Tibe-
tans, was received not only with real ceremony, but with real
warmth, by the Tashi Lama at Shigatse. And, last but by no
means least, Tibetan wool-merchants are already making ar-
rangements for trading with India.

How all this was effected none can tell better than Mr. Lan-
don. He reveled in the mysteries of Tibet, and appreciated to
the full the wonderful scenery which to my mind was infinitely
the most fascinating of all our experiences. I have not had the
advantage of reading the proofs of his book, and I cannot be
responsible for any political views which he may have expressed.
But I feel confident that no more competent chronicler of what
the Tibet Mission saw and did could be found, and we were
indeed fortunate in having with us one of his enthusiasm and
powers of description.

F. E. YOUNGHUSBAND.
London,

December, 1904.

TO FRANK YOUNGHUSBAND

My dear Colonel :

It was into the mouth of a British chieftain in the first century
that Tacitus put a criticism which has become famous. " Men,"
protested Calgacus, " are apt to be impressed chiefly by the un-
known," In a sense, somewhat different from that in which it was
originally intended, this estimate has remained just to the present
day. Spread out the map of the world and there before you is
proof enough of one of the most marked, most persistent — perhaps
also one of the best — characteristics of an Englishman. You are
but the latest of a succession of explorers which has no rival in
the history of another race. The sturdy trampings of Sir John
Mandeville, perhaps also his even more robust imaginings— be
it remembered, that without the latter we should not have had the
former — have had their successors in unbroken line to the pres-
ent day. Other nations have had their home-keeping centuries—
years in which the needs of commerce or high politics have de-
manded that they should for a time develop and not explore. But,
decade after decade, the English have always had their represen-
tatives creeping on a little beyond the margin of the traveled world
—men to whom beaten tracks were a burden, men for whom the
" free air astir to windward " was inevitably more than the new-
found territory, however rich, upon which they were just turning
their backs.

Century after century it is the same old story. The instinctive
tracks of voyagers in Elizabethan years; the restlessness ashore of
merchant 'venturers the moment Blake had won for them and for
us the peaceful occupation of the seas; the lonely dotted lines that
drive a thin furrow of knowledge across the blank salt wastes of
Australia ; the quick evaporation of the mists of African ignorance ;
above all, the prosaic English place-names of arctic peak and tropical
island and anchorage, unrevisited and unknown, except by a shore-
line on an Admiralty chart no longer dotted as conjectural— all

xiii

XIV

these have carried on an unconscious tradition; and there is no
apology needed for the present story of another English expedition
which won its way where all other living men have failed to go.

For us the door was opened, and though it has now again been
locked as grimly as before, at least for many months we have lived
in the very heart of the real Tibet. The course of our expedition
lay through no deserted wastes of sand, through which a stealthy
or disguised European creeps painfully from water-hole to water-
hole, avoiding the least sign of man or human habitation, learning
little and caring to learn less of the people from whose notice he
is shrinking. We have moved through the only populous and
politically important districts of the country, we have made our stay
in the centers of Tibetan life, and of necessity we were brought into
immediate contact with that mysterious government and religion
upon which no other European transgressor into the forbidden land
has been able to throw the light of personal knowledge. It has
been but a passing chance, but perhaps for that very reason the
more interest attaches to the simplest account of men and places
upon which the curtain has again impenetrably fallen.

Yes, the chance has been a great one, but there is a touch of
regret in our ability to use it. One canpot forget that the net-
work of baffled explorers' routes which circumnavigate and sheer
painfully off from Lhasa, represents the last of the greater ex-
plorations possible on this earth. The barriers that guard the
pole are of nature's making only. It is not endurance only, or even
chiefly, that has attracted us in the past, but for the future there
will be little else for our explorer to fight. The hostility of man,
which has added a spice of interest to all exploration hitherto, will
never again whet the ambition of a voyager to an undiscovered land.

That the last country to be discovered by the civilized world
should be one which has few rivals in its religious interests and
importance, fewer still in the isolated development of its national
characteristics, and none in its unique government and policy is a
fitting close to the pioneer work of civilization ; and that the English,
who have long been faithful servants of that restlessness on which
all progress is based, should have done the work, is not unjust;
and that you, my dear Younghusband, should have been chosen
to lead this rear-guard of exploration was for all concerned a good
deal more than fortunate. In these pages I do not intend to praise,
or indeed lay greater stress upon your work, or that of others, than
such as the bare narrative may of itself suggest from time to time.

but I am none the less aware of the debt which this country owes

to your quiet constancy and determination.

I am,

My dear Younghusband,

Sincerely yours,

Perceval Landon.
5 Pall Mall Place, London,

January ist, 1905.

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Writers on Tibet have acquired an unenviable reputation for con-
cealing their indebtedness to other workers in the same field; I
take this opportunity of saying that it would be difficult for me to
set down the full number of those to whom I am indebted for help
in the writing of this work. Besides the authors of all books
on the subject, I am glad to think that there is hardly a man on
the expedition who, consciously or not, has not added his tale of
help to the book, and will not recognize lurking in some phrase
or footnote a fact which could only have been given me by himself.
Some, however, I must single out for my especial thanks, and in
mentioning these I trust that I may not be regarded as ungrateful
by those whose names I am compelled to omit. The actual writer
of such a book as this is among the last to whom a reader should
feel gratitude.

To Sir Francis Younghusband, to Lord Curzon, and to Captain
W. F. T. O'Connor, to Captain H. J. Walton, Lord Ampthill, and
the late Major Bretherton, to Mr. Claude White, Lieutenant-Colonel
L. A. Waddell, Colonel Sir James R. L. Macdonald, Captain C. H.
D. Ryder, and Captain H. M. Cowie, to Mr. E. C. Wilton, Lieuten-
ant-Colonels Iggulden and Beynon, Mr. H. H. Hayden, and to
Majors Sheppard and Ottley, my obligations throughout the fol-
lowing pages are continual and, I hope, obvious. Less patent but
almost equally indispensable for any success has been the help I
have received from Mr. L. Dane, Sir Edward Maunde Thompson,
Mr. Filson Young, Mr. Herbert Blackett, Mr. A. W. Paul, and Mr.
Valentine Chirol. I should be glad to receive any additional in-
formation, notes, or criticisms, as I hope to make of " The Opening
of Tibet " a work of Tibetan reference, and, in any future edition,,
shall carefully revise the book up to date.

> > )„ > J J ^ J

> 1 J ') > , ,

THE OPENING OF TIBET

CHAPTER I

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET

THE earliest historical relic of the Tibetans— like that of
many, perhaps of most, other races — is a weather-beaten
stone, the Do-ring. It stands in the center of Lhasa, across the
courtyard in front of the western doors of the Cathedral or Jo-
kang, beneath the famous willow-tree. Like Asoka's pillars on
the one hand or the Black Stone of Mukden on the other, it both
records a treaty and is the outward symbol of the prosperity of
Tibet. One might also add that, like the Omphalos at Delphi or
London Stone, it is to the Tibetans not only the center of their
strange shoulder-blade-shaped earth, but, more practical, the goal
from which their journeys and stages are reckoned. But the Do-
ring is even more than this. The terms of the treaty of 783 a.d.,
now barely decipherable upon its cup-marked surface, corroborate,
in some degree, the legendary history of Tibet so far as it can be
found in Chinese chronicles.

This history is not one of great interest, and may be chiefly
dismissed as one of continued hostility with China, but of hos-
tility on equal terms. That the result of these border skirmish-
ings was by no means as uniformly satisfactory to China as one
might imagine from her version of the events, is clear, for about
the year 640 a.d. the King of Tibet, Srong-tsan-gambo, succeeded
in obtaining the hand of a princess of the imperial house of Tang
against the will of the emperor and after some years' fighting.

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4 THE OPENING OF TIBET

The story of this Srong-tsan-gambo is incrusted with incon-
sistent legend. He appears to have been a devout Buddhist, to
have married also a Nepalese princess, to have led an army into
India, where, about the year 648, he inflicted a defeat upon the
King of Magadha, from which place he carried off the famous
image which is to this day the chief and central treasure of the Jo-
kang. Another story says that it was presented as a free gift
from the Buddhists of Magadha by the hand of the returning
Tonmi-Sambhota, a minister whom Srong-tsan-gambo had de-
spatched to India to inquire more perfectly about the Buddhist
religion. The legend that this man introduced writing, and his
Chinese wife several of the best-known arts of her own country,
merely reflects the impetus given to foreign influences in Lhasa
by the origin and travels of the two.

Srong-tsan-gambo's grandson, Ti-srong-de-tsan, resumed hos-
tilities with China, and in 763 actually sacked the capital, Chan-
gan, or Hsia-Fu. Before that he also had given proof of his
Buddhist zeal by inviting the famous Buddhist saint Padma
Sambhava to visit his country. This was a more important mat-
ter than it then appeared, and was destined to mold indefinitely
the future of Tibet ; for, apart from his personal influence at the
time, this man, known also as Padma Pani or the Guru Rinpoche,
founded the Samye monasteries and the Red Cap school in 749,
and eventually reappears as the central figure of Lamaism — actu-
ally more important than the Buddha himself in its tradition and
ritual. And it is his soul, itself a re-incarnation of that of Ami-
tabha, the Bodisat, which is born again both in the person of the
Grand Lama of Tashi-lhunpo, and, vicariously, as Avalokites-
wara, in the body of the Dalai Lama or Grand Lama of Lhasa
also. To this king Ti-srong-de-tsan must be credited more than
military skill or religious fervor. It is clear that the position of
Tibet as a sacrosanct center of religion is due to his recognition
of the vast importance of Tibet as offering a permanent home to

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 5

the faith which was being slowly but completely expelled from
India at this time. War after war followed his death, and in
or about 783 his successor, King Ralpachan, made with the Em-
peror Tai-tsang the Second the treaty which is engraved upon the
Do-ring at Lhasa. It is to be noted that the high-sounding
epithets which the contracting parties apply to themselves already
reflect the semi-sacred and mystic importance of Tibet.

These dry particulars are necessary in order to understand
much of later Lamaism, but the era of important legend closes
with the assassination of Lang-darma, the younger brother of
\^ Ralpachan, who had ascended the throne in 899. Lang-darma,
who had murdered his brother to clear the way for his own suc-
cession, is the Buddhist Julian, and the assassination of this perse-
cutor of the faith is still annually observed in Lhasa on the
threshold of the Jo-kang, where a fanatic monk achieved his
purpose at the cost of his own life. From this date onward Tibet
was divided into a large number of petty principalities, and its
history is for many centuries obscure. Lamaism, however, flour-
ished at the expense of the body politic, and in 1038 Atisha or
Jo Ji-pal-den again reformed the religion of the country. In
1206 the country was conquered by the Tartars, and in 1270
Kublai khan recognized the supremacy of the head Lama of the
Sakya monastery as titular ruler of Tibet, an arrangement which
lasted until the foundation of the Yellow or Gelukpa sect by
Tsong-kapa in the fifteenth century and the final establishment
of the re-incarnate hierarchy of Lhasa two hundred years later.
But before that momentous coup d'etat, the first European traveler
had entered Tibet, and it is the aim of this chapter rather to give
a brief account of the attempts of foreign nations to enter into
communication with this hermit country, than to dwell at any
length upon its internal history.

Friar Odoric or Ordericus of Pordenone, a Minorite friar, ap-
pears to have visited Tibet about the year 1328. He was return-

6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

ing from the east coast of China, by Shensi, hoping eventually to
strike the main European caravan routes through Asia. It seems
clear that he never reached Lhasa. Astley dismisses him as " the
prince of liars," but some of his notes are good and interesting.
He reports of the capital of Tibet that its walls are black and
white ; that its streets are well paved ; that the Buddhist prohibi-
tion against the taking of life was strictly observed there ; and that
the Tibetans of the country districts lived, as now, in black yak-
hair tents. The title of the Grand Lama of Sakya he gives as
Abassi, in which a reflection of the Latin title of the chief of a
monastery may probably be seen.

But from that time there is a blank of many years, at the end
of which the present regime was established by Tsong-kapa,* a
monk from the then populous region of Koko-nor, far to the
northeast of Lhasa. His reformations were sweeping in their
scope, and though at this day the various sects of Lamaism are
divided rather by tradition, ritual, and costume than by any vital
dogmatic schism, the stricter moral code of the Cjclukpas or Yel-
low Caps, Tsong-kapa's sect, is still to be recognized. Before the
next European visited Lhasa, the Gelukpas had consolidated their
rule, and in 1624 Antonio Andrada, of the Society of Jesus,
found the chief power in their hands at Tashi-lhunpo. This mis-
sionary was the author of the most widely known description of
Tibet until the travels of Turner were issued at the close of the
eighteenth century. But it is certain that his acquaintance with
the country was limited to the western and northern parts —
Lhasa still remained unvisited.

The doctrine of political re-incarnation had now been fully ac-
cepted. The first re-incarnation of Amitabha or Manjusri ^— the
Indian synonyms are conveniently used for the chief personages
of the Greater Vehicle of Buddhism— was Gedun-tubpa, Grand
Lama of Tashi-lhunpo, in whom Tsong-kapa recognized the per-

* "He of the Orion Land." ' The Tibetan name is Chenrezig.

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 7

sonality of Padma Sambhava. Gedun-tubpa thus founded a series
of re-incarnations near Shigatse, of which the successive holders
made such good use that toward the middle of the seventeenth
century Na-wang Lob-sang made himself master of Tibet. But
he then transferred his capital to Lhasa, accepted the title of Dalai
Lama from the Emperor of China/ built the Potala palace, and,
most important of all, discovered that, besides being, as Grand
Lama of Tashi-lhunpo, a re-incarnation of Amitabha, he was also
a reappearance of Avalokiteswara. This produced a curious re-
sult, for Avalokiteswara was an emanation of Amitabha and,
therefore, inferior to his " father " as touching his potential man-
hood. Thus, though the entire political power has been absorbed
by the Dalai or Grand Lama of Lhasa, the Tashi Lama— as the
Grand Lama of Tashi-lhunpo is commonly called— remains in
theory his senior and superior in spiritual matters. A govern-
ment, similar in most respects to that which is now established,
was afterward inaugurated, the forcible introduction by the Chi-
nese Emperor of two Ambans or Viceroys with a strong guard
being the result of the Dzungarian raid and the occupation of
Lhasa in 171 7. Chinese suzerainty may be said to date from
1720.

In 1662, in the middle of Na-wang Lob-sang's revolution, the
first European, Father Johann Grueber, also a Jesuit, reached
Lhasa in company with Father Dorville. He left few records of
his travels, but Astley's " Collection of Voyages " contains an
abstract of his account of this journey. Lhasa— or, as he calls it,
Barantola— is described as the capital of the country and the resi-
dence of the Buddhist Pope, whose castle " Butala " reminded
Grueber of the Rhenish fortresses of his own fatherland. He re-
marks that the religion was essentially identical with Christianity,

^ The title means Ocean (of learning). It has originated the perpetual "sur-
name" of Gya-tso (expanse of water) for the successive re-incarnations of the
Dalai Lama. ^ ^ l^:^

8 THE OPENING OF TIBET

though, as he says, no Christian was ever in the country before.
Among other remarks which are true of Tibetans to-day, he men-
tions the feminine habits of wearing the hair plaited tightly into
a number of small cords, of bearing the " patug " or turquoise-
studded head-dress, and of smearing the face with kutch.* In
1708 the Capuchin mission in India was pushed forward and four
fathers were sent to make a settlement in Lhasa. Elsewhere I
have sketched the career of this ill-fated hospice. For the moment
it is only necessary to say that it was persecuted by the Jesuits and
eventually abandoned in 1745. Brother Orazio della Penna of this
mission acquired a perfect knowledge of the Tibetan language.
He wrote an account of the country, which is a somewhat bald
aggregation of facts and fancies. To him is probably due our
knowledge of the mineral wealth of the country, and a certain
light upon its internal dissensions during the first quarter of the
eighteenth century. His summary of the chief features of La-
maism is colored by the scholasticism of his own religion.

Hippolito Desideri and Manuel Freyre, Jesuit spies, reached
Lhasa in 1716, and stayed there thirteen years, until they were
recalled by the Pope. The manuscripts of the former are still
unpublished, but, contrary to general belief, they have been thor-
oughly examined, and full extracts have from time to time been
made from them for private use. About this time the famous
survey of China was made under the auspices of the Jesuit colony
in Peking.

One Samuel Van der Putte was the next visitor. He was a

shrewd, adventurous Dutchman, and twice succeeded in making

his way to Lhasa. But the anti-foreign prejudices of the Tibetans

* Grueber drew a picture of the Potala palace in his day, which is of con-
siderable interest. In its earlier state it must have resembled Gyangtse-jong
in the disposition, character, and stability of its buildings, and it is also clear
that the gigantic buttress-building which sweeps sheer up the side of the
rock from the plain to the Dalai Lama's own palace covers two deep ravines
which are probably converted into secret treasure chambers at this moment.
See Appendix B.

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 9

were fermenting. Van der Putte was obliged to travel between
China and India in disguise, and during the whole of his stay
in Tibet and China — a period of about twelve years, 1724- 173 5 —
was unable to compile any connected narrative owing to the dan-
ger which surrounded him. He made his notes upon slips of
paper, and ultimately, in fear lest improper or inaccurate use
should be made of them, ordered them in his will to be burned.
He appears also to have kept a small journal which was, it
seems, destroyed at the same time. It is difficult to find a parallel
to the loss which scientific exploration has suffered by the holo-
caust of the entire notes of a man who was equally distinguished
as a traveler, a linguist, and a scientific expert.

About this time the names of three Englishmen are conspicuous
among those who have explored Tibet. It is, indeed, almost en-
tirely upon their notes that our information as to the interior of
Tibet rested until the organization of the traveling Pundits by
the Indian Survey Office comparatively late in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Between the years 1774 and 1812 Mr. George Bogle, a
young writer of the East India Company, Lieutenant Samuel
Turner, and Mr. Thomas Manning— an eccentric mathematician
and Oriental scholar— all penetrated with more or less success
into this country of mystery. The three men represented different
types: Bogle, as his diary shows, was, though a comparatively
young man, a peculiarly suitable envoy for the delicate work
which Warren Hastings intrusted to him. The Governor himself
showed in his dealings with Tibet the same grasp and foresight
that characterized his actions in every part of his huge De-
pendency; he realized the importance of securing friendly rela-
tions with a country which seemed at that time to be the most obvi-
ous link between Bengal and the rest of Asia. He therefore sent
George Bogle, as the accredited agent of the Company, to establish
communication, and, if possible, improve the commercial inter-
course between the two countries. A thin current of merchan-

lo THE OPENING OF TIBET

disc filtered down over the passes into India, its owners exchang-
ing the musk, wool, and turquoises of Tibet for the rice and
hardware of India, but it is not likely that Warren Hastings had
any very definite intention to open up a thoroughfare to India
from the north and east. Many years were needed to consolidate
the British rule in Bengal, and he had difficulties enough in India
proper to contend with without in any way inviting the inter-
ference of outside tribes or nations. It is probable that his chief
aim was to secure information. Nothing whatever was known
of this particular route between India and Tibet ; the very names
of the towns, the nature of the country, the disposition of its
inhabitants, its products, its government, all were alike unknown,
and George Bogle was set a task by Hastings which might well
have daunted a diplomatist more experienced than the young and
unknown writer twenty-seven years of age. But from first to
last he carried through his mission with unfailing tact, and, so
far as it was possible, with complete success. His object was not
Lhasa. The Dalai Lama was then a boy of fifteen, and the vir-
tual government of the country lay in the hands of the Tashi
Lama; this man, whose name was Jetsun Poldan Ye She, has
remained the most distinguished figure in all the list of re-incar-
nate Grand Lamas. He was a man of commanding personality,
of wide-minded sympathy and toleration, and remarkable, even
beyond the confines of his country, for his courtesy and wisdom.
To him, therefore, Bogle was sent, and making his way through
Bhutan, he arrived at Tashi-lhunpo without serious delay in
December, 1774. His diary and the ofi^cial report which he sent
to Warren Hastings, by that time appointed first Governor-Gen-
eral of India, contain by far the most judicious description of
the life and customs of the inhabitants of this unknown country
that has been written. He was received as an honored guest,
and, though, indeed, he was asked not to press his request for
permission to visit Lhasa, the favor of the Tashi Lama was

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET ii

suflficient to secure for him unique opportunities of examining
the nature, habits, and peculiarities of this unknown neighbor
across the Himalayas. All that could be done to promote
friendly relations between the two countries was cheerfully at-
tempted by the Tashi Lama, but it is clear from Bogle's own
account that he met with considerable opposition from the rep-
resentatives of Lhasa, even in the court of the actual ruler of
Tibet, and the death of the Tashi Lama shortly afterward, com-
bined with the accession to supreme power of the Dalai Lama
in 1776, effectually put an end to any hope of an amicable under-
standing between the two countries. Bogle's narrative will be
quoted in the following pages, and it would be difficult to im-
prove on the shrewd insight and steady judgment with which
many of the peculiarities of Tibet were unerringly noted down,
generally with some characteristic comment, shrewd or satirical.
After the death of the Tashi Lama in 1780, followed within
six months by the decease of Bogle himself at Calcutta, and the
consequent failure of his intended scheme, Warren Hastings
determined to make another attempt. Samuel Turner, his own
cousin, was despatched at the head of a small party to Tashi-
Ihunpo. After some delay • in Bhutan he successfully accom-
plished the journey, traveling over the same route as that which
had been taken by Bogle, and reached Tashi-lhunpo on the 226.
of September, 1783. Turner, however, found that the center
of Government had been transferred to Lhasa; the new Tashi
Lama was an infant, and the Dalai Lama showed no disposition
whatever to allow his visitor even to discuss the object of his
mission. After formally congratulating the Tashi-lhunpo hie-
rarchy upon the speedy and successful re-incarnation of the de-
ceased primate, he took his leave. On his return to England,
Turner embodied the result of his observations in a sumptu-
ously printed volume, illustrated with steel engravings, which
for a long time remained the only English printed record of

12 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Great Tibet, and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sir Clem-
ents Markham for having given to the world, in 1875, the some-
what more interesting and reliable account written by Turner's
predecessor at the Tashi court.

The third, and last, name of these three, Mr. Manning, pre-
sents one of the most curious psychological studies in the whole
history of travel. That he was a man eccentric in his habits
and tastes throughout his life may be fairly argued from his
behavior during his last years, but it is difficult to reconcile
the extraordinary energy, courage, and fixity of purpose which
enabled him successfully to carry through, at the utmost per-
sonal risk, the most dangerous expedition that any man in his
day could attempt, with the utter vacuity of the only record
which he has left of his great and successful enterprise. It is
not too much to say that on no single point did the recent ex-
pedition glean a fact or an opinion of the slightest use from the
record left by a man who, presumably for the purpose of ob-
servation, had traveled over a route to Lhasa which for the
most part was identical with that of 1904. .From the first day
recorded in his journal, the 7th of September, 181 1, to his re-
turn to Indian territory, in June of the following year, such
notes as these constitute the main bulk of his observations:

" I came in thoroughly wet and dried my clothes on my body.
Afterward, upon walking across the room, I was seized with a
violent palpitation. The insects disturbed me all night.

" I saw a lad gnawing a turnip, and called to him immediately,
and, showing it to my conductor, asked the name and told him
to give me plenty of it. I thus got an excellent well-dressed
stew with turnips."

His account of his own behavior during the crossing of the
Tsang-po is one which most Englishmen would have blushed
to recall, far more to incorporate in their record of travel.

" The reminiscences occasioned by the motion of the boat

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 13

brought on a fit of European activity. I could not sit still,
but must climb about, seat myself in various postures on the
parapet, and lean over. The master of the boat was alarmed,
and sent a steady man to hold me tight. I pointed to the or-
namented prow of the boat, and assured them that I could sit
there with perfect safety, and to prove to them how commo-
diously I was seated, bent my head and body down the outside
of the boat to the water's edge; but finding, by their renewed
instances for me to desist, that I made them uneasy, I went
back to my place and seated myself quietly. As the boat drew
near shore I meditated jumping over, but was pulled back by
the immense weight of my clothes and the clumsiness of my
boots. I was afraid of jumping short, and having the laugh
against me."

The manner in which he permitted his Chinese servant to
treat him is a revelation to those who know the East. His
only protest against the discourtesy, insubordination, disobe-
dience, and, at last, openly expressed contempt of his Chinese
servant, was to fill the pages of his diary day after day, and
week after week, with whining complaints of the man's " un-
kindness." It will hardly be believed that, after he had achieved
the end which he had set before him, and at last actually found
himself inside the Sacred City, he still occupies himself with
petty personal grievances, with long notes upon the treatment
which he applied to his patients there, with the effect of his
medicines, and with lengthy moral disquisitions upon the under-
lying influences which affect all human nature alike. Until
almost the end of his visit, with the doors of the Jo-kang open
to him, he does not seem to have visited a single temple, and
when at last he did so he occupied a page of his diary by a
petty narration of his servant's incivility and his own silly con-
duct; of the temples visited, he left no description whatever,
and the only clear thing is that the Jo-kang was not one of them.

14 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Manning returned to England after this great expedition and
lived a life of seclusion, and, it must be confessed, of eccentricity.
Sir Clements Markham has published the diary to which refer-
ence has been made, and it certainly possesses a very remarkable
interest, if not as a record of observation, at least as a psycho-
logical document which has probably no parallel in the world.

With one exception, the record of Tibetan travel from that
day to the present year is, so far as Europeans are concerned,
a record of interesting and picturesque failure. That exception
was the visit of two Jesuit Fathers, Evariste Hue and Joseph
Gabet. Traveling by the southwestern route from China,
through Sining, these two adventurous priests reached Lhasa
in January, 1846. After a stay of less than seven weeks they
were expelled by the Amban, and returned to China by the east-
ern route through Tachienlu. The book which Hue wrote upon
his travels in Eastern Asia is graphic and vivacious, and the
picture which he draws of his own experiences in Lhasa is
graphic and true; but of the natural and architectural features
he says almost nothing, and there was wanting in him a realiza-
tion of the intense importance, as well as interest, of his travels.
It is true that many of his statements, which at the time were
received with undisguised incredulity, have since received cor-
roboration from later travelers, but Hue cannot be said to have
added very much to our scientific knowledge of the countries
through which he passed, and, though his narrative possesses
a racy charm of its own which will always make it a popular
classic in the history of missionary effort, it is greatly to be
regretted that he did not use his unique opportunities in a
steadier and better informed record of the national and physical
peculiarities of this almost virgin country.

As has been said, the record of all other travel to Lhasa has
been a record of failure.* In the whole history of exploration,

^ Hue gives a curious account of the supposed visit of an Englishman, Moor-
croft, to Lhasa. Briefly stated, his assertion is that, though WilHam Moor-

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 15

there is no more curious map than that which shows the tangled
lines of travelers' routes toward this -city, coming in from all
sides, north, south, east, and west, crossing, interlocking, retrac-
ing, all with one goal, and all baffled, some soon after the journey-
had been begun, some when the travelers might almost believe
that the next hill would give them a distant glimpse of the golden
roofs of the Fotala. It has often been remarked to the writer
that this consistent failure to reach a known spot, barely 200
miles from our own frontier, across a thinly inhabited region,
has never yet been accounted for. As a matter of fact, the
reason is, I think, clear enough when that region has been
visited. Roughly stated, there is in Tibet only one way of
going from one place to another, whether the necessity lies in
the nature of the ground or in the inability to obtain food,
fuel, and fodder elsewhere, and that in itself effectually re-
duces the chance of traveling without attracting observation.
Thanks to the extraordinary system of Chinese postal relays,
it is absolutely impossible for a traveler to prevent the news of
his arrival reaching Lhasa. The population of Tibet is, it is
true, small, and it might be thought that therefore a traveler
enjoyed greater opportunities of escaping detection. It is a fact
that one may go, not for hours only, but for days, along a well-
known trade route without meeting a soul more than half a
mile from the nearest village. But this very scantiness of popu-
lation is the undoing of the trespasser; every face is as well
known to the Tibetan villager as the face of the local Chinese
official, to whom, under horrible penalties, the presence of a
stranger, in whatever guise, must be at once reported. The

croft is supposed to have died in 1825 at " Andkou," he really reached Lhasa
in 1826, and Hved there for twelve years undetected. Even his own servant
believed him to be a Kashmiri. He was assassinated by brigands on his return
journey, and the discovery of elaborate maps upon his person after death was
the first indication to the Lhasans of his nationality. It must be remembered
that Hue had this story direct from the Regent in Lhasa only eight years after-
ward. The authority for the fact of his death in 1825 is a letter written by
Trebeck, his companion. Trebeck himself died a few days later.

i6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

merchants who pass up and down upon the road are the only-
new faces that the Tibetan sees from year to year. High Lama
officials may hurry through, and now and then the Chinese
garrison of the nearest post may be relieved, but in both these
cases there is a robe or uniform readily distinguishable by the
villager, and he would be a daring man indeed who would at-
tempt to thrust himself in disguise into the company of* either
the actual, or the nominal, ruling class in Tibet. Excepting
these two classes, every passer-by along the high road is subject
to an unceasing scrutiny, which, it can readily be understood,
has hitherto effectually prevented all attempts to visit the For-
bidden City by stealth.

We have not space to include even the briefest summary of
these plucky but doomed enterprises, but each of the tracks that
contribute to the tangled skein which envelops Lhasa has its own
peculiar interest. One remembers, one after another, the light-
hearted and purposeless raid of Bonavalot and Prince Henri
d'Orleans in 1890, the steady and scientifically invaluable prog-
ress of Bower and Thorold in 1891, the triple attempts of
Rockhill — a determined American, whom every one in the col-
umn would gladly have seen accompanying us into the city he
had striven to reach for so many years at such a cost of time
and labor — and the debt which geography owes to Henry and
Richard Strachey must not be forgotten. All of these enter-
prises have, unfortunately, not ended in failure alone, and the
murder of Dutreuil de Rhins, in 1894, and the disappear-
ance of Mr, Rijnhart, in 1898, remain as significant proof
of the very real danger which has been in the past, and, so
far as one can forecast the future, will still remain an inevitable
characteristic of travel in Tibet. Of all these journeys, that of
the Littledales, in 1894, was perhaps the most interesting, and
those who knew either Mr, Littledale, or his nephew, Mr,
Fletcher, will realize that further progress was absolutely and ir-

FORMER EXPLORATIONS OF TIBET 17

revocably prevented when even these two determined men ac-
quiesced in the inevitable and gave up the attempt when within
70 miles of their long-desired goal.

The work of Russians in Tibet has been watched with some
interest from India, and the names of Przhevalsky, Roborovsky,
Kozlov, and Pevtsov honorably recall a series of explorations,
extended over many years, of which the pursuit and ultimate
object were none the less admirable in themselves because they
did not happen to commend it to the policy of the British Gov-
ernment.

These men were, of course, all Europeans. Of the secret
surveys undertaken by the Indian Government I shall speak
later.

Of Sven Hedin, it is not necessary to remind the reader.
His own gallant attempt to reach Lhasa, which occupied over
two years, is sufficiently recent to need no further description
at this moment. His own record — unostentatious, and bearing
the stamp of accurate observation in every line — is still wet
from the press, and, though his adverse opinion as to the justice
of our expedition had been freely expressed, the regret felt by
every member of the Mission that Sven Hedin was not with us
in Lhasa was genuine and deep.

CHAPTER II

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION

FOR many years there were almost no relations between the
English conquerors of India and Tibet; but so far as any
might be said to exist, they were, if anything, friendly. The
policy of isolation which the authorities of Lhasa adopted had
been formulated first in the early years of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and we must not suppose that even previous to that date
the lamas would have been willing to allow strangers to come
to their capital in any numbers. But, as a matter of fact, the
incredible remoteness of Lhasa, and the extreme difficulty of the
road thither, had always prevented any but the hardiest from
even attempting the grim journey. When, therefore, it became
obvious that European trade and European traders were going
to flourish in the Far East, it made no great difference that the
Lhasan authorities decided once for all that strangers were not
welcome there. This decree, however, they did not put into
force with extreme rigor for a long time, and it is possible that
Bogle, so late as 1774, might after all have succeeded in over-
coming the opposition of the Regent.

Chinese supremacy over Tibet nominally dates from the year
1720, and as about that time the policy of isolation was adopted,
it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Chinese pressed it
upon the Tibetans with the idea of making a " buffer state " of
the most impenetrable description between their western prov-
ince and the unknown but growing power of the foreigners in

India. Perhaps it was not the white foreigners alone that they

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 19

dreaded; Nadir Shah's invasion of India in 1727 must have
been the cause of some anxiety to the Middle Kingdom. In
any case we may fairly accept the definite statement of many
travelers that the isolation of Tibet was in its origin a Chinese
device. But they taught willing pupils, and the tables are now
so far reversed that the Chinese are unable to secure admittance
into the province even for the strangers to whom they have
given official permission. Mr. W. W. Rockhill, than whom no
man has earned more deservedly a reputation for Tibetan eru-
dition, has of course long wished to visit Lhasa. The Ameri-
can Government, on three occasions, has sent in a request to the
Chinese that he should be permitted to make the journey, and that
the Tibetan authorities should be compelled to receive him. The
first promise was readily granted; the second, that which pre-
supposed a real suzerainty over the Tibetans, they were frankly
unable to make. They did their best : three times, as the suzerain
power, they sent an order to Lhasa. Three times the Dalai
Lama flatly and unconditionally refused even to consider Mr.
Rockhill's admission.* The main responsibility, therefore, for
the exclusion of foreigners from Tibet rests now with the La-
maic hierarchy. But the great game of exchanging responsibil-
ities is as well known to those Oriental hermits as it was to the
firm of Spenlow and Jorkins. At one time the Chinese said that
they were willing enough to allow strangers to travel freely in
Tibet, but they deplored their inability to coerce the Lhasan
Government ; the Lhasan Government, on the other hand, stated
that they would be glad to see foreigners within their borders,
but unfortunately the orders of China were imperative. Lat-
terly, however, the Tibetans abandoned this pretense, and at
a great meeting of the Tsong-du, which was attended by rep-
resentatives from all parts of the country, they made a national
vow that no stranger, under any circumstances whatever, should
*This we discovered after our arrival in Lhasa.

20 THE OPENING OF TIBET

henceforth be permitted to enter the country. This vow they
made doubly sure by annexing it as an article of faith to the
Buddhist creed! One of Colonel Younghusband's earliest dip-
lomatic successes was the silencing of this plea. He asked them
whether it were indeed part of the Buddhist faith or not ? They
answered that it was; he replied, that he knew the Buddhist
scriptures well, and that nowhere from end to end of them was
there one word which could justify this assertion. Retreating
a little from their position, the Tibetans then said, " Well, it is
not perhaps really an article of faith, but we have decided that
so it must be." To this Colonel Younghusband naturally an-
swered that those who could make could also unmake, and that
if their religion were not concerned there was no reason that
they should not at once reconsider what was a mere matter of
policy.

Had the Tibetans confined themselves to this assertion of
their inviolability, pur relations with the country would have
remained as satisfactory as could have been wished. The loss
of trade was after all a small matter, and, in any case, it was
one which the Tibetans had every right to decide. But the
presence in Lhasa of a single man began the trouble which
eventually made the expedition necessary. The history of Dor-
jieff may as well be told at once.

About twenty-five years ago there arrived in Lhasa a young
lama from the Siberian steppes to the east of Lake Baikal. He
was by birth a Mongolian Buriat, but by nationality a Russian
subject. He was born at a place called Azochozki, and was
destined from his youth to holy orders. He came to Lhasa and
was received into that hot-bed of sedition, the Debung monas-
tery, where, displaying unusual ability, he ultimately became
professor of metaphysics. In no way did he dabble in political
affairs, and he seemed destined to spend the autumn of his life
as a teacher. He had reached the age of fifty-two when, more

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 21

by chance than by design, he found himself involved in high
international politics, and entered upon the adventurous career
of intrigue which has made his name notorious in the chan-
celleries of Calcutta, London, and St. Petersburg. His first
journey from Lhasa to Russia was innocent enough ; he was sent
in 1898 to collect contributions from the faithful, of whom
there are many communities in the southeastern provinces of
Russia in Europe. He traveled in the country from town to
town, and at last the Russian ministers seemed to have awakened
to the opportunity which lay before them.

Throughout this book I do not wish to suggest that Russia,
in attempting to gain influence in Lhasa, was guilty of anything
which reflects the least discredit upon her statesmen. On the
other hand, it was a far-sighted and, from many points of view,
an entirely laudable attempt to consolidate the Central Asian
Empire which she believes to be her rightful heritage. The
only reason why the British found it necessary to intervene was
that the equally justifiable policy which they had themselves
deliberately adopted, and their own vastly greater interests. in
Tibet, clashed all along the line with those of the Muscovite.
Except that we have no wish to make ourselves responsible for
the protection and good government of this huge and unwieldy
province, the aims of the government of the Tzar are no doubt
those of ourselves also. On either side it has been a mere mea-
sure of self -protection ; we happen to have been the better placed
to achieve our end. What the Russians did in allowing Dor-
jieff to represent them unofficially in Lhasa we should have been
glad to be able to do, and it is a deplorable thing that the millions
of northern Buddhists under our sway do not produce men of
the capacity which is exhibited by a Dorjieff or a Norzunoff;
if these men were to be found I fancy we should have used them
willingly long ago. For these quick-witted adventurers are
often the most effective screen which can be interposed between

22 THE OPENING OF TIBET

two advancing nationalities, so long, of course, as they are offi-
cially recognized by neither. But there was no one whom we
could oppose to the dexterity of this Buriat lama.

He was originally best known by his Tibetan name, Ghomang
Lobzang, but after his adoption of the position in which he has
become famous, he is known to Western nations by his Russian
title of Dorjieff— a name, by the way, which is merely a Rus-
sianized form of the typical Tibetan word, which means a " thun-
der-bolt," a " diamond," or, more important than all, the ulti-
mate symbol of Lamaic authority, a small brass ornament,
shaped somewhat like two royal crowns joined together by an
inch of molded brass. Other names, too, he has; Kawaguchi,
the Japanese traveler, refers to him as Ngaku-wang-dorje; the
commonest name in Lhasa itself for this man was that of his
official position, or Khende-chega, and his name appears also
as Akohwan Darjilikoff. This list does not exhaust the number
of his aliases, but it may indicate why the Government of India
took some time to realize that one and the same man lay behind
these different personalities which had, it was clear enough,
at least one bond of union — that of hostility to British influence.

Precisely what took place in Russia has not been made public,
but in these days of indiscreet memoirs it is not likely that the
true inner history of Dorjieff's mission to Russia will long re-
main a secret. All that is known is that when he returned to
Tibet, Ghomang Lobzang found himself in the unofficial position
of Russian agent in Lhasa. He brought with him a large num-
ber of exceedingly valuable presents, and he lost no time in try-
ing to persuade the Lhasan hierarchy that it was to their in-
terest to secure the informal protection of the Tzar of Russia.
Briefly stated, his arguments were these: You have no strength
in the country to resist invaders; your natural protector and
suzerain, China, is a broken reed; even at this moment she is
entirely under the domination of the British. If you remain any

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 2Z

longer trusting to her support, you will find that she has thrown
you as a sop to the Indian Government. The English are a
rapacious and heretical nation; they will not respect your reli-
gion; they will bring you into servitude, and the ancient and
honorable rule of the priests in this country will be surely put
an end to. On the other hand, if you will ask the aid of Russia
you will secure the most powerful protector in the world. You
will have gained on your side the only military power which is
able to crush the English nation. More than that, you may be
able to induce the great monarch of that nation to embrace your
faith. Another emperor, as great as he, has in past ages been
converted to our great faith, and if you can convince Nicholas,
whose sympathies with Buddhism are universally admitted, it
will not be long before the whole Russian race are obedient
servants and loyal disciples of your Holiness.

Such, in rough outline, was Dorjieff's policy. It produced
an almost immediate effect upon the Dalai Lama himself. Im-
petuously, without consulting his national council, he accepted
the suggestion, and even proposed to visit St. Petersburg in per-
son. The sacred cushion on which his Holiness should sit in
audience with the Tzar, and a beautiful codex aureus from his
own library, were sent at once, and will probably remain in the
Imperial museum on the banks of the Neva as a curious and
significant reminiscence of the great and daring policy which
so nearly succeeded in Russianizing, at a stroke, the most auto-
cratic and far-reaching religious empire of Asia. But the Dalai
Lama had reckoned too hastily; the Tsong-du had still to be
consulted, and here the Dalai Lama received a check which was
the beginning of all the internal troubles which have hampered
the proper management of Tibetan diplomacy ever since. The
Tsong-du replied diplomatically that it was very nice of the
Russian Emperor, but that they required no protection, and that
the Dalai Lama had exceeded his authority in committing the

24 THE OPENING OF TIBET

country even to a consideration of Dorjieff's offer. The Grand
Lama did all in his power to induce them to accept his scheme,
but without avail, and the next year another ruse was adopted
by Dorjieff to further the interests of his patrons.

He went again to St. Petersburg, and there was received in au-
dience by the Emperor himself; he returned after a short stay, the
bearer of two interesting things.* One was a letter, asking that
the Dalai Lama should despatch an envoy to Russia to discuss the
matter more fully. The other was a complete set of vestments
appertaining to a Bishop of the Russian Church. Later on in this
book their importance and significance will be referred to ; for the
moment, the political fruits of this embassy to St. Petersburg
claim our attention. In spite of the recent declarations of the
Tsong-du, the Dalai Lama, on his own responsibility, sent in re-
sponse Tsan-nyid, an abbot of high rank, to accompany Dorjieff,
who, a month after his arrival at Lhasa, was again on the road
to Europe. The two men made their way through Nepal and In-
dia to Colombo, where they embarked on a Russian vessel for
Odessa. Upon their arrival in Russia they were received with
the highest consideration, and a second audience with the Tzar
was granted them. Ultimately they set off on their return jour-
ney and reached Lhasa about December, 1901. They there laid
before the Dalai Lama a proposal from the Russian Government,
that a Prince of the royal house should take up his residence in
Lhasa for the purpose of promoting friendly relations between the
two countries. It may well be imagined, whether it were so ex-
pressed or not in the message, that the Russians would have con-
sidered it necessary that a small armed guard should accompany
his Imperial Highness. The other document which the returning
abbot laid before his master was the hotly discussed agreement
between Russia and Tibet. Those who deny that a treaty was

* It is of some interest to note that he made the record journey between
Urga and Lhasa ; he covered the distance in ninety days.

A TIBETAN MONK WITH HIS PRAYER-WHEEL

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 25

ever formally made between Tibet and Russia are perfectly cor-
rect. It requires no great perspicacity to see that under the rela-
tions then existing between Tibet and China no such treaty could
have been valid, even if it had been made. But it was not made ;
the treaty, the terms of which were definite enough, remained
rather as a pledge than as an assurance ; it represented, in a per-
manent form, the kindly feelings of the Russians toward Tibet;
it was there to encourage the Tibetans should any difficulty arise
with their southern neighbors; it was a comfortable guarantee
that the Russians would encourage Buddhism in their extending
empire of Central Asia. In return, the Russians asked for facili-
ties which the poor people of Lhasa may be pardoned for having
misunderstood. Concessions to construct railways must seem in-
significant enough to a country which has not a wheel within its
borders except a prayer-wheel ; but to the eye of the uncharitable
European diplomatist the very mention of railways in connection
with Russia calls up a wide field of reminiscence and implication.
That treaty was an informal reduction to terms of an unratified
and an unratifiable arrangement with Tibet. It was none the
less dangerous. The Chinese officials in Lhasa were from the first
aware of it, and at once attributed to this understanding with
Russia the sudden insolence and insubordination with which Tibet
continued to treat the advice and even the orders of their suzerain.

So far as the Dalai Lahia was concerned, the treaty would have
been signed at once, but the other authorities were imrhovable.
On behalf of the suzerain's power, the Chinese Viceroy denounced]
it as treason to his Imperial master ; as to the proposed residencej
of a Russian Grand Duke, the objections of the high officials to
the intrusion of a European among them, be he prince or peasant,/
were loud and universal. The Tsong-du refused to be drawn intc
the discussion again, or to allow the Chinese Emperor's positior
as suzerain of Tibet to be ousted by the Tzar, or by any one else!

The Dalai Lama, in bitter anger, then adopted other tactics; if

L/"

26 THE OPENING OF TIBET

he could not persuade the Tsong-du to accept Russian protection
by fair means, he was not averse to use others. From this date
onward he was without question riding for a fall with the Eng-
lish. To provoke aggression with India would, in his opinion,
bring the whole matter to a crisis. The Chinese were neither
willing nor able to interfere effectually to protect Tibet. The
Russians were, as he believed, both able and willing, and he
looked to compel the Tsong-du to adopt his policy by placing them
in a position in which they had no other resort but to accept it.
Russian rifles came into the country in camel-loads; the arsenal
at Lhasa was furbished up and a new water-wheel put in, and
Dorjieff, on his side, stated that the Russians would have a de-
tachment of Cossacks in Lhasa by the spring of 1903. It occurs
to one that there must have been a considerable body of opinion in
Lhasa sympathetic to Dorjieff's suggestions, or he would never
have ventured to make so daring a prophecy. As it was, however,
he seems to have taken pains that this boast should reach Lord
Curzon's ears. It did, and the fat was in the fire. A

yf^ Such, then, was the position of affairs into which it became im-
perative for India to intervene. Excuses for interference were
ready to hand. The Tibetans had encroached upon our territory
in Sikkim, they had established a customs post at Giao-gong, fif-
teen miles inside the frontier, and had forbidden British subjects
to pass their outposts there ; they had thrown down the boundary
pillars which had been set up along the undisputed water-shed
between the Tista and the Ammo chu. They had insulted the
treaty rights of the British by building a wall across the only
road from Tibet to the market of Yatung, which had been thrown
open to trade with India by the stipulations of the Convention
of 1890-3 ; more than this, they returned unopened letters sent by
the Viceroy to the Grand Lama in Lhasa. These insults wouldl
never have given rise to the despatch of an expedition if the TibeJ

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 27

tans had not added injury to them by their dalliance with Russia.|
As it was, there was nothing else to do but intervene, and that
speedily. With characteristic decision Lord Curzon made up his
mind to come to an understanding with these turbulent children,
and in the spring of 1903 he sent hastily to Major Bretherton and
asked him to present a scheme for the immediate advance to
Lhasa of 1,200 rifles. But this was found to be impracticable,
and the home authorities were as yet far from understanding the
urgency of the matter.

It is not unjust to say that from first to last the home Govern-
ment had mistaken the real importance of the issue. The utmost
that Lord Curzon could persuade them to do was to sanction the
despatch of Colonel Younghusband, with a smair escort, to await
the Tibetan representatives in the little post of Kamba-jong, some
fifteen miles north of the true Sikkim frontier. This the Govern-
ment consented to do, but they added loudly and publicly that
under no circumstances whatever would an advance from Kamba-
jong be permitted. This intelligence was instantly communicated
by a gentleman in the pay of the Chinese to the Amban in Lhasa,
and from that moment, naturally enough, the ultimate necessity
of an advance to Lhasa itself was insured.

The stay at Kamba-jong of the Mission was, therefore, not of
the greatest political importance, but a brief account of it is here
necessary. At the end of July Mr. Claude White, the Political
Officer in Sikkim, and Captain W. F. T. O'Connor, the only white
man who can speak Tibetan fluently, moved up the Tista Valley,
and arrived at Giao-gong, where they were met by a small party
of Tibetans who attempted to oppose their progress. It was
pointed out to them that Kamba-jong had been chosen by the
Indian Grovernment for negotiations, and that the Chinese Gov-
ernment had assented and undertaken to co-operate with the
Tibetans in negotiating at that place. To Kamba-jong, there-
fore, the members of the Mission intended to proceed. Hands

28 THE OPENING OF TIBET

were laid upon their bridle-reins, but easily brushed aside, and no
further active opposition was offered. They moved on that day
to the true frontier at the Kangra Lamo Pass. On the next day
they actually set foot on Tibetan territory and were met by a
small Chinese official named Ho, who asked them not to go on
to Kamba-jong; they returned the same answer to him as to the
Tibetans at Giao-gong, whereupon he ceased all further opposi-
tion and drowned his cares in opium. On the next day Kamba-
jong was reached, and a small encampment was made at the foot
of the hill on which the fort is built. This fort is an imposing
structure, crowning, in the usual Tibetan manner, the crest of a
sharp hill ; the plain over which Kamba-jong dominates is a wide,
flat stretch, separated only by low hills from the main Himalayan
ranges. This first view of the world's backbone from the north
is, from one point of view, disappointing, because of the great
height, i5,cxDO feet and more, from which it is seen. But the
distant view of Mount Everest, here clearly distinguishable from
the surrounding ice-fields, is imposing, though nearly a hundred
miles away. The plain of Kamba is a bare stretch of earth and
wormwood, dotted with big boulders, and here and there affording
a scanty pasturage of coarse grass.

The camp was pitched in two portions and earthworks were
thrown up; small as it was, it would have been a difficult camp
to take by storm, and here the Mission waited in patience. For
the reasons I have just suggested their patience was not re-
warded; emissaries did, indeed, come down from Lhasa, but af-
ter a formal visit to Colonel Younghusband, who followed Mr.
White after an interval of a few days, they shut themselves up in
the jong and had nothing further to do with the Mission. At
times a Chinese official, more out of curiosity than anything else,
would come into the camp. Always there were a few Tibetans
lounging outside the earthworks in mild curiosity, but the days
went on and nothing further was done than the surveying and

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 29

geological work of the Mission experts. Mr. Hayden, of the
Geological Survey, was intrusted with the latter work; Captain
Walton, I.M.S., here began his natural history notes and collec-
tions. Mr. White roamed about the district as far as the Tibetans
permitted him to go. Life was not unpleasant,^ but no business
was done, and the advent of the Abbot of Tashi-lhunpo was a
welcome break in the monotony. This typical ecclesiastic ap-
peared bringing a courteous message from the Grand Lama of
Tashi-lhunpo. He was an intelligent man of a superior type, and
evinced the utmost interest in all the instruments and habits of
the English. The gramophone was employed to impress him ;
hereby a somewhat amusing tale hangs. This gramophone had
been exhibited before to some Tibetan officials, who had said that
it was not half as good as the gramophone in Lhasa. This state-
ment somewhat paralyzed the Mission. They inquired the rea-
son. " Oh," said the official, " the Lhasa machine will not only
give out sounds, but it will take down and give out again our
own voices ! " After this there was no question but that phono-
graphs were among the European luxuries which Dorjieff had
brought from his new masters. Something had to be done to re-
store British credit, so by night a disk was scraped flat, and it was
found that a fairly good original record could be made. On the
following day, therefore, a Tibetan was asked to speak or sing
into the machine ; this he promptly did, and after a pause of some
anxiety the gramophone rendered back his voice, to his amuse-
ment and delight. This record was triumphantly rendered on the
machine to the Abbot of Tashi-lhunpo, but it was not until the
interpreter explained the matter afterward that the growing
stoniness of the worthy cleric's face during the performance was
fully understood. Apparently our Tibetan, being in a mischie-

*0n one occasion Mr. White and Major Iggulden rode up on ponies to a
height of 21 ,000 feet above the sea. This must sound strange to many Alpine
mountaineers.

30 THE OPENING OF TIBET

vous mood, had recited into the gramophone a popular Tibetan
song of the most unfortunate description.

One thing is worth recording: One morning the Abbot paid
a visit to the camp and listened to accounts of the latest discov-
eries of Western science calmly and not without interest. He
himself suggested no criticisms until he was directly asked by
Captain O'Connor some point in connection with the Tibetan
knowledge of this planet. He answered courteously, but very
decidedly, that what we English believed as to the nature of the
earth was interesting as showing the strides which science had
begun to make in distant parts; "but," he said, " of course you
are quite wrong in this matter ; the earth is shaped like a shoulder
of mutton bone, and so far from being only a small country, Tibet
occupies nearly one-half of its extent. However, do not despair;
if you will continue to read industriously and will read better
books, there is no doubt that you will be learned in time." In the
face of this I regret to have to record that our scientists collapsed
ignominiously, and no one even attempted to justify the illusions
of Europe.

M^ Now and then the usual message was received : " Go back
to Giao-gong and there we will discuss the matter; we will not
discuss the matter while you are at Kamba-jong." On one
occasion a small durbar was held, though Colonel Younghus-
band entirely demurred to the social position and the political
importance of the men who represented themselves as the Tib-
etan delegates. He explained the whole position at full length;
he set out the reasons which had induced us to attempt to come
to an amicable arrangement with our neighbor; he recapitu-
lated the events of the past few years, reproaching the Tibetans
with having broken the treaty of 1890-3, and, finally, concluded
by earnestly asking that the Tibetans should co-operate with
ourselves in bringing matters to a satisfactory conclusion. In
order that there might be no mistake his speech had been care-

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 31

fully written out to be handed on to the Dalai Lama. At the con-
clusion he presented the envelope to the chief Tibetan official, who
shrank from it in horror; he utterly refused to touch it, and he
as positively declined even to report in Lhasa the speech to
which he had just listened ; no one, in fact, would take the respon-1
sibility of having any official intercourse with us.

This was the universal attitude of the Tibetan representatives
up to the last. The following story is a curious illustration of
it: The Tibetans once sent in an oral protest chiefly directed
against the extended ramblings of Mr. White and others of the
Mission. They also protested against Hay den's chipping little
pieces from the mountains ; they said, and it was difficult to refute
it, that we should not like them to come and chip pieces off the
houses in Calcutta. Nor did they approve of the heliograph, by
which they believed that we could both see through mountains and
control the rain. But the wanderings of the members of the Mis-
sion were what they particularly disliked. This was, perhaps, not
unreasonable, though a certain amount of reconnoitering was ne-
cessary in order to collect firewood, and even country produce,
which the good people of the country were always eager to sell
us, provided they could appease their superiors by the pretense
that we had compelled them to trade with us. Colonel Young-
husband, wishing in every way in his power to accustom the
Tibetans to communicate with ourselves, asked that the request
should be put into writing and signed. It was a very simple
thing, and the Tibetans wrote the request without demur, but,
to the Colonel's surprise, they point-blank refused to sign it.
After interminable persuasion one of them snatched up a pen and
made a little mark in the corner of the sheet ; this, when examined,
proved to be no signature at all. The thing was so ridiculous
that the ponies for another excursion were saddled up and
brought to the gate of the camp, and the Tibetans were told that
if they could not put their names to this protest the English could

32 THE OPENING OF TIBET

not believe that they had authority to make it. Then, and then
only, in despair did the Tibetan officials sign the paper. This
was a most illuminating little incident, and to the very end the
Tibetans were faithful to the policy of which it forms so good an
illustration.

So it became evident that nothing could be done at Kamba-]
jong, and Colonel Younghusband suspected, as was indeed the
case, that the Tibetans had got wind of his strict injunctions not
to advance further into the country. It then became necessary to\
take stronger action, and with the concurrence of the India Office
it was arranged that he should go to Gyantse, and there make a)
second attempt to carry through the negotiations with which h^
had been intrusted.

At this point a divergence of opinion occurred; it was origi-
nally suggested by Younghusband that two columns should con-
verge upon the Kala tso; one with 2,500 yaks as transport should
occupy the Chumbi Valley, and move on directly by the side of
the Bam tso, under Colonel Macdonald, who had been at work for
some time in Darjeeling as C.R.E., organizing the routes along
which the Expedition was to travel; the other, consisting of the
Mission, of which the guard was to be considerably reinforced,
with 500 yaks, was to go across country by the Lango la ; at the
same time, 400 Nepalese troops were to occupy Kamba-jong, and
cover the advance of the Mission. To this scheme Macdonald,
who now appeared for the first time, demurred; he pointed out
that this advance in two weak columns without means of com-
munication gave the Tibetans the opportunity of dealing with
each separately; that the rendezvous was an unknown point in
the enemy's country ; that the roads to it were also unknown, and
that it was, therefore, difficult to effect a meeting at a given mo-
ment. He further pointed out that the Mission, which would be
the weaker of the two columns, would have to march with its
flank exposed to the enemy and without communications in its

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION ss

rear. On the i6th of October, Colonel Younghusband, who had
returned from Kamba-jong, seeing the uselessness of any further
residence, met Colonel (now Brigadier-General) Macdonald at
Darjeeling. By this time the matter was further complicated by
the question of yak transport. The Nepalese made a present of
500 yaks to the Mission ; these were intended to act as transport
for the Mission in their cross-country journey; the other yaks
were to be bought in Nepal and taken across Sikkim. Macdonald
pointed out the dangers of attempting to take the yaks through
the Tista Valley, and his forebodings ultimately proved to be well
justified. But the 500 yaks which were to cross into Tibet by
the Tipta la were turned back by the Tibetans; whereupon the
Nepalese asserted that, in spite of anything urged to the contrary,
the yaks could safely be taken down to the level of the Tista Val-
ley, and the military authorities, accepting their statement, com-
mitted themselves to this course.

The official estimate of the distribution of the Tibetan force
at this date is interesting ; they were supposed to have 500 men at
Kamba-jong, where a night attack was imminent, 2000 men at
Shigatse, 500 between Shigatse and Kamba-jong, 1000 at Gy-
antse, and a few in the Chumbi Valley. On the 8th of November
the Tibetans were reported to be moving 3000 men toward
Chumbi, and a week later it was said that nearly 3000 more sol-
diers were advancing upon Kamba-jong, a somewhat significant
action : foot-and-mouth disease was at the same time reported to
have made terrible ravages among the Nepalese yaks.^ For these
accumulated reasons the advance in two columns was abandoned,
and it was decided to advance in a single strong column through
the Chumbi Valley.

The question then arose, first, as to the route by which the
Chumbi Valley should be reached, and, secondly, as to the date
at which the retirement from Kamba-jong should be carried out.
* This was afterward discovered to be anthrax.

34 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Colonel Younghusband was naturally anxious, under the cir-
cumstances, that no retreat should be made from Kamba-jong
until a footing had been effected in Tibetan territory in the
Chumbi Valley. It was, therefore, decided to make the two
movements coincident in point of time. As to the route to be
adopted, Mr. Claude White was of opinion that the Jelep Pass
in October was preferable. There was this to be said in its favor
that it was already well known to us, and had been used in the
1888 expedition. It was arranged that the original advance was
to be made over the Jelep, but it was also decided to improve and
utilize the Natu la route through Gangtok, and this eventually
became the sole line of communication. By the loth of December
there were concentrated at Gnathong two guns of No. 7 Mountain
Battery, the machine gun of the 2d Battalion Norfolk regiment,
two seven-pounders, half a company of the 26. Sappers, eight
companies of the 23d Sikh Pioneers, and six companies of the
8th Gurkhas, with the necessary hospital, ammunition, and postal
columns. On the nth a short march was made to Ku-pup, and
on the 1 2th the Jelep was crossed in bitter weather. On the 13th
the column reached Yatung, and after a formal protest made its
way through the gateway in the Tibetan wall, where a not un-
friendly welcome was extended by the officials. On the i6th
Chumbi was reached, and two days later a column of 800 men
set out to Phari, which was reached on the 21st; the jong at this
place was at once occupied by our troops. This gave rise to a
difference of opinion between the Commissioner and Macdonald.
The former had, for diplomatic reasons, undertaken to the Tibe-
tans that the fort should not be occupied unless it were defended ;
the Gieneral, for overbalancing military considerations, decided
that it would be dangerous to leave it unoccupied, and it was con-
sequently taken.

The behavior of the Tibetans now became more threatening.^

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 35

Representatives of the Three Monasteries * arrived at Phari, and
forbade the people round to supply us with any of the necessaries
of life ; the Chinese Colonel Chao was willing to do all he could,
but he evidently had little authority, and his successor, Major 0,^
said that nothing could be done in Lhasa at this moment, as th
Grand Lama was relying upon Russian support and would pay
no respect to the Chinese demands. Colonel Younghusband no-
ticed about this time the despondency even of our own followers
at the thought of invading Tibet. They believed that we were
doomed men ; the whole of the drivers of the Tibetan Pony Corps
had bolted at Gnathong, and the desertions of followers and even
private servants were innumerable. He summed the position up
tersely: " We have not one ounce of prestige on this frontier."
From political motives, he determined to winter at Tuna, a small
village about nineteen miles from Phari, across the Tang la. He
adopted this course because of the unwillingness of the Tibetans
to admit that entrance into the Chumbi Valley was really entrance
into Tibet itself; and he felt it necessary to occupy a position at
least as far advanced into Tibet as Kamba-jong had been. Gen-
eral Macdonald found the position inconvenient from the point
of view of transport, but the political reasons were important
enough to decide the question.

At Tuna, therefore, three months of weary waiting ensued
while Major G. H. Bretherton, a man of experience and great
capacity, was organizing supply and transport along the lines of
communication. It was felt that a very large amount of stores
must be accumulated in the Chumbi Valley before any advance
to Gyantse was possible. Life at Tuna was uninteresting and
bitterly cold. The Tibetans had gathered in considerable strength

* The three monasteries of Sera, Debung, and Gaden, near Lhasa, are the ulti-
mate poHtical authorities in Tibet. In very important matters they are able to
orerrule even the Grand Lama.

36 THE OPENING OF TIBET

at Guru, a place about nine miles away on the road to Gyantse.
Here for the first time the Commissioner was able to deliver his
message to thoroughly representative men. But its reception was
unsatisfactory. After a fruitless attempt to make the delegates
pay him an official visit, Colonel Younghusband determined to
ride over in person to their camp informally ; it was a character-
istically audacious action, and if it had failed — if, that is to say.
Colonel Younghusband and the two or three officers with him
had been killed or kidnapped, as was not unlikely — the respon-
sibility for the outbreak of war which would have inevitably fol-
lowed must have rested upon the Commissioner. But Young-
husband is a shrewd judge of Orientals, and, besides, he is not one
of those men with whom an Oriental takes a liberty ; and, though,
as will be seen, the visit was not entirely successful, it seemed at
the time to be almost the last chance of coming to terms with our
opponents upon a perfectly friendly basis. The Tibetan general
was the senior Depen of Lhasa, one of the Lheding family, and
he received Colonel Younghusband with great politeness. But
upon the Commissioner's introduction to the room in which the
representatives of the three monasteries were seated, the atmo-
sphere became electric at once. They neither rose nor returned
his salutation, but after an informal discussion had been initiated
they took command of the conversation, maintaining throughout f
an unfriendly attitude, and insisting that no European could be
allowed in Tibet on any account, and that if any settlement was
to be carried through we must return to Ya-tung.^ As Young-
husband was taking his leave and expressing a hope that the
Tibetans would visit him at Tuna their tempers changed ; in
a threatening way they clamored for the instant retirement'
of the British; they demanded insolently to know the exact

* This place was sometimes confounded by the Tibetans themselves with
Gna-thong. It is spelled "Sna-mdong," and the "s" and the "m" are of
course not sounded. I do not know how the English pronunciation was
originated.

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 37

date on which the British would evacuate Tibetan territory,
trumpets were blown outside, and the attendants closed
round the small party. Younghusband betrayed not the slight-
est uneasiness, and O'Connor helped to save the situation
by the almost superhuman suavity which he can assume when
he wishes. A messenger accompanied Colonel Younghus-
band back to Tuna to receive his answer, which was, of course,
to the effect that he was obliged to carry out the orders of his
Government.

The Lheding Depen subsequently called at Tuna; he was a
pleasant man, but, in the words of the Commissioner, he was not
clever; he had little strength of character, and he was entirely
in the hands of his three monk colleagues. Nothing, therefore,
had been done, and Colonel Younghusband was obliged to wait
in the cold everlasting wind of the Tuna plateau for the first ad-
vance of the troops. Meanwhile the Tibetans gathered strength
in his immediate neighborhood, and from time to time there were
disquieting rumors of their intention to make a night attack.
Colonel Hogge, with four companies of the 23d Pioneers and
the Norfolk Maxim detachment, was, however, thoroughly
able to hold Tuna against any conceivable concentration of
Tibetan forces. The telegraph wire was not put up to Tuna till
March, so a heliograph on the summit of the Tang la was in
daily use.

Meanwhile, the General took up his quarters at Chumbi, in a
not uncomfortable house at Bakcham, about three-quarters of a
mile from the encampment at New Chumbi. The Coolie Corps,
which Mr. White had undertaken to organize, was in working
order by the middle of January, and under the able superinten-
dence of Captain Souter contributed greatly to the accumulations
of stores, which were steadily passing over the Jelep route, and
creating tarpaulin-covered hillocks at Chumbi. The choice of the
Natu la was accepted by Mr. White after the alternative road

38 THE OPENING OF TIBET

over the Yak la ^ had been tried. The Yak la is the shortest road
between Chumbi and Gangtok, to which place a good cart-road
runs from Siliguri in the plains of India, but to the best of my
belief only one party ever crossed it. It was my fortune to be one
of them. Bad as all these passes are, the eastern descent of the
Yak la is beyond comparison the worst — a mere semi-perpendicu-
lar scramble four miles deep, down which one could only go by
jumping from one boulder to another ; many of these were coated
with ice, and some crashed down the khud upon the lightest pres-
sure. I do not think I have ever been so cold in my life as when
I was helping Mr. White to put up a valuable self-registering
thermometer upon the extreme summit of the Yak la. I do not
remember what the temperature exactly was; I remember that
when we took it out of the box it was 4° below freezing-point,
but in the five minutes which it took us to set up strongly the pole
to which it was to be attached, it had fallen over 30° ; there was
a wind like a knife edge the whole time, against which thick
clothing and poshteens were as gauze. To illustrate the difficulty
and hardship of that crossing, it is, I think, only necessary to say
that that thermometer still stands at the summit of the pass; no
one has ever summoned up enough courage to go and take it
away. The idea of using the Yak la was abandoned, and the
lines of supply were thenceforward the Jelep and the Natu la.
Over these no burdened beast can pass. Only on the backs of
coolies could the precious stores be carried across, slowly and
painfully. It was a tremendous task, and it was difficult to believe
that day after day, week after week, month after month, obstacles
so appalling could be overcome by the small men of Sikkim who
composed the corps.

Still, forty thousand pounds' weight of stores was daily deliv-
ered in Chumbi, and Major Bretherton and Captain Souter are

* The yak pass— pronounced Ya la. The Jelep is the "beautiful flat pass"

and is spelled " Tges-lep-la. "

THE REASONS FOR THE EXPEDITION 39

alike to be congratulated indeed upon so brilliant an achievement.
The road from India that these stores had traveled is worth a
chapter to itself. Beyond all question the track that leads from
Siliguri through Sikkim to Phari is the most wonderful and beau-
tiful on earth.

CHAPTER III

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS

SILIGURI itself was of no greater interest than the rail-
head of any expedition usually is. It is true that it had be-
come transformed from an idle little junction, whence the toy
train started daily for Darjeeling, into a bustling warehouse of
military supplies. New tents sprang up in rows, tarpaulin-
covered heaps rose like great boulders from the plain, loaded
trucks crammed the sidings of the station, long droves of mules
detrained and were sent off— too soon in many cases— on their
long journey to the front. Officers reported themselves and
went on, but the village itself remained the same dull, mosquito-
ridden spot, which has always been avoided like the plague by
any one whose business or duty brings him into this part of the
world. There is an English club at Jalpaiguri, an hour's run
away, and the inadequacy of the dak bungalow at Siliguri is
chiefly due to the fact that no one used it. A man can get a good
dinner at seven o'clock in the railway refreshment rooms, take the
Calcutta express an hour later, and sleep at Jalpaiguri. Travelers
who have looked out from the train at the scattered patch of low
houses that spot the burnt brown grass of the plain have seen all
that there is of interest in Siliguri. The tiny track of the Dar-
jeeling railway runs in timidly beside the broad gauge of the
Bengal line, and the place is only remembered by most travelers
as the point at which they climbed into the little char-a-banc cars
that suggest rather a child's playing at traveling than a serious
railway which is going to deposit them and their luggage in

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 41

Darjeeling 7,cx)0 feet up in the clouds to the north. Then Siliguri
passes into the limbo of forgotten things, even while the train
is making its violent little scamper across the flat to the foot of
the hills, or leaping, catlike, from side to side of the slowly up-
winding cart-road, pouncing upon it only to let it crawl out again
from under the wheels of its little engine for another two hun-
dred yards on the other side.

But there is another journey to be made from Siliguri, a differ-
ent journey indeed. It promises little enough at the beginning.
One rides out from the station, threading one's way at first
through the little houses of the town, and then dodging across
the irrigation channels of the fields until the North road is gained.
As you climb the slope of the low embankment and kick up the
first hoofful of the deep dust you are on the road to Lhasa. The
opening stage is common and dreary enough, but four hundred
miles away this road, which you see slowly slipping below you,
ends in a loop insnaring the golden roofs of the Potala and of the
Cathedral, and round that loop the sad-eyed lamas, muttering
their unchanging prayer, creep solemnly all day, turning ever to
the right.

Here all round is the wide flat plain, north, south, east, and
west ; the grass is burned, the fields are dusty, and the white ribbon
of the road swerves and straightens between the heavy-scented,
white-flowered siris trees, like any other road in the peninsula. To
the northward the clouds conceal the rampart of the Himalayas
with a deep gray and indigo veil ; elsewhere the sun shines crudely
from the hard white sky. Napil-para slowly heaves in sight, just
where a belt of trees slants inward to the track ; a mile further on
the road plunges into the great Baikuntpur sal forest. A country
bullock cart, with whining wheels, jolts very slowly in front,
haloed in a cloud of dust. The driver is asleep, and the flies settle
spectacle-wise around the sore eyelids of the sedate beasts. In
after days, the moaning, dusty cart, redolent of all the heat of

42 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Indian plains, just entering the shade of the tall straight sal trees
with their wide, crimsoning leaves, was a curious memory in
which the " ching-chik, ching-chik " of the spear-bells of the mail
runners, bringing their letters over the last stage of their long
journey, rang continually in very different scenes. Under the
shade of the sal forest the white dust heaps itself on either side of
the track, powdering the glossy vegetation and reducing every
bush and plant alike to the nameless insignificance of the under-
growth which is common to all countries in all dry seasons. For
sheer folly the idiotic energy of a sweeper sweeping in mid- jungle
was equaled by the inspiration of the English engineer, who
had wasted hundreds of precious iron telegraph posts beside the
road where nature was offering him a pole every six yards gra-
tuitous and perfect.

Half-way through the wood the crossing of the Phulbari Ghat
path attracts two or three huts. At last there is a dip and the road
drops at the eleventh mile to cross the stream into Sevoke. The
sight of a Himalayan river reaching the plain is worth looking
at. The Tista, pent up between narrow and precipitous hills for
eighty miles, here bursts fan-wise over the Terai, marked and par-
celed by long smooth banks of sand, through which in twenty
channels the suddenly contented water drifts slowly and at peace.

The Himalayas' southern front ends with an abruptness which
is almost startling, and five or six miles away it would have been
difficult to point out a fissure in the great wall of mountains which
stands untopped across the wide flat waste of northern Bengal.
Through this curtain there is this one narrow channel and India
ends at its jaws. The towering cliffs, clothed suddenly with vege-
tation wherever root-hold can be found, spring sharply upward
and the first turn in the track by the river hides the plain, with
their blue lines of trees fifteen miles away beside the leveled water.
Sevoke, planted at the water-side just where the sticks of the fan
diverge, is a little street of grubby huts. Dust hangs heavy in the

A ROAD IN THE HIMALAYAS

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 43

air, and dryness dulls the leaves. The only wet thing at Sevoke
is the water itself, as it slackens way and gently swerves outward
at the foot of its long stair. Even the rough dug-out boats,
moored to the pebbly bank, are coated with dust, and the lumps
of camphor are almost indistinguishable in the boxes in the shops
from the inevitable Pedro cigarettes beside them. From Sevoke
onward the beauty of the road begins to grow. The track runs
on the westward bank of the Tista, fifteen or twenty feet above
the snow-green water. Almost from the first mile-post it is a
gradually increasing riot of foliage such as Hooker himself ad-
mitted to be unparalleled in the world. There is no color on God's
palette which he has not used along this road. There is no
variety of vegetation which he has not permitted to find its own
place somewhere beside the slowly chilling path. Sal and gurjun
lead on through teak to kapok and bamboo, then on through tree
fern and rhododendron to the pine. Beyond these last, birch-
trees alone survive among the frozen rocks of the upper snows.
At their roots, or from the hill-side above their tops, round their
stems, or springing from their wood is almost every flower known
to man, here wasting its luxuriance along the loneliest and love-
liest two hundred miles on earth. Pepper ferns, with their dark
green glossy foliage, vines and bind-weeds, begonias and aspho-
del tangle themselves about the undergrowth'of gorgeous shrubs,
or stumps gay with scarlet fungus and dripping moss. Overhead
the bald scarp of the rock, orange and ocher and cinnamon, rarely
broke through the trailing glories of smilax and other creepers.
Once or twice down on the road itself, where a passage had been
blasted years ago, the deep crystalline garnet rang not only with
the echoes of the sweeping water below, but with the tiny per-
sistence of the drip-well from its roof. Ferns lurk in every cleft,
and, higher up, the majesty of some great osmunda thrusts itself
clear of the green confusion round its roots. Of greens, indeed,
from the dark moss myrtle of some varnished leaf that ought to

44 THE OPENING OF TIBET

have been a magnolia, but probably was not, to the aquamarine
of the young and dusted bamboo grass, from the feathery emerald
of some patch of giant moss to the rich olive of a crown- vallary
of orchid, none is unrepresented.

Where the valley vegetation lies in the ugliest putrefaction,
there you will find the living jewels of this long fillet— a flash of
emerald and chrome glazed with chocolate; a patch of brown,
shot through and through with sapphire in the sun; a swallow-
tail with olivine and black velvet where we may rarely see, beside
some Norfolk broad, the dun and cream of his poor English
cousin. Strong in the wing, zigzagging unballasted in ten-foot
swoops of pure color, the butterflies lace the sunlight. And un-
derfoot in the deep soft white dust the kidney footmark of the
brown ox or the kukri-like print of the high-instepped native are
the only reminders in that hot world of color that there are other
things as graceless as oneself.

At Riang, where the road falls into the river every year with
a regularity worthy of something better, a stream breaks through
from the west, and for a moment the dingy picturesqueness of a
semi-Indian settlement beneath its trees drives back the beauties
of the road. But in half a mile the path turns again beneath close
matted branches overhead and winds, deep rutted, beside the rank
dark vegetation which is characteristic of just this place — flower-
less, amorphous, and heavy. The Tista bridge swings out its
curve from behind a rock, and one crosses the narrow span, re-
alizing from its scanty width that one has left behind the normal
limits of wheeled cart traffic. The road, still ascending, keeps on
the left bank of the Tista river, passing Mali-ghat among its trees
three miles on. Slowly the character of the vegetation changes,
though the fact of its being still tropical is clear enough from a
tiger trap half-way between Mali-ghat and Tar Kola. Beside this
latter place the road runs along tirelessly, curving and recurving
beside the shallow stream. At the junction of the Tista with the

ENCAMPED UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE HIMALAYAS

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 45

Rang-po the creaming white crests over the rock points below
vahantly hold their own all day against the down sweep of the
green turquoise flood. Sometimes for a mile one does but hear
the stream of the Rang-po murmuring invisibly through the
trees; again over its very waters the track clings scantily round
the bare red scarp of some intruding spur, hand-railed most rot-
tenly. A warm breath of guimauve-like scent pants out at one
here: there is the sweet acrid perfume of wild geranium, more
taste than smell. The fierce glare of the day sinks imperceptibly
into a cooler and a steadier light; there is no sign of sunset yet
awhile ; only the high crowned ridges of the western heights break
his force. And presently the dust on the patient road-side foliage
seems half shaken off, and tints and shades creep out on surfaces
which the blatant heat of midday had frightened into an insignifi-
cant blur of neutral colors.

Here the cactus stops for a while, why, I do not know : there are
. many puzzles in this Himalayan botany. Why does the rhodo-
: dendron grow to the very highest spot on the south and refuse
to put forth a leaf at any elevation to the north? Why does the
blue poppy of Tibet despise utterly the identical rocks and ledges
offered at the same height south of the Tang la? Why does the
bamboo stop with a certainty and cleanness at a height of 9,500
feet on the south, which enables the Bhutanese to use it as their
frontier mark, while two hundred miles away on a hillside at
Lhasa a flourishing twenty-five-foot hedge keeps the cold from
the Chief Wizard's house, nearly 13,000 feet above the sea?

You will cross the bridge at Rang-po ; and there you will stay
the night, sleeping under mosquito nets for the last time. The
stream you have just crossed you will meet again under very dif-
ferent circumstances, but some suggestion of the clear emerald
of its ice-bound pools at Lagyap still lingers as it joins the snow-
stained waters of the Rang-po. Still going on, your path lies on
the left bank of the latter river, chiefly bound up against the side

46 THE OPENING OF TIBET

of the river cliff. Six miles will take you to the last river
that you will have to follow till Tibet is reached. The Rong-ni
is, after all, the most beautiful stream that you will have
tramped beside. Here the two vegetations mingle, and the orange
groves of Dowgago mark the transfusion of the two. Here the
maples and the violets begin, the geraniums and the daphnes,
the lobelias and the honeysuckles, the ivies and the elder-
trees — the first outposts of the European zone. But we have
not yet lost the creepers and hydrangeas of the south before
the first azalea-like rhododendrons bear promise of the shrub
that, towering at the 7,000-foot line to eighty feet in height and
dwindling again to three or four inches on the pass, will remain
with us till the frontier line is crossed. Here the bamboos in-
sinuate themselves at last, and as the road sweeps up and up, the
undergrowth rising here and there into the magnificence of the
tree fern, every corner betrays a fresh scene of luxuriance and
grace. Sometimes the bank opposite rises steep as a precipice
and red as an old English garden wall, veiled with overhanging
creepers and rich with green moss in every crevice and on every
ledge : elsewhere the bank breaks away into a wide slope of tan-
gled jungle, clothed with small ponds of greenery where the need
of the dotted white huts has cleared, leveled and sown. Here the
first tender rice tips peep above the mud. Round the echoing,
waterworn curves of rock overhung by trees and screw-pines,
hanging on, God knows how, to the bare face of the rock, cross-
ing some small stream rustling under its canopy of shade, still
mounting every mile, the track goes on, until the last bridge is
crossed and the long splendid zigzags of the new road to Gang-
tok, which no one uses, seam the hill in front. The barest novice
knows the short cuts, and with your ears cracking every twenty
minutes, you clamber up the old stony road, which saves two miles
in six. At last the Residency, or rather the foliage which con-
ceals it, seems less hopelessly distant than it did, and coming out

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 47

again upon the white, well-made road, one climbs at an easy gra-
dient to the capital of Sikkim. On the left is the deep green cut-
ting of the river we have crossed, a league in width and lost be-
hind a ten-mile distant corner. The double Residency gates open
and shut behind one, and through the tree ferns and the dying
bamboos of the drive* one emerges into the English roses and
clean, short turf of Mrs. Claude White's home-made Paradise.

The Residency brings a whiff of England into this far distant
country. It is a substantial and handsome little building of stone,
roofed in red of such a well-remembered tint, that it is some time
before one realizes that tiles are impossible at Gangtok. Hitherto
it has been the end of all northern travel in India, and it must
have been curious for the rare travelers who made demands on
Claude White's famous hospitality, to find this dainty gem of a
house, furnished from Oxford Street within, and without en-
circled with the tree ferns and orchids of this exquisite valley.
It is a perfect spot. Far off to the west rise the pinnacles of Nur-
sing and Pan-dim ; to the north there hangs in heaven that most
exquisite of all peaks of earth, Siniolchu.

Beyond Gangtok, before the Expedition came, there was no
road. Indeed, a road wide enough for carts was finished only
eighteen months ago up to the gates of the Residency. Further
on, it is still a bridle track hugging the side of the hill, barely
thrusting its way through the dense wall of bamboo which rises
on either side like the green walls through which Moses led his
flying countrymen.^ Overhead the giant rhododendrons branch
upward to the sky, high as a London house. No one who
knows the rhododendron of England can form the faintest con-
ception of what these monsters of the upper hills are like. The
trees at Haigh Hall and at Cobham are regarded by their own-

* All the bamboos of the Gangtok district fertilized and died in 1904.

•The color, too, contributes to the fantasy, for here the blue-leaved Hooker's
ba^iboo grows more freely among its commoner brethren than anywhere else
in the Himalayas.

48 THE OPENING OF TIBET

ers with some complacency. But in size they are mere shrubs
compared with their brothers of Sikkim, and in beauty they are
left far behind. " I know nothing of the kind," says Hooker,
" which exceeds in beauty the flowering branch of rhododendron
argenteum, with its wide-spreading foliage and glorious mass
of flowers." This variety, though it does not grow to the height
of its brethren, is the finest of them all. The enormous glossy
leaves, powdered with white underneath, are thrown with a care-
less grace around the splendid blossoms, arranged with all the
delicate looseness and lightness which none but the Master
Gardener could give to this royal and massive foliage. The ac-
tual florets of the commoner kinds are undoubtedly poorer than
those of the English variety, and there is an ineffective conical
arrangement of their azalea-like blossoms which the Englishman
notices at once. But in their masses, crimson, lemon, and white,
they star the dark green steamy recesses of the path, and, except-
ing only the magnolia, are the most striking flowers upon the
road.

These magnolias are strange plants. They seem to turn
color as they reach the limit of their growth, and the pure white
is lost in a tinge of purple. Unlike the magnolias which occa-
sionally overpower the scents of an entire rectory garden in
England, the waxen flowers grow on naked lilac stickery. The
wide, enameled leaves, which seem so indispensable at home,
are gone. I do not know whether they appear later, but the
magnolia seems to be outside ordinary rules of plant life. One
species has even the depressing habit of dropping its flowers
unopened on the ground below. Oaks grow here, though in
a chastened way. An English tree which takes fuller advantage
of the rank vegetable mold and steamy hothouse climate of Sik-
kim is the juniper. This, which is best known to the inhabi-
tants of towns in the shape of " cedar " pencils, grows to a
height of forty or fifty feet, and Mr. White has, on two occasions,

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 49

made an attempt to develop a regular trade with the manufac-
turers. They admitted that the wood sent was as good as any
they could buy, but the contracts they had entered into for the
supply of this wood bound them for some years to come. An-
other industrial product of this jungle is madder, and the dark
crimson robes of both Tibetan churches, Red and Yellow alike
— for the distinction is shown only in the cap — owe their rich-
ness to the hill-sides of Sikkim. Elephant creeper winds up the
forest trees, the huge leaves nuzzling into the bark all round
like a swarm of gigantic bees. The common white orchid, which
is wired to make a two-guinea spray in London, is a weed at
Gangtok. Its quaintly writhen blossoms of snow hang over-
head in such profusion that one welcomes a shyer blossom,
trumpet shaped, and of the color and coolness of a lemon-ice.
The orchids are not the only epiphytes ; other parasites than they
crown the living branch with their coronals of leaves, more
lovely than the trees they feed upon.

The game here is very scanty : the reason is not uninteresting.
For, dormant or active, visible or invisible, the curse of Sikkim
waits for its warm-blooded visitor. The leeches of these lovely
valleys have been described again and again by travelers. Un-
fortunately the description, however true in every particular,
has, as a rule, but wrecked the reputation of the chronicler.
Englishmen cannot understand these pests of the hot mountain-
side, which appear in March, and exist like black threads fring-
ing every leaf till September kills them in myriad millions.^
Spruce grows here under a Latin name, and the writer enters
thereupon a layman's protest. It takes away half the interest
of new and tropical vegetation if the only names that one can

*It is worth a passing note that these unwelcome visitors can be driven
from the nostrils of the cattle exactly as MacComglinney enticed the "law-
less beast " from the throat of King Cathal. A bowl of warm milk at the cow's
nose, a little slip-knot, and a quick hand are all that is required. Fourteen
or fifteen have been successively thus taken from the nostrils of one unfor-
tunate heifer.

50 THE OPENING OF TIBET

be told for some magnificent or graceful thing are Latin atro-
cities, generally embedding some uncouth Teutonic surname.
In a country like Sikkim one's resentment is doubled; when a
good English word lies ready to hand, why should it be nec-
essary to call the spruce tree abies excelsa, or, worse still, Smith-

iana?

Leaving Gangtok, the last reminder of the West, one strikes
out east by north to make the final climb which takes us out of
the Empire. For five miles the road is— or rather, until the
rains came, was— a good one. Beyond that, in spite of much
hard work of pioneers and sappers, the track is bad indeed.
Karponang,^ when I returned through it for the last time, is
a far-stretched hamlet, lying in long tiered sheds against the
mountain wall, and the last pretense of a road along which a
wheel can go is here frankly abandoned. Beyond it is a section
of the road which for months was the despair of the engineers.
"The tenth to the thirteenth mile " passed into proverbial use
as a standard of utter badness and instability. When the road
was cut out of the rock it was too narrow for the easy passage
of a loaded beast; where it was cut out of the hill soil, a night's
rain sent it down the khud. Where it crossed a cataract, the
bridge gave more trouble than a quarter of a mile of honest
rock. Where, as it too often did, it jutted straight out on bam-
boo brackets from the side of the cliff, 800 feet above the whis-
pering stream below, the bamboos used to rot with a rapidity
unknown elsewhere. Landslips were the rule rather than the
exception. The whole length was sprayed with continual rivu-
lets through the rank vegetation which overhung the track;

*The name Karponang was suggested for the ten-mile stage by the
writer. From a perilously insufficient knowledge of Tibetan, karpo seemed
to mean " white " and nang was clearly a " house " ; and as some shorter title
was needed for the political officer's bantling, Karponang stuck, though it is
not, perhaps, a particularly idiomatic rendering of what it was intended to
mean.

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 51

all afternoon these washed away the mold with which the bald
sharp rock-points of the blasted road were covered; all night
they formed a coat of ice which made it impossible for man
or beast to stand or go upon it. Accidents upon this stretch
were painfully common; two men were killed by a dynamite
explosion, though in common fairness to even this unfortunate
exhibition of nature, she can hardly be held responsible for the
folly of men who dry their dynamite at a fire. Four men were
overwhelmed here by a gush of liquid mud, just when three
weeks' hard work upon the road at that point was finished. One
man slipped down, or maybe he was kicked — for the mules
disliked this " trang " with almost reasonable intuition— and the
loss of mules near Karponang was heavier than anywhere else
upon the road. On a winter afternoon a mile an hour was good
going along this stage. Any attempt to ride was out of the ques-
tion ; painfully prodding one's way with a khud-stick, one scram-
bled up or glissaded down over the unfenced ice-slides thinly
veiled with dirt. One's beast was led behind one with mincing
steps and starting eyes. It was a bad road; and the noise of
waters many hundred feet sheer below was always painfully
present in the ears. Lagyap was the next halting-place, hanging
over the gulf like an eagle's nest.

Beyond Lagyap, the road, as a road, did not exist. The
ascent was tolerably steep, and one either strode from boulder
to boulder, or trod, at the risk of one's ankles, between the stones.
This, after five miles, is wearisome work. And even the sight
of Lagyap Pool, the most beautiful basin of ice-bound emerald
water that I have ever seen, fails to cheer one up. Up under
the pine-trees, slipping and staggering, where no road pretended
to have been ever cleared, we reached Changu Lake at last.
Here we were clear of trees ; the dwarf rhododendrons ran along
the ground in acre patches, a foot in height, but the last tree
barely showed its head over the great natural dam which shuts

52 THE OPENING OF TIBET

in the waters of the lake. One leaves a land of timber; one
comes to a land of rock, and the dividing-line is as clean as if it
had been the work of man. Behind us, also, we left one of the
most magnificent views in the world, for the deep green valleys
of Sikkim, like some loosely thrown length of myrtle-green
velvet, lie out for the last time many thousands of feet below,
stretching on till the gray gauze of sheer distance overtook the
tint, and only the pure, clean argent of those Himalayan snows,
which have no rival on this planet, lifted themselves into the
blue.

It is an austere country into which we are now moving.
The lake is a mile long and perhaps 6cx) yards in width; nearly
all the year round it is frozen, though in the bitterest days of
mid-winter, when the thermometer is nightly going down to
5° or io° below zero, there is always on the southern side of
the lake an unfrozen pool. The cliffs sweep down into the basin,
bare and unlovely. To the east, whither our road still is to run,
the nakedness of a steep ascent of wearisome boulders is barely
qualified by the stunted rhododendron growth. At Changu
there is now a comfortable bungalow, and only those in dire
necessity will fail to stop the night. The hardest work of all
the road to Lhasa lies before us on the morrow, and though I
have more than once passed through from Chumbi without a
halt, there is no doubt that the exertion can only be justified by
real urgency. Leaving Changu in the morning, the traveler,
considering the very short way he knows he has to go, will
demur at the earliness of his start. But there will be no mercy
shown him. He will be allowed, perhaps, to ride for 500 yards ;
after that he will prefer to trust to his own feet until all except
the last three miles of the stage have been covered. Climbing
over these boulder-strewn surfaces would be bad at the sea-level ;
here, where the air is so thin, it soon becomes a burden to pull
one's solid body over the heartless obstacles. If the ascent be

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 53

at all steep, the newcomer will sit down every twenty or thirty
yards. His muscles are not tired, and he regains his strength
in a surprisingly short time, but at the moment he sinks upon
some friendly stone he thinks that another step forward would
be his last. This is a peculiarity which it is impossible to de-
scribe to those who have never been more than a thousand feet
or so above sea-level. The lungs seem foolishly inadequate to
the task imposed upon them; the pluckiness of one's own heart
is an unmistakable, but somewhat terrifying, symptom, for it
goes on beating with increasing strokes till it shakes the walls
of the body; and not the written testimony of the leading
heart expert in London will convince you that it is not on the
point of bursting its envelope. Then you may be thankful indeed
if you escape mountain sickness. If that should come upon you,
your bitterest enemy will lead your horse for you. I have seen
cases of mountain sickness in which amazement overwhelmed
even one's sympathy. I have seen men in such a state, that they
seem to have every symptom of habitual drunkenness; all the
limbs shiver, and in the bloodless face the eyes have that ex-
traordinary look of insanity which is, I think, caused by an in-
ability to focus them. The speech comes with difficulty, and in
one case that I saw the mental coherence was as obviously at
fault as the physical. But, strange though the appearance is
to the outsider, for the sufferer himself I do not suppose that
there can well be condensed into three or four hours such an
agony of aching. The brain seems cleft into two, and the wedge,
all blunt and splintery, is hammered into it as by mallet strokes
at every pulsation of the heart. Partial relief is secured by
a violent fit of sickness (which, however, is not always forth-
coming), and through all this you have still to go on, to go on,
to go on.

Here, too, the wind exacts its toll, and drives a cold, aching
shaft into your liver. This is no slight matter, for the toil of

54 THE OPENING OF TIBET

climbing is excessive, and the exertion of covering half a mile
will drench a man with perspiration. He then sits down, and
this strong wind plays upon him to his own enjoyment, and
to the destruction of his lungs.^

Up one still goes till the lake lies a mile behind one, still un-
touched by the first rays of the dawn. Often a steep descent
as treacherous to the foot as the ascent has to be made. One
of the most tedious and tiresome things about this track is the
wearisome necessity, which awaits you round every corner, of
losing at a stroke two-thirds of the advantage that you have
just won by an hour's hard work. It appeals to the mind, and
shortens the temper at a time when any friction in the human
microcosm is waste of strength. One resents the man who first
pointed out the track. One is inclined to think, that had one
only a few hours more, one could oneself find a far more
economical path than that by which one is now obliged to go.
This, a very common failing, as I have noticed myself, perhaps
indicates that one's common sense also is a little affected in
these high altitudes. Two miles from Changn is the only level
portion of the day's march. One goes across the little plain,
and makes for exactly the one point which a stranger would
decide to be the most impossible in all the amphitheater.

The Sebu la is beyond question the most difficult point of
all the road from Siliguri to the end, a sheer wall of precipitous
rock, springing up from the level plain. On looking closely
one can see some symptoms of a zigzagging road climbing up-
ward, and by those zigzags you have to go, for the rock itself
allows no other path. This is the most heart-breaking climb
of all the day. You may, perhaps, here overtake the slow,
painful tramp of the coolies sent on, even before your own ris-
ing, from the last stage; pack animals are impossible on a road
like this. The strange thick-calved, patient men, carrying bur-
* Pneumonia caused more deaths than any other disease.

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 55

dens which no EngHshman would shoulder, move steadily on-
ward over their six-mile stage.^

One climbs at last to the crest of the Sebu la. One goes
thirty yards round a projecting rock, and at once one is obliged
to scramble as best one can down a declivity which lands one
400 feet below the level of the little plain from which one
has climbed to the top of the Sebu la. It all seems so unneces-
sary, so wanton. At the bottom, one crosses the bed of a river
closely packed with rough and heavy water-worn rock, but no
stonier than the road leading down to it on either side. There
is still another steady rise to the heights of the Natu la. One
seems to have wandered in a vast amphitheater of rock and stone
for days. The homely bungalow at Changu has faded among
the recollections of another year, and you are wise if you do
not ask how loQg it will still take to climb to the summit of
these weary hills. Just about this time, you begin to realize
why Tibet has remained a shut-up country for so long. The
transportation of an army and, what is far more wonderful,
its daily supply across the water-shed between the Tista and the
Ammo chu will probably remain an unrivaled feat of transport
and supply in the history of warfare. In old days, marches,
which would to-day be regarded as impossible, were somehow
carried out. But we have never been told the loss of life that

*The weight that these Central Asian coolies can carry is astounding; the
ordinary load is from 80 to 100 pounds, nearly double a man's pack on the level
plains of India. But these Bhutias, when paid by the job, do not hesitate to
double and even treble the load. I have myself seen a man carry into camp
three telegraph poles on his back, each weighing a trifle under 90 pounds. Fur-
ther east the tea porters of Se-chuan are notorious and loads of 350 pounds are not
unknown. Setting aside the story of a Bhutia lady who carried a piano on
her head up to Darjeeling from the plains as too well known to be likely to
be exact, the record seems to be held by a certain Chinese coolie who under-
took, in his own time, to transport a certain casting, needed for heavy ma-
chinery, inland to its owner. The casting weighed 570 pounds, and the carriage
was slowly but successfully accomplished.

An English bricklayer is forbidden, by the rules of his union, to carry more
than 14 pounds.

56 THE OPENING OF TIBET

accompanied the ultimate arrival in India of Genghiz Khan,
Alexander, or Nadir Shah. But the road dips downward for
the last time at the half-way stage, and we are free to make
the best of the remaining clamber which lies now uninterruptedly
before us to the pass.

Much has been made of the added horrors of ice and snow.
As a matter of fact, bare-footed though the coolies are, it was
a merciful relief for them when the snow lay packed into
a kindly carpet blanketing the boulders under foot. The
only difficulty then was said to be that of losing the road.
Only those who have been over the Natu la can quite understand
the grim foolishness of speaking of losing the road over it.
It is true that there is a track. Probably that track, so far as it
can be distinguished from the hill-side, above and below, repre-
sents as good a means of getting to the top as any other. But
so far as the ground is concerned there is almost nothing to
choose; and not the least remarkable thing is the steady persis-
tent refusal of the coolies to use the easy zigzag path which has
been made for them over the last 200 yards to the top. It is
roughly true to say that no hill coolie will deign to use an easier
path than that which goes straight to his journey's end, though
one might have expected that after a long and wearying climb
over this heart-breaking mountain-side, the chance of an easy
and steady climb for even so short a distance would have been
eagerly accepted.

We have now reached 14,300 feet, and before we climb the
last remaining steps, it is worth while to turn back and watch
for the last time the scenes through which we have come so
painfully. Away to the left a gigantic bastion of rock carries the
sister road over the Jelep la, and away to the southwest Ling-tu,
on the crest of the 6,000 feet precipice up which the road is
zigzagged, can be seen in the clear air. The Jelep Pass itself
is hidden by the bulk of the range, though only three miles

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 57

away. A little lake lies frozen in the stony bowl up the sides
of which we have just come. Far below its edge falls another
mighty hollow, and yet we do not see a blade or leaf. Only
beyond and below, peering through one of the little crevasses
in the ringed hills, there is the dark mantle of the Sikkim woods.
One turns one's back upon it for the last time, and gains the
summit, where three heaps of stones, piled by pious travelers,
support a flagged bush, the usual ornament of every pass in
the country. One takes another step, and one is in the Chumbi
Valley.

The first sight of Tibet, thus seen, is not without a somber
interest of its own. It is at once obvious that the general level
of the country is very much higher than that of Sikkim. The
mass of Chumolhari fills in the end of the valley. Glittering in
the bitter air, it rises thirty-five miles away, though the richer
aquamarine of its crevasses can be seen from where we stand.
The ridges and ranges swarm between, intersected with the
courses of rivers invisible. All is bare and dull, but a thousand
feet below us the dripping pines send their single spies up toward
the barren and unlovely path.

There is something fascinating about the very sight of this
long, slow line of burdened men, in spite of the miserable cold
that almost prevents your watching anything. Up there, high
above the most venturesome pines, where only the dwarf rhodo-
dendron, two or three inches high, survives here and there be-
neath the shelter of a friendly rock just piercing the two-inch
snow that fell last night, the laden team crawls slowly to the top.
The green and golden lichen spreads over the dull and bitter
crags of gneiss, and under foot the tense stiff bents of frozen
grass prick themselves scantily through the dirty ice. Up hither
the coolies thrust their way painfully, and the thick, duffle-clad
figures in a long line zigzag up the side of the pass, swaying
from side to side under their burdens as they gain a bare foot-

58 THE OPENING OF TIBET

hold on the blunt rocks; the sky is overcast and this vivid cold
searches through everything, in spite of the thick winter cloth-
ing which has been liberally supplied. Butterflies, birds, and
beasts are alike fled. Only a lammergeier floats still in the air
some 300 feet below, wheeling slowly with motionless wings,
and far down in the gulf there is a scurry of lavender snow
pigeons. The pass itself is nothing but elemental rock, and the
Indian file of men drops down again as quickly as it can into the
stiller cold of the sheltered side of the peak. One goes down.
At first lichen and stunted moss alone mask the coarseness of the
huge boulders ; lower down the scarlets and reds of the barberry
and a few stunted bushes of feathery juniper, as high as one's
hand, come up as forerunners of the fast-thickening vegetation
of the gorge. Two thousand feet below the pass, while one is
still sliding and scrambling over frozen washes of curving ice
across the track, the silver firs and stunted junipers crowd beside
the zigzag path that still leaps from rock to rock. Of under-
growth there is but little, even when the mountain-ash and silver
fir have given place to the Pinus excelsa and a silver-gray variety
of the deodora, and the air is heavy with warm resin. Behind,
fifteen miles away on the Sikkim side of the pass, the dull roar
of blasting may perhaps remind one of the wide ten-foot road
which the Government are still intending to throw across this
terrible sierra.

The coolies still crawl upward and over. Compared with
the western face, the descent of the Natu la on the Tibetan
side is a comparatively easy thing. The road soon runs at a
gentle gradient over the spurs which buttress the precipices that
frown over Sikkim, and after a mile you may, if you come in
winter, get thankfully upon your pony once again. The track
runs straight and level along the mountain-side, and you may
wonder why the engineers have corduroyed the road. There

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 59

seems so little reason for this fearful waste of time and timber.
But if it is your luck to retrace your steps when the rains are
in full swing, you will wonder no longer.

There is no end to the devilish ingenuity with which Nature
has strewn this path with obstacles. That one which hitherto
we had hardly found was waiting us after all. And you may
have to get wearily off your pony once again to pick your way
unsteadily from rock to rock, in a sea of mud which defies de-
scription. Two feet deep, black, stinking, slippery, your pony
has to make the best of it. And once in every ten paces you too
will sound it to the knee. Not a mere stretch of a quarter of a
mile is this disheartening morass; before the transverse logs
were laid there were five miles of this unending slide and slip
and splash to be overcome. Corduroy itself is no luxurious
floor. Your beast will like it only a little better than the quag-
mire he has scrambled through. The wood is slippery, and
though the ribbing of the road prevents a long slide it insures
a short one at almost every step.

The path on the bare mountain-side, bad as it was, is better
than that which threads the close pine trunks of Champi-tang.
Torrential rain may wash a path away, but nothing so entirely
ruins a made track as the drip from trees. There is something
about the slow persistence that does harm which even a water-
spout could not compass. And if by this time you have any
spirit of curiosity left in you, you may notice that the corduroy
work upon the road coincides with those very parts, which at
the first blush you might consider most protected by foliage
overhead. It is getting late now in the afternoon, and you will
thank your good fortune in having as companions unfeeling men
who made you rise at five. The worst is over, and you can
stumble along at more than two miles an hour. The hill-sides
opposite become clothed with forestry, and after an hour or two

6o THE OPENING OF TIBET

you will find yourself before the blazing hearth of the luxurious
bungalow at Champi-tang.

On the following day, you go down to Chumbi. You make
your way along a greasy path, now passing underneath a lonely
little shrine, half hidden by the trees, now emerging among the
bared, charred trunks of the pine army which was burned three
years ago. Doubling the spurs again and again, you make your
way at a fairly level altitude, until a Bhutia-tent marks the
division between the official main road by the Kag-ue monastery,
and the short cut over the hills to Chema. Down the first you
elect to go. The road is longer, but the road is easier, and you
have not yet acquired either the mental attitude or, what is
more important, the muscles of a hill man. Through junipers
and birch you pass out to the bare hill-side, and descend sharply
to the monastery.

This is a curious place. It is the most important religious
community in the valley. It is a special favorite with the Dalai
Lama, and when, some years ago, owing to certain scandals
which were, unfortunately, too well known in the valley to be
disregarded, the older monastery in these parts was broken up,
the lamas were permitted to build a far more magnificent tem-
ple within a mile of the scene of their misdoings. Service is
going on as you enter the courtyard. They will pay no attention
to you if you go into the shrine itself — that is, the monks will
not. Only the acolyte children will gaze, round-eyed, at the un-
known white men, while their mouths still move with the shrill
and simple cadence of the chanted office. Now and again a
bell is rung, or a drum beaten with the sickle-shaped stick. Once
in a while the long, eight-foot trumpets emit a ponderous blast
of discordance. Tea is handed round continually, and the chant
pauses now and again to allow the presiding lama to monotone
a passage from the Buddhist scriptures. At the further end,
in the darkness, lighted by the pale beads of butter-lamps, sits

CROSSING THE HIMALAYAS 61

the gilded image of Gautama, half-hidden by " katags " or
scarfs.

Leaving the monastery, the track flings itself down the steep
sides of a hollow, and at last comes out upon the good and
welcome level of the Chumbi road. We have almost reached
the end of the first stage of the long journey.

CHAPTER IV

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY

BEFORE the coming of this Mission, no white man had ever
seen the Chumbi Valley.
The women of Chumbi think a good deal of themselves, though
to the eye of the stranger there seems very little distinction be-
tween the stunted and dirty little people of one part of Tibet and
those of another. The head-dress used by them is the usual tur-
quoise-studded aureole of the province of Tsang. The outer and
possibly only garment * is of the same very thick crimson dun
cloth, tied round the waist with a string and fastened at the throat .
with a plain yoke-like hasp of silver. This dress is generally
patched, until it is difficult to say with certainty which part of it
is the original garment, and it is of course open to more objec-
tions than the presence of inanimate dirt alone presents. The
shoes worn reach up to the knee, and are made of the same dark
red cloth, variegated over the instep by a streak of scarlet extend-
ing down to the toes. Here the plain tanned yak hide incases it.
These shoes are not uncomfortable, though the entire absence of
any heel makes it necessary that a little practice in them should
precede a long or a difficult tramp, otherwise the Achilles tendon "
is apt to make a violent protest. In face, the men and women are
strangely alike. Neither here nor elsewhere in Tibet do the men
grow mustaches or beards ; the utmost that one ever sees is a thin
fringe of scanty hair marking the lips or pointing the chin of a

* These ladies seem to use their outer dress as their dessous when torn and
worn beyond decent use. A girl at Bolka had apparently two such under-
garments.

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY 63

high official. It cannot be claimed that Tibetan ladies look beau-
tiful. It is, of course, difficult to say what the effect would be if
some of them were thoroughly washed. As it is, they exist from
the cradle, or what corresponds to it, to the stone slab on which
their dead bodies are hacked to pieces, without a bath or even a
partial cleansing of any kind. One could imagine that they were
of a tint almost as dark as a Gurkha, but this is by no means the
case. In spite of the dirt, wherever the bodies are protected by
clothes the skin remains of an ivory whiteness, which is indis-
tinguishable from that of the so-called white races. At times
also accident, perhaps in the shape of rain, has the effect of re-
moving an outer film of dirtiness, and then it is quite clear that
Tibetan girls, until they are two or three and twenty, have a
complexion. Of course the habit of the race, of besmearing the
forehead, cheeks, and nose with dark crimson kutch, which
blackens as it dries, militates against any display of beauty. The
origin of this strange custom is, like most facts and theories about
Tibet, the subject of hot dispute. Some contend that it origi-
nally marked the married women only: some will have it, and
there seems some evidence in their favor, that this disfigurement
was intentionally introduced in order to save the ladies of Tibet
from the sin of vanity, and incidentally, also, to reduce the
chances of young men's infatuation. The third and more prosaic
explanation is that it is done to mitigate the glare of the sun from
rock and snow.^ This would be a more convincing reason, if
the kutch was actually worked into the hollow of the eye, and on
the eyelid ; but these are left unstained. Two other reasons, also
of a flatly contradictory nature, have been suggested to explain
this custom of Tibetan women, but there does not seem any ne-
cessity to accept either view. One thing must in common fairness

* Mr. Talbot Kelly recommends essentially the same thing for use against
the glare of Egypt. The Sikkim coolies pull their hair over their eyes in a
curtain for the same purpose.

64 THE OPENING OF TIBET

be said, and that is, that nowhere in the world will you find such
exquisite teeth in men, women, and children alike as in Tibet,
though it is beyond dispute certain that no tooth-brush, or any
form of cleansing them, has ever been practised, or indeed known,
from one end of the country to the other.

Prayer flags in Tibet are the commonest possible means of in-
vocation. The " airy horses " printed upon long perpendicular
strips of limp tarlatan, or rather butter muslin, about twelve
inches wide, are nailed to the pole, from twenty to thirty feet in
height. These fringes stand out in the wind, till they are frayed
back to the very nails, or tear themselves loose in ragged stream-

ers.*

Among the private convictions of Sir Isaac Newton was the
singular belief that prayers went to Heaven by vibration. It was
not, perhaps, one of the most demonstrable theories of that great
man, and very little stress has ever been laid upon this curious
idea, though I believe it underlies the almost universal use of in-
cense as a symbol of prayer. But your pious Tibetan would have
understood Sir Isaac in a moment; to him, movement is prayer,
and no inert petition finds its way to the ear of the gods. The
turning of a prayer-wheel, whether in the hand, or by the agency
of water, wind, or fire, is the best illustration of this. The pere-
grinations round the Ling-kor or the Jo-kang at Lhasa are other
examples of an acted prayer. Attention is not necessary; merit
is acquired, whether the mind be fixed or not, and Claudius' tru-
ispi, " Words without thoughts never to Heaven go," would be
scouted as foolishness by the piety of this land. Nor would the
Lamas be inclined to agree with the counsel which deprecates
repetition, for some of the larger prayer-wheels contain the sacred
mantra, " Om mani padme hum," repeated to an extent that al-
most defies calculation. Very thin sheets of paper made from the

*In Lhasa itself a peculiarity is noticeable. The prayer flags there
are tightly bound in to the pole.

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY 65

Daphne Cannabina, as thin as Oxford India paper, are printed
with symbols of this invocation as closely as the space permits.
Many hundreds of sheets of this paper are compressed into every
inch within the great revolving tub. The contents remain in a
tight, hard block, even if the outer covering is broken. A prayer-
wheel eight feet in height may contain this same mantra about a
hundred million times. Every revolution of a wheel like this adds
considerably, therefore, to the credit side of the Tibetan's account
in Heaven. So easy is it to add a thousand billion or so of these
ejaculations to one's account in a five minutes' visit to the near-
est gompa, that the plain mind of the Occidental wonders why, if
all this is really necessary, the Tibetan does not accumulate his
merit in this easy fashion, instead of wandering all day long, un-
economically twisting in his hand the comparatively inefficacious
hand wheel, or moving the still less expeditious lips. But here
we soon learn to leave behind us all the logic of the West. A
thing is so in Tibet because it has always been so ; research is not
encouraged ; progress is a form of heresy.

Galinka lies at the foot of the great dam which once fell across
the waters of the Ammo chu and made a lake where now the
plain of Lingma-tang stretches itself. This is a curious feature
of the valley. One climbs 200 feet up from Galinka by the side
of the sprawling torrent and at last reaches a piece of turf about
a mile and a half long, a quarter of a mile wide, and as flat as
Lord's. In the rainless months the turf grows here short and
thick, and provides the best grazing of all the valley. It would
be easy to make some arrangement for the draining of the plain
in the rains, but, as it is, from the end of July onward, Lingma-
tang is a mere swamp, overgrown indeed with luxuriant vegeta-
tion and bright flowers, but, from a more practical point of view,
a useless nuisance. Through this plain, in the curves of a tortured
worm, the Ammo chu winds and rewinds itself. When the ex-
pedition first crossed the plain the rocky sides of the containing

66 THE OPENING OF TIBET

hills were bare of all but the seemingly dead trunks of birch, and
the hardly more lifelike blackish-green of the pines. A scanty
and thorny brush filled in the interstices among the boulders just
where the steep hills stood knee-deep in the plain, but that was
all. The " vleis " of South Africa, which have been formed in
a similar manner, will offer the best suggestion of the exactly
perfect surface — then covered with brown, burnt grass, cropped
short by sheep, and, as we once discovered, by shao also. At the
southern end of the valley the forest comes down close to the
plain, and one leaves behind the treeless level to be engaged at
once among the junipers and pines of the last stage of vegetation
which at this great altitude the valley of the Ammo chu can show.
The thorny shrubs cease as if by magic when the road has reached
the upper part of the rocky slope which has to be scaled before
the road begins again an even ascent by the side of the stream.
The silver firs come down thickly to the very edge of the water,
and under their shade the track runs between moss-covered rocks
some twenty feet above the water, which here falls in a torrent
from boulder to boulder, pausing only when delayed by the frost,
which hangs great combs of ice from every gray dead fir athwart
the stream. Junipers and a few twenty-foot rhododendron trees
take advantage of the shelter of a turn in the range of hills just
where the stone breast-work of Tong-shong crosses the road.
The heavy, resinous smell of the pines harmonizes well with the
carpet of dark-green moss which sprawls at will over the seamed
rocks of Indian red and sienna. The mountains, 2,000 feet over
our heads, barely allow the road to squeeze between their gigantic
Symplegades. Five miles beyond the end of Lingma-tang the
road crosses the torrent twice and one comes out over a stony
patch and a carpet of brown pine needles into a little clearing,
where a heavy fall of grayish-black granite warns the traveler of
the strange characteristics of the road for the next two or three
miles.

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY ^7

Some years ago — ninety or a hundred, perhaps, if one may
judge by the size of the largest of the trees growing among the
debris — a Himalayan convulsion shattered vertically the eastern
side of the hills which hem in the tumbling river on the west.
They now stand stark, austere, and perpendicular a thousand feet
above the roadway and the stream. No trees crown their sum-
mits, not a bush can find root-hold on their granite faces. But at
their feet a long, continuous buttress of granite, torn rawly from
its matrix by the shock, forms a ramp 200 feet in height below the
crannies and clefts of the gigantic curtain overhead. This ramp
is composed of boulders varying in size from mere splinters of
granite, which have been used wherewith to metal the bridle-path,
to one great giant at Ta-karpo or " White Rock." This is one
of the most prominent features of the Chumbi Valley. There are
in it over 70,000 cubic feet of stone above the level of the debris
over which the road goes, and on which the Chinese post has been
built.i

The name of this rock must have been given years ago.
When this granite is newly exposed to the air it is of a vivid,
crystalline whiteness. Such granite is not, perhaps, to be found
elsewhere in the world. For not only is it incomparable in
color, but its hardness almost defies dynamite; the explosion of
the charge does not cleave the boulders, it merely breaks out
great craters from the stone. The stone darkens rapidly on
exposure to the air, and the sparkling purity is soon hidden
under a film of dull grayish-black. Beside this sloping terrace,
crowned only with birch and juniper, the river rushed between
frozen banks. Sometimes there was only a narrow channel
left in the middle, and one could see the three-foot balks of

^ The use by the Tibetans of the stored warmth of the sun in these vast
blocks of stone is quite intentional. The vegetation immediately surround-
ing this great rock showed the stimulating power of the accumulated heat,
slowly surrendered all the frosty night by the fallen monster. To this may
also be due the constant use by wayfarers of the natural shelters formed by
hollows under projecting rocks.

68 THE OPENING OF TIBET

ice which hedged the water in, and listen to the quiet " seethe "
with which, now and again, a thin detached layer of ice be-
gotten of last night and astray upon the current mounted and
came to rest upon the thickening, greenish mass below. It was
just like the prickling crackle of a glazier's diamond. Some-
times the ice extended from shore to shore, broken here and
there by some whirlpool which had defied the cold, or some spirt
of water where the stream flowed too viciously over a rounded
stone to be entirely caught by the closing-in grip of the frost.
It was a wild scene, and very soon the limit of vegetation, which
is here about 13,300 feet, was apparent a little way up the hill-
sides. Birches are the last to go.

Another sharp climb brings one to the last phase of the
Chumbi Valley. This, indeed, is different from all the scenes
through which we have passed. A promontory, now being
avoided by the work of pioneers, gave us a view of the bare
plain of Dota ahead. To the east a frozen waterfall, nearly
a hundred feet in height, was the rallying-point of our attention.
It was a gigantic, irregular pillar of ribbed ice, through which
the evening sun played with the colors of a Pacific shallow.
But this was the last example of abruptness. From that point
till the Tang la rises gently beneath the ice-bound crags of
Chumolhari, on all sides the hills sweep down gently to the
stream or valley, bellying, brown, grassy slopes — for all the
world like Sussex downs tilted together at an angle. There
was not on all that waste of formless and almost naked rock a
stick of vegetation a foot high. Only little dead bents of aconite
prick up still brown and innocent. Nothing else breaks the
monotony of the finger-long blades of coarse low-lying grass.
I do not suppose that in all the world you could find a contrast
so great as that which meets the eye at Dota during your stage
from Gautso to the plain below the pass. From Dota to the
Tang la, and indeed on northward for three thousand miles, ex-

A MEMBER OF THE EXPEDITION
Outfitted to cross the high passes of the Himalayas in July

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY 69

cept for the fertile alluvial flats which hem in the rivers of south-
ern Tibet, this scenery remains monotonous, waterless, heart-
breaking. One has said good-by to the Himalayan landscape with
a suddenness that can hardly be conceived, and from this point
onward the track winds round the easy curves of hills or picks
its way along the flat, stubbly plains till, as one turns the last
corner beyond Kamparab, Phari Jong comes out from behind
the last spur on the left and dominates the distance, a square,
grayish block of keep and bastion and parapet commanding
the converging highways of three States, and itself humiliated
by the overhanging 10,000 feet of Chumolhari's rock and ice.

The town of Phari deserves more than a passing notice. The
name — which in Tibetan is spelled " Phag-ri," or the " pig-
hill " — has been explained in many ways. The small mound on
which it is built may, or may not, have been shaped like a pig, as
the inhabitants say. The name may or may not have some refer-
ence to the pig goddess who is re-incarnated by the shores of the
Lake of Palti as the Dorje Phagmo — the Abbess of Samding.
There is a third explanation, which the lamas of the monastery of
Chat-sa, four miles away to the north, say is self-evident, but
of that later. The Jong itself is clearly of Chinese-plus-Euro-
pean construction. Its date, as ascertained by papers at Lhasa,
was said by the two Jong-pens, or fort commandants, to be
about 1500 A.D. ; it is, indeed, impossible to assign it to a date
later than 1600, and the assertion of the custodians may well
be true. A well-constructed stone parapet eighteen feet high,
with corner bastions, surmounts a low hill about twenty feet
in height. Above this, occupying the center of the hill, stands
the keep, about fifty feet in height and a hundred and twenty
wide, of several stories, and irregularly bastioned, or rather
buttressed. The fort lies square to the points of the compass,
each side of the parapet being about no yards in length. The
peculiar features in its construction conclusively prove that the

(

70 THE OPENING OF TIBET

place was built in unreasoning imitation of some European
model, for the little machicolated galleries which bestraddle
the corners of the outer bastions are entirely useless. Nothing
could be dropped from them, as they dominate precisely the
points at which no sane commander would deliver an attack.
Moreover, they are of the flimsiest construction, and, at present
at any rate, do not even possess floors. Inside, the Jong is dark,
badly constructed, and, to some extent, positively dangerous, as
the seeming solid walls are actually thin skins of granite ma-
sonry filled with rubble. In many places one skin has fallen
and the interior beams are supported wholly upon the other.
Quite recently a large part of the northern wall has completely
fallen. A certain amount of armor, both of iron and bamboo,
was found in the Jong, but every weapon of modern construction
had been carefully removed to the north or buried.

It is, however, the town of Phari which will remain longest
in the memory of those who have seen it but once. The head-
quarters mess of the escort to the Mission included several men
whose experience of the outlying places of the world it would
be difficult to equal round another table. But by common con-
sent Phari was the filthiest town on earth. This is a charge
not infrequently made against other towns, so it may be worth
while to justify the right of Phari to that bad eminence. First,
let it be said in fairness that there are more than a few reasons
why the inhabitants of this town are of necessity dwellers in
dirt. To begin with, Phari, at a height of 15,000 feet, is the
highest town worthy of the name in the world. The cold is
consequently fearful, a nightly temperature ranging in Feb-
ruary rather downward than upward from — 3° F., being often
joined with a merciless grit-laden cold wind from the north.
Cold is admittedly an excuse for dirt, but it is not cold only that
palliates the filth of Phari. At this altitude the least exertion
brings on breathlessness and apathy. To put on a pair of boots

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY 71

and gaiters is often a serious exertion for the new-comer, and it
is not, perhaps, to be expected that the good people of Phari should
go out of their way to secure by unwelcome activity a sanitation
and cleanliness which appeal to them as little as to other Tibetans.
Indeed, any others of that uncleanly race would, under similar
circumstances, attain an equal degree of dirt. The absence of
trees, compelling the wretched people here to use argol or dried
yak-dung as their only fuel, is another contributory cause. The
heavy, greasy blue fumes of these fires coat the interior of the
squat houses with a layer of soot which it would be useless
labor to remove. Unfrozen water is almost non-existent, except
during the summer, and, so far at least as the women are con-
cerned, the dirt which seams their faces is not perhaps unwel-
come, for, as we know, custom compels the disfigurement with
, kutch (or raddle resembling dried blood) of the brows and
cheeks of women in Tibet.

Having thus pleaded the cause, I have now to explain the
results of this want of cleanliness upon the town of Phari.
The collection of sod-built hovels, one or, at most, two stories
in height, cowers under the southern wall of the Jong for pro-
tection against the wind from the bitterest quarter. The houses
prop each other up. Rotten and misplaced beams project at
intervals through the black layers of peat, and a few small
windows lined with crazy black match-boarding sometimes dis-
tinguish an upper from a lower floor. The door stands open;
it is but three black planks, a couple of traverses, and a padlock.
Inside, the black glue of argol smoke coats everything. A brass
cooking-pot or an iron hammer, cleaned of necessity by use,
catches the eye as the only thing in the room of which one sees
the real color. A blue haze fills the room with acrid and pene-
trating virulence. In the room beyond, the meal is being cooked,
and a dark object stands aside as one enters. It is a woman,
barely visible in the dark. Everything in the place is coated and

72 THE OPENING OF TIBET

grimed with filth. At last one distinguishes in a rude cradle
and a blanket, both as black as everything else, an ivory-faced
baby. How the children survive is a mystery. It is the same
in every house. Nothing has been cleaned since it was made,
and the square hole in the flat roof, which serves at once to
admit light and air, and to emit smoke, looks down upon prac-
tically the same interior in five hundred hovels.

But it is in the streets that the dirt strikes one most. Let it
be said at once that in the best quarter of the town, that in which
the houses are two-storied, the heaped-up filth — dejecta and re-
jecta alike— rises to the first-floor windows, and a hole in the mess
has to be kept open for access to the door. It must be seen to
be believed. In the middle of the street, between the two banks
of filth and offal, runs a stinking channel, which thaws daily.
In it horns and bones and skulls of every beast eaten or not eaten
by the Tibetans — there are few of the latter — lie till the dogs
and ravens have picked them clean enough to be used in the
mortared walls and thresholds. The stench is fearful. Half-
decayed corpses of dogs lie cuddled up with their mangy but
surviving brothers and sisters, who do not resent the scavenging
ravens. Here and there a stagnant pool of filth has partially
defied the warmth, and carrion, verminous rags, and fur-
wrapped bones are set round it in broken yellowish ice. In the
middle the brown patch is iridescent. A curdled and foul tor-
rent flows in the day-time through the market-place, and half-
bred yaks shove the sore-eyed and mouth-ulcered children aside
to drink it. The men and women, clothes and faces alike, are
as black as the peat walls that form a background to every scene.
They have never washed themselves. They never intend to wash
themselves. Ingrained dirt to an extent that it is impossible to
describe reduces what would otherwise be a clear, sallow-skinned,
but good-complexioned race to a collection of foul and grotesque
negroes.

^'^^i^^sg^T^s^s^>ssmw^i^i^^(^^9i^fWW*^^

ti1*^K?sWM

THE TWO ABBOTS OF A TIBETAN MONASTERY

THE TIBETANS OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY 73

" Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke." Thomas Manning's concise de-
scription of Phari as he knew it on the 21st of October, 181 1,
holds to this day, and the cleaning up which went on inside the
walls of the great buttressed fort after our arrival provoked no
imitation in the foul streets and grimed turf-built hovels at its
foot.

And the disgust of all this is heightened by an ever-present
contrast, for, at the end of every street, hanging in mid-air above
this nest of mephitic filth, the cold and almost saint-like purity
of the everlasting snows of Chumolhari — a huge wedge of ar-
gent a mile high — puts to perpetual shame the dirt of Phari.

The Jong-pens, or twin commandants of the fortress, had
trimmed their sails with some dexterity under the stress of this
breeze of foreign influence. They had served us not unfaith-
fully, a fact which they had doubtless kept from the knowledge
of those far Lhasan authorities with whom their correspondence
was neither confessed nor unknown to us. For their reception
of the English into the fort — an occupation which every suc-
ceeding week more fully justified — the two Jong-pens were cere-
monially degraded at Peking. This, however, is the East. At
the request of the very Power whose reception had caused their
disgrace, they were at once, with equal formality, reinstated
in their dignities of the crystal button and the backward-slant-
ing peacock feather — avowedly for services rendered to the Eng-
lish. What wonder if these two worthy men were a little be-
wildered as to their duty! Nor was it clear to them on which
side their bread would ultimately prove to be buttered. With
gratitude they accepted the offer of a monthly salary of 50 rupees
apiece during our occupation of Phari; with foresight they de-
clined to accept any money from us until after the expedition
was over. Asked whether they believed that we should be un-
successful, they smilingly put the question by. But, they said.

74 THE OPENING OF TIBET

there were many and powerful forts lying between us and Gy-
antse, and though the Pilings— they ought not to have used the
word to us— were beyond question a mighty race, who could
foresee the future? They accepted the invidious position with
a good grace, and, on the whole, after a preliminary attempt
to smuggle cattle over the near Bhutanese frontier, they acted
with apparent integrity.

Such was the road along which the toilsome preparations for
the advance crept slowly to the storehouses of Chumbi and Phari
from the plains of India. Through all the tedious months neces-
sitated by this provision for the future, Brigadier-General Mac-
donald, with the exception of one or two expeditions up and
down along the line of communication, remained at Chumbi.
Meanwhile, Colonel Younghusband, with the members of the
Mission, remained pent up in the wretched little houses which
cower beneath the hills of Tuna from the eternal blast which
drives the grit under foot along the open frozen wastes of Tuna.

CHAPTER V

THE FIGHT AT THE WALL

ALL preparations were ready by the last week in March,
±\. and on the 26th Brigadier-General Macdonald started
from Chumbi. His first march brought him to the small wooded
plain of Gautso, where a strong little camp had been maintained
for some time. It was the last halt below the upper limit of
trees, and for the last time we enjoyed here an unlimited supply
of fuel. The next day the force pushed on to Phari, where a
day's halt was made to compose the column finally for the ad-
vance. On the following day a short march was made to a
camping-place on the bare plains one mile short of the Tang la.
It was a bitterly cold spot, utterly unprotected in any way, and
the two slight valleys which meet here acted as funnels for the
wind that blows everlastingly across these frozen plains. On
the 29th of March,^ the camp was struck early. Chumolhari
rose overhead, veiling its vast icy slopes with thin, half-frozen
cloud. From behind it the sun rose coldly, forming, by some
curious series of accidents, the most beautiful and complete white
rainbow that any of us had ever seen. There is something
about a white rainbow which is not entirely different from the
plumage of a white peacock. If you look closely you will find
that the structure of the missing bands of color remains almost
unchanged, and in this perfect half-circle of the purest white
one could almost imagine the ghostly lines of division between
the customary tints. For twenty minutes it arched over the
* Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.
75

76 THE OPENING OF TIBET

valley running up westward toward Pahamri, and vanished
slowly as the long line of the expedition moved out of camp.

It was a bitter morning; the promise of the sun was betrayed,
and, as we ascended the last furlongs of the southern slope, the
cold came down upon us again with bitter intensity. Crossing
the Tang la into Tibet proper was a terrible experience. The
frozen mist, laced with stinging splinters of ice, was blown hori-
zontally into our faces by the wind which never sleeps over this
terrible pass. Men and animals alike were stiff with an ar-
mor of ice, and beards and even eyelashes were, powdered and
hoary with the fine particles of frozen mist. It was difficult
to see fifty yards away, and it would be difficult to form a just
idea of the hardships which no human activity can ever hope
to remove from the highway leading on to Lhasa.

Slowly creeping on against the blizzard, the long line of ani-
mals and men moved into and out of the narrow radius of one's
sight, demi-cloaked with ice. About eight o'clock the sun gath-
ered enough power to melt the frost in the air, and an hour
later, looking up from the mist which rose like steam from the
plain, one could see the clear white top of Chumolhari sailing
against the thin light clouds of the upper air. We had crossed
the frontier. Half an hour later the plain was clear to the hori-
zon, and we trudged on against the wind and over as forbidding
a floor as exists on earth. It was grit and pebbles all the way.
There was not the slightest hint of even the dead brittle shrubs
. of wormwood that gave promise of greenery on the plain of
Phari. Two streams, hard bound with ice, lay across our path,
and Tuna was not to be seen till we were almost upon it. When
it at last came in sight it seemed a strange place, indeed, for
the residence of a British Commissioner for the whole winter.
Backed by arid sand-stone dunes 600 or 700 feet high, its only
outlook is toward the snow-fields, peaks, and glaciers of the
dividing range between Bhutan and Tibet, culminating to the

THE FIGHT AT THE WALL -j-j

west in the gigantic mass of Chumolhari. There had been no-
thing to do all the winter. There was little game to shoot, and
the only walk, unless one climbed the hills at the back of the
post, was "there and back again" across the accursed frozen
waste. As we came near, the houses which the Mission had
originally occupied appeared. They are squalid in the extreme,
and one could well understand that Colonel Younghusband and
his men had early preferred to brave the cold of the winter in
their tents.

On our arrival we had luncheon with the Mission — these were
the days before the stores began to run low — and a surprisingly
good luncheon it was. We heard the latest news. The Tibetans
had been watched for some days; they had built a wall across
the road at a point between six and seven miles to the north,
and there was no doubt that, besides the force (then estimated
at about a thousand men) who were manning this defense,
large bodies of Tibetans were also busy on the other side of the
Bam tso. From the old narratives of the eighteenth century,
one had expected to find this lake within sight of Tuna, and
it is quite clear that at no very remote period Tuna itself was
almost washed by its waters. But not a sign of them was now
to be seen, though the short cut to Lhasa through the La-tse
Karo la, just visible across the plain, proved how recently the
ground had at any rate been a swamp by the wide curve which
it took before it started northeast, from the posting-station and
village of Hram.*

A typical day followed. From the earliest dawn till after sun-
set, a piercing wind swept the camp from end to end with a
liurricane of tingling grit, and the discomfort of the men was
increased by the device which Brigadier-General Macdonald
adopted to deceive any Tibetan scouts who might be lurking

^This village is supposed to give an alternative name to this sheet of water. It
appears as the Hramtso on many maps, but without any real justification.

78 THE OPENING OF TIBET

among the hills which hemmed in the plain to the west. All
tents were struck and the men received strict orders to con-
ceal themselves. Captain Ottley, after a reconnaissance with
his mounted infantry, reported that the Tibetans had tempora-
rily retired from their wall, and from the string of sangars which
led upward from its western end over the spurs of the neigh-
boring hills. But as they had returned in full force by the
morning of the 31st, it is more probable that they were driven
away, not in any belief that the Mission had retreated, but
simply because even the Tibetans found the discomfort of the
day unbearable.

At twenty minutes past eight on the 31st the column moved
out. About a mile and a quarter of the road ran eastward im-
mediately under the high spur to which I have referred. Then,
turning sharply to the north, it makes its way five miles to the
little promontory and ruined house between which the road
runs. Here, as we could see two miles away, the Tibetans had
built their defenses. On the plain itself, the wall ran from the
spur to the house, constructed in the shape of four redans with
narrow openings between them. On the left hand the hills,
grassless and stony, rose steadily until the saddle joined the two-
thousand-foot ridge three miles away to the west. Here there
were seven or eight sangars. But to our right a clear space
of three thousand yards of level plain stretched between the end
of their poor little defenses and the nearest swamp bordering
the far but just visible waters of the lake. The fatuity of the
Tibetan scheme of defense would, one thinks, have been manifest
to a child. No attempt whatever to block this space was made.
The truth is that the whole project had been conceived in Lhasa.
The authorities there were guided by an obsolete map, or possibly
by a mistaken remembrance of the locality, and the general who
came to conduct operations had no authority to select another
field for his defense. The fact that the lake had retreated about

THE FIGHT AT THE WALL 79

two miles from its ancient shore was a matter of which the
lamas in the capital were either ignorant or careless.

We tramped steadily across the plain — a mere continuation
of the Tuna plateau, frozen deep, and barely supporting the
scanty growth of thistles that pricked up here and there through
the patches of still lying snow. Everything under foot or in the
distance was gray and colorless. You will understand more
clearly the scene of the coming incident if you will remember
the bitter frost-laden south wind blowing all day with increas-
ing strength beneath a hard ash-gray sky.

Just when the Tibetan wall had become clearly visible in
the distance, a messenger, riding forward in haste, announced
the coming of the leading men of the defending force. The
Lheding Depen himself was in the field, and he, accompanied by
his brother general from Shigatse, the late Commandant of
Phari, and Gesur Yeshe Wang-gyuk (the representative of the
great Ga-den monastery), ambled quickly across the plain, and
an informal conference was held between the military and po-
litical chiefs on either side. It was merely a repetition of the
same old story. Coached from Lhasa, the delegates had no
power, if, indeed, they had the wish or saw the necessity, to
say anything but the old parrot-cry, " Go back to Yatung.'*
As Colonel Younghusband himself reminded them, this obsti-
nacy had served the Tibetans in good stead for fifteen years.
Hitherto it had always succeeded; how then were they to realize
that at last the British Government was in earnest? After
twenty minutes of excited but fruitless discussion, carried on
through the interpretation of Captain O'Connor— at such times
the most immovably patient of men— the small durbar was
broken up and the more important of the Tibetans cantered back
to their defenses in a cloud of dust. One or two only endeavored,
by violent gesticulation and shouting all together, to secure the re-
treat of the English commissioner. O'Connor, though he was be-

So ■ THE OPENING OF TIBET

ing jostled and ridden off ten times a minute, retained his compo-
sure, explaining again and again that the advance must now
continue, and that Colonel Younghusband could listen to no-
thing before Gyantse was reached. At last they were made to
understand, and shouting excitedly to each other they, too,
scampered away on their stout little ponies. It was a curious
incident — the impassive non possumus which Younghusband re-
turned to the heated declamations of the two senior delegates;
•the gay yellow and green coats of the generals from Lhasa and
Shigatse; the various head-dresses; the purple and blue of the
robes; the strange forked guns embossed with turquoise and
coral; the richly worked sword hilts; the little gray and bay
ponies, saddle-clothed with swastika-patterned stuffs and gay
with filigree brass headbands and wide molded iron stirrups
— all these things straight from the sacred and forbidden city
possessed a new and intense interest for all of us.

There was no doubt about it ; the Tibetans intended to defend

' their walls, and this created a most unpleasant predicament.

- Acting upon Colonel Younghusband's instructions, the General
ordered that not a shot was to be fired until the enemy had be-
gun. This, in other words, meant that our men were to forego
■every advantage which discipline and modern weapons conferred
upon them. At the worst, it meant that they were obliged to
march straight up to sangars, held by men equipped with firearms
of unknown strength, and that, not only were they to suffer a
.possibly destructive volley before opening fire, but that they
might even be compelled to carry on the combat at a range so
short and from ground so coverless that the Tibetans would en-
joy other advantages besides that of sheer numbers, which they
already possessed. Still, the thing was done. It was such a pol-
icy as has probably had no parallel since the days of the Old
Guard at Fontenoy, and it is more to the credit of Indian disci-
•plme than English readers may realize that not a man, Gurkha
^r Sikh, disobeyed the order all the day.

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THE FIGHT AT THE WALL 8i

The scene was a strange one. Out toward the lake a thin ex-
tended line was pushed forward, far outflanking the wall and
entirely commanding the line of the Tibetans' retreat. Mean-
while, the 23d Pioneers and the 8th Gurkhas were slowly clearing
the hills on the left, making each sangar disgorge its holders one
after the other. It was done in silence, and almost with good-
humor; but there was a hush of suspense among the two staffs
out in the plain who were watching with straining eyes the slow
progress of the khaki dots on the hillsides two miles away. At
any moment a shot might fire the powder magazine, and it was
not till the last of the hundreds of gray-coated figures had slowly
come down to the wall that the officers shut up their field-glasses
and moved on to where the work of disarmament was just begin-
ning. The sense of an insecurely leashed anger which might
break out at any moment was suddenly replaced by an exag-
gerated sense of security and congratulation. The incident
was regarded as practically over. The Commissioner and the
General rode in together to the wall to watch the huddled
group of Tibetans massed behind it, covering as much ground
as a battalion in quarter column. On either side of them were
our men. In front also the wall was lined with the 32d Pioneers ;
the line of retreat alone lay open to them. Two hundred others
had been taken prisoners up the hillside and disarmed there.
These remained passive and thankful spectators of what was to
follow.

The main body of the Tibetans were bewildered, but not sub-
dued. The whole thing must have been incomprehensible to these
poor men. No order had been given to them to retreat, and they
seemed to have acquiesced in their friendly expulsion by the Gur-
khas and Sikh Pioneers in a dazed way. Gathered together in a
body, their enormous superiority in numbers must have struck
them. They had no idea, of course, of the advantage which we
possessed, and there was a growing murmur as they discussed the
matter excitedly behind the wall. Some of them then and there

82 THE OPENING OF TIBET

concocted a scheme which might have had terrible results, and
the unwitting action of the Mission leaders almost put it into
their power to carry it out. As we afterward found from the
prisoners, they on the spot determined upon nothing less than
to permit the advance guard of the expedition to go through, and
then fall suddenly upon the members of the Mission themselves.
The disarmament upon which the General insisted of course de-
feated their plans, and it was in the attempt to carry out this op-
eration that the storm broke. When the Sikhs advanced toward
the wall and began the work there was difficulty from the outset.
In some cases the Tibetans actually struck the Pioneers ; in others,
there ensued a struggle for a weapon ; but this was not immedi-
ately noticeable from where Younghusband and the General were
standing, ten yards away from the house at the far end of the
wall. Homer has given the explanation of what then took place.
Steel of itself, says he, draws a man, and this handling of weapons
was a terrible risk. It was almost exactly noonday.

The Depen of Lhasa himself was the man who set the slum-
bering mine ablaze. He was seated on his horse just outside the
wall, and, exempt himself from the confiscation of his arms, he
shouted hysterically to his men to resist. They replied by stoning
the Sikhs. Even then, though the whole affair hung in a slippery
balance indeed, the latter held themselves in check. One of them
advanced to the head of the Depen's pony as the Lhasan General
tried to move up toward the wall. In an evil moment for himself
and his countrymen, the head of the great house of Lheding drew
his pistol and fired, smashing the Sikh's jaw. There was an
awful pause, that lasted for perhaps three seconds; and then an-
other report broke the stillness. A jezail, for which a Sikh and
a Tibetan were struggling, discharged itself into the air. But it
was almost unnoticed in the sudden yell with which the Tibetans
hurled themselves with drawn swords against the thin line of Pio-
neers leaning up against the wall. Such of them as had their

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THE FIGHT AT THE WALL 83

pieces ready fired point-blank at the Indian guard, and then drop-
ping them, flung themselves with their long, straight, heavy-
swords into the melee. Two Europeans were caught inside the
wall, and both were wounded. One, Mr. Candler, the correspon-
dent of the Daily Mail, was severely cut about before his assail-
ants could be shot down. The other, Major Dunlop, found him-
self confronted by a furious Tibetan who cut his hand upon his
rifle stock with a fearful thrust before Dunlop was able to kill
him.

By this time the storm had broken in full intensity, and from
three sides at once a withering volley of magazine fire crashed
into the crowded mass of Tibetans. It was like a man fighting
with a child. The issue was not in doubt, even from the first mo-
ment; and under the appalling punishment of lead, they stag-
gered, failed, and ran. Straight down the line of fire lay their
only path of escape. Moved by a common impulse, the whole
mass of them jostling one against another with a curious slow
thrust, they set out with strange deliberation to get away from
this awful plot of death. Two hundred yards away stood a
sharply squared rock behind which they thought to find refuge.
But the Gurkhas from above enfiladed this position and the only
hope they had lay in reaching the next spur half a mile away.
Had we been armed with their weapons, another hundred yards
would have brought them into safety, even in the open. It was
an awful sight. One watched it with the curious sense of fasci-
nation which the display of unchecked power over life and death
always exerts when exercised. Men dropped at every yard.
Here and there an ugly heap of dead and wounded was concen-
trated, but not a space of twenty yards was without its stricken
and shapeless burden. At last, the slowly moving wretches— and
the slowness of their escape was horrible and loathsome to us—
reached the corner, where at any rate we knew them safe from the
horrible lightning storm which they had themselves challenged.

84 THE OPENING OF TIBET

All this was necessary, but none the less it sickened those who
took part in it, however well they realized the fact. This was no
fighting in the usual sense of the word. As soon as their first
assault had failed there was nothing for the Mission escort to
fear, except, perhaps, the bullets of their own companions. This
was so real a danger that the company of the 32d, which had
been sent round on the right, as has been described, was obliged
to retreat so as to leave a clear field for the fire of the
Gurkhas on the slope of the spur. The guns had come into
action on the right as soon as possible, but the extraordinary
difference which these high altitudes make in the burning of a
fuse * nullified their work to a very great extent. I do not
suppose that any white man in the force was anything but sin-
cerely glad when one more dark-coated little figure disappeared
in safety behind the distant corner. But the behavior of the native
troops was beyond all praise. They had kept their temper and
their discipline till it was almost beyond human endurance. And
when the word was given they naturally had no mercy upon an
enemy whose attempt to equalize matters by the hand-to-hand
use of vastly superior numbers had been tried and failed. It was
a short but a terrible lesson.

An attempt was made to defend Guru itself, two miles on, but
this was easily defeated ; and after leaving a small garrison in the
place, the column returned to Tuna against a bitter wind and a
darkening sky.

The lesson which Guru should have taught was hardly learned
by the Tibetans. It should have been patent to them from that
moment, that until they had adopted modern weapons and, per-
haps, also had adopted some of the methods of the tribes on the
northwest frontier, it would be vain for them to attempt to resist
by force the progress of our troops. But every one of the men

* At the Kara la a distance requiring a 19 half-second fuse was only properly-
shelled by reducing the fuse to 9.

A FEW MINUTES LATER
The British force still firing at the retreating Tibetans

THE FIGHT AT THE WALL 85

whose report might have carried weight in Lhasa was dead, and
all we could ever afterward learn suggested rather that this com-
plete and utter rout of the pick of the Tibetan army was looked
upon in Lhasa rather as a disgrace to the officers concerned than
as a final proof of the foolishness of opposing us in the open field.
We afterward found that about fifteen hundred men in all had
been detailed for the defense of the Tibetan position on this side.
Another force of about one thousand men was ready to defend the
road to Lhasa across the lake, where twenty-four well-made san-
gars had been built across the road. Another body of men, esti-
mated variously at from two hundred to one thousand, remained
in Guru when their companions advanced to their position.^ The
troops returned to Tuna for the night, and before we advanced
again, it had been found necessary to amputate Mr. Candler's left
hand. He stayed at Tuna some time, and when he was well
enough to be moved, returned to Darjeeling till the final advance
began.

This incident made it imperative that the advance to Gyantse
should be carried out as quickly as possible. The road was re-
ported clear to the Kala tso. Beyond that, vague rumors reached
us of a concentration of Tibetans, generally embroidered with
accounts of mailed horsemen and other picturesque details, which
unfortunately were never justified by the fact.

^ Here, as elsewhere, it seems to me that the numbers of the enemy
have been overrated in the official estimates.

CHAPTER VI

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE

AFTER the fight at the Hot Springs the force remained at
JTx. Tuna for three days. On the morning of the 4th of April
the Mission and its escort moved on to Guru, passing over the
scene of the sudden disaster of the previous Thursday. Every-
where, indeed, ugly traces of the tragedy were still only too visi-
ble. Everything that could possibly be done had been carried
out by the medical officers, and it is only fair to record the quiet
work among the Tibetan wounded which was done on their own
initiative by the surgeons connected with the force. Captains
Walton, Baird, and Kelly, and Dr. Franklin had worked unceas-
ingly all day on the ist among the wounded Tibetans, and it would
be difficult to describe adequately the blank amazement with which
our prisoners regarded this treatment. Mercy to prisoners is not
a characteristic of the Oriental, and not one of the wretched men
whose wounds had rendered it impossible for them to escape or to
be carried away had the least idea that any mercy except a coup
de grace would be extended to them. They were tenderly treated
and the resources of the expedition were lavishly used. In the
end the inevitable occurred, and it was with the utmost difficulty
that we could shake off from us the Tibetans whom we had re-
stored to health and strength.

The information that was received from these men was simple
and always to the same effect. They had no quarrel with us;
they had been driven to the front unwillingly, partly by the super-
stitious hold which the Lamas had over them, partly by the threat

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 87

of physical punishment which the hierarchy did not fail. to wield;
and they realized soon enough that any attempt to stop us was
not only unnecessary but impossible. At any rate they would pre-
fer to take up any service, however menial, with us rather than go
back to the tyranny of their priests. Many wounded men came
in from a distance of their own accord. Morning after morning
one or two dead figures would be found a few hundred yards
away from our outposts — men who had been painfully trying
. to drag their broken bodies in to this miraculous healing of which
the fame had spread far and wide. It has often been said, and
no doubt said with some truth, that the work that we then did to
heal our wounded enemies, besides sorely depleting our stock of
bandages and other surgical necessities, was a source of weakness
rather than strength to the subsequent negotiations. The methods
of a Genghiz Khan would no doubt have brought our Mission to
a speedier end. But knowledge is not to be confounded with
wisdom, and many of our Oriental experts have forgotten in their
experience of detail that, after all, the Oriental is a man. What-
ever may be the ultimate success or permanence of our diplomatic
relations with the present priestly government of Tibet, the repu-
tation for magnanimity which we have secured among the poor
unlettered peoples of these uplands will as a tradition long out-
live the remembrance of political success, however great. Besides,
the thing had to be done.

The column halted at Guru. This is an unattractive spot, bare
and wind-swept, and marked only by a few disreputable houses
in two clumps, gathered in each case round a house of more re-
spectable appearance. Here the Chinese " General " Ma appeared.
But Captain Parr, of the Chinese Maritime Customs, declined to
recognize his representative character. On the morning of the
5th, the Mission moved on past Dochen toward Chalu by the
northern shore of the lake. It was a long march, and the narrow-
ness of the shore made it impossible to advance in more than one

88 THE OPENING OF TIBET

column. Here we struck into the heart of the land of Bogle and
Turner. What they wrote 130 years ago is true to the letter to-
day. The high, naked spurs which inclose the plain upon which
the Bam tso is now but a dwindling stretch, frowned upon us as
we moved past the successive openings. Some grazing might
perhaps be found here in the height of the summer, but in April
there is no blade of vegetation except the usual wormwood. Di-
vided from the road by a wide swamp, the waters of the lake, then
partly frozen, were dotted with the innumerable wild-fowl which
the previous explorers had reported. Ruddy sheldrake, pintails,
bar-headed geese, pochards, terns, teal, and wild-duck were all to
be seen and it was easy to approach within twenty yards of them.
A curious thing was here to be seen. These birds undoubtedly
migrate annually across the Himalayas from the plains of India.
Lower down, they had had experience enough of the meaning and
danger of a man's figure. Here in Tibet, where no bird had been
shot since Bogle offended the susceptibilities of his companions,
they did not show the slightest fear when the long dusty column
bore down upon them. But after the evening of the 5th, when '
shooting was for the first time permitted after our arrival in camp^
the change that came over the fowl was strange indeed. In a mo-
ment they became, and remained, as shy as ever they had been
in India.

Under foot, on the cinderous slopes, the only vegetation was
the hard circular sponges of saxifrage or the tiny plants of edel-
weiss, no larger than a florin, hiding away between the boulders
and the stones. Here and there a hare scurried away before the
feet of the column, but it was a rare break in the monotony.
Across the lake to the east, the road to Lhasa ran visibly, and
away to the south-east could be seen the deserted walls and san-
gars of Hram, which the enemy had deserted during the fight at
Guru. Chalu was reached about three o'clock.

The village itself lies half-way between the two lakes on the

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 89

borders of the stream which flows from the Bam tso into the
Kala tso, a distance of about three miles. A halt was made
just where this stream leaves the former lake. It was a cold,
pitiless afternoon, with a horizontal sleet blowing and the prom-
ise of heavy snow that night. A few duck were shot and a wel-
come store of bhusa was obtained from Chalu. Lu-chea mon-
astery was visible half-way up the hills to the east, but it was
not visited, except by a foraging party. The stream joining the
two lakes is traversed by a long stone causeway, about a quarter
of a mile from the upper lake, and on the following morning
it was crossed by the column, who were to make only a short
march that day. The road between the two lakes runs at a little
height above the stream in the defile. On either side there are
steep hills, and Chalu occupies the only level place beside the
road. It is only a short distance before the gorge ends and the
waters of the Kala tso are seen. Even the most recent map
makers, I notice, have insisted that this gorge is ten miles long.
It is curious that they should have persisted in this mistake in
spite of the far more accurate map which Turner drew in 1784.
As one goes on an extraordinary optical delusion is seen.
The Kala tso stretches out, a great shield of silver gray on the
left front, and the river, some thirty feet below us on the same
side, appears to run up hill into it. This delusion, which is very
striking, can only be accounted for by assuming that the eye is
mistaken in the apparent height of the Kala tso. This lake cer-
tainly seemed to be on a level with the path along which we were
marching, and the river is perhaps only seen as an accidental item
in the picture. When, however, it is perceived running close un-
der our feet, the inference that it has to make its way up hill to
fall into the lake is, I suppose, irresistible. In any case, it is a cu-
rious spectacle, and one to which Manning evidently referred in
his journal, though he must have misread his notes. He records
this optical delusion as visible in Red Idol Gorge. The Kala

90 THE OPENING OF TIBET

tso, on the banks of which the column halted for the night of the
6th, after a short march, is the remains of a very much larger
lake, which in earlier days covered the whole plain that now lies
east of its shore. The scenery was the same as before, though
the scanty grass bents now became a little more frequent, and
thick wormwood appeared here and there in patches on the
mountain-side.

The most remarkable thing here is the evidence of a very
large population in earlier days which the continuous string of
ruined walls and houses supplies. For a space of nearly two
miles the hill-side road — which clings still to the mountains in
avoidance of the now vanished lake — is marked by a wilderness
of great pebbles which have dropped from the walls and houses
of a lost civilization. The ground is still marked by lines of
crumbling structures held together in the ground plan of their
first shape by dry layers of mud-mortar. Thousands must have
lived here once. As with most other things in Tibet, there are
many different reasons suggested for this wholesale desertion —
a small-pox, the subsidence of the lake, the Mongol invasion,
the utter inability of the inhabitants to adjust themselves to
so wretched and inhospitable an environment. Perhaps, also,
the closing of the trade routes over the Sikkim passes may have
had its effect. It is only clear to-day that the scanty duffle-
clad figures who bow with protruded tongues at the entering in
of their hamlets and the black-aureoled women whose heads
appear inquisitively over the sordid sod-parapets of the roofs
above are but the hundredth part of the population of a scattered
but important trade center in the past.

The question that now exercised the General was whether the
jong would be defended or not. It was apparent, even at this
distance, that it would be no light matter to drive an enemy, how-
ever weakly armed, from so strong a position, and we were, as

H
►J
<

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 91

a matter of fact, confronted by the easier slopes of the rock upon
which it is built. There is no approach on the western side.
Standing out as it does in the plain, joined only by a narrow sad-
dle to the hills beside and above it, the jong is a formidable fort
indeed. There was some delay about crossing the river, and then
the column encamped above the river flats on the edge of the wide,
fertile plain.

Emissaries came out from Gyantse— the Jong-pen and the
Chinese General Ma who had first accosted us at Guru. The
Jong-pen put the whole situation clearly enough. On the one
hand, he said, if he were to surrender the jong to us, his throat
would be cut by the Dalai Lama ; on the other hand, he said, with
naive simplicity, that as all his soldiers had run away, he was not
able to offer any effective opposition to our occupation of it. This
was indeed true. Hundreds of Tibetan soldiers during the last
halt made by us on the plain took advantage of our inaction to
escape, carrying with them, it was reported, most of the available
weapons from the jong and town. The Jong-pen of Gyantse is a
kindly heavy old man like a saddened Falstaff ; and it was with
considerable regret that we were obliged to disregard his peti-
tions. As events proved, however, it would have been a wiser
thing if, instead of a temporary occupation of the fort, followed
by inadequate demolitions near the two main gateways, we had
boldly undertaken to occupy the place. Meanwhile it was clear
that the Tibetans could not be allowed to remain undisturbed in
the fort which commanded the country round. They were indeed
promised that no harm should be done to any one in the place, and
that the temples of the jong and of the town should remain un-
touched if, on their side, the Tibetans behaved with straightfor-
wardness to us. We camped for the night beside a new and well-
built house, and on the following morning moved in, prepared both
for treachery and for the task, if need be, of taking the fort by
storm. There was, however, no necessity for apprehension. The

92 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Jong-pen and the Chinese General came out to meet us and surren-
dered the entire place. Still, precautions were not relaxed until the
small party of pioneers, which we sent forward to investigate the
ruined walls and towers that crowned the great rock, had climbed
to the topmost pinnacle, and the Union Jack run up beside the gilt
copper finial which marked the highest point. The utmost cour-
tesy was shown to the Jong-pen, and he in his turn, though it
must be feared with a heavy heart, undertook to help in the col-
lection of necessary foodstuffs from the town and from the sur-
rounding villages. Already a cursory examination, of the store-
houses and cellars of the jong had shown that the whole place was
one gigantic granary. All was not, of course, discovered at first,
but nearly eight thousand maunds * of grain and tsamba were
found inside the storerooms of this fort alone. Two positions were
selected by the military authorities as suitable for the residence of
the Mission. One of them, Chang-lo, lay at the head of the ap-
proach across the Nyang chu, 1,350 yards from the large modern
barrack round which the defenses on the jong were centered.
The other lay within 500 yards of the rock, and (as the jong was
not occupied by our troops) would have proved utterly untenable
in the circumstances which afterward resulted in the practical in-
vestment of the Mission post. As it was, Chang-lo, the place oc-
cupied by Colonel Younghusband, was unpleasantly near and a
thousand yards within the range of a Tibetan jingal. The follow-
ing day the work of collecting the foodstuffs of the jong began
under the able generalship of Major Bretherton, and the long
convoys of mules began to go backward and forward between
Chang-lo and the jong. Small bodies of mounted men went out
to report upon the stores that could be supplied by the surround-
ing villages, and the amount far exceeded that reported as likely

* The maund used in the north-east of India weighs 80 pounds. This was,
during the expedition, the accepted unit of measurement, and was also the
normal weight carried by a single cooHe.

THE HIGH PRIEST AT GYANTSE
" Who looks like a saddened Falstaff "

■I

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 93

by the Mission. On the fourth day, Colonel Younghusband and
the men moved into the smaller of the two compounds which com-
prise Chang-lo. It was a pretty place. A beautifully painted and
columned open room opened upon a small courtyard, in the south
wall of which was a gateway leading straight out on to a grav-
eled court in which the finest poplar trees we ever saw in Tibet
rose bare and branching over our heads. The other part of
Chang-lo consisted of a very irregularly shaped building which
probably represented the actual daily living-house of the ducal
family of Chang-lo. It was very thickly built, and presented its
most impregnable side toward the jong. This peculiarity, which
was common enough in the houses of the plain to suggest that it
was not wholly unintentional, proved afterward the salvation of
the situation. The place was capable of defense, and to the south,
away from the jong, a thick plantation of leafless willow-thorns
was carpeted from end to end with iris. The river ran beside us
sixty yards away, turning in its course toward the far distant spur
upon which the scattered houses and temples of Tse-chen were
built. Other white houses dotted the plain on all sides within a
mile, and twelve hundred yards away to the north-east the little
village of Pala, then deserted, guarded the road to Lhasa.

It is worth while to review the political situation at the time
of our arrival at Gyantse. Colonel Younghusband had sent a
letter to the Amban announcing to him the impending arrival of
the British Mission, and requesting him to come to Gyantse to
discuss the terms of the agreement, bringing with him properly
qualified Tibetan representatives of sufficiently high rank. This
letter was sent off during the march up, but I do not suppose
that any one in the force really believed that the Tibetans were
willing to treat with us. The news of their loss at Tuna was
brought to the Lhasan authorities in a wholly mendacious form.
It is easy to see how the incidents of that unfortunate day lent
themselves to misconstruction. It was reported, and believed, in

94 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Lhasa that the English had decoyed the Tibetan soldiers away
from their defenses and had then wantonly shot them down. The
truth was indeed known to the friendly States of Bhutan and
Nepal, but these carry little weight in Tibetan councils. The
only man in Lhasa who seems to have understood the gravity of
the situation was Dorjieff himself. His action was immediate
and characteristic. As soon as the news arrived of our occupation
of Gyantse he suggested to the Tibetans the advisability of over-
whelming the Mission by a night attack. This had been proposed
by him already, while the Mission were still encamped at Kamba-
jong, and it is likely that the retirement of the Mission from that
place was rendered doubly ignominious in the eyes of the Tibetans
because they believed our evacuation to be directly due to the
attack for which they were preparing. Dorjieff was, however, far
from confident as to the upshot of this Experiment. He realized,
better perhaps than any one else in Lhasa, that if the small force
accompanying Colonel Younghusband were able to force their way
on to the capital they would unhesitatingly do so. The name of
Younghusband is unpleasantly well known in the chancelleries of
St. Petersburg. He has never been associated with want of enter-
prise or of readiness to seize the least opportunity afforded by his
opponent, but his far-sighted prudence was perhaps better recog-
nized still. That the Colonel should have decided to remain in
Gyantse with a small escort while Macdonald returned to the
Chumbi Valley to organize arrangements for a further advance
to Lhasa cannot, therefore, have seemed to Dorjieff to be the rash-
ness of an over-confident man. So far Dorjieff's influence with
the Dalai Lama was unimpaired ; his position in the country was
however weakened, not only because in spite of his assurances the
English had actually been able to penetrate into the country, but
also because it was now becoming known that Japan was actually
at war with Russia, a disquieting suggestion of the latter's real
strength. News of the Russian defeats did not reach Lhasa until

A VALLEY NEAR SAMONDA

EAST END OF THE JONG, OR FORTRESS, AT GYANTSE
Captured after a long and bitter fight

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 95

the middle of May, if information received there is to be trusted.
Dorjieff, therefore, determined, after setting the fuse alight, to
make the best of his way to a place of safety. If the British Mis-
sion were annihilated he could always return and claim the credit
of the suggestion. If, on the other hand, the English were able
to beat off the attack, Dorjieff foresaw only too clearly that his
influence in Lhasa was doomed, and that even the Dalai Lama
himself could not protect him.

While the Tibetans were preparing to send a fresh force for
this hostile purpose they naturally refused to allow the Amban to
negotiate with the Mission. The Viceroy himself repeatedly saw
the Dalai Lama in person, but could get nothing from him ; to his
demands for transport and for responsible and accredited repre-
sentatives of Tibet in the forthcoming negotiations no answer
was returned. At one time he thought that when it came to the
point the Tibetan government would hesitate to repudiate in any
direct manner the suzerainty which he represented. He there-
fore bluntly reminded them that he was acting under the orders
of the Chinese Emperor in demanding that they should negotiate ;
he added that the responsibility of acquiescing in the refusal of
the Tibetans was so serious that he declined to be any party to
their action. The orders had been given and signed with the ver-
milion pencil — those orders he intended to carry out. The im-
mediate answer of the Dalai Lama was an assumption of all re-
sponsibility for the action of the Tibetan government. He said
that he was willing to accept the onus of acting in contravention
of his suzerain's commands.

Meanwhile, Colonel Younghusband found himself in a difficult
position. The advance to Gyantse had been accepted as inevitable
by the home government. But they did not believe that it would
be necessary to make any further advance, and their policy at this
time assumed the ultimate submission of the Tibetan government
during this phase of our relations with the country, and Young-

96 THE OPENING OF TIBET

husband, in some way which is neither entirely clear nor entirely
fair, was regarded as unduly anxious to press on to the capital.
This was true in so far as that he recognized the importance, in
dealing with Oriental nations, of concluding the treaty in no
place short of the capital. Sound as this theory is in all cases, it is
especially so in the case of Tibet. Gyantse is a place the political
importance of which has been greatly over-rated; the truth is,
that no city or district, except Lhasa, is of any political impor-
tance whatever. A treaty signed at Gyantse might have achieved
one object. It might have given us a satisfactory basis for insist-
ing, when we thought fit, upon the observation of its terms. But as
binding the hierarchy of Lhasa it was of no more real importance
than the treaty of 1890-3, which they Jiad repudiated. Colonel
Younghusband appreciated the difficulty of securing any finality
in our relations with the Dalai Lama by negotiations at Gyantse,
but he was throughout perfectly willing to accept the opinion of
the Government and negotiate at this place. He may have re-
garded it as a half measure, but he recognized the necessity of
carrying out his orders to the letter, if it were possible for him
to do so. At the same time he also recognized the improbability
of getting the Tibetans to co-operate.

Tradition and experience alike had combined to persuade the
Tibetans of the truth of Disraeli's statement that delay is the se-
cret of success. They had always succeeded in the past by a pol-
icy of abstention ; why, then, even if we were able to reach a town
of the political insignificance of Gyantse, should they be induced
to abandon the policy which had served them in good stead for so
many centuries? The Dalai Lama had perhaps good reason for
his confidence. He remembered that assurances had been received
long ago from a trustworthy source that the British Government
were opposed to the risks involved by sending troops further
into Tibet. It is true that he cannot be supposed to have under-
stood the enormous advantage which the Parliamentary system

FORCING THE WAY TO GYANTSE 97

of England put into his hands : he cannot have known that there
was any serious criticism of Lord Curzon's policy in England : of
the chance — which seemed to us in Tibet to be a considerable one
— of a change of policy as the result of a General Election he can
have known nothing. But there were many other things which
may have influenced him in risking our unwillingness to proceed
further into the country. In the first place, first by a long interval,
Lhasa had never before been reached, and he may well have
trusted to the experience of history. In the second place, he prob-
ably imagined that the advance to Lhasa would necessitate the
employment of a very much larger force than that with which
we had reached Gyantse, and no one knows so well as a Tibetan
the impracticability of taking large bodies of men over these high
uplands without long and careful preparation. Then, again, he
looked forward to the evacuation of southern Tibet by the Eng-
lish as a matter of necessity, not so much because they were un-
able to withstand the climate there as because it was impossible
to maintain communications during the winter over the terrible
passes of the Chumbi Valley, Delay, therefore, was his obvious
policy. It is an odd thought that if he had limited himself to this,
his opposition might perhaps have been successfuK

Of all these considerations. Colonel Younghusband was fully
aware. He did not for a moment believe that negotiation at Gy-
antse could be carried through. His knowledge of Oriental habits
and thought told him unerringly that in the capital only was there
a chance of making such an impression as might secure the due
observation of the treaty. But, on the other hand, his instruc-
tions from home were clear enough, and for some time, while the
matter hung in the balance, it must have been difficult for him to
see how any middle course was possible which would enable Lord
Curzon to achieve even the most moderate triumph in the face of
misconceptions in Whitehall, As we now know, the Tibetans all
along were on the point of settling the matter by their own foolish

98 THE OPENING OF TIBET

action, but until the early days of May the outlook was blank
indeed.

In the light of after events it was lucky that during those first
three weeks after our arrival at Gyantse we did not let the grass
grow under our feet. Much had to be done by the military au-
thorities in putting Chang-lo into a proper state of defense, but
for the members of the Mission, excepting Captain Ryder, R.E.,
and Captain Walton, I.M.S., there was little to do. Negotiation
of any kind was obviously not intended by the Tibetans, and some
of us spent our time in making expeditions to eyery point of in-
terest in Gyantse and in the plain around.

CHAPTER VII

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN

THE first view of Gyantse is imposing. Across the wide,
level plain, cultivated in little irregular patches as closely
as an English county, the high-walled peak from which the town
gets its name^ rises 500 feet into the air. From the first the
jong fills the eye, and it is not until one is close that the low,
white two-storied houses of the town are seen at its foot, nestling
under the protection of the battlements and bastions of the great
fort.

So huge is the mass of masonry and sun-dried brick with
which the steep and isolated hill is crowned, that it is a matter
of some surprise that it has received scanty or no attention from
the few travelers who have passed beneath it. Manning, indeed,
in 181 1, refers to it as "a sort of castle on the top of a hill,"
a somewhat inadequate description of a pile of buildings hardly
less in size than those of Mont St. Michel. Ruinous it was
even in April, but that was hardly perceptible at a distance,
and the apparent strength of the huge towers and curtains which
overhang the almost precipitous rock would, one thinks, have
impressed the most incurious of observers, among whom Man-
ning, the only Englishman who has ever reached Lhasa, is
unfortunately to be placed. Even in its existing condition, a
week's siege and a couple of hundred casualties would have

* The name is written rgyal-rtse and means " Royal Peak." The " n " is
merely an example of a common tendency to nasalize the close of a first sylla-
ble. " Palden Lhamo " is almost invariably pronounced " Panden Lhamo."
The great monastery at Gyantse is often called the " Pan-khor Choide."

lOO THE OPENING OF TIBET

been the price of any attempt on our part to take the successive
defenses by storm in the face of the slightest really well-handled
opposition.

Leaving the level of the town at the south-eastern corner of
the rock— which is 400 or 500 yards in length— one makes one's
way up the zigzag approach hewn out of the side of the ocher-
ous quartz-seamed sand-stone. The roadway, after running the
gauntlet of a large detached bastion built against the flank of the
almost perpendicular stone, leads up to the great gateway, in the
deep recess of which — then partly supported by two stout
wooden pillars and of no great strength— there hung from the
ceiling four huge stuffed carcasses of dongs or wild yaks, with ar-
tificial eyes and tongues protruding in a fearsome way. But the
beasts were falling to pieces from age, and rather resembled badly
stitched leather bags than anything else. Everything that could
fall from them — hair, horns, hoofs — had already fallen, and
handfuls of the straw stuffing bulged out from every seam.
After passing the gateway the road zigzags upward again, pro-
tected by a rough breast-work in which recent repairs and new
loopholes were obvious every few yards. The latter were
" splayed " on the inside, contrasting strongly with the older
useless little slits which only allow a defender to fire straight
in front of him. Higher up, beside some houses which are fall-
ing rapidly to pieces, was a new and well-built barrack store-
room, in which thousands of pounds of powder, tons and tons
of supplies, and tens of miles of matchlock fuse were found.
Another hundred paces to the left brought one to the door of the
most interesting series of rooms remaining in the jong. Dark-
ened by the blocking up of their windows, one cellar-like low
room leads into another — some little chapels, some living rooms,
some storerooms. Out of these one came into a little court
with a rotten wooden ladder and a loyal dirty gray watch-dog
who exhibited more pluck than his flying masters had. At the

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THE TOWN OF GYANTSE

Here the Mission made a long lialt. 1 1 did not advance until the military escort, after a fierce battle with the Tibetans,
captured the stronghold. The Palkhor Choide. inclosed in walls, fills the upper end of the picture.

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN loi

top of the ladder a step to the left takes one into a small yard,
one end of which is occupied by a little gompa or temple. Look-
ing in from the sunlight one could just distinguish the great
dull gold figure and smiling, placid countenance of the Master
whose presentment no superstition or latitude can either deface
or materially change. Whatever stage in art his devotees may
have reached, the great teacher's own image remains the same
from Japan to Java, and the gaudy " katags " or ceremonial
scarfs hide in Gyantse as severely simple a design as you may
find at Kamakura or Mandalay. One large turquoise supplied
the ever-present bump of wisdom on Gautama's forehead, but
otherwise there was no decoration. But when one entered the
luxury that had been denied to the central figure was seen to be
lavished on the ornaments that strew the kyil-kor or altar shelves
beneath the Buddha. One great wrought-steel chorten with
chased courses and turquoise and gold ornamentation stood out
among a crowd of lesser ones of brass or silver, antique ivories
from India, vases with peacock feathers, and great brass and
copper lamps. These lamps are perhaps the most striking orna-
ment of a Buddhist shrine. Sometimes single, there may be
dozens and even hundreds, each composed of a wide and deep
bowl of heaped-up butter, in which, floating in a little pool which
its own warmth has made, burns a single wick with a small
yellow flame. These are the last things that the priests will
take away. If they fear looting, they will hide every other
ornament, replacing them by strange, many-colored erections of
butter (torma), which they mold with extraordinary dexterity
into conventional structures, sometimes five or six feet high.
But the altar lamps must, and do, remain, whatever the risk,
and one of the pleas subsequently brought forward by the Abbot
of Gyantse was that a fine to be paid in butter might be com-
muted, as they needed all the butter they could get for cere-
monial use on their hundred altars — and they urged, with shrewd

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«■ r r r

I02 THE OPENING OF TIBET

flattery, it was well known that the British never interfered with
the religion of the countries into which they made their way.

Outside this little orange-walled gompa were five pots in
which bloomed courageously well-grown plants of simple Eng-
lish stocks. It was a curious shock to see them. How they
came there it would be useless to guess, but surely never before
did stocks justify so well Maeterlinck's eulogy of those little
flowers that " sing among ruined walls and cover with light the
grieving stones." For up above the gompa rise the great towers
and buildings which lead up to the topmost structure on the
very edge of the precipice which confronts the Lamasery to
the north-west ; and even then, before the bombardments and ex-
plosions of later days, they were all roofless shells of stone which
quivered in the light afternoon wind.

From the castle a fine view is to be had of the town of
Gyantse and the great Lamasery of Pal-khor Choide, which
stretches on the slope of a southerly spur facing the jong three-
quarters of a mile away, protected by a long crimson wall from
the assaults of the prevailing north-west wind. There are two
curious things about this monastery. First, although it is sub-
ject to Lhasa, and therefore nominally a Gelukpa or Yellow
Cap foundation, it contains representatives of nearly all the
recognized sects in Lamaism, which are numerous and jealous,
though not vitally opposed to each other in doctrine. A curious
custom, however, is, that when the Nying-mas or Red Cap com-
munities in Pal-khor Choide worship with the Gelukpas the
former make the not inconsiderable concession of wearing the
yellow cap instead of their own distinctive red one.

The other point, which is perhaps of little interest, is the
legend that the great chorten or caitya outside the central tem-
ple was copied from the well-known temple of Buddh-Gaya
long before the restorer's hand had obscured some of the char-
acteristic features of the latter. This legend is, as a matter of

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LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 103

fact, wholly untrue. There is hardly any similarity between the
two buildings. Chandra Das calls the architecture of the Gy-
antse building unique. In a way this is true, but the lower part
represents fairly well on a minute scale — the whole base is only
120 feet each way — the great vihara of Boro-Bodoer in the mid-
dle of Java. There is the same number of balustraded terraces,
and the sides of each contracting stage are broken by square
projections in a similar way. Each projection or angle con-
tains a small chapel. The upper part of the structure consists
of a large white drum with four grotesquely ornamented door-
ways of a Burmese type, and a thirteen-ringed cone surmounted
by a " htee " and finial, decorated with leaf-clapper bells, is also
suggestive of Burma. The upper part is thickly ornamented
with gold leaf, and the gilt copper plates composing the rings
are each decorated with two incised figures of Buddha. The
lower part of this pagoda — which is generally white — is roughly
decorated here and there with color in an effective way, and the
interior walls and passages are painted with microscopic finish,
in some medium that produces an enamel-like surface.

As one leaves the chorten and enters the main temple, an
exquisitely painted "Wheel of Life" (if we may accept the
rough translation which Rudyard Kipling borrowed for " Kim "
from Waddell) meets the eye to the left of the doorway leading
from the vestibule to the central apartment. It is difficult to
convey any idea of the minute finish of this piece of work. A
few will realize it when I say that it is probably the only prod-
uct of man's brush which rivals the " Book of Kells " or the
" Lindisfarne Gospels." Up in the balcony above there is ex-
quisite work, but upon this circle the artist has lavished an ob-
vious affection and care which must be seen to be believed. In
style it resembles thirteenth century illumination, but, for ex-
ample, no Vision of Hell was ever drawn with such amazing
delicacy and hideous ingenuity as are the quaint tortures of the

I04 THE OPENING OF TIBET

damned in this representation of the Buddhist Sheol. Inside
the central crimson-pillared hall the only conspicuous object is
the great seated figure of Maitreya, the next Buddha to be re-
incarnated. He is, as always, seated in European fashion, a
tradition which is more suggestive than most modern Buddhist
legends, and instinctively recalls the belief of Lamaism that the
end of the present age will be marked by the surrender of
Buddhism into the hands of the " Piling " or western foreigner.
In a recess of each of three sides of the central hall are great
seated images of the Buddha. Sakya-muni himself is sur-
rounded in the dark northern chapel by half-seen gigantic stand-
ing statues of Egyptian massiveness and simplicity, almost
touching each other as they line the walls, and looming out of
the obscurity with dignity and no small dramatic effect.* To
the left of the vestibule is an odd chamber of horrors. It is
reported to be sufficient to overawe the most insubordinate of
lamas, but the decaying stuffed beasts that hung from the roof
and the dingy demons painted on the walls were scarcely as hor-
rible as the common blue and scarlet guardians of religion who
protect the entrance to every gompa. A dragon's skin was
pointed out to me. It was, perhaps, no bad imitation. Allowing
for contraction, the python which once owned this covering
must have been at least 25 feet long and 13 inches in diameter.
Chain-armor, bows, quivers, flags, painted cloth, skins, a few old
guns and spears, and a few little untidy altars, from which, as
from every other shrine we visited in the Lamasery, every orna-
ment, except the lamps, had been taken and hidden away in ter-
ror, and, of course, dirt everywhere, completed the furniture of
this dismal chamber. But there remained many more temples
and apartments, from the inspection of few of which we were
excused by the talkative and, apparently, perfectly friendly

* A similar arrangement is to be seen in the sanctuary of the "Jo" in

the cathedral of Lhasa.

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LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 105

lamas. After drinking tea with the Abbot under the somewhat
oppressive chaperonage of four Sikhs armed to the teeth, we
left the monastery with many expressions of good-will.

This was the first of many excursions to places of interest
in the neighborhood. The strangest visit we ever paid was that
to the Buried Monks. One day O'Connor and I rode out down
the valley about twelve miles to a small village in the cleft of the
mountains almost opposite Dongtse; we took with us the Sheb-
dung Lama. Nothing could have been more peaceful and rus-
tic than the long stretches of the plain dotted here and there
. with little figures engaged on their farm work. We stopped
once to examine more closely the elaborate head-dress of a
couple of plowing yaks, much to the pleasure and pride of the
clear-eyed boy who was their driver. Everywhere the villagers
were pleased enough to see us; the first prickle of green was
rising from the brown squares of irrigated mud, and some of
the trees were timidly putting out the purple that precedes the
green of spring. The nights were still cold, though the heat
in the middle of the day was excessive, and the hot dry wind that
scoured the valley every afternoon still burned up the vegetation
on the hill-sides and in other places where no artificial moisture
could supply sap for the young foliage. We took the road on
the right bank, not crossing over the bridge at Tse-chen; this
road keeps a constant level following the curves of the mountain-
sides ten feet above the valley flats. There was little enough
to mark the journey down. Carelessly enough we ambled along
with our two Mounted Infantry men, whom we had taken out
of deference to Colonel Brander's wishes, rather than from any
real belief that then or thenceforward we should be in actual
need of them. Nothing could have been more peaceful and
promising than the affairs of Gyantse at that moment; we had
come through the town and — an unquestioned proof of our popu-
larity — the beggars had become both familiar and insolent. It

io6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

was a bright day and we had our luncheon with us. The good
people of the valley were always willing enough to give us
hospitality to the best of their ability, but after all it was as well
to have a couple of sandwiches and a boiled egg. About twelve
o'clock we paused opposite Dongtse, lying out sleepily in the sun
with the great three-decker palace of the Pala family anchored
in the trees below. Very soon after this we rode through a little
hamlet with some name like Chi-lang. A sharp turn round a
projecting spur brought us face to face with the little valley in
which the monastery of Nyen-de-kyi-buk hides itself. The as-
cent was easy between bushes of thorn and roses covered with a
wealth of traveler's joy; we passed beside the usual chortens
and through a gateway over which a peach-tree spangled the blue
of the sky with pink and snow. There was another blossoming
against the walls of the monastery half-way up the hill. A hun-
dred yards further on we found the abbot and the " chanzi " of
the community waiting to receive us.

The Shebdung Lama had lived for many years across the
valley and must have seen from his master's windows above
the town and gompa the rock-clinging monastery to which we
had come was really responsible for our visit. With the usual
inability to recognize the things which really interest a traveler
in a strange country he had, while insisting upon the interests
and the beauty of the Sinchen Lama's home, only incidentally
spoken of a small community across the valley where, he said,
extreme self-mortification was practised by a small company of
the Nying-ma sect. We left our ponies in the monk's care and
went inside the temple. We were glad to escape the white
and dazzling sunshine. There was instantly visible a curious
distinction between the monks of Nyen-de-kyi-buk and those
whom we had met elsewhere. With the exception of the officials
of the monastery these recluses wear their hair long, not plaited
into a pigtail, but allowed to fall almost loose over their shoul-

GAILY BEDECKED YAKS DRAWING A PLOW

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 107

ders in a matted and filthy tangle. But besides this, there was not
very much to distinguish the lamasery from others in the valley.
The abbot, a quiet, sad-eyed man of about forty, v^as shaven,
as also were a dozen children playing about with wholesome
bickerings in the dust of the courtyard opposite the great door-
way of the temple. All were dressed in the usual sacred maroon,
and they seemed cheerful and contented. Inside the chapel of
the monastery, however, there was certainly an austerity which
we had not seen elsewhere. This Du-kang had few of the usual
silk banners and hangings which contribute so much both to the
color and the darkness of an ordinary gompa. There were the
usual cushions on the ground, but the rows of images and cere-
monial ornaments which generally fill the sanctuary end of
these chapels were replaced by precise rows of books, each lodged
sedately in its own pigeon-hole. In the center, in place of the
usual kyil-kor, with its multifarious confusion of cups and bowls
and lamps, there was a narrow shelf in front of a glazed recess.
I think that there were on this shelf ten or twelve little brass
bowls full of water, but there were no butter lamps. The sight
of glass in Tibet always attracted attention : it was rare enough
to see a piece a foot square; this glass was five times as large,
and one wondered how it had escaped safely across the passes
to this sequestered spot. Behind it a hard-featured Buddha
scowled, a very different representation of the Master from that
placid and kindly countenance which sanctifies him still to many
not of his own creed. Under the abbot's guidance we visited
the rooms opening out from the temple. There was nothing of
great interest, nothing to distinguish it from twenty other
gompas. We then had tea with our host, and afterward we asked
permission to see one of the immured monks. Without any
hesitation the abbot led the way out into the sunshine, which lay
sweltering over the spring-teeming spaces of the valley below,
and venturesome little green plants were poking up under our

io8 THE OPENING OF TIBET

feet between the crevices in the stone footway. We climbed
about forty feet, and the abbot led us into a small courtyard
which had blank walls all round it, over which a peach-tree
reared its transparent pink and white against the sky. Almost
on a level with the ground there was an opening closed with a
flat stone from behind. In front of this window was a ledge
eighteen inches in width, with two basins beside it, one at each
end. The abbot was attended by an acolyte who, by his mas-
ter's orders, tapped three times sharply on the stone slab; we
stood in the little courtyard in the sun, and watched that wicket
with cold apprehension. I think, on the whole, it was the most
uncanny thing I saw in all Tibet. What on earth was going
to appear when that stone slab, which even then was beginning
weakly to quiver, was pushed aside, the wildest conjecture could
not suggest. After half a minute's pause the stone moved, or
tried to move, but it came to rest again. Then very slowly and
uncertainly it was pushed back and a black chasm was revealed.
There was again a pause of thirty seconds, during which im-
agination ran riot, but I do not think that any other thing could
have been as intensely pathetic as that which we actually saw.
A hand, muffled in a tightly wound piece of dirty cloth, for all
the world like the stump of an arm, was painfully thrust up,
and very weakly it felt along the slab. After a fruitless fum-
bling the hand slowly quivered back again into the darkness.
A few moments later there was again one ineffectual effort, and
then the stone slab moved noiselessly again across the opening.
Once a day, water and an unleavened cake of flour is placed for
the prisoner upon that slab, the signal is given, and he may take
it in. His diversion is over for the day, and in the darkness
of his cell, where night and day, moon, sunset, and the dawn,
are all alike, he— poor soul!— had thought that another day of
his long penance was over.

I do not know what feelings were uppermost at that moment

A LONG-HAIRED MONK AT HIS MONASTERY

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 109

in the others, but I know that a physical chill struck through me
to the marrow. The awful pathos of that painful movement
struggled in me with an intense shame that we had intruded our-
selves upon a private misery ; and that we should have added one
straw to the burden borne in the darkness by that unseen and un-
happy man was a curiously poignant regret. We came away,
and the abbot told us the story of the sect. " These men," said
the abbot, when we questioned him, " live here in this mountain
of their own free will; a few of them are allowed a little light
whereby reading is possible, but these are the weaker brethren;
the others live in darkness in a square cell partly hewn out of the
sharp slope of the rock, partly built up, with the window just
within reach of their upraised hand. There are three periods of
this immurement. The first is endured for six months; the sec-
ond, upon which a monk may enter at any time he pleases or not
at all, is for three years and ninety-three days ; the third and last
period is for life. Only this morning," said the abbot, " a hermit
died here after having lived in darkness for twenty-five years."
The thing was almost more revolting because the men entered
willingly upon it. " What happens when they are ill ? " O'Connor
asked the abbot. The answer came concisely enough, " They
never are." It is true that when pressed he qualified this state-
ment a little, but it seemed still to have considerable truth. He
himself was waiting for the moment, now not long to be delayed,
when he should bid his final farewell to the world.

Voluntary this self-immolation is said to be, and perhaps tech-
nically speaking it is possible for the pluckier souls to refuse to
go on with this hideous and useless form of self-sacrifice, but the
grip of the lamas is omnipotent, and practically none refuse.
These hermits store up such merit— for themselves— by these
means as no other life insures. That may be some consolation for
a Tibetan mind ; it would be little enough for any one else. On
our return the children in the courtyard were invested with a ter-

no THE OPENING OF TIBET

rible pathos. To this Hfe of painfully useless selfishness they are
condemned, and the very difference in their coiffure is one more
link which ties down their young lives. After their first immure-
ment their hair is allowed to grow, and the sanctity which en-
haloes a Nyen-de-kyi-buk hermit, whenever recognized by his
tresses, effectually prevents his turning back. He is a marked
man, and, as in so many other cases in this world, he ends by
doing what he is expected to do. Our horses were made ready
and we said farewell to our kindly host and rode away into the
warmth and life of the valley in silence.

This memory still makes a deeper impression than one thought
possible even in the first shock of the moment. Even now the
silver and the flowers and the white linen and the crimson-shaded
lights of a dinner table are sometimes dimmed by a picture of the
same hand that one shook so warmly as one left the monastery,
now weakly fumbling with swathed fingers for food along the
slab of the prison in which the abbot now is sealed up for life ; for
he was going into the darkness very soon.

At Little Gobshi (one had to distinguish it from the better
known Gobshi, seventeen miles away along the Lhasa road) there
was, and now probably is again, the finest rug factory in Tibet.
A large two-storied house with a courtyard was filled entirely
with the weaving looms of both men and women workers. The
patterns used are native Tibetan, and the colors are excellently
blended and rich in themselves. It is difficult for them to make a
piece of stuff wider than about thirty inches, because their looms
are of a primitive description, scarcely more advanced than those
of the Chumbi Valley, nor do they attempt to make a pattern
larger than can be contained upon a single width. The plain
orange and maroon rugs are made in narrow strips and sewn to-
gether to any desired width, but this is not done with the figured
cloths. The difference in quality between one rug and another is
often a matter of expert knowledge only. At first one is surprised

THE WINDOW OF A HERMIT CELL AT NYEN-DE-KYI-BUK

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN in

and inclined to resent the great differences in the price of these
rugs ; two will be shown you, one slightly softer in the pile, per-
haps also slightly looser in design. You will get that for three
rupees. The other one, crisper to the touch and, if you will look
closely, far richer in color, they will not sell you for less than
twenty-five. But when the eye is once taught to recognize the
difference, the cheaper rugs are easily seen to be inferior from
every point of view. They are, however, more than good
enough for the London market, and this is one of the indus-
tries at Gyantse which might most profitably be developed.
Even now if a big London firm were willing to place an order for
five hundred rugs in Grobshi, that is to say, if it were to buy up
practically the entire annual output of this first factory in Tibet,
it could, while it held the monopoly, charge almost any price it
liked to London buyers and obtain it. It is an experiment which
is, perhaps, worth the attention of Farringdon Street Without. In
those halcyon days at Gyantse I wrote to Lord Curzon in London
and offered to act as commercial traveler for any firm which cared
to make a trial of these really beautiful things, but long before an
answer could be sent, times had changed and we were prisoners
in Chang-lo.

The village of Gobshi, which, like so many other villages in
Tibet, is divided into two entirely distinct parts, separated by a
waste of common-like land dotted with willow thorn, is not un-
interesting. It lies comfortably among its trees, with a truant
channel of the main river plashing lazily over hard pebbles
within a few hundred yards. Overhanging it to the north is a
very sharp conical rock, surmounted by an orange-colored build-
ing, which attracts the eye from afar. This is the residence of the
local magician. He only resides there during such part of the
year as the young crops are in danger from damage by the wea-
ther. He then takes up his residence, and is ready at any moment
with due incantations to deliver a charm against lightning or hail

112 THE OPENING OF TIBET

to a timid countryman. The charms against hail are large cir-
cular sheets, adorned, not in the most delicate way, with figures
of the four Winds. These figures are represented bound and
shackled, to signify the supernatural power exerted by the magi-
cian ; pointing at them from the inscribed center are the eight in-
struments of power: the Dorje, the bow and arrow, the sword,
the double purbu, the flame-like knife, the scepter, and one other
thing that might be anything.

These magicians occupy a very curious position. They are all
now sanctioned by the Gelukpa hierarchy, but this does not mean
that they have always been obedient and loyal members of the
orthodox church. As a matter of fact, many of them remain dis-
ciples of the Beun-pa, or aboriginal devil worshipers of the coun-
try. This sect is bitterly opposed in every way to the tenets of
Buddhism, and it is only on this point that a truce has been pro-
claimed. The reason of this is clear enough. Successful in all
other ways, the Yellow lamas have never been able wholly to
transfer to themselves by the exercise of wizardry the deepest awe
of the plain village peasants of Tibet. These men continued to
pay their tribute of terror to the old autochthonous sorcerer,
whose tradition and succession were undoubted. The authorities
of Lhasa were shrewd enough to recognize the one case in which
the invincible ignorance, which they deliberately foster in their
flock, has turned to their own harm. They accepted and indorsed
the magicians of the countryside en bloc, making no distinction
of creed. By these means the sorcerer works hand in hand with
the lamas of the district, and thereout, we may be sure, they both
suck no small advantage. There is in Lhasa the head of all these
magicians, but it is necessary at this moment to draw a sharp line
of distinction between him, a responsible and revered reincarna-
tion—whose authority is hardly less than that of the Dalai Lama,
and whose position, though different, is scarcely less venerated —
and these local magicians, whose scope is very different from his.

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 113

To a small degree every great gompa in Tibet trades upon the
influence of occultism upon the Tibetan peasants. Charms and
written mantras are by no means issued by the magicians alone.
The katags, which lie sometimes in heaped-up confusion over the
shoulders of the chief Buddha of a monastery, can afterward be
sold in fragments, and few relics are more potent. These little
charms, to which reference has already been made, are worn
round the neck, in what the Tibetans call a gau-o. These are little
boxes, of silver as a rule, thickly set with turquoise, and suspended
round the neck by necklaces of beads ; in the case of the rich, they
may be fronted with gold, but this metal is but rarely used for the
rest of these trinkets. It is used in Tibet in a singularly pure state,
and in the economical amounts with which the Tibetans are
obliged to be satisfied would not be strong enough. Men, espe-
cially when going on some dangerous expedition, carry much
larger gau-os of copper, upon which the monogrammatic symbol
of the great mantra is embossed by repousse work. These also are
always stuffed with relics and charms of different kinds; every-
thing, it might almost be said, in Tibet that is capable of being
stuffed is full of these little luck-bringing spells or charms. The
biggest idols are packed with paper and silk charms, interspersed
here and there with small brass images and occasionally silver
ones. To this fact unfortunately the destruction of several of the
larger idols — which were afterward " taboo " to the troops — was
due at Gyantse. Lieutenant-Colonel Waddell gives, in his learned
and careful work upon Lamaism, a large number of instances of
the cases in which these charms are used, and the ritual employed.

One odd fact came under our notice. The charms issued from
Lhasa to the Tibetan soldiers opposing our advance included pro-
tection against almost every known material used in war. After
Guru, some of the wounded who were being tended by us were
asked whether their faith were shaken or not ; they, in some sur-
prise, entirely repudiated the idea. " We did not know in Lhasa

114 THE OPENING OF TIBET

what metals we should guard ourselves against : lead and iron, and
steel and copper, and silver, none of these could have hurt us ; but
we did not even know that there was a metal called nickel ; there-
fore no charm was given us to protect us against your bullets."
The unwinding of a grimy little silk-covered packet from the in-
side of a gau-o is rather an interesting occupation; the contents
are cleaner than might be thought. One of the oddest things I
found in any was a little pebble with the thumb imprint of the
Dalai Lama upon it in vermilion. Unfortunately damp had
blurred the lines.

The prayers printed on the prayer-flags of Tibet are generally
identical in arrangement and, perhaps, also in the words of the
prayer. In Gyantse I bought one of the wood-blocks, from which
these flags are printed; it is a curious piece of careful and not
ineffective wood engraving. It is about sixteen inches in length
and twelve inches in width. This is about the largest size that
is used ; the flag, being attached to the mast perpendicularly, only
allows a thin upright fringe to be printed, and you will find fifteen
or twenty repetitions of the same prayer, reaching one above an-
other all the way up the mast. These " flying horses " (lung-ta)
were probably mistaken by the traveler who originated the idea
that the Tibetans sent horses to belated wayfarers by throwing to
the winds pieces of paper with the figure of a horse printed upon
it. It is quite possible that this may actually have been done, but
continued inquiry on my part elicited no corroboration whatever.

To return to the country surrounding Gyantse. The monas-
tery at Dongtse, twelve miles away toward Shigatse, the sacred
residence of the Sinchen Lama, was visited by O'Connor, Wilton,
and myself very soon after our arrival at Chang-lo.

The road to Dongtse serpentines across the wide level plain of
the Nyang chu, idly acquiescing in the obstacles which villages,
water-courses, field boundaries, chortens, houses, or irrigation

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 115

ditches throw in its way. The patchwork of cultivated fields,
some no larger than allotments, none more than an acre in area,
reminds one of high farming in Berkshire, so jealously is every
square foot made to serve the owners and grow its patch of
barley. There are no trees, no hedges, not even a weed. The
very dikes which restrain the irrigation channels are grudged
from the rich, dry, gray loam, as fertile as the Darling Downs.

Agriculture is a serious business with the Tibetans. Here and
there, but very rarely, the darkened garnet or dirty amber of a
lama's dress adds a note of color to the thirsty stretch of alluvial
soil, fenceless and flat. But generally the work is done by quiet
little figures, whose patched gray dresses are blotted out among
their own furrows and whose very existence is often betrayed
only by the slow plod and turn of the scarlet and white head-
dressed yaks in the plow-yoke. Among these people there is no
shyness, scarcely even curiosity. The spring work has to be done,
and there is no one but themselves to do it — perhaps the yaks can
only be borrowed from friend Tsering up at the hamlet for this
day; perhaps, too, the lamas will exact their corvee to-morrow.
And there is much to do. Meanwhile these strange foreigners
can wait to be inspected.

Always, of course, there was civility as we rode by. The Tib-
etan peasant's manners are perfect. The small boy jumps off the
harrow upon which he has been having a ride, and, stopping his
song, bows with his joined hands in front of his face, elbows up,
and right knee bent. A householder smiles, exhibits two inches
of tongue, and gives a Napoleonic salute as we pass by, pulling
his cap down over his face to his chest. Rosy-backed and
breasted sparrows fly in a twittering company before us through
the gray-white sallowthorn brake, and a vivid golden wagtail
flirts his tail beside a puddle. Redstarts sit on the top of prayer
poles, and hoopoes flash black and white wings by the stream.
Ruddy sheldrake and bar-headed geese barely move aside from a

,ii6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

wet patch of recent plow-land as we approach, and iridescent
black-green magpies, half as large again as our English luck-
bringers, keep pace beside us with their dipping flight. The sun
is hard and vivid, and the flat plain shivers a little in the heat,
confusing the lines of leafless willows beside a whitewashed mill.
There is promise of foliage, but no more. The houses are streaked
perpendicularly with wide welts of Indian red and ash-gray, and
long strings of many-colored little flags droop between their
housetops and the nearest tree. Tibetan " mastiffs " bark from
every roof until the housewife quiets them with a stone. She
throws better than her European sister, in spite of a grimy coral
and turquoise halo round her head and a baby on her left arm.

The story of the last Sinchen Lama is one which it is worth
while to tell. He was the seventh in succiession of one of the
most important secondary reincarnations of Lamaism. His abode
has always been at Dongtse, but his predecessors were buried
with great ceremony each under a gilded chorten at Tashi-lhunpo,
the metropolis of the province of Tsang. The last Sinchen Lama
was the man who in 1882 received Sarat Chandra Das, and ex-
tended to him continual patronage and hospitality. In the narra-
tive of his journey the famous spy refers to him repeatedly as
" the minister." He was, as a matter of fact, minister of tem-
poral affairs of the province of Tsang at this time, and a most
important man. On his way to his first interview with his patron
Chandra Das passed in the market place of Tashi-lhunpo a party
of prisoners loaded with chains, pinioned by wooden clogs, and in
some cases blinded. It was an ugly omen of the end. To the
Sinchen Lama's influence Chandra Das owed the facilities which
enabled him eventually to make his way to Lhasa, and that he
was not ungrateful is clear in every line in which he refers to his
patron. The minister seems to have been in his way strangely
like that enlightened Grand Lama of Tashi-lhunpo who received
Bogle in 1774; he was anxious to improve his knowledge of the

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 117

world, and especially of English affairs; he even attempted to
learn our language, and he seems throughout to have been a
broad-minded, intelligent, and sympathetic man, Chandra Das
stayed with him for some time at Dongtse, on his way to Lhasa.
A year or two after Chandra Das had returned to India the truth
leaked out about his individuality. The Lhasan Government
threw the entire blame upon the carelessness of the authorities in
the province of Tsang. Upon the Sinchen Lama they visited
their anger in a fearful manner. His servants were taken— all
except one — they were beaten, their hands and feet were cut off,
their eyes were gouged out, and they were left to die in the streets
of Tashi-lhunpo. The Sinchen Lama was reserved for another
fate. He was taken to Gong-kar, a fort on the right bank of the
Tsahg-po, a few miles below the confluence of the Kyi-chu.

The rest of the story must be told as it is believed by the com-
mon people, who had known and loved the Lama in his life. A
message was received from Lhasa to the effect that the Sinchen
Lama must commit suicide. This he quietly refused to do. He
said, " I am indeed in your hands; you will do with me what
seems good to you. But I will not kill myself, and if you kill me,
you will incur for yourselves a terrible reincarnation." This an-
swer produced another peremptory demand that the Lama should
lay violent hands upon himself. To this the Lama made no re-
ply at all. The days went on, and at last the authorities in Lhasa
determined to take his life, though they still hoped that they
might avoid the awful consequences to themselves of blood-
guiltiness. A boat was taken, and innumerable holes of different
sizes were bored in her. In this the Lama was placed, and he was
sent spinning down the current of the great river. Thus he would
be drowned, but to the ingenious minds of the hierarchy it seemed
that the responsibility lay perhaps with their victim, whose weight
would have sunk the unseaworthy craft. Blood, at any rate,*
would not have been spilled. But the Lama was in no way dis-

ii8 THE OPENING OF TIBET

mayed ; he raised a prayer, and fishes innumerable came ; they in-
truded their blunt noses into the holes in the boat, and slowly pro-
pelled it safely to the shore. The Lama disembarked and walked
quietly back to his prison. The news of this miracle produced
but momentary consternation in Lhasa ; the brute creation might
indeed be at the orders of this holy man, but die he must; they
must try another way. Therefore, almost immediately, another
attempt was made; large rocks of granite were bound upon his
back, and he was once more thrown into the river. But again
they had reckoned unwisely. If the Sinchen Lama's life were to
be taken, the sin of murder must accompany it. This was the
eternal law, and as the sainted Lama's body touched the water, the
rocks were turned into pumice stone, and his friendly fishes soon
nuzzled him again to shore. Thereafter Lhasa grew desperate.
They sent a wicked man, a Kashmiri Mohammedan, for whom
the prospect of reincarnation as a louse had no terrors, and the
Sinchen Lama's head was hacked from his body.^

Nor was this all. Having destroyed the body, the hierarchy
at Lhasa proceeded to annihilate the soul. No further reincar-
nation of the Sinchen Lama has been recognized from that day.
In the long gallery of reincarnated Bodisats who occupy the chief
place of Lamaism there is one frame, as there is in the Venetian
ducal palace, blank and empty. This has been a very serious
trouble to the good people of Dongtse, and they are apparently
not without sympathizers at Lhasa. A few years after the mur-
der of their loved Lama a child was admitted into the Ga-den
monastery. He had been born immediately after the crime, and
to the awe-struck amazement of the ruling lamas he exhibited the
one final proof of Sinchen Lamaship. His left kneecap was ab-
sent. That child lives still, and in sullen determination the peo-

^ This is the native tale, and it is almost a pity to correct it in any particu-
lar. Another story is that the Sinchen Lama with his hands tied behind him
was thrown into the river and never seen again..

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 119

pie of Dongtse are but waiting till their Lama shall be restored
to them. Meanwhile Dongtse is in a parlous state. Its religious
life has been broken into and a stranger imported from another
province to rule over them. Down in the town below affairs are
no better. The Pala family which reigned in the great palace un-
derneath the hill is exiled and expropriated. A government
chanzi, or bailiff, collects the rents and pays them over to the
man who by auction obtained the beneficiary rights of the de-
posed family. At Dongtse it is said that those rents are paid over
to a member of the family, and certainly the local bailiff seems to
be in a difficult position, for the offense for which the Pala family
was banished was merely that of having abetted the late Regent in
retaining temporal power in his hands after the coming of age
of the Dalai Lama. At any moment, therefore, the Pala family
may be reinstated in their property with unpleasant powers of
retaliation.

Our small party — one of us the only servant of the Sinchen
Lama who had escaped death — reached Dongtse about noon, and
immediately climbed the hill on which the monastery stands ; we
were received with the greatest friendliness by the abbot, and one
or two of the senior monks. The great temple was hardly as
richly endowed with silver and jeweled ornaments as we had been
told. It was curious to watch the Shebdung Lama as he wandered
round the old familiar halls. For many years he had been an ex-
ile, and he had never believed that he would see the home of his
loved master again, and as he put his forehead on the lip of the
lotus throne, upon which the great Buddha of the place was
seated, and so remained motionless for ten seconds, there must
have passed through his mind something strangely like Nunc
dimittis Domine. For this man's love for his murdered master
after eighteen years is still as fresh to-day as when they lived at
peace on this hillside of the Nyang chu Valley, and in all the
time since, the Shebdung Lama's only happiness has been bound

I20 THE OPENING OF TIBET

up with the memories of his life here. He could hardly speak as
we entered the shrine, and was again visibly affected when we
ascended to the actual rooms occupied by the Sinchen Lama.

• These consist of a set of well-painted chambers, opening out
one from another. In the main room, still empty and forlorn,
save for a table containing a hundred little brass bowls filled with
water, there is one of the strangest things in Tibet. The Sinchen
Lama, continuing the series of his ancestors painted round the
wall, had also a record of his own life and ministry painted in a
series of scenes by an artist. His own portraiture is encircled by
these little pictures ; the figure of the Lama is purely conventional,
a mild-eyed, celestial face with a pursed up rosebud mouth.
Round him there is a series of stiff little drawings not without
some strength, recording from his birth, passage by passage, the
events of his momentous life. Now these were painted in the
happy days before Chandra Das came.

At the end of this record there is the strange thing. There is
in a corner the picture of a fortified house, and, above it, the pic-
ture of a man who has been thrown into a stream of water. But
there is no such appended written description as may be seen be-
neath other scenes depicted on the wall. The artist requested him
to dictate the legend for these two pictures. The Lama refused ;
he said, " These two incidents shall remain undescribed ; one day
you will understand." We were assured there that the house
painted on the wall bears a strong resemblance to Gong-kar jong ;
the meaning of the last scene is obvious enough. There the two
pictures are, and in its main lines the story must be a true one, but
it is difficult to explain.

Immediately beyond this series of pictures is the most touching
thing I have seen in the country. In sheer gratitude to the only
companion of his lonely exaltation, far removed from the com-
mon friendship of men, the Sinchen Lama had painted upon the
wall his little shaggy-haired dog, feeding out of a blue and white

LIFE IN A TIBETAN TOWN 121

china bowl. I do not know that anything in the record of this
man could tell the story of his kindly sympathy and humanity so
well as this ill-drawn little figure.

We spent an hour or two there, and had tea, both with the
abbot of the monastery and with the occupants of the Pala palace
in the town below ; then we set off for home in the middle of the
afternoon, facing south-east to where the high fort-crowned peak
of Gyantse rose indistinctly, amid the daily driving dust-storm
which wrapped its base and indeed all the valley in a tawny fog.

Ne-nyeng — or, as it was invariably known, Nai-ni — was an-
other place which was afterward to become of great interest and
importance to us. Seven miles away to the south, just before
the valley opened out from the gorges of the Nyang chu, it
commanded our road to India, and was the scene three or four
times of fighting between the Tibetans and ourselves. Ne-
nyeng lies in an amphitheater of steep hills; looking at it from
across the river the sight was typically Eastern, and might have
been a theater " back-cloth," painted with the deliberate intention
of including every suggestion of the Orient; but he would have
been a clever man who limned such a scene as this. All round
this half-circle of converging spurs the plain hot rock glared at
one. The line cut by its upper cornices against the sky was
harsh and exact. The blue that descended into the ravines and
arched the peaks was cloudless and whitened; on one conical
hill, almost inaccessible, sat a square yellow block-house com-
manding the town from a height of a thousand feet. A little
lower down, when the eye got used to the glare, another and
stronger fort, built of the very rock on which it rested, could
just be made out by the straightness of its lines. In the middle
of this great recess the river flats stretched white and dusty,
draining down by a slackening gradient from the clefts of the
amphitheater. Just where it gained its equilibrium, Ne-nyeng

122 THE OPENING OF TIBET

rose in a garden of greenery. The square white houses bhnked
in the sun, the high unchecked line of the square building in
the center of the town, half monastery, half keep, showed up
dustily above the flat roofs of the houses, which cling to it for
protection.

Between us and the town the sweeping river cuts its way,
leaving perpendicular banks of pebbled banquette purple in the
shades and amber in the sun, for all the world like the moldings
of a clustered Gothic pillar. We had little to do with the in-
habitants, except in an unpleasant manner. Now and again
they fired upon our mail runners, and eventually the place had
to be cleared when the relieving force was nearing Gyantse.
There was in this monastery, if some of the reports are to be
believed, a reincarnation in the form of a little girl, of about
six years old. We never heard anything more about her; the
story seems unlikely, because there was no nunnery in the place.
The only monastery over which a woman presides in Tibet is
that of Sam-ding, where the Phag-mo Dorje was reigning many
centuries before the coming of the " new woman " in the West.

In this connection one thing was frankly admitted by the Tib-
etans. We were often surprised to find the monasteries stripped
of their valuable and most precious ornaments upon our arrival.
Without any hesitation the monks would admit that they had
all been taken away, and put in the nearest nunnery, because,
they said, the English people do not attack women, and do not
enter nunneries. It was a simple device and one that implied
no small compliment.

CHAPTER VIII

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS

COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND occupied Chang-lo on the
19th of April with a force of about four hundred and
fifty men. He had also about fifty mounted infantry, two Max-
ims, and two ancient seven-pounder field-pieces, now officially
discarded, which, in their popular nicknames " Bubble and
Squeak," were at once described and appraised. This force was
amply sufficient to defend the place against any attack that the
Tibetans could deliver. They, however, seemed in no way will-
ing to test the defensibility of Chang-lo; and nothing could
have been more peaceful than the reception of the British force,
not at Gyantse only, but for a score of miles up and down the
valley. It is true, that for our expeditions beyond the imme-
diate neighborhood of the post, two or three mounted infantry
were always taken as an escort, but we imagined no danger, and
nothing seemed less probable than that which actually occurred.
I am quite certain that the events of the 5th of May were not
less surprising — and a great deal more dismaying — to the good
people of Gyantse than they were to ourselves. In the last chap-
ter I have described one or two visits paid somewhat far afield
in the Nyang chu Valley, and it will be clear that nothing could
have exceeded the hospitality and, in most cases, the welcome
which we received. At Gyantse itself, the friendliness of the in-
habitants was almost excessive. We afterward found that from
the date of our expedition till the 4th of May, the servants
of the Mission (who were unavoidably under less strict mili-

123

124 THE OPENING OF TIBET

tary surveillance than other followers) not infrequently spent
the entire night within the town enjoying themselves among
their Tibetan kin, with results on the following morning
which were more natural than edifying. It need not be said
that as soon as this was discovered the military authorities made
a severe example of the chief offenders. Shopping in Gyantse
was an almost daily amusement. The great Palkhor-choide
monastery was willingly opened to us by the abbot, and the mem-
bers of the Mission looked forward to a pleasant two months'
stay in one of the most interesting cities of Tibet, and a full
enjoyment of the extraordinary opportunities which the undis-
guised friendliness of our neighbors promised.

More than this. Captain Walton, the surgeon and natural
history expert attached to the Mission, had invited the Tibetans
to make the fullest use of his own skill and the medical equip-
ment of the Mission; and, as a result, he soon had as many
cases as he could deal with. By preference he selected cases
requiring surgical treatment, and many unfortunate wretches
disabled by cataract or disfigured by a particularly hideous form
I of hare-lip, which is common in Tibet, were relieved by him.

Everything was peaceful. There was not a cloud on the ho-
rizon. The dak ran through from the Chumbi Valley without
interruption, day after day. The British intruders had given
commissions freely in the town, and the local artists were work-
ing overtime to execute orders for " tang-kas." Carpenters from
Pala attended daily in the compound and worked from morn to
night upon the furniture needed for the post. Their use of tools,
by the way, which seemed in most cases to be of European origin,
was extremely quick and certain, and the work which the adze
was made to do would have surprised the British carpenter.
Planes, saws, bradawls, and, in rare cases, chisels, were also
used; but nothing showed originality or suggested any device
that might possibly be used to advantage at home except a little

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 125

machine, simple, ingenious, and compact, for marking a straight
line upon wood by means of a thread loaded with black pigment.
Gardeners also were called in, and the courtyard in front of
the Commissioner's tent was carefully dug up, divided into
beds, and manured. There the seeds which the Mission had
brought from home were hopefully planted, and beans, peas,
cabbages, scarlet-runners, onions, and mustard-and-cress were
sown with an almost religious care — in return for which, it
must be confessed that only the last-mentioned vegetables pro-
duced any return. Still, the experiment was well worth making,
and, incidentally, it had the effect of laying the dust in the com-
pound—by no means a slight blessing. To tend this garden a
worthy Tibetan lady, with her two husbands, was hired; and
if her treatment of her brother-spouses was characteristic of
Tibetan domesticity as a whole there is perhaps more to be said

•

for this strange custom than a somewhat bigotedly monogamous
nation like England could be expected at first sight to admit.
" Mrs. Wiggs," as she at once came to be known, was certainly
the moving spirit in her own domestic circle, and the work that
she got out of her pair of semi-imbecile husbands was quite ex-
traordinary.

Outside the compound a bazaar was dail^ held, and over one
hundred Tibetan men and women made it a daily practice to
come with the small commodities of the place and spend a cheer-
ful and, probably, not unlucrative morning in chaffering with
the Sikhs and Gurkhas of the garrison. The afternoon weather,
but for clouds of dust that blew eastward from Dongtse, was
perfect; and though the trees were long in showing the first
sign of spring, the lot of the Mission seemed cast in a fair
ground indeed.

While everything round us was pointing toward peace and
good-will, the action of Colonel Brander in clearing the Karo la
Pass needs some explanation. A week after our arrival the

126 THE OPENING OF TIBET

rumor came from a trustworthy source that the Tibetans were
fortifying this pass ; but as we had never deceived ourselves into
believing that our presence in the country was even acqui-
esced in at Lhasa, the news was neither surprising nor dis-
quieting. The pass, or rather the actual position across which
the wall was being built, was over forty-five miles from Gyantse,
and at the moment it lay somewhat outside the sphere of bur
immediate interest. Round us at Gyantse, there was, as I have
said, every indication of perfect tranquillity, and even welcome.
All up and down the valley agricultural work had been resumed,
and there is no doubt that somewhere about this time the men
of Shigatse definitely refused to obey the orders of the Dalai
Lama to take the field again against us. Another matter which
made it even almost impossible that there should be any immedi-
ate friction was the fact that the Amban himself had received,
and was still considering, an invitation to negotiate at Gyantse.
Matters, however, seemed somewhat affected by news which
came in by a special despatch rider on May ist — that a reconnoi-
tering party of ours, with a mounted escort of fifty men, had
been fired upon two days previously from the Tibetan fortifica-
tion. The affair in itself was not perhaps of the highest impor-
tance. Our own intentions were entirely peaceful, and we had
found no unfriendliness at any point on the journey to the Karo
la. We sustained no casualties, though the sudden heart failure
of one of the Sikhs at the unaccustomed altitude was naturally
hailed by the jeering Tibetans as proof of the skill of their
marksmen. We made no reply except two or three shots to keep
down the enemy's fire while we retired; we inflicted no casual-
ties.^ But, though unimportant in itself, this encounter was not
without its significance. In the first place, it put an end finally
to any hope of the Amban coming to negotiate at Gyantse, and,

Of this, however, I am uncertain. It was afterward said
in Lhasa that two were killed.

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 127

though this refusal was not unexpected, the disinclination of
Lhasa to take any steps whatever to open up amicable relations
with us was hereby exhibited in a somewhat unmistakable man-
ner. Nor was this all. From the Karo la toward Gyantse, ten or
twelve miles of an easy route brings one to Ra-lung. At Ra-
lung there is a division of the way, the main road running thence
westerly to Gyantse and ultimately to Shigatse. It is, in fact,
part of the main thoroughfare between the two capitals of Tibet.
From Ra-lung another road runs due south-west through Nyero
to Kang-ma, and upon this road we had no post. It was at
once obvious that the defenders of the wall on the Karo la
might, entirely unknown to us, move in two days upon our
line of communication to the south and cause us serious in-
convenience by the re-occupation of Kang-ma. The position,
therefore, was, that while we had no fear of the least unfriendli-
ness in the Nyang chu Valley, Lhasa was obviously prepared
to withstand us by force of arms, and might at any time compel
us seriously to weaken the little garrison at Gyantse in order '
to relieve the post at Kang-ma, and re-obtain control of our com-
munications.

There was, however, an understanding with Lhasa that, until
negotiations at Gyantse were shown to be impossible, we should
not move further along the route to the capital. The detach-
ment of a force sufficient to clear the Karo la would, moreover,
cripple the garrison at Chang-lo; nor could we possibly hold
the pass, although we might without great loss secure it for the
moment. On the one hand it might be argued that our prestige,
as well as our line of communications, was in danger, and that
the presence of a large and well-armed body of Tibetans hold-
ing the best strategical position between Gyantse and Lhasa might
speedily undermine the existing friendliness of our neighbors.
On the other hand there is no doubt that popular opinion in
England would have been seriously affected by the news that we

128 THE OPENING OF TIBET

had again assumed the offensive unless, of course, the necessity
were overwhelming.

Such was the situation with which Colonel Younghusband
had to deal when Colonel Brander, commanding the post, laid
before him an urgent request that he would sanction the imme-
diate dispersal of the fifteen hundred Tibetans who had been
located at the Karo la. One of the difficulties which every ex-
pedition subject to a twin control must experience is the ex-
treme reluctance of the political authorities to interfere in the
slightest degree with the operations of their responsible mili-
tary escort. Colonel Younghusband appreciated to the full the
pros and cons of this proposal, and, in giving his unreserved
assent to Colonel Brander's suggestion, he was no doubt in-
fluenced by the conviction that all chance of negotiation at Gy-
antse was not only at an end, but had never really existed. At
all costs the Tibetans must be made to respect our strength,
and against such an enemy as we had before us, the effect of
a successful blow might at any time turn the scales and convince
them that further active opposition to our advance was a mere
act of folly. Colonel Younghusband therefore consented, and
accordingly, on the 3d of May, Colonel Brander, with two com-
panies of the 32d Pioneers, one company of Gurkhas, two Max-
ims, and almost the entire force of mounted infantry, moved
out to Gobshi, seventeen miles on the road to the Karo la. As
they set forth news arrived that Tibetan troops were moving up
the Nyang chu Valley to occupy Dongtse, a post which, it will
be remembered, lies twelve miles west of Gyantse. Almost at
the same moment a despatch was received from the Amban, say-
ing that the Dalai Lama had definitely refused either to satisfy
his demand for transport, or to answer his request that a properly
qualified Tibetan should be empowered to deal with the ques-
tions in dispute between the British and himself.

Colonel Brander moved rapidly on. At Gobshi he found the
headman of the village seriously disquieted, and, though he had

ATTACKED BY THE. TIBETANS 129

no difficulty in obtaining what he wanted, the wretched villagers
clearly realized their position between the devil and the deep
sea. Gobshi itself is a picturesque village with an untenable
jong, perched upon a tooth of rock half a mile from the Chinese
post-house, which had attracted to it the little community of the
" Four Gates." As a matter of fact, if ever a village deserved
the name of " Three Gates " it is Gobshi, for there, hopelessly
shut in by mountain spurs and heights almost precipitous, three
roads, from Gyantse, Nyero, and Ra-lung respectively, meet
abruptly. Here the Ra-lung chu joins the Nyero chu, and
shortly below " waters meet " the little town sits precariously
on the edge of the river cliff, at the end of a wide alluvial terrace,
a mile in length, which presents, perhaps, the best instance of
successful cultivation that one can see from the road for eighteen
miles. From this place until it descends steeply into the valley
of the Tsang-po, cereal crops will not ripen, though here and
there they can be used for fodder. After a hasty inspection of
the Chinese rest-house it was unanimously decided to make no
use of its grimy and obviously populous accommodation.

On the next day Colonel Brander moved on up the right bank
of the Ra-lung-po. Threading his way over the two bridges just
above the confluence of the rivers, he came in two miles through
the gorge and out into the easier road which makes its way
through the poor fields of the Ra-lung Valley. The first place
one passes is the Kamo monastery, a strange community, in
which the monks and nuns live a common life together — a thing
permitted by the Dalai Lama and one that causes no great scan-
dal even among the strictest disciples of Lamaism, though it
is regarded as a concession to the weaker brethren. This part
of Tibet has a Red Cap colony, and the ash-gray, white, and
Indian-red perpendicular stripes that characterize the buildings
of this community form for miles a peculiarity in the landscape
and strikingly relieve its monotony.

Of that monotony, the dead sameness of mountain tracks

I30 THE OPENING OF TIBET

across the top of the world, it is hard to give any idea. The
blue sky, of a clearness and depth of color that no less altitude
can give, vaults over the slippery hill-sides between which the
thin stream cataracts or spreads itself in runlets across a waste
of sand. There is no verdure at that time of the year except
that which is artificially grown on the river-flats where the
valley is wide enough. Rich umber and light red, seamed and
filmed with gray purples of the clefts; bald ocher of spurs that
thrust the water from their feet; bare red of whip-like willows
growing over a mud wall; coarse grit-colored road, here gray-
ish with slate, here dun with granite, there again rufous with
a floor of limestone — these are all the colors except here and
there, when one meets a hurrying lama, wrapped in his habit of
dull maroon. As the sun sets the richer pigments, beaten all
day by his rays into the hot hill-sides, are cooled out of the
rocks; and as the sunlight is slowly lost in the valleys below
a faint orange gauze spreads and reddens into carmine on the far
snowy peaks to- the northeast.

One side of the river is like the other; you may cross it any-
where and find the same view, the same road. Perhaps Long-ma,
well placed upon a bluff overlooking an alluvial flat where
stunted barley grows, is the most interesting town on the route;
and the village itself, though quite as dirty as every other in
Tibet, has, at any rate in the distance, a certain dignity of its
own, to which, in a rather specious way, the buildings set up
on the rapidly ascending slope behind the main path of the town
contribute. There is a large house here which was unoccupied
and shut up on our arrival, and interested us chiefly because it
was said to have recently contained a community of Lamaic
acolytes. From Long-ma to Ra-lung the road is comparatively
uninteresting. Here and there, in the distance, filling the end
of the valley, one saw the great white mass of Nichi-kang-sang ;
here and there steep jutting pinnacles of red rock; here and there

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 131

across the river the remains of a house crumbling on the alhi-
vial ledge. The river itself runs entirely round the stone but-
tresses of the fields, and over the waste of uncultivated ground
a few patches of vetch — at that time without even a promise of
flower— a few stunted thistles, and the inevitable gray brushes
of wormwood star the dun naked slopes. Nothing is more strik-
ing up here than the way in which the dark blue of the sky over-
head shades quickly down toward the horizon on every side into
the palest shade of turquoise. The clearness of the air is such
that not the faintest screen of blue is interposed between oneself
and the hills four miles away; while the clefts in the glaciers
of Nichi-kang-sang himself seem as clearly defined at a range
of fifteen miles as those which criss-cross upon the gravel of the
further bank.

Ra-lung was reached on the afternoon of the second day.
This march of thirty-three miles in forty-eight hours at this al-
titude was, perhaps, the most creditable feat of endurance of
the whole campaign. Such distances as these may not seem of
any particular military interest, or of credit to the troops con-
cerned, but it must be remembered that the lowest estimate that
one can fairly place upon the additional labor of marching at
these high altitudes is a hundred per cent. It is true that the
actual fatigue to the muscles is hardly increased, and that though
men may arrive in camp almost dead-beat, an hour or two's rest
(if they are lucky enough to get it) will always set them up
again. But the strain on the heart and lungs is terrible, and
nothing but use can accustom a man living nearly all his life
in the plains of India to that intense heaviness of both himself
and his accoutrements which, in these highlands, is the most
conspicuous sensation. I have elsewhere referred in more de-
tail to the physical experiences and sufferings of the troops,
and these circumstances of all our work in Tibet should be
borne in mind as an ever-present environment, from the first

132 THE OPENING OF TIBET

climbing of the heights of Changu or Ling-tu to the scaling of
the little ridge between Potala and Chagpo-ri.

Ra-lung is divided by a small stream into two parts. The
Tibetan village lies to the south, a mere cluster of common
adobe huts whitewashed or in ruins. On the northern side of
this affluent is the Chinese post-house, set a hundred yards back
from the edge of the river cliff on the very spot where there
is one of the curiously marked out camping-grounds used by
the two Grand Lamas alone. The bridge over the Ra-lung chu
is a typical line of roughly heaped stone piers, bridged across
with larger slabs of the same schistose limestone. Crossing
the river here the main road to Lhasa keeps close beside it on the
northeastern bank for one or two miles of a bad track. Small
streams intersect its progress, running in the wet weather in
a plashy torrent at the bottom of deep-cut ravines; otherwise
the steep cliff wall comes down sharply on to the very path until
the last corner is turned and the wide valley of Gom-tang is
seen spreading out a mile or two wide toward the northwest.
Here the track leaves the river-side and runs northward over the
gently sloping highlands beneath the snowy backbone of this
great spur of the Himalayas.

Some reference should be made to these hills. A high range
rises to the elevation of 24,000 feet, through which a deep fissure
between Nichi-kang-sang on the north and on the south a peak,
which, I believe, is known in the surveys as D 114, allows the
road to Lhasa to creep along far down between the gigantic
ice-fields. To the north and to the south this uplifted stretch
of snow is carried onward, terminated to the north by the abrupt
valley of the Rong chu, to the south curving eastward and form-
ing the snowy southern frontiers of the basin of the Yam-dok tso.
This description is necessary in order to make clear the impor-
tance and the military ^kill of the Tibetans' choice of a position
to defend. No flanking movement is possible, either to the north

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 133

or to the south, unless an invading force is willing to wait
five days for the co-operation of any mounted column sent
round by the northern route to come upon the enemy's rear from
a point within a mile or two of Nagartse.

After a march of about seven miles from Ra-lung, the road
keeps well away to the right to avoid the marshes covered with
hummocky grass, reeds, stunted primulas, and, it must be added,
quagmires through which the clear brown waters of the Ra-lung
chu run ice-cold from their snowy source. Across the river
the plain still extends, sweeping upward between the projecting
spurs of the western hills in long ascending plains of bare stone.
As our force reached this point, it seemed only possible to con-
tinue the march in one direction. The long plain stretched out
in front, ascending gently until the farthest limits cut upward
into the sky itself. But this was no road for a laden force, and,
as a matter of fact, it is not used at all except by shepherds and
goat-herds in the brief summer months. As I have said, the
real road to Lhasa turns suddenly inward under the snowy
shoulders of Nichi-kang-sang ; and over 8,000 feet below the
gigantic mass of unrelieved ice and snow which forms his high-
est peak, the ribbon-like track dives abruptly into the river-bed
beside a little stream which has cut its way through this gigantic
curtain of rock.

The gorge that opens here is narrow and the road bad.
Closely hugging the southern bluff the trang * makes its snowy
way over the boulders and almost through the waters of this ice-
fed rivulet. On either side the cliffs rise so steeply that one
hardly catches a sight of the eternal snows that slope steeply back
from the crest of these frowning heights. Now and again a
ravine betrays the sparkling glory of the white ice-cornice against

* A trang is a track cut out of the cliff beside a stream. There is a steep
rock on one side and the water immediately below. It is a useful word for a
feature which is not easily described otherwise.

134 THE OPENING OF TIBET

the deep blue of the upper sky. In May there is nothing to be
seen here in the way of plants except the dead sticks of a curious
thorny scrub, which during its hibernation is of an unusual pink
color, cobwebbed about with the gray dead filigree of last year's
leaves. This will burn, and, indeed, it forms the only fuel to be
found for many miles.

Sharply ascending, the road after a mile and a half crosses
the stream, now sparkling in a noisy shallow between the pebbles
of its bed ; and a climb of another two hundred yards brings one
into an oval plain which, probably from the fact that in the
summer the whole extent of it is permeated and saturated with
water from the melting glaciers, the Tibetans call the Plain
of Milk.* In May the cold was intense enough, except in the
middle of the day, largely to reduce the volume of the stream,
and the force made its way without difficulty over the shales
and slate of this lonely little flat-bottomed cup buried away
nearly 17,000 feet above the sea, and ringed in by the eternal
snow-fields of the Himalayas.

At the farther end, immediately under a great glacier — one
infinitesimal projection of the huge land of ice of which Nichi-
kang-sang is the highest point — the force encamped. The
mounted infantry had, of course, been sent on ahead. They
reported that the wall was strongly held by the Tibetans; and
Colonel Brander, who had accompanied them to a point a mile
or two further on, within range of the wall itself, made his dis-
positions for the next day. To the east the Karo la itself, the
highest point between Lhasa and India, was within an easy
climb, barely three hundred feet higher than the Plain of Milk.
Beyond that the valley takes a turn to the northwest between
precipitous cliffs, ^11 immediately crowned by the snow-fields
of the Nichi-kang-sang group; and at its narrowest and most
precipitous point the Tibetans had built an enormous wall. This
* This is also the name of the plain in which Lhasa stands.

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 135

was, perhaps, the greatest triumph of Tibetan construction that
we found throughout the expedition. I do not suppose that any
other nation in the world, with similar means at their disposal,
could hold their own for half an hour against the Tibetan in this
one art of wall building. With apparent ease the most enormous
stones are collected and placed with unerring judgment, and with
a rapidity which seems almost miraculous to the eye-witness.
This was no ordinary wall. It was composed of angular and
well-adjusted pieces of granite about two feet in thickness; the
loopholes, at a height of about four feet, were constructed with
wide-angled " splays " permitting an extensive field of fire ;
and above these carefully made little embrasures there was
head cover for at least another twelve inches. Between each
man's recess the Tibetans had built up a partition wall of heavy
slabs of stone, so that the damage caused by direct shell fire
was reduced to a minimum, and loss by enfilading shrapnel al-
most entirely avoided. At this time the wall was about eight
hundred yards long; the enemy had thrown forward two san-
gars, one on either side, which at once prevented any chance of
an easy flanking movement, or, indeed, of our bringing forward
without danger either the Maxims or the main body of the
force; and secure in this position they awaited our coming on
the following morning.

It was by no means a promising task for the small forces to
attempt, and whatever anxiety Colonel Brander might naturally
have entertained as to the rapid success of the enterprise was
gravely increased by two despatches which an urgent messenger,
riding through the night, had brought from Gyantse. The first
was a telegram from General Macdonald, far to the south, ex-
pressing his disapproval and insisting that the force should in-
stantly retire, unless it were at the moment of the receipt of the
orders irrevocably committed to an engagement with the enemy.
In itself this was not calculated to encourage a man immediately

136 THE OPENING OF TIBET

confronted with a difficult military problem. That in any case he
would have regarded himself as irrevocably committed there can
be no doubt ; retreat under the circumstances would have been a
serious blunder, even though no actual contact between the two
forces had yet taken place. But with characteristic loyalty, Colo-
nel Younghusband, who throughout had accepted full responsi-
bility for the expedition, appended to it the opinion that under
no circumstances should the proposed operation be abandoned or
delayed.

The other news was much more serious. A postscript to the
letter, in which Colonel Younghusband confirmed his instructions,
gave the intelligence that before dawn on the previous morning
the Mission post at Gyantse had been surrounded by 800 armed
Tibetans, and that the attack, although beaten off by the reduced
garrison of the place, had been renewed at once by bombardment
from the abandoned jong, which had been retaken by another
column of similar strength. This was grave indeed, and though
it was necessary to dismiss it from all consideration till the day's
work in front of him was done, this double intelligence greatly
increased the anxiety with which Colonel Brander set himself to
secure, not a victory only, but a victory that must be complete at
any cost and before nightfall.

As we have seen, the Tibetans had built sangars on both sides
of the valley in advance of the wall. Two of these sangars— one
on each side — were occupied by about thirty men apiece, and
Major Row and a company of Gurkhas were sent forward to the
left to secure the northern outwork. At the same time two com-
panies of the 32d Pioneers had been sent down the river-bed to-
ward the wall. One, under Captain Bethune, arrived almost at
the barrier itself, but so heavy was the fire from the loopholes, and
so impossible any effective reply, that cover had to be taken under
the river bank itself, some two or three hundred yards away. The
second company, under Captain Cullen, fought its way across an

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 137

open stretch of ground to comparative security within a fold in the
ground, about the same distance from the wall. Further advance
was impossible, though Captain Bethune very early in the day
made a magnificent but doomed attempt to carry the wall by as-
sault. It was here that he was killed, close under the very wall
itself; according to one account he was at the moment of his
death even clutching the barrel of a protruding matchlock. He
was killed on the instant, and the force thereby lost the most popu-
lar, and, perhaps, also the most capable of the junior regimental
officers. The Sikhs under his command retreated to their former
cover and held their places for the remainder of the day.

A small body of Pioneers had been detached to drive the enemy
from the sangar which was being held on the southern slope, op-
posite to that toward which Major Row was now advancing; but
it was almost impossible to climb the slippery shale slopes, which
had already assumed their utmost angle of repose; there was no
cover, and it was necessary to abandon this direct attack. There-
upon Colonel Brander had recourse to an heroic measure. A
dozen men under a native officer, Wassawa Singh, were sent up
the almost perpendicular face of the 1,500-foot southern scarp,,
in order that from the ice field above they might enfilade the san-
gar which was the chief obstacle to a direct attack upon the wall.

Meanwhile, on the left the Gurkhas had pressed on pluckily
over the difficult sliding surface of the northern slope, now glis-
sading for a dozen feet, now helping each other up over a difficult
spur ; here creeping under a projecting shelf on hands and knees^
there making a quick dash across an open space, but always under
a steady and pretty well directed fire from the sangar they had
been told to clear. After a time advance along their present line
was seen to be impossible, and the whole action of the morning
was suspended while Major Row detailed a few of his small
force to climb the rock face overhead commanding the enemy's
sangar. For two hours it was the guns only that answered the fire

138 THE OPENING OF TIBET

from the wall and from the sangars. There was a deadlock, and
if no means could be found to drive the enemy from the advanced
defenses which they were holding so gallantly, there seemed in-
deed little chance of doing anything more until nightfall. It was
an anxious moment, and Colonel Brander did not spare himself.
Up with the Maxims, within easy range of the Tibetan rifles, he
watched the developments of the fight.

But little by little the almost indistinguishable dots moved up-
ward along the face of the cliff to the south. A deep chimney
afforded them both protection from the Tibetans manning the
wall, and the bare possibility of an ascent. What the hardship
must have been of climbing up to an altitude which could not
have been less than 18,500 feet it is difficult for the ordinary
reader to conceive. Hampered alike by his accoutrements and
by the urgent anxiety for rapidity, Wassawa Singh still gave his
men but scanty opportunities of rest. It was such a climb as many
a member of the Alpine Club would, under the best circumstances,
have declined to attempt, and the Order of Merit which was after-
ward conferred upon Wassawa Singh was certainly one of the
most hardly earned distinctions of the campaign.

Still, in spite of everything, the little figures crept upward, and
at last reached the line of perpetual snow, where they could be
seen clambering and crawling against the dazzling surface of
white. There was still a long way for them to go when an out-
break of fire from the southern slope of the valley showed that
Major Row's men had established themselves above the enemy's
right-hand sangar. A brisk crackle of musketry broke out; the
exchanges were heavy, but the issue was never in any doubt.
Covered by the fire from the party above. Major Row led the
main body forward over the unprotected glacis, at the upper end
of which the little fort had been made. The enemy's fire slack-
ened, broke out again, and finally died down as the surviving Tib-
etans flung away their guns and attempted to escape down the

ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 139

almost perpendicular slope of the hill. Not one of them got away.
The wretched men one after another scrambled amid the pitiless
bullets that pecked up the dust all round, and then slid in an inert
mass till they lay quiet on the road below.

With a cheer that we could hear with odd distinctness in the
bottom of the valley, the Gurkhas sprang forward and captured
the post. But even then much remained to do. The holders of
the southern sangar kept up as steady a fire as before at any one
who showed himself, and it was impossible to move on from the
recently captured outpost so as to enfilade the main position,
which ended on the north against a precipitous cliff. For up-
ward of an hour the fight again languished. Nothing could be
seen of Wassawa Singh and his little force; they had taken a
course which was hidden behind the edge of the rock and ice
above us.

Nothing in Tibet is more curiously deceptive than the little
upright boulders which stand, for all the world like men, against
the sky line of the hills, and time after time a false alarm was
given that the Pioneers had at last reached the mountain brow
from which they could enfilade the enemy. At last, however,
one of the stones upon which our glasses had been fixed for so
long seemed to move and, half-fainting over it, a tiny figure
halted and unslung the miniature rifle into its right hand. He
was joined in a moment by another, and his comrades in the
valley below gave the first warning to the defenders of the
sangar by raising a thin distant cheer. The enemy did not wait ;
not more than four or five of the escalading force had reached
their goal before the Tibetans bolted from their advanced post
and ran back across the open coverless slopes of the mountain-
side to the protection of the great wall. In a moment the fire
was concentrated upon the fugitives, not only from three points
of the compass, but from angles which must have varied nearly
180°. There may have been about twenty-five men in the sangar:

I40 THE OPENING OF TIBET

of these two or three were hit at once, and the remainder, clam-
bering and sprawling over the slippery shale, made their way
back in a rain of bullets. Rifle fire is one of the most unaccount-
able things in the world. Judging by the standards of the
shooting range it would seem impossible that even one man
should have escaped from this converging battery ; as a matter of
fact, though the aim was fairly good, that of Lieutenant Hadow's
Maxim being especially well managed, I do not think that of the
remainder more than five men fell before the shelter of the wall
was reached. But the day was won; for the Tibetans behind
the wall, who cannot have lost more than two or three men
throughout the whole day, and whose position was really hardly
weakened as yet, fled as one man back down the valley of the
Karo chu. We afterward heard that all day long there had
been a steady melting away of this force, and that in consequence
reinforcements of 500 men from Nagartse, sixteen miles down
the road, had been sent up to stiffen the courage of the waverers.

We found, on passing over the wall, that the tents were still
standing, the fires still alight, and the water in the cooking ves- •
sels still boiling. Furs, blankets, horse furniture, spears, powder-
flasks, quick-match, bags of tsamba, skins of butter, tightly
stuffed cushions, everything was there as the Tibetans had left it
in their haste ; but almost no rifles or matchlocks were recovered.

By the time the force had secured the position Captain Ottley,
with his mounted infantry, was hurrying after the flying hordes.
At one time it seemed more than likely that his little force of
fifty or sixty men would be surrounded by the compact body of
reinforcements which was halting for a rest at Ring-la nine miles
away, when the dreaded mounted infantry swept round the cor-
ner. Never was the inherent incapacity of the Tibetan as a sol-
dier better shown. There is no doubt that the very names of
Ottley and the mounted infantry were associated by this time
in the minds of the Tibetans with an almost superhuman strength

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ATTACKED BY THE TIBETANS 141

and invulnerability. These reinforcements, which consisted to a
great extent of monks, made almost no attempt to defend them-
selves, but fled in all directions up the ravines and clefts of the
sides of the valley— anywhere out of the reach of the " Night-
mare " and his men. The blow inflicted upon the enemy was
trebled by this successful pursuit, and in Lhasa afterward we
heard that the Tibetans themselves admitted 600 casualties. This
is certainly an over-statement, made partly in order to justify
their expulsion from so strong a position, partly also to persuade
the authorities that it was no longer any use attempting to oppose
our advance. We took a few prisoners. Our own casualties,
besides the loss of Bethune— a host in himself— were but four
killed and thirteen wounded. The day's work reflects the utmost
credit on the two out-flanking parties, and if it had been possible
to retain any sort of control of the position we had gained, this
fight in itself might have been the turning point of the expedition.
As it was, there was nothing to do but to return with the utmost
speed to Gyantse. Colonel Brander had not the time even to pull
down the Tibetans' wall. The tents and the ammunition were
destroyed, as much damage to the wall as could be done in the
short time was carried out, and then the force returned to their
■camping-place of the previous night four miles back in the Plain
of Milk.

The altitude to which the southern flanking party attained was
probably the highest point on the earth's surface at which an
engagement has ever taken place, and the accounts given by the
men of the terrible labor of climbing, and of the utter inability,
at this height of over 18,000 feet, to do more than crawl forward
listlessly, were not the least interesting part of this extraordinary
action.

Immediately beyond the wall is a very curious freak of nature.
The ice-field on the south here comes down to a basin three hun-
dred yards across, the lower or northern end of which is banked

142 THE OPENING OF TIBET

up ; and the melting of the ice has produced there a deep and al-
most clear lake, the waters of which on one side lap up against
the high glacier itself. The Tibetans, recognizing any natural
eccentricity as the predestined home of devils, have taken the
greatest pains, with little pyramids of quartz and fluttering flags,
to propitiate the evil spirits of this pretty little imitation of the
Merjelensee.

On the following morning, the 7th of May, the column began
the return march, and Captain O'Connor and I set off in good
time to cover before nightfall the forty-four miles which lay be-
tween us and Gyantse.

CHAPTER IX

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND

WHAT exactly we should find when we reached Gyantse
neither O'Connor nor myself had the least idea. We
knew that the first attack had been gallantly and satisfactorily
beaten off ; but we also knew that only half the Tibetan force had
been employed on the 5th — knew too that the attacking party had
bungled things in some way or other. We did not know the size
of the guns which the Tibetans had mounted on the jong, we did
not know how far the post had been surrounded, and to tell the
truth we rather trusted to luck and to the shades of night to get
back into the post at all. Rumor reached us when we got to Ra-
lung that the Tibetans had determined to hold the gorges through
which our little party, consisting of Captain Ottley with ten of his
mounted infantry and our two selves, had to pass. If this were
found to be the case we could hardly hope to force a way
through; but we knew that the earlier we pushed on the better
hope there was of being able to make our way to the open plain
of Gyantse, which it was impossible for the Tibetans to barricade,
and in which we might then be able to hold our own against any
number the Tibetans were likely to send out from the jong to
cut us off. It was an uneventful ride of fifteen miles from
Ra-lung to Gobshi, and we covered it in a little over three hours.
We halted at the village of the Four Gates to collect intelligence
and to rest. The head men of the village were, not unnaturally,
in a state of considerable agitation. It is possible that they knew
nothing whatever about the intentions or the actions of their

143

144 THE OPENING OF TIBET

countrymen eighteen miles away; but their nervousness inevita-
bly suggested that they were lying when they so assured us. So
we determined not to hurry on, but to take care that the evening
should have set in before we reached the last and most difficult
stretch of our journey.

Leaving Gobshi at half-past four in the afternoon, we moved
on slowly down the valley of the Nyero chu, watching the slow
transformation of one of the finest sunsets I have ever seen in
Tibet. Luckily we found all the bridges along the road intact.
This was a never-ending source of amazement to us throughout
the expedition. The Tibetans had never taken the trouble or
perhaps even had the idea of impeding our progress by so simple
and effectual a device as the breaking of the road in any way;
perhaps the most glaring example of this was seen in the way in
which they eventually left for our use the two great barges at
the Chak-sam ferry. The rebuilding of a bridge is no small
matter in Tibet. Of wood on the spot there may be nothing, and
in many cases where the bridge is made of timber brought from
a distance the space across is much too great for the substitution
of stone at a moment's notice. Accustomed as we were, it was a
relief to find that the stone causeway at Malang, about three
miles from Gobshi, was standing intact. After that there was
at least no bridge by the destruction of which they could bar our
return to Gyantse that night.

There was not a sign of a Tibetan an)rwhere. The little
houses and rare gomi>as, nestling here and there in the bare
valleys to the north and south, showed no sign of life. So we
made our way unnoticed till we faced the crimson blaze of the
sunset over the open plain of Gyantse, two miles beyond the big
■chorten which is the most conspicuous object of the track astrad-
dle of the road just where a sharp turn in the river half incloses
a wooded peninsula. We moved on in the dying red light for
a couple of miles, and then the night of these high uplands crept

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 145

in upon us from all sides. As we passed the house of the eldest
son of the Maharajah of Sikkim we could still distinguish dimly
the houses near Ne-nyeng. A mile and a half further on we
passed the long ruins of a battlemented wall and were just able
to distinguish the jong in the darkness as we moved over the low
neck of white quartzite, which here thrusts out into the plain a
line of little peaks. After that the gloom deepened and soon we
could hardly see each other. It was a moonless night, and four
miles from home we literally could not see the ground under our
horses' hoofs. Now and then a Tibetan wayfarer ran into our
arms before he knew what or who we were; such travelers we
questioned and turned behind us. The explanation each gave of
his night wandering was not wholly uninteresting. One man
had been into the city for a charm for his sick wife, and was
returning confident in the efficacy of his closely cuddled treasure.
Another man was a lama who had been relieved by a friend at a
monastery all day, and was hurrying back to keep his word and
release his already over-taxed proxy. A third had an ugly story
to tell to us— he was the first who gave us any information of
the horrible fate which had overtaken our unfortunate servants.
They all agreed that the Tibetans were holding all the houses in
the plain past which our road necessarily ran ; but more than that
none of them honestly seemed able to tell us.

By this time our escort had been reduced to six men. Captain
Ottley had decided to remain behind at Gobshi to secure a safe
escort for a belated baggage mule and her leader. So we moved
on through the night, and for the first time I realized the skill of
a native of India as a tracker. There was not the slightest indi-
cation of a road anywhere. There was not a light visible in the
whole plain, and even the stars were obscured by the light night
mist that was rising into the cold air from the still warm fields.
By daylight one would have made half-a-dozen mistakes in trying
to thread one's way across the three miles of flat country, deeply

146 THE OPENING OF TIBET

intersected in every direction with wide and often unfordable
water-courses; but now in the dark the guidance of our Sikhs
was unfaiHng. One road there was, and one only, after we had
struck out toward Chang-lo from the beaten path. This took
a fantastic course over the plowed fields, along the bunds con-
taining the marshy squares where the first barley was beginning
to show itself, across the irrigation channels by single-stone
bridges, swerving now to the right and now to the left, dipping
down into a dry water-course, rising on the farther side at some
unindicated point, brushing past little clumps of sallow-thorn,
skirting an old reservoir, and often verging too close to be com-
fortable to some occupied house which was invisible at ten yards,
but was betrayed by the furious barking of the inevitable watch-
dogs. Along this tortuous path the Sikhs of our escort led us
in the darkness without the slightest hesitation or mistake. Even .
at the end, when a single light could be seen from the window of
the upper story of our besieged post, they made no mistake in
going straight toward it. A sharp turn to the right along an
iris-covered embankment saved us a heavy wetting in the deepest
water-channel of the plain.

As we approached Chang-lo we suddenly remembered that we
were in considerably more danger from the high-strung watch-
fulness of our own sentries than from all the forces that Tibet
could put into the field. After a while we could barely distin-
guish against the vague duskiness of the sky the mass of our tall
poplars. And then two men were sent on to feel our way into
the post — no easy matter. The garrison were not expecting us,
and the approach to a defended position is a difficult matter,
wholly apart from the possibility of the sentry firing before he
challenges. Barbed wire entanglements, well-planned stakes and
abattis of felled tree-tops and other impedimenta are no light
things to penetrate on a dark night; and in the present case we
had no means of knowing what additional precautions the garri-

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 147

son had, as a matter of course, taken. But all was well ; and at
about a quarter to ten we found ourselves in the Mission mess
heartily welcomed as earnest of better things to come.

The story of the attack on the Mission in the early hours of
May 5th reads like a romance. As I have said, news had come
that a body of Tibetans was moving up the valley of the Nyang
chu to Dongtse, twelve miles away to the north-west. These men,
1,600 in number, no doubt had their instructions, and it subse-
quently was shown that those instructions had been given them
by Dorjieff himself. They had to retake the jong and anni-
hilate the Mission with its escort. It may be questioned, how-
ever, whether they would ever have had the determination to
attempt to carry out the latter part of their orders, if at the last
moment they had not received what must have seemed to them
the miraculous news that two-thirds of the defenders of Chang-lo
had suddenly been called away. Marching in two bands through
the night of the 4th of May, one-half reoccupied the jong, while
the other moved as silently as shadows up to the very walls of
the English post.

Speculation as to what would have happened if another course
had been adopted is, perhaps, useless; but there was a fair con-
sensus of opinion in the post that' if the Tibetans had simply
thrown away their useless firearms, and had contented them-
selves with rushing the sentries with drawn swords, the issue of
that evening might have been painfully different. Actually, the
men who reached the post were under the walls by about three
in the morning ; and there in silence they seem to have remained
for nearly an hour. Not a sentry perceived them ; and if it had
not been for an alarm given by the last joined recruit of the
whole force, a boy who had not been thought to have sufficient
steadiness for the work of a soldier, and was only accepted be-
cause of the unexpected loss of another man, they could with-

148 THE OPENING OF TIBET

out difficulty have made their way within striking distance of at
least two of the four sentries. This boy, looking through the
darkness, thought he saw the movement of what might have
been a man about twenty yards from the southern' entrance. It
will be remembered that our relations with the Tibetans were of
the most friendly character, and as a matter of fact the nightly
visits paid by the followers of the Mission to Gyantse, for more
or less disreputable purposes, must have been well within his
knowledge; he must, in fact, have known that at that moment
there were at least eight of the servants of the force in the town ;
and it says a good deal for his coolness and discipline that, whe-
ther he were betraying a friend or not, he did not hesitate for a
moment to rouse the echoes of the night by a hasty shot follow-
ing upon a single loud challenge.

The effect of a shot at night upon a defended post is something
which should be experienced to be fully understood; the whole
place is galvanized as though it had received an electric shock.
And every other sentry realized in a second the danger that lay
in the swarming black ring of men, which now, for the first time,
were seen clearly enough encircling the whole post. The Tibe-
tans also were naturally startled into action ; they stood up under
our very walls and actually used our own loop-holes, thrusting
the muzzles of their matchlocks into the Mission compound. A
doctor was the first man to dash into the place from the redoubt
and warn Colonel Younghusband of his danger. His descrip-
tion of the compound is curious; he says that a network of
flashes and humming bullets struck in every direction over the
inclosure. By some merciful accident not a single man was hit,
though several of the tents received four or five bullets straight
through them. Captain Walton in particular had a very narrow
escape ; he said that the first thing that he realized, after this rude
awakening, was the muzzles of two or three rusty matchlocks
poking down through the wall in his direction. One thing prob-

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 149

ably saved the situation; the Tibetans, being naturally shorter
men than the Sikhs, for whom the loop-holes had originally been
made, and at no time paying much attention to fire discipline or
aim, simply held their guns up over their heads and fired through
the loop-holes in any direction that was convenient. For a few
seconds, which seemed almost as many minutes, the walls re-
mained unmanned; then round by the water gate the quick
reports of the Lee-Metford heralded a blaze of fire from every
point of the perimeter.

From the point of view of the Tibetans, the moment chosen
for the attack was most unfortunate. They secured, indeed, for
themselves the advantage of an approach in the dark, and, of
course, had they been successful in effecting their purpose and
forcing a hand-to-hand struggle inside the walls of the post, the
coming of dawn might have served them in good stead. As it
was, however, the growing light caught them, not only still out-
side our defenses, but a beaten crowd, for whom there was not a
stick of cover, huddled up under the walls of the post. When
their inevitable flight had to be attempted some fled at once
among the trees of the plantation behind Chang-lo; some hid
themselves idiotically in the walled-up bays of the bridge, where
they were caught like rats in a trap by the first skirmishing party
that set out to clear the ground. The luckiest were the most
cowardly; large numbers, as soon as our firing broke out, had
made their way back in terror through the shrubs and willows
immediately overhanging the river bank toward the white house,
600 yards ahead of us, toward the jong, which was afterward
captured by us and known as the Gurkhas' post. Here they were
in safety. On the way they passed a small shrine which Captain
Walton had been using as his consulting room and hospital for
Tibetan patients.

It was from this hospital that the first intimation of anything
wrong had been received. On the morning of the previous day

150 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Captain Walton's suspicions had been aroused by the sudden
exodus of a very large number of his patients. One and all
seemed anxious to get away, and though this might really mean
little with a shy and probably mistrustful people like the good
folk of Gyantse, there was a unanimity about the whole matter
which caused him to make some disappointed comment, and then
it appeared that one of his patients had been told of the intention
of the Tibetans to make a night attack upon the Mission. Such
rumors had, of course, been common ever since our occupation
of the place, and had been proved time after time to be the merest
canards. Captain Walton paid very little attention to it, but he
was sufficiently aware of a change in the attitude of his patients
— such of them as remained for treatment— to make him report
the matter to Colonel Younghusband that evening, without, how-
ever, expressing any belief or, indeed, much interest in the mat-
ter. By this time his hospital was empty of all its inmates
except, I believe, one or two bedridden men who could find no
one to come and help them away.

I have said that the luckiest were the most cowardly, but for
the main body of the attacking force there was no help. When
their attack failed and flight was necessary they were obliged to
make the best of their way back across the flat plain to the jong
and Gyantse. The defenders' post numbered in all about 170
men, but this number was to a large extent weakened by the fact
that Colonel Brander had naturally taken with him the strongest
men of the force, and those who remained behind were certainly,
to the extent of forty per cent., either weakened by dysentery or
actually in hospital blankets. But, well or ill, every man reached
for his rifle and came out to his place. The members of the Mis-
sion — Colonel Younghusband, Captain Ryder, Lieutenant-Colo-
nel Waddell, and, it should not be forgotten, Mr. Mitter, the con-
fidential clerk of the Mission — immediately manned the upper
works, and a certain number of the followers displayed consider-

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 151

able martial energy in positions of more or less personal danger.
About a dozen of the mounted infantry had been left by Colonel
Brander, and these men saddled their ponies with feverish haste.
Bullets were still singing over the post, but there was no doubt
that the Tibetans had been successfully beaten off, and the lesson
to be taught them was one which mounted men could best convey.
The real flight of the Tibetans did not begin till forty minutes
after the first alarm, and though it would be inaccurate to say
that the issue was really in doubt after the first five or ten, it
will be seen that the engagement was for a time hotly contested,
and it is doubtful whether the Tibetans lost many men till they
broke and ran. After that it was simply a case of shooting down
the flying figiu-es in the gray morning twilight. It is one of the
peculiarities of Tibet that as soon as a leafless bush can be distin-
guished twenty yards away in the dawn you can almost as clearly
see a willow tree on a slope a mile and a half distant. The tiny
body of irregular infantry, made all the more irregular by the
volunteers who aided in the pursuit, were busily and systemati-
cally clearing the plantation of the enemy, and preparing to carry
a counter attack home to the very foot of the rock from which
the first jingal balls were now being fired toward Chang-lo.

The Tibetans left behind them but few under the actual walls
of the post, but 180 dead were found within a radius of one
thousand yards, and, under the circumstances, at least three
times that number must have been wounded. On our own side —
besides our wretched servants and the unhappy Nepali shepherd
who was caught outside the defenses watching his flock through
the night, and fell a shocking victim to the Tibetans' savage lust
for blood — there were but two casualties all this time. This is
but another example of the immunity which, time after time, was
enjoyed by our men against all probability and, indeed, expe-
rience.

The work of the mounted infantry was finished about six

152 THE OPENING OF TIBET

o'clock in the full light of the quick Asiatic dawn. The Tibetans
flying helplessly over the flat irrigated fields had been scattered
to the winds. The luckier ones on horseback made good their
escape almost to a man. The others either ran for their lives
with the characteristic heavy-shouldered tramp of their race, or
hid in vain desperation among the irrigation channels of the
fields. One or two fled to the river bank and there immersed
themselves, leaving their mouths and noses only above the thick,
brown flood, under the friendly shelter of an overhanging shrub.
One or two by the banks, with animal-like cunning, feigned
death, and when detected pretended to be severely wounded.

An hour and a half after this heavy and responsible work two
Sikhs threw the post-bags of the dak across their saddles and
moved out to take the mails as usual to Sau-gang. Later in the
day another man cantered off on the road to the Karo la. The
lesson of the morning was emphasized by a spasmodic bombard-
ment all the day, and a Sepoy was killed while standing almost
immediately behind a high adobe wall. Captain Ryder instantly
assumed the direction of the additional defenses which had to be
made, and the next two days produced an extraordinary altera-
tion in the aspect of Chang-lo. Great traverses of timber logs, in-
terspersed with granite boulders, rose up like magic everywhere.
The Masbi Sikh is by nature and intention a lazy man ; yet it is
possible that no Sikh in the history of his race ever worked with
such desperation as the hundred laborers who, in very truth, had
to work like the famous artisans under the direction of Nehe-
miah. There was no time to lose, for the only information we
could certainly get from the prisoners was that more men and
larger guns were even at that moment being hurried up against
us from Lhasa.

Such was the state of affairs when O'Connor and I rode in
on the evening of the 7th. The column from the Karo la could
not arrive until the afternoon of the 9th ; an attack, meanwhile,.

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 153

was threatened for that same night. But the Tibetans had had
too heavy a lesson, and nothing, therefore, was done before the
arrival of the main body of the defenders had put an end to all
hope of carrying the post by storm.

As soon as the place was put in a proper condition of defense
we had leisure to consider the extraordinary change in the politi-
cal situation which had been caused by the attack of the Tibe-
tans. Of course, in one way it simplified the position enormously ;
there could no longer be any pretense on the part of the Tibetans
that they were a peace-loving and long-suffering race ; the issues
were cleared. It was obvious that no negotiations had ever been
intended. We were able at last to estimate the authority of the
Chinese suzerains and the influence of the Amban himself — nei-
ther existed. Unless we were willing to help ourselves, it was
in a moment clear that the Chinese were neither willing nor able
to help us. I do not suppose that any one in his senses has ever
seriously criticized the right of the Tibetans to massacre the

•

Mission if they could, and if they were ready to accept the con-
sequences of success. It is true that the circumstances of this
attack during a period of practical armistice, while we were
awaiting, if not perhaps expecting, the advent of the Amban,
gave some reasonable ground of complaint ; but as we were our-
selves tarred with the same brush, reproach was a boomerang-like
weapon for us to employ. The situation, as I have said, was
undoubtedly cleared, but it may well be doubted whether that was
any particular gratification to the Cabinet at home. That it was
not is perhaps clear from the fact that Lord Lansdowne seems
immediately to have gone out of his way to make a gratuitous
re-statement of the pledges which the Government had given six
months before to Russia. Herein, perhaps, there is some just
reason to demur to the policy of Whitehall. It is an open secret
that our policy in Egypt just then demanded that we should be
on good terms with Russia, but even so, it seemed common sense

154 THE OPENING OF TIBET

to lay every conceivable stress upon an active hostility which was
at once recognized as due to the presence of a Russian subject
in Lhasa. In any case, whatever the responsibility of an unau-
thorized representative of the great northern neighbor of Tibet,
it was perfectly clear that the attack on the Mission had practi-
cally justified to the full the presumptions of active hostility
which had seemed to us to necessitate the accompaniment of the
Mission by a strong escort. The chief point, therefore, which
had excited the mistrust of continental critics Was clearly demon-
strated as a wise and, indeed, a very necessary precaution on our
part.

More than this, the behavior of the Tibetans had justified at
a stroke our taking action in the matter at all. It was clear from
the kindly reception which the Mission received on its coming
to Gyantse from every one except the local representatives of the
close Lamaic corporation that governs the country, and from the
subsequent attack promoted by that corporation, that our forecast
was correct, not only in assuming that the Lamaic hierarchy in
no way represented the feeling of the bulk of the population, but
also that it was from the priestly autocrats of Tibet alone that
danger to British interests was to be feared. It was no part of
the business of the British Government to play the role of Perseus
rescuing Andromeda from a monster; but somewhat to our sur-
prise we found that the policy of the Viceroy, begun for very
different and somewhat prosaic reasons, was actually compelling
us into a position which was not very different. We had begun,
without questioning the form of government which obtained in
Tibet, by working for the conclusion of some agreement with a
properly accredited representative of the country. We had ac-
cepted the peculiarities, not to say the brutalities, -which mark this
extreme form of religious tyranny, not in ignorance, but as
being no affair of ours. With the Grand Lama as the head of
the country we had certain business to transact; and if he had

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 155

been willing to meet us at Kamba-jong, our difficulties would
have been over. We should never have moved a mile farther
into the Forbidden Country, and, perhaps, the hold of the lamas
over the country might have been even stronger than before, inas-
much as our diplomatic relations with Lhasa would have formed
an additional proof of the ability of the Tibetans to manage their
own foreign affairs, and of the uselessness of continuing the farce

of Chinese sovereignty. This the Grand Lama failed to see, and
the upshot of our interference has been that the reign of supersti-
tious tyranny has received a severe blow, not only by the prestige
we have gained by our successful advance to Lhasa, but by the
deposition of the Grand Lama, and by the strength which has
thereby been temporarily given to the tottering structure of Chi-
nese sovereignty.

These considerations might perhaps have made the home au-
thorities hesitate before wantonly reiterating to the Russians
assurances which were perfectly honest but in their origin appli-
cable only to an entirely different and much less complicated
state of affairs. The attack on the Mission was the throwing
down of the glove. It was a deliberate challenge on the part of
an autocrat who saw that in the slowly increasing friendliness
between the foreigner and the " miser " of the land there lurked
perhaps the seeds of trouble for himself in the future. We know
from an excellent source that the action of the English in paying
full prices, and even more than full prices, for the food-stuffs
they requisitioned in the Chumbi and Nyang chu Valleys was an
unexpected shock to the authorities in Lhasa ; they complained of
it. And knowing, as we now do, whose influence lay at the bot-
tom of this night attack upon the Mission, we can see not only
a shrewd and successful scheme whereby Dorjieff himself might
escape from the consequences of his own bad advice, but a not

unnatural determination at all hazards to put an end to the grow-
ing familiarity between the invaders and the invaded.

156 THE OPENING OF TIBET

About this time in Lhasa there was a wave of mistrust of the
Chinese. Actual power the Chinese had none, and the very-
advice of the Amban was believed to be tainted. Dorjieff had
assured the government of Tibet that the English had brought
into subjection the Middle Kingdom, and were using to the full
the authority of the Chinese representatives abroad when and as
it suited their purpose. The earnest and repeated advice there-
fore to them was merely a confirmation of the serious danger they
were in. They left no stone unturned to spur their people on to
harry those whom they called the English infidels of Hindustan.
The men of Kams at first refused to leave their province to op-
pose our advance; they argued that they could not leave their
own district unprotected, and, as the Dalai Lama's temporal
authority over Kams is somewhat nebulous, he very wisely ad-
jured them to assist him on the spiritual ground that the ultimate
intention of the Mission was to wreck Buddhism.

The state of affairs in Lhasa at this time was desperate. The
Emperor of China had ordered the Tibetans to negotiate with
the Maharajah of Nepal and the Tongsa Penlop, the temporal
ruler of Bhutan ; both had urged upon the Dalai Lama an imme-
diate compliance with the British demands. No help was forth-
coming from Russia, and, as a final blow, the good people of
Nakchu-ka said with some firmness that the English had already
killed many professional soldiers of the Tibetans, and how then
could peaceable cattle-drivers like themselves fight against them ?
Rather than come out they would go on pilgrimage. In these
depressing circumstances, the Dalai Lama appears to have acted
somewhat hurriedly, and, so far as can be gleaned, the Amban
seems to have had a bad quarter of an hour with him. At any
rate, upon his return through the green parks of Lhasa, which
separate the Potala from the Residency, his cogitations took a
definite shape, and the Viceroy of Tibet sent an urgent request
to the Maharajah of Nepal that a thousand Gurkhas should be
sent at once for his protection.

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 157

On the side of the Grand Lama also military preparations were
pressed on. The construction of a fort at Chu-sul, forty miles
from Lhasa, at the junction of the Kyi chu and the Tsang-po, was
ordered. A new water-wheel, presumably for the purpose of
turning a lathe, was set up in the arsenal, and, in utter need, the
magic powers of the Sa-kya monastery, the awful representative
of an old regime of divine tyrants, were called in, and the incan-
tations and charms of the contemned Red Cap faith rose up for
the first time from under the golden roofs of the Potala, Finally,
two days after our arrival in Gyantse, the Tibetans had deter-
mined to rush our post by night and reoccupy the jong. This had
been attempted with partial success.

It will be seen that there was no real hope of conducting nego-
tiations in Gyantse even before the morning of the 5th of May.
After that eventful moment, with the Tibetans all round us and
the guns of the jong playing at their will upon the Commissioner's
residence, negotiation was naturally farther off than ever. The
determination of the Government to adhere to its policy of con-
cession to Russian susceptibilities now crippled Colonel Young-
husband's right hand. The very Sikhs of the garrison came to
hear of it, and said gloomily that unless this business were car-
ried through as it should be and in Lhasa, they would never
be able to hold up their heads again among their own folk at
home. So long, however, as this bombardment lasted, so long
as the Tibetans retained possession of the jong, negotiation on any
basis whatever was in abeyance — except for Colonel Younghus-
band, whose weary pen again and again restated the position for
the benefit of the Cabinet, scarcely one of whose members, with
the exception of Lord Lansdowne, had even a bowing acquain-
tance with the East.

There is no doubt about it ; in the East you must do as the East
does, if you hope to achieve anything permanently good or per-
manently great in it. Had the two things been necessarily incom-
patible, the jettison of Lord Curzon's policy in order that Lord

158 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Cromer's goods should be safely brought to port might well have
been accepted by every one, and certainly would have been by
every member of the Mission in Tibet. But this was not put
forward as inevitable, and it seemed to us unfortunate that the
Government should not have realized that the condition of affairs
had changed.

Meanwhile, the daily work of defense had to be done, and bet-
ter provision had to be made for the mules whose old lines lay
under the guns of the jong with scarcely a twig to protect them.
They were given a more secure position in rear of the buildings.
The abattis and horn-works were strengthened, the Gurkhas' gate
was re-staked, wire entanglements surrounded the entire post,
traverses rose up in every unprotected spot, the trees in the plan-
tation to the rear were cleared away for two hundred yards, and
the sentries were doubled. Captain Ryder's defenses of Chang-lo
were subsequently slightly extended by Captain Sheppard, but
the latter, on his arrival, found the place sufficiently secure to en-
able him to devote all his energies to the construction of bridges
and covered ways between the main position and the outposts at
the white house and Pala village, which had then been secured.

From day to day it became increasingly uncertain whether the
little mail-bag, which was taken out every morning to be met at
Sau-gang by the dak runners from Kang-ma, would ever reach
its destination. Why the Tibetans did not effectually prevent this
mail remains a mystery to this day. The bag was usually guarded
by four mounted men only, and it had a long road to cover, by
villages, from any of which the messengers might with impunity
have been shot down ; through defiles in which any ravine might
well conceal a dozen determined men; or across the open plain,
where its distant progress could be watched by a sharp-sighted
man six miles away. Once or twice a faint-hearted attempt was
actually made. On one occasion. May 20th, it was so far success-
ful that the mounted infantry were obliged to make the best of

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 159

their way into Chang-lo, leaving behind them one mail-bag and
one of their number dead.*

The coming of the dak was the one incident that broke the
monotony of our daily life. The telegraph wire was with us al-
most from the beginning, and only once was there the slightest
attempt to interfere with it on the part of the enemy. In this
connection an incident may be noticed which reflects no small
credit upon Mr. Truninger. He, so the story was told to me,
with his second in command, was engaged in setting up posts and
laying the wires along one portion of the road to the undisguised
interest and curiosity of one or two innocent-looking lamas.
These men persistently asked what was the use of the wire. It
will be seen that this was, under the circumstances, an inquiry the
true answer to which might prove disastrous to our communica-
tions. We had not the men to defend even ten miles of this long
line, and without the slightest question the wire would have been
cut in twenty places a day if the Tibetans had had the least idea
of the enormous value it was to us. But the answer came simply
and earnestly. " We .English," said Truninger, " are in a
strange land, a land of which no foreigner has ever known any-
thing ; our maps are no good, and every day we go forward we are
like children lost in a great wood. Therefore we lay this wire
behind us in order that when we have done our business with
your Dalai Lama we may find the road by which we came and,
as quickly as possible, get hence to England." Needless to say,
nothing could more effectually have secured the wire from dam-
age, as the single ambition of the Tibetans from the first was to
be rid of us as quickly as possible.

The result of this forbearance on the part of the enemy was

that we often received the news in the first editions of the evening

^ This dead man was the only one left in the hands of the Tibetans through-
out the expedition. His head was afterward found to have been hacked off and
sent to Lhasa to substantiate a claim to the grant of land offered by the Dalai
Lama in return for every head of a member of the expedition.

i6o THE OPENING OF TIBET

papers in London before we sat down to dinner the same evening.
In point of actual time we received such news within three hours
of its publication, while the news which we sent westward at
times reached London long before the nominal hour at which it
had been despatched from Gyantse. Ordinarily, however, mes-
sages took about three hours apparent time, that is to say, eight
or nine hours actual time, in reaching their destination in London.
Diaries of sieges are dull. There was always plenty to do, but
it lacked distinction, although under other circumstances much
of it would have been exciting enough. One day, or rather one
night, there were water channels, supplying the town, to be cut
or dammed; there was a patrol to be sent out, with the general
intention of rendering night traveling unhealthy for the Tibetans ;
later on, there was a two-hundred-yard length of covered way to
be made in the exposed plain. Another day some of the houses
in the plain behind us, which the Tibetans were holding, had to be
cleared of their occupants. Another time there was a bridge to
be built beyond the end of the plantation, just within the furthest
range of the jingals from the rock. These jingals generally gave
the first intimation that the dak was arriving. Besides their regu-
lar morning bombardment, and one equally inevitable about half-
past four, they reserved aim and ammunition for the dak riders,
whom from their high eyrie they could easily see as they crossed
the bridge and made their way through the trees of the plantation
to the southern entrance of the post.^ All day long there was
something to be done; I spent the late afternoons in acquiring a
smattering of Tibetan. The wind used to spring up daily about
three o'clock, whirling a shower of catkins from the willows be-
side the wall of the Mission garden, and driving a penetrating
storm of grit through the post. Out across the plain, the long
trails of smoke from the burning houses were dissipated into the

* I do not think that a single man was ever hit in this way, but the amount
of lead the Tibetans thus used was extraordinary.

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND i6i

low-lying blue haze of the distant hills, and added another glory
to the sunset scene.

On the 19th of May it was decided to clear what was known af-
terward as the Gurkha post. This was a white house 600 yards
away from Chang-lo straight in the direction of the jong. The
Tibetans had occupied it with sixty men, and it was imperative
that they should at once be dislodged. Before dawn the storm-
ing-party, under Lieutenant Gurdon, moved out, followed by the
Gurkhas of the garrison. The main doors of the house were
blown in, and the place carried by assault in a quarter of an hour ;
our casualties were insignificant, and before the sun was well up
the house was occupied by a single company of the attacking
force, which remained in this exposed position during the re-
mainder of our stay at Gyantse. Against this house the chief
fury of the Tibetans was thenceforward directed; night after
night it was surrounded and had to beat off the Tibetan forces.
Day after day it was pounded by the guns on the jong, which here
seemed to rise almost perpendicularly above the house. A wall
was built up by the Tibetans from the westward corner of the
jong toward the river, and from two embrasures in it a continual
bombardment was kept up upon the defenders of the post. On
the following day occurred the attack upon the mail escort, to
which I have already referred. On this occasion Captain Ottley,
who went out with the mounted infantry to the rescue of the
dak runners, drove the Tibetans headlong from two farms,
hut found them so strongly ensconced about four miles further
on that he was himself obliged to retire, impeded by the necessity
of escorting two wounded and five unmounted men.

On the 2 1st a small force rnoved out under Colonel Brander to
dear the plain to the south ; they captured and burned three farms
held by the enemy, and returned to camp on receiving a report
that the enemy were moving out from Gyantse to attack Chang-lo.
Colonel Brander did not allow the grass to grow under his feet,

i62 THE OPENING OF TIBET

and five days later he swept the Tibetans from Pala village, the
most important position that they held, except the jong itself.

The taking of Pala was one of the most creditable bits of work
done by the garrison. In utter darkness, before the dawn. Colo-
nel Brander sent out a small column, composed of three hundred
rifles, four g^ns, and a Maxim. Their objective was this hamlet,
where the Tibetans had been strengthening a position and mount-
ing guns for the previous two or three days. This danger at all
costs had to be prevented. Pala enfiladed nearly the whole of our
defenses, and was barely 1,200 yards away to the north-east. The
relative positions of Chang-lo, Pala, and the jong were, roughly
speaking, those of the points of an equilateral triangle; the road
from Gyantse to Lhasa runs through Pala ; and the occupation of
this post gave us practical command of all direct communications
with the capital. For more reasons than one the place had to be
taken, and Colonel Brander's scheme was in its conception admir-
able. The guns were posted on an eminence, a quarter of a mile
away to the north-east, which completely dominated the village.
After skirting round the village to the south-east his plan was to
develop an attack in the first place upon the house which was
nearest to the jong. For this purpose Captain Sheppard and Cap-
tain O'Connor were deputed, with half-a-dozen men, to open the
assault by blowing in the wall of the next house, which wholly
commanded it. At the same time Lieutenant Garstin, with Lieu-
tenant Walker, R.E., was sent a few yards further to breach the
house itself. Major Peterson, with two companies of the 32d »
Pioneers, was to follow up the explosions with an instant rush.
This was the plan ; what actually happened was entirely different.

The column moved slowly through the darkness, until its lead-
ing ranks were within fifty yards of the high road to Lhasa. At
that moment a small party of three unsuspecting Tibetans tramped
slowly along it, and though Colonel Brander believed that not one
of his men was actually seen, it is possible that, in some way.

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 163

these men were able to give the alarm to the defenders of the post.
Certainly there seems to be no reason to charge any member of
the attacking column with carelessness, or even an accident. But
the Tibetans were on the alert, and, as soon as the first figures
were visible in the obscurity, a hot fire was poured upon them
from the roofs of all the houses in the village. The two storm-
ing-parties had by this time reached a low wall, thirty yards from
the house to be attacked, and there was nothing else to be done but
to make a dash for it. Captain Sheppard, followed by Captain
O'Connor, vaulted over the wall, and ran forward into the nar-
row lane between the two houses. From a doorway in the fore-
most house, opening into this passage, three Tibetans rushed out
with matchlocks and swords. Captain Sheppard drew his re-
volver and shot two of them, set the cake of gun-cotton under
the wall, and lit the fuse. He then ran back, preceded by the
third Tibetan, who, however, escaped into the door again. At the
same time, beside the smaller house, Garstin and Walker were
setting up their explosive, and everything seemed to promise im-
mediate success on the lines that Colonel Brander had mapped out.
Garstin's fuse, however, refused to act, and only Sheppard's ef-
fected its purpose. An earth-shaking roar was followed by blind-
ing dust, through which it was impossible to see the full extent
of the damage done. But all firing ceased for the moment, and in
one house at least a breach, big enough for the entrance of the
supporting companies, had been made. No one came.

It appeared afterward that Major Peterson's men had found
it impossible to advance in the face of the fire from the houses,
and instead of moving westward to the place from which they
could carry out the work begun by the storming-parties, they took
up a sheltered position to the east in a garden, where they re-
mained until the well-directed fire of " Bubble " and " Squeak "
enabled them to advance. The little storming-party was indeed
also supported by a company of the same regiment on its flank.

i64 THE OPENING OF TIBET

which had occupied a position in the sunken road a hundred yards
from the house, and did not understand the dangers in which the
two small bodies of men under Captain Sheppard were in a mo-
ment placed. These men were thus entirely cut off, and both
houses were full of Tibetans.

O'Connor acted with great presence of mind. He had his own
cake of gun-cotton intact, and, by the merest chance, the door
through which the surviving Tibetan had escaped back into the
house was left unfastened. Attended by one Sikh only, O'Connor
dashed through into the unoccupied house. Luckily every man
in it was on the roof ; for that very reason he considered it neces-
sary to go up on to the first floor, in order more effectively to ex-
plode the charge. Followed by his companion, he dashed up the
slippery iron-sheathed ladder, and set his cake in the corner where
it would do most damage. The men on the roof had seen him,
and in a rain of badly aimed bullets he lighted the fuse and, to
use his own phrase, " ran like a rabbit." His Sikh companion in
his excitement caught his rifle, to which the bayonet was attached,
between a wooden pillar and the hand-rail of the stairs, thus
completely barring the descent. Fuses used by storming-parties
are, naturally, short, and the stage directions for the descent of
O'Connor and his man would have : " exeunt confusedly." Pick-
ing themselves up at the bottom they made for the door, which,
however, they did not reach before the explosion took place.
O'Connor never has given a very lucid description of the moment,
but the fact that in his inside pocket a thick cut-glass flask was
smashed to pieces by the shock shows that his escape was a nar-
row one indeed. Sheppard outside saw with horror half of one
of the walls of the house subside in yellow dust before a sign of
O'Connor was visible at the doorway.

Soon after this a second attempt of Garstin's was more success-
ful, but in the absence of any support, the position of the little
storming-parties was dangerous indeed. Soon afterward, as we

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 165

were to hear with the deepest regret, Garstin was killed outright,
and O'Connor was seriously wounded by a ball through the
shoulder, before safe quarters could be taken up. In fact, these
exposed sections suffered all the more serious casualties of the
day, and in number no less than eight out of a total of eleven.

As soon as it was light enough, the guns on the little hill opened
fire upon the still strongly held houses to the east of the village,
and Major Peterson showed great gallantry in bringing up his
Pioneers through the gardens and houses, taking each by storm in
turn. The fighting was severe, for with the rising of the sun the
Tibetans found themselves caught without the chance of escape.
The jong lay 1,200 yards away, but to reach it fugitives were
obliged to cross an entirely coverless plain. Their fellows in the
town could be of little assistance to them. One plucky attempt on
the part of a score of mounted men was, indeed, made, but the
enterprise was hopeless; riding straight into the zone swept by
the Maxims, hardly three of them escaped back. Nor did the
bombardment, which the jong opened at the first streak of light,
help the defenders of the village. With an impartial hand the
gunners showered their balls upon friend and foe alike, and to
this cannonade some at least of the Tibetan casualties among the
crowded houses of Pala must have been due. A stout defense
against overwhelming odds was made for a short time; but as
the morning wore on, the Tibetans abandoned their loop-holes
and their windows, and fled to their labyrinth of underground
cellars, where they crouched in the darkness, and with their
matchlocks ready, formed a far more formidable antagonist than
in the open air. The place was practically cleared by one o'clock,
though for two or three days afterward a considerable number
of undiscovered Tibetans crept quietly away under cover of the
darkness of the night.

In the center of the village was a large and comfortable house,
owned by the Pala family, one of the most aristocratic stocks

1 66 THE OPENING OF TIBET

in Tibet. Besides a well-built three-storied house, there was
also the usual little summer-house beneath the trees of the
garden. The excellent workmanship of the few things, such as
tea-pots and brass images, which were found in the house gave
proof of the luxury of its late occupants, A more significant
find, however, was the discovery of two heavy jingals in the
cellars. It is a little difficult to account for their presence.
They had certainly not been brought there recently, and it is
curious that the Tibetans in bringing guns even from Lhasa
itself, for the purpose of bombarding our post, should have over-
looked within a mile of Gyantse two pieces throwing a ball as
heavy as those which they had laboriously transported from a
distance. The larger of the two guns weighed over four hun-
dred pounds, the diameter of its bore was three inches, and the
outside was curiously fluted. It was made of gun-metal, and
altogether seemed serviceable enough for the limited ballistic
requirements of Tibetans.

The village was occupied by a detachment of the Pioneers,
whose exploits were recognized in their Colonel's orders on the
following day. It is perhaps a pity that the work of the storm-
ing-parties did not receive acknowledgment, though the sur-
vivors of them, wounded or not, were the last people to notice
the omission. It was a good piece of work, and Colonel Brander
is to be congratulated. The delay of even twenty-four hours
in capturing this village might have made a serious difference
to the defense of Chang-lo, and when the Tibetans had once
been driven out the fullest use was made by us of this second
point d'appui.

The situation created by the capture of Pala was briefly this :
the English force was placed in a strong position with regard to.
the jong; we were enabled to cut the communications of the
Tibetans eastward, and, by holding the bridge at Chang-lo itself,
communication with the south was only possible after the river

THE DALAI LAMA SHOWS HIS HAND 167

had risen by going five miles down stream to the bridge at
Tse-chen. We had for some time been able to keep the Tibetans
under cover all the day; a few sharp-shooters and Lieutenant
Hadow, with an itching thumb upon the trigger-lever of his
Maxim, had long made it impossible for any Tibetan to show
himself by daylight on any part of the jong, or in so much
of the town as was visible from the roof of the Commissioner's
house. But we had hitherto of course been unable to stop steady
communication with Lhasa by night. Now, however, we were
astride the road, and an occasional patrol was all that was neces-
sary to prevent the Tibetans holding any communication with
their capital, except by the circuitous and difficult track, which
could only be followed by retreating thirty miles down the valley
of the Nyang chu.

On our side we were still surrounded, and it was a daily
uncertainty every morning whether our thin line of communi-
cations would have continued to exist through the night. We
were therefore in a curious situation, both sides besieging the
other; and the word investment (which was generally used to
describe our position) is not perhaps strictly accurate. The hon-
ors were pretty evenly divided ; neither the Tibetans nor we were
able to storm the others' defenses; a mutual fusillade compelled
each side to protect its occupants by an elaborate system of trav-
erses ; and straying beyond the narrow limits of the fortifications
was, on either side, severely discouraged by the other. The Tib-
etans had, however, two considerable advantages. They were
fighting in their own country, and in numbers they probably ex-
ceeded us by ten to one. For them, every village or house that
dotted the wide plain round us was a refuge, and might also be-
come a post from which to operate against us. The loss of a few
men now and then mattered little to them; they had the whole
of Tibet from which to make good their casualties, and from
almost the same wide recruiting ground reinforcements crept

1 68 THE OPENING OF TIBET

in nightly in small companies. Sometimes in the past they had
ventured in during the daylight, bent double, running from
cover to cover like hares, now waiting for a quarter of an hour
behind a friendly overhanging bank, now making quick time
to the shelter of a white-washed chorten, or a ruined wall. But
our success at Pala made a great difference to the relative po-
sitions of ourselves and the Tibetans.

CHAPTER X

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST

AT Gyantse, from dawn till sunset, there was generally a
AIL breeze. Except for an hour or two in the white heat of
mid-day the lightly strung leaves of the branching Lombardy
poplars in the compound were every moment shifting edge-ways
to the faint indraft from the plain, and, overhead, the long strings
of prayer-flags, orange and faded gray and gauzy chrome, rocked
gently in the stirring air. Silent the post never was by day,
not even in the motionless glare of noontide when the wind was
stifled and the heat sweated out from the wide empty plains,
a teeming mirage veil. These were the hours which the shrill
whistle of the kite or the monotone of the hoopoe filled — hours
when the petty restlessness of a camp, even in the hour of siesta,
assumed ear-compelling importance. Never during the day
could one hear the faint rush and race of the Nyang chu over
its pebbles a hundred yards away. At night there was no other
sound.

Gyantse under the stars will remain an impressive memory
for every one in the little post at Chang-lo. Perhaps the picture
of the nights there is worth giving so far as one can. Close
behind the fortified parapet of the Commissioner's house the
trees stood up with their sable branches sharply etched against
the powdered spaces of the night sky. One had to look upward
at them to be sure that it was not, indeed, their rustling, but the
voice of the river that hushed the silence and was itself muted
by the distant bark of a dog or the lifted heel-chain of a rest-

169

I70 THE OPENING OF TIBET

less mule in the lines below. Far behind, straightly ascending
like a column of phosphorescent smoke, the Milky Way ribbed
the sky to the south-southwest. Beneath it, the heavy sloping
buttress of the redoubt stood out boldly, the outer angle cutting
sharply across the line of the river as it flowed westward in its
shadowy channel, only a little brighter than the sky, till a curve
carried it behind the thin fringe of sallows, where all day the
rosefinches chattered in a crowd.

Looking downward over the sand-bags, the thick tangle of
the nearest abattis is barely seen, and beyond it the plain is only
certainly broken by an acre patch of iris, or by the darkness
under a clump of trees. These, uncertain in the gloom below,
are blackly silhouetted above, over the outline of the distant hills
which are clear against the sky of the horizon round; for in
these pure altitudes the stars invisibly assert themselves, and
interstellar space has a half-latent illumination of its own, against
which the peaks and saddles of these Himalayan spurs are better
defined than on a moonlight night. At the end of the parapet
is a sheeted Maxim, and beside its muzzle the motionless sentry
looks out into the night toward the jong. All day long the
high rock and its forts, clean cut in the bright air, have towered
up against the ash and ocher of the distant mountains, scored
and scarred with sharp water channels, cut fan-wise by a thou-
sand of the brief rains of these high uplands. Six hours ago
every stone of it could be counted ; now it had vanished and the
blank levels run to the foot of the distant ranges. Other fa-
miliar things but a few yards away — a worn foot-path, a clay
drinking-trough, or a half up-rooted tree-stump — have vanished
with the jong. Pala village is faintly betrayed in the distance
by its whitened walls, but even of that there is no certainty.
Six hundred yards to the front the position of the Gurkha Post
is only distinguished by the trees which cut the sky line over it.

As one peers out into the warm night, a long monotone is

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 171

faintly droned from the darkness ahead. It is one of the huge
■conch shells in the jong and it may only mean a call to prayer
—the " hours " of Lamaism are unending— but as the moaning
note persists softly and steadily, a vivid speck of flame stabs
the darkness across the river. A second later the report of
the gun accompanies a prolonged " the-e-es " overhead. There
is another and another, and the balls chase each other through
the trees. The Tibetans are out for the night. A heavy fire
breaks out for two or three hundred yards along the further
hank, the neater crack of the European rifles in their possession
blending with the heavy explosion of matchlocks an inch in bore,
and the malicious swish of the conical bullets with the drone of
leaden lumps.

The sentry moves inward shadow-like and rouses an oflicer
sleeping in a corner of the parapet. It is only a word or two,
** Water-gate, sir." As the fire increases, the garrison, a ghostly
company of half-seen men, move silently and mechanically to
their posts from their beds behind the traverses. After a little,
• the officer of the watch comes round and one hears a few whis-
pered words in the compound below. But this has happened
so often, night after night, that there is not much to do; the
defenses are manned without question needed or answer given.
A minute or two later there is hardly a change to be noted in the.
quietness of the post, except for the wail of the bullets over-
head, and the occasional inevitable cough of the awakened Se-
poys. But the post is ready from end to end, and the oflftcer
at his Maxim traverses her snub muzzle once or twice to see
that she runs easily.

The conch drones again from the hidden jong. Nothing is
easier now than to people the darkness with creeping figures.
One seems to have seen them — one always seems too late actually
to see them — here and there in the obscurity, but the small force
betraying its front by the flashes across the river is the only

172 THE OPENING OF TIBET

certain thing. These men keep up a persistent but useless fire,
though not a shot is returned. The spots of flame jerk out of
the night along a widening front, but there is no sign of an
advance, and, failing to draw any response from us, the aimless
fusillade slackens after a time. From the enemy's position,
Chang-lo must seem a sleeping, almost a deserted, post. But the
Tibetans have been taught a severe lesson time after time, and
they will not easily come on. Two or three, indeed, of their
hardiest come right up to the other side of the bridge and, at
a range of sixty yards, fire straight into the mud walls of the
water-gate. There is a rifle muzzle out of every loophole that
commands the bridge, of which the seven sagging bays may
just be seen against the dim stream from a corner of the re-
doubt. But not a sound of life is betrayed. The Tibetan
" braves " fire half-a-dozen shots along the roadway and then go
back to urge on their reluctant followers. There is a momentary
increase in the firing, but the sparks of flame have not moved up
a yard, and the faint sound dies down again into silence. It is
difficult to convince oneself that anything has happened, so com-
pletely has the night swallowed up everything except the chuckle
of the river over its stones.

After a lull of twenty minutes it is clear that no attack is
^o be brought, at least against the central post. There was per-
haps no real intention on the part of the Tibetans to follow
up their volleys ;• we are much too strong and they know it ; their
real object is disclosed as we watch. Round the detached Gur-
kha posts the darkness is suddenly pierced by a hundred tongues
of flame, and upon the rattle of the muskets, a babel of excited
shouting follows. The enemy have surrounded the house.
Again and again the Tibetan war-cry is caught up. It is like
nothing in the world so much as the quick and staccato yell
of a jackal pack, and it carries for two miles on a still night.
One from another the Tibetans take up the weird cadences in

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 173

an uprising falsetto, reviving and again reviving the hubbub
whenever there seems any chance of its dying down. But the
Gurkha house is mute, though its walls re-echo with the din.
Then the Tibetans adopt another course. Shouting together
in groups, they pour forth challenges and contempt upon the
little garrison of forty or fifty Gurkhas. One or two swagger-
ers come up within fifty yards of the very loopholes and scream
out a flood of foul abuse. There is never a word or a shot in
reply, and the braves retire. The fire re-opens and the enemy
advance a little. Even the most timid Tibetan takes heart and
looses off his piece a little less wildly.

Inside the post, the Gurkhas stand aside in the darkness be-
side their loopholes, through which a bullet whizzes every now
and then, burying itself in the mud wall opposite. Two men keep
watch for the rest, and Mewa, the jemadar, bides his time till
he has word from them. The war-cry breaks out again, rising
and falling like the bellowing falsetto of the mules' lines at
feeding time, and the Tibetans grow confident and move for-
ward, until a dim ring of them can just be seen from inside
the post. The fire re-doubles, and a Gurkha is hit in the neck,
but still there is not a sign of life about the house. The excite-
ment of watching this attack from the roof of the post is as fresh
to-night as if it were the first time we were seeing one.

There must be about a thousand of the enemy. From Chang-lo
we can hear them chattering and shrieking together, keeping
their courage up with noise. One thinks of the fate that awaits
every soul in that little garrison should they be caught unawares
some night, and one blesses the foolishness of the noisy Tibetans.

But the time is almost ripe. Mewa takes the place of one
of his watchmen and looks down keenly through the dark. Af-
ter a while, he is reluctantly convinced that the enemy cannot
be induced to come forward again for some time, and he knows
that the strain on his men has become severe. There is sud-

174 THE OPENING OF TIBET

denly a movement among twenty or thirty Tibetans ; they move
round almost out of sight for a rush at the stake-protected door.
From the parapet, we can hear a quick double whistle. It is the
awaited signal, for the Gurkha post will risk no storming-party.

In a moment there is pandemonium. From every window and
loophole, and from between the sand-bags and through the crev-
ices on the roof, a burst of Maxim-like fire is poured into the
misty ring of men, which envelops the building, and the air aches
with the incessant snap of the rifle and the very short scream
of the bullet. In another moment all is over. The Tibetans
have broken and are flying into the night, leaving five or six
dead behind them. Their road back to the jong lies flat and free
before them, and they never look back. The Maxim fire has
stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Silence falls upon every-
thing as before. Only the first rays of the rising moon strike
full upon the upper terraces and towers of the jong, and the mass
of it emerges from the distant darkness edged with silver and
strangely near. It is still some two hours before sunrise, but
as the moon frees herself from behind the hills to the east,
the first faint ripple stirs the leaves overhead, and the silence of
the night is lost.

After the sun had risen the day became monotonous, and
the monotony was repeated daily, from week's end to week's
end. Even the poor interest of watching the first appearance
of the vegetables in the garden palled. There was a day when
nine little green points promised nine bean plants to come.
Day after day added two or three to this number, but after
the appearance of thirty-eight, there was not only a cessation
of further evidence of fertility, but a lamentable check in the
development of the plants already above ground. At one time
the peas, two little square plots planted with a generosity of seed
which would have scandalized Messrs. Sutton, arose in ranks
almost in a single night, and a few days afterward were about

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 175

three inches in height. Captain Walton, to whose hands the
Mission had intrusted this responsible duty, assured us that
all was going well. Both the beans and peas were, he assured
us, of a dwarf variety. Indeed, he seemed to suggest, with
apparent self-conviction, that had these two plots exhibited any
further intention of growth he would have despaired of the
dishes we were looking forward to. The carrots made no at-
tempt to justify their credit, except in a prodigious growth of
green feathery leaves. To them, and to the radishes, one fault
was common. Where one expected to find the best part, a thin
leather-bootlace-like root descended weedily into our carefully
prepared loam. Nor, so far as I was ever able to ascertain, was
a single dish of any vegetable, except mustard-and-cress, pro-
duced from our carefully tended and certainly Eve-less garden.

There was very little to do from morn to night. Captain
Ryder planned the defenses of the post. Construction and
demolition were alike in his hands; and the ultimate result of
his care and technical skill was quaintly embodied one day by
Colonel Brander in a sentence in the orders, — Si monumentum
quaeris, circumspice. The original phrase referred, indeed, to
a structure which served as a tomb, nor perhaps was the quota-
tion strictly accurate, but Colonel Brander's intention was de-
lightfully clear, and every soul in the garrison of each one of
the many races there represented most cordially echoed the
phrase.

The direction from which most danger was to be expected
was that of the jong. Every morning and every afternoon the
usual bombardment broke out. It is possible that the Tibetans
had secured some knowledge of the hours during which, from
one reason or another, there was generally more movement in-
side the post than at other times. The free intercourse which
the Tibetan visitors to Kamba-jong enjoyed must, at least, have
taught them something of our habits, and, without doubt, they

176 THE OPENING OF TIBET

made whatever use they could of this information. We early-
received news that the Teling Kusho was directing operations.
He had been allowed to see a good deal of us at Kamba.

There was one thing in connection with this bombardment
which may throw some light upon the ability of beleaguered
garrisons in old days to hold their own until starvation com-
pelled them to surrender. The fact that the report of a gun
of an ancient pattern invariably precedes the ball was, we found,
of the most invaluable assistance. There was always time to go
four yards at least under cover of the nearest traverse before
the ball crashed into the compound. There was one jingal, how-
ever, which was christened " Chota Billy," which only allowed
three yards and in extreme cases of over-charge of powder only
two. The naming of the bigger guns mounted on the jong was
curious. From a large jingal, throwing a ball four inches in
circumference, and immediately receiving the name of Billy,
two Chota Billies, one big Billy, and finally two Williams suc-
cessively took their names. In all, there may have been at most
nineteen guns mounted on the jong, of a bore ranging from
one inch to three and three-quarter inches. All of them ranged
easily some two or three hundred yards beyond Chang-lo. Wil-
liam, the heaviest of all, would sometimes kick up the dust
600 yards in our rear, and 2,400 yards from the jong; that is
to say, from 800 to 1,000 yards beyond the post was the utmost
range of any gun, except one of the two Chota Billies, which
at a pinch could reach the bridge at the end of the wood 2,800
yards from the gun positions of the rock.

But most of their missiles fell short. The ground immedi-
ately in front of Chang-lo was scarred and seamed with hun-
dreds and even thousands of futile jingal balls which had
dropped uselessly into the " football field " or the field outside.
Only eight or ten of their best weapons threw projectiles with
accuracy and certainty. The others heaved their muzzles up

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 177

into the sky and trusted that elevation would counteract econ-
omy of powder and the amazing escape of gas all round the
ill-fitting bullet. Bigger guns made an astonishing report, and
a second and a half later a lump of lead from William, as big
as a Tangerine orange, would moan through the air, sometimes
with unpleasant accuracy whipping down into the compound,
or sometimes tearing its way through the high trees over our
heads. Altogether about four men were killed by these mis-,
shapen projectiles, which looked like sections of a solid lead bar
with the edges roughly filed down. At first lead alone was used,
but the appearance among us of balls composed of a heavy stone
wrapped with lead suggested that the supply was running short.
Later on, this surmise was justified, for a curious substitute for
lead was found in the use of pure copper. During the last two
weeks of the siege lumps of this glittering red-gold metal were
used almost as constantly as those of more humble material.

At one time the Tibetans adopted the principle of firing vol-
leys. At a given signal fourteen or fifteen guns were fired in a
ragged feu de joie. There was little additional danger to us
even from the first of these concerted pieces. But it is clear that
to follow such a volley by another, five minutes afterward, was
sheer waste of ammunition. Still, almost everything in the
post which could be struck was struck. Tents, sand-bags, trav-
erses, house-walls, and trees were pounded alike. The trees
suffered most; the Tibetans never seemed to be perfectly certain
of the direction of any ball unless it betrayed its billet a hun-
dred yards in front of our defenses. Naturally, therefore, in
order at least to insure that no such obvious failure of aim
should be noted against them by the Commandant, they preferred
to elevate their guns at an angle which often only resulted in a
shower of twigs and leaves from the lofty poplars over our heads.

In those trees the kites whistled and the ravens croaked all day.
Both species were twice the size of ravens and kites elsewhere.

178 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Captain Walton would not admit that this enormous difference
in size justified him in setting them down as a new species, but
the practical results of having these double-powered scavengers
probably contributed in no small degree to our comfort. Outside
our defenses the unclaimed pi-dogs roamed all day and howled
nearly all the night. By day they were probably engaged in
unearthing the long-buried limbs of some wretched Tibetan
killed during the attack upon the post on May 5th. By night
they seemed to be disputing among themselves the possession of
the disgusting spoils they had secured during the day. At one
time Colonel Brander arranged for the destruction of some scores
of these parasites. But this was found to be a somewhat dan-
gerous proceeding when carried out within half a mile of the
camp. Two charges of attempted assassination were brought by
a person of no small importance in the post, and, though these
cases were smilingly dismissed, there was undoubtedly a certain
element of danger in permitting this indiscriminate dog-slaughter
with rifles which were capable of inflicting serious harm at a
range of 4,000 yards. So the dogs were permitted to grout in
the ground as they liked, and as a set-off against the intolerable
nuisance of their howls by night, it was remembered that they
might perhaps thereby give us useful warning of any second
attempt on the part of the Tibetans to creep up in the darkness
of a moonless night.

Of the dogs within the defenses " Tim " was perhaps the best
known, and certainly in his own eyes the most important. He
was an Irish terrier belonging, so far as any dog very certainly
belonged to any one there, to Captain Cullen, but the members of
the Mission, making a contemptible use of the few occasional tit-
bits which were found in their mess-boxes, successfully seduced
him away from his true allegiance for some time. Of other
dogs mention must be made of " Mr. Jackson," a little beauty of
an Irish terrier, who we were assured enjoyed every minute of

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 179

his life in spite of a permanently dislocated shoulder. He un-
doubtedly limped, and he evfen more certainly enjoyed life; but
we could not help hoping that some mistake had been made in
the diagnosis of his complaint. " Major Wimberley," a fearsome
hound, had undoubtedly bull-dog and fox-terrier as his chief
ingredients, but it was difficult finally to exclude his claims to
any other breed of dog, except perhaps a greyhound or Pekinese
pug. I do not remember what the real name of this entirely
attractive dog was, but he used to go, on the below-stairs princi-
ple, by his master's name, and I am sorry that no photograph I
possess seems to include his sober countenance. " The Lama "
was a snarling, bad-tempered little beast, who produced a litter
of pups of such appalling vulgarity and ugliness that, in spite
of the real need which we then had of the companionship of
even an animal, they were drowned by her native owner without
a protest from any one.

To many it may seem unnecessary, and perhaps silly, to make
even this passing reference to the dogs that shared our captivity.
But without going more deeply into the matter, I would only
say that a critic should experience even the slight investment
which it was our lot to undergo before he speaks slightingly of
the right of a dog to grateful recollection.

For the rest, one day succeeded another without change, and
except for the uncertainty of the arrival of the daily post, with-
out variety. There was little actual danger, but we were of
course restricted to the narrow limits of the defended posts for
the greater part of the time of the investment. Toward the end,
when we had secured and were holding Pala village and the
Gurkha post, and after Sheppard had constructed his covered
ways between us and them, more exercise was possible. But
for the greater part of the time we could not stray beyond our
own perimeter, and that in itself became somewhat of a burden.
Perhaps the want of exercise contributed in no small degree to

i8o THE OPENING OF TIBET

the irritation caused by this sense of captivity, but whatever the
cause, an observant man might at times have noticed a shght
tendency toward what we believe was called, in Ladysmith,
" siege temper." In fact, with the exception — and in justice I
must say the absolute exception — of Colonel Younghusband him-
self and Captain Sheppard, there was hardly any one in the little
force who was entirely free from a touch of this pardonable
frailty.

It is a pity that there were not more men with the force who
were able to sketch. The most rudimentary skill in color would
have found scope indeed at Gyantse. As it was, there was hardly
a paint-box in the force, if we except the little old-fashioned
cakes of color which officially provide for the sappers the reds
and grays and ochers needed for their plans. However, even
had there been more skill and better equipment, there would have
been little time for the mere work of the artist. It is perhaps
worth while to try to catch in words a little of what the finest
photograph must fail utterly to record.

The color of Tibet has no parallel in the world. Nowhere,
neither in Egypt, nor in South Africa, nor even in places of such
local reputation as Sydney, or Calcutta, or Athens, is there such
a constancy of beauty, night and morning alike, as there is in
this fertile plain inset in the mountain backbone of the world.
Here there is a range and a quality in both light and color which
cannot be rendered by the best of colored plates, but which must
always be remembered if the dry bones of figure and fact are to
be properly conceived.

During the mid-hours of a summer day, Tibet is perhaps not
unlike the rest of the dry tropical zone. Here, as elsewhere, the
fierce Oriental sun scares away the softer tints, and the shrinking
and stretching shadows of the white hours are too scanty to
relieve the mirage and the monotony. All about Chang-lo the
contemptuous shoulders of the shadeless mountains stand blank

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST i8i

and unwelcoming. All along the plain as far as the eye can see
the stretches of iris or barley and the plantations of willow-thorn
are dulled into eucalyptus gray by the dust; the trees lift them-
selves dispirited, and the faint droop of every blade and every
leaf tires the eye with unconscious sympathy. Far off along the
Shigatse road a pack-mule shuffles along, making in sheer weari-
ness as much dust as the careless hoofs of a bullock, that dustiest
of beasts. One does not look at the houses. The sun beats off
their coarse and strong grained whitewash, and one can hardly
believe that they are the same dainty buildings of pearl-gray or
rose-pink that one watched as they faded out of sight with the
sunset yesterday evening. Everything shivers behind the crawl-
ing skeins of mirage. There is no strength, there are no out-
lines to anything in the plain, and even the hard thorn trees in
the plantation are flaccid. As one passes underneath them a kite
or two dives downward from the branches. He will disturb
little dust as he moves, for your kite mistrusts a new perch, and
the bough he sits on must be leafless both for the traverse of his
outlook, and for the clear oarage of his wide wings. Also, you
may be sure he has been to and fro fifty times to-day. See him
settle a hundred yards away near that ugly significant heap of
dirty maroon cloth, and mark the dust thrown forward by the
thrashing brake-stroke of his great wings. It hangs in a petty
cloud still when we have come up to him and driven him away
in indignation for a little space.

Under foot the dwarf clematis shuts in from the midday heat
its black snake-head flowers, and the young shoots of the jasmine
turn the backs of their tender leaflets to the sun, drooping a little
as they do so. Veronica is there in stunted little bushes ; vetches,
rest-harrows, and dwarf indigo-like plants swarm along the sides
of the long dry water channels; and here and there, where the
ditch runs steep, you may find, along toward the southern face,
what looks for all the world like a thickly strewn bank of violets.

i82 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Violets of course they are not, but the illusion is perfect, in color,
growth, and size alike. Near them tall fresh-looking docks have
found a wet stratum deep below the dusty irrigation cut, and
away in a sopping water meadow by the river stunted Himalayan
primulas make a cloudy carpet of pink.

Late in the afternoon the change begins. Details of flowers
and fields and trees vanish — and surely one is content to lose
them in the scene that follows. First, the light pall of pure blue
which has all day gauzed over the end of the valley toward
Dongtse deepens into ultramarine ash. Then, in a few minutes
as it seems, the fleeces of white and silver in the west have gath-
ered weight, and a mottled company of argent and silver-gray
and cyanine heaps itself across the track of the setting sun. The
sky deepens from blue to amber without a transient tint of green,
and the red camp-fires whiten as the daylight fades. But the
true sunset is not yet. After many minutes comes the sight
which is perhaps Tibet's most exquisite and peculiar gift: the
double glory of the east and west alike, and the rainbow confu-
sion among the wide waste of white mountain ranges.

For ten minutes the sun will fight a path clear of his clouds
and a luminous ray sweeps down the valley, lighting up the un-
suspected ridges and blackening the lurking hollows of the hills.
This is no common light. The Tibetans themselves have given
it a name of its own, and indeed the gorse-yellow blaze which
paints its shadows myrtle-green underneath the deepened indigo
of the sky defies description and deserves a commemorative
phrase for itself alone. But the strange thing is still to come.
A quick five-fingered aurora of rosy light arches over the sky,
leaping from east to west as one gazes overhead. The fingers
converge again in the east, where a growing splendor shapes it-
self to welcome them on the horizon's edge.^

^ Travelers have more than once referred to this curious phenomenon,
and the Tibetans have a word, "Ting-pa," for this rosy and cloudless beam
also.

LIFE IN THE BESIEGED POST 183

Then comes the dimax of the transformation scene. While
the carmine is still over-arching the sky, on either side the horizon
deepens to a still darker shade, and the distant hills stand out
against it with uncanny sharpness, iridescent for all the world
like a jagged and translucent scale of mother-of-pearl lighted
from behind. Above them the ravines and the ridges are alike
lost, and in their place mantles a pearly underplay of rose-petal
pink and eau-de-nil green, almost moving as one watches. Then
the slowly developed tints tire and grow dull ; the quick evening
gloom comes out from the plain, and a sharp little wind from
the southeast is the herald of the stars.

These sunsets are as unlike the " cinnamon, amber, and dun "
of South Africa as the high crimson, gold-flecked curtains of
Egypt, or the long contrasting belts of the western sky in mid-
ocean. So peculiar are they to this country that they have as
much right to rank as one of its characteristic features as Lamaic
superstition, or the " bos grunniens " itself ; and to leave them
unmentioned, however imperfect and crude the suggestion may
be, would be to cover up the finest page of the book which is
only now after many centuries opened to the world. That alone
is my excuse for attempting what every man in this expedition
knows in his heart to be impossible.

CHAPTER XI
religion: manners and customs: art

IN Tibet the line of division between the layman and the priest
is sharply drawn indeed. The domestic life of the country,
its government, its cultivation and even, in some degree, its com-
merce, all are colored to a greater or less extent by the strange
religion centered in the divine person of the Grand Lama of
Lhasa; and the line of honorable demarcation, so far as persons
are concerned, permits of no mistake. If a man is a layman he
belongs to an inferior caste; however high his rank he does but
the more point the contrasts which exist between the rulers and
the ruled. The Lamaic hierarchy have succeeded in creating a
religious caste unparalleled in the world.

What that religion is, demands therefore more than a passing
notice. There is, or rather there has hitherto been, a belief that
the Buddhism of Tibet is a lawful descendant of the Buddhism
which the Master preached beneath the pipuls of Bengal. Ex-
travagant it was known to be; it was obvious that it had become
incrusted in ritual, and both adorned and humbled by traditions ;
it was clear also that for the common folk the letter had almost
killed the spirit, and the use by the priests of their sacred posi-
tion to secure entire tyranny over the laymen had not escaped
notice. But after all, the same things, each and all of them in
some form or another, are to-day true of Christianity also. And
yet the flame of Christianity, however strange or tawdry the
shrine, burns perhaps as steadily to-day as ever it did. This

ever-ready parallel— one which the student carries with him

184

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 185

almost unconsciously to the consideration of Buddhism — has ob-
scured the truth.

But the Buddhism of Tibet has no longer the faintest resem-
blance to the plain austere creed which Gautama preached. It
is doubtful if the great Founder of Buddhism would recognize in
its forms or formulae any trace of the purity and sobriety of his
own high creed. It is hard to say whether he would be more
offended by the golden cooking-pots of the Potala palace or by
the awful self-mortification of the immured monks of Nyen-de-
kyi-buk and other extreme hermitages. Except in so far as that
Buddha's face of quietism personified still gazes down from wall
and altar upon the rites of Lamaism, that religion can claim little
connection with the faith upon which their reputation and power
are wholly based. Under a thin mask of names and personifica-
tions suggested by the records of the Master, or by the reforms
effected by Asanga, a system of devil-worship pure and simple
reigns in Tibet; the monkish communities spare no effort to
establish their predominance more firmly every year by fostering
the slavish terror which is the whole attitude toward religion of
the ignorant classes of the land. The wretched tiller of the soil
is always the ultimate supporter of a religious tyranny, because
in a manufacturing community the faculties, and a sense of inde-
pendence, are necessarily developed too strongly for its tolera-
tion; but of all such superstitious servitudes the unhappy
" miser " of Tibet supplies us to-day with the classical example.
Not even the darkest days of the Papal States, nor the most big-
oted years of Puritan rule in New England, not the intolerance
of Genevan Calvinism, not Islam itself can afford an example of
such utter domination by an abuse of the influence upon men of
their religious terrors. The line between religion and supersti-
tion may be a fine one and hard to place. But wherever it may
be drawn the Buddhist of Tibet has long crossed it.

From a political point of view, the importance of the religion

i86 THE OPENING OF TIBET

of any country lies less in its moral or ethical excellence than in
the extent to which it exerts a real influence upon the lives of its
professing members and in the use or misuse of that influence
in the government of the country. Apart, therefore, from the ac-
tual doctrine or ritual of this so-called Buddhism, the degree to'
which it enters into the public and private life of the Tibetans is
worth studying. It may be said at once that, so far at least as the
lower classes are concerned, it is paramount: no other influence
is of the slightest importance. But whether that influence de-
serves to be called religious is another matter. The distinction
between northern and southern Buddhism is one which is far
more than geographical. The common people of Burma and
Siam still apply the standards of Gaya to their daily life, but
northern Buddhism has long abandoned, except in name, the
Indian faith. In their vain repetitions and mechanical aids to
self-salvation, in their gaudy and frequently obscene ritual, in
their hells full of demon spirits and fearsome semi-gods, Bud-
dha's simple creed has long been dead. The doctrine of reincar-
nation, rather implied than taught by him, is still politically use-
ful, and therefore remains as almost the sole link which still
connects the two Churches. Brushing aside the films of ritual
and the untruthful suggestions of tradition, one finds in Lama-
ism little but sheer animistic devil-worship.

To the Tibetans, every place is peopled with the active agents
of a supernatural malice. Always in this country — at the sum-
mit of a pass, at the entrance of a village, at a cleft in the rock-
side, at the crossing of a stream by bridge or ford — one is ac-
customed to find the flicker of a rain-washed string of flags, a
fluttering prayer-pole, or a gaily decked brush of ten-foot willow
sprigs; evil spirits must be exorcised at every turn in the road.
Wells, lakes and running streams also are full of demons who
visit with floods and hailstorms the slightest infraction of the
lamas' rules. Tibet is peopled with as many bogies as the most

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 187

terrified child in England can conjure up in the darkness of its
bed-room. A natural cave, a chink beneath a boulder, a farm-
stead, the row of willows beside an irrigation channel, or the low
mill house at the end of them, a doorway or a chorten — every
habitation of man teems with these unseen terrors. The spilling
of the milk upon the hearth-stone needs its special expiation, and
the birth and death of men are naturally perhaps made the oppor-
tunity of securing oblations from the people of the land. For
there is but one way of exorcising these powers of ill. Prayers
are not of themselves the defenses of the poor in Tibet ; they can
only be lively and effectual when sanctioned by the priest; and
the fluttering prayer-flag, the turning-wheel, or the muttered
ejaculation is valid only after due consultation at the local gompa.
And not a pole is set up, not a string of flags pulled taut, not a
water-wheel or a wind-wheel set in motion without the payment
of the customary fee. The priestly tax is not paid in money
alone. The labors of the people's hands are g.t the disposal of
the ruling caste. The corvee is known in Tibet as it was known
in ancient Egypt, and no feudal seigniory of the Dark Ages in
Europe ever exacted its full rights as mercilessly as this narrow
sect of self-indulgent priests.

Invariably there will be found outside a house four things.
The first is the prayer-pole or the horizontal sag of a line of
moving squares of gauze ; the second is a broken teapot of earth-
enware from which rises the cheap incense of burnt juniper twigs
—a smell which demons cannot abide ; the third, a nest of worsted
rigging, shaped like a cobweb and set about with colored linen
tags, catkins, leaves, sprigs and little blobs of willow often crown-
ing the skull of a dog or sheep. The eyes are replaced by hid-
eous projecting balls of glass and a painted crown-vallary rings
it round. Hither the spirits of disease within the house are help-
lessly attracted, and smallpox, the scourge of Tibet, may never
enter there. Last of all is the white and blue swastika or fylfot.

i88 THE OPENING OF TIBET

surmounted by a rudely drawn symbol of the sun and moon.
This sign marks every main doorway in the country.^

Other more public charms against evil are the chortens or
cairns which piety or terror has set up at small intervals along
the road to be a continual nuisance to the impious traveler. Like
the " islands " in Piccadilly or the Strand, they may only be
passed to the left, and their position on the edge of a cliff often
renders this in one direction a hazardous proceeding. There are,
of course, no carts or wheeled vehicles of any kind in Tibet, or
this superstition would long ago have become extinguished
through sheer necessity. As it is, the chorten remains till the
cliff itself falls, but to the last there is generally foothold on
which to climb round the outside of a cairn. It may be noted as
a psychological curiosity that, after living in the country for a
few months, the least thoughtful man in the force usually adopted
this superstition as he walked along, though, of course, when rid-
ing it is not unnatural for Englishmen.

Here and there one finds long walls, composed for the most
part of inscribed stones; these mendangs or manis represent the
accretions of many years, and some in Tibet are reported to be
half a mile in length. They do not, however, assume the impor-
tance in the province of U that they possess farther to the west.
To other pious memorials also the passer-by adds his contribution
of a stone. A few white pebbles of quartzite carefully selected

* A good deal of inaccurate statement has been made about the swastika.
To nothing did I pay more attention than in noting the color and shape of re-
ligious emblems as we penetrated deeper and deeper into the country. It is
said that the swastika which revolves to the right is consecrated to the use
of orthodox Buddhists of whatever school, and that the swastika which kicks
in the other direction, that is to say which revolves to the left, is used only by
the Beun-pa, the aboriginal devil-worshipers, whose faith was ousted by the
adoption of Buddhism. This is not borne out by the relative frequency of
position of the two swastikas in Tibet. The left-handed swastika {i.e., that
which turns to the dexter) is, if anything, the commoner of the two, and the
commonest use of this symbol is in the opposition of the two kinds : thus the
two halves of a doorway, or the pattern of a rug, will generally offer an ex-
ample of the two kinds confronted.

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 189

from the neighboring stone-strewn field will acquire for him no
small merit if heaped together in a little pyramid, or piled with
careful balance one on the top of another. Prayer-wheels offer
their fluted axles to the hand of the traveler in long rows, hung
up conveniently beside the wall of a house. The poorest may
thus accumulate merit. I have before referred to the use of
prayer-wheels, but it may be added here that besides the hand-
turned wheels and those moved by water, the principle of the
anemometer has long been known for the purposes of Lamaic
devotion, and the essential principle of the turbine is found in
little gauze-sided stoves which drive a tiny rotating tun by hot
air forced through a spiral.

The walls of the merest hovels are plastered with yellow paper
charms; and round their necks the people carry amulet boxes,
without which no Tibetan ventures far. These are packed with
a cheap little image of clay, a few grains of sanctified wheat, two
or three written charms and a torn scrap of a sacred katag, origi-
nally thrown over the shoulders or head of some famous image.
Pills, too, may be found in the box, red pills certified to contain
some speck of the ashes of the Guru Rinpoche. For the special
purposes of this year, one often found a small, sharply triangular
piece of flint. This was guaranteed to be a perfect protection
against the bullets of the foreigner. For all these things the
lamas have to be paid, and we soon realized that their control
over the souls of their flock was used solely to secure an unlimited
tyranny over their worldly possessions. The riches of Tibet are,
almost without exception, enjoyed by the priestly class.

It may be not without interest to draw attention to a curious
and special use of the one doctrine which connects Lamaism still
with Gautama by a fundamental dogma. It is a cynical misuse
of the theory of reincarnation, the employment of it as a political
lever. Augurs do not look at augurs when they meet, but when
they quarrel they sometimes afford the onlooker some amusement.

I90 THE OPENING OF TIBET

The present Dalai Lama (at the time of writing it does not seem
at all clear that we have succeeded in weakening his hold upon
place and power) made for political reasons a sudden and con-
venient discovery, that Tsong-kapa, the great reformer of Lama-
ism, was reincarnated in the person of the Tzar of Russia. This
announcement was, of course, intended to smooth the way to that
closer union between the two states which Dorjieff had so success-
fully managed to begin. As a statement in itself by the reincarna-
tion of Avalokiteswara, it was difficult to deny or even to discuss
the truth of the proposition. But the indignant Tsong-du were
equal to the occasion. They countered gracefully. In effect they
said, " How interesting and how lucky for the Tzar ! " But the
guardian of this country, the Chinese Emperor, is also a reincar-
nation. He, as they reminded the forgetful Tubdan, is, poor
man, the existing representation of the god of learning, Jampa-
lang, and therefore is not lightly to be ousted from his predomi-
nance in Tibet.

Here matters remain, though the Grand Lama had no reason
to regret the extension of this graceful courtesy to the Tzar.
It is a fact beyond dispute, deny it as the Russian individual may,
that the " Little Father," in virtue of his position as head of the
Christian Church in Russia, sent with all ceremony a complete
set of the vestments of a Bishop of the Greek Church to the Dalai
Lama. This is perhaps the most extraordinary thing of all the
strange incidents in connection with this odd expedition. A Rus-
sian would probably prefer to deny than to explain the fact. It
does not seem probable that it was caused by any similar lapse
from common sense as that which the early Christians displayed
when they raised Buddha to a place among the saints of the
Church. (This is a fairly well-known fact, and, if evidence were
needed, the life of St. Joasaph, as told in the " Golden Legend,"
would convince the most skeptical.) Still, it is a long step from
including the personality of a very holy pagan by inadvertence

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 191

among the pillars of the Early Church to the symbolic acceptance
as a Christian, and subsequent appointment as an apostolically
descended bishop, of the most typical character in the heathen
world to-day.

Among these freaks of politico-religious strategy, one of the
most amazing was the reincarnate representative which, by uni-
versal consent, was found for the soul and spirit of one of the
terrible guardian deities of the land and of the faith. Palden-
Ihamo is a dark-blue lady with three eyes who sits upon a chest-
nut mule drinking blood from a skull and trampling under foot
the torn and mutilated bodies of men and women. Her crown is
composed of skulls, her eye teeth are four inches long, and the
bridle, girths, and crupper are living snakes kept in position by
the dripping skin of a recently flayed man. Of this atrocity the
Tibetans found a reincarnation in Queen Victoria. This they did
without the slightest wish or intention in the world to do any-
thing but convey the highest possible personal compliment. The
" horrible " aspect of these guardian deities does but increase their
virtue and their efficacy. They represent the old heathen tyrants
of the land who were brought into subjection by Buddha, and
left with all their horrible attributes to scare away every evil, es-
pecially the intruder and the enemy. This last reincarnation was
so well known, that a lama will think an Englishman ignorant if
he does not know it; and he will explain that, after all, if proof
were needed of the truth of what they believe, it is to be found in
the fact that Tibet, during Queen Victoria's long reign, was
saved from invasion, saved even from that intercourse which they
hate nearly as much, and that after her death and her return to be
reincarnated again in a little child in Tibet, the English troops
immediately bore down upon their sacred capital.

As I have said, no priestly caste in the history of religion has
ever fostered and preyed upon the terror and ignorance of its
flock with the systematic brigandage of the lamas. It may be

192 THE OPENING OF TIBET

that, hidden away in some quiet lamasery, far from the main
routes, Kim's lama may still be found. Once or twice in the quiet
unworldly abbots of such monasteries as those of Dongtse or
Ta-ka-re, one saw an attractive and almost impressive type of
man ; but the heads of the hierarchy are very different men, and
by them the country is ruled with a rod of iron. The vast aggre-
gation of symbols and ceremonies which have strangled the life
out of the simple and beautiful faith of Buddha is but a barrier
which the more effectually separates the priestly caste from its
lay serfs. To educate the latter in any way would be to strike
at the root of Lamaic supremacy, and, therefore, the whole land
is sunk in an ignorance to which it would be difficult to find a par-
allel. To these unlettered hinds the awful figures which scowl
from the gompa wall, blood bespattered, with dripping tusks and
bloated and beastlike bodies, are as veritable as were ever the pic-
tures of a medieval hell to the frightened catechumen. To them
the muttering or the fluttering of the strange charm, om mani
padme hum, is the easiest, and for them the only, pathway to a
vague well-being after death, provided spiritual pastors shall have
sanctioned and hedged about with charms their earthly life.

These simple people are a pleasant race. You will always meet
in the poorest hut with unfailing courtesy; not only is it an un-
questioned duty, but you would believe it also to be a pleasure,
for them instantly to bring forth an offering of their best. It may
be small enough — a little bowl of barley, three or four eggs in
the hand— but there it will always be. Eggs may cost but two-
pence a dozen in the nearest village, but it is only fair to remem-
ber that pennies are scarce among these poor people. They live a
toilsome and hard life uncomplainingly, without the wits to re-
alize that any other could be their lot. The ordinary villager
sleeps and eats on the floor of the hut. Furniture he has, of
course, none ; two or three brass or copper bowls, a big unglazed
red porcelain teapot^ a few lengths of thick red or gray cloth are

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 193

(besides the implements of his trade) all you will ever find in a
Tibetan house.

Perhaps the best known thing about Tibet is the habit prevalent
throughout the country for a woman to marry all her husband's
brothers as well as himself. This is a curious custom and I do not
think that any sufficient reason has ever been given for it; natu-
rally it fills the nunneries, and the population of the country,
whether due to this fact alone or not, is steadily decreasing. The
plan, however, seems to work well enough so far as the family is
concerned. Perhaps they expect very little, but the fact remains
that these many-husbanded ladies seem able to keep a comfortable
enough home for their changing housemates. That, I think, may
be the reason why friction rarely or never occurs. If there are
three sons in a family the third will become a lama, the eldest will
remain chiefly at home, the second son will tend the flocks on
the grazing grounds or carry the wool to the nearest market ; the
two brothers, therefore, do not very often meet, and the good
lady apparently chooses which of the two she would rather look
after for the moment. The result is apparent in one way; the
women have developed a distinctly stronger character than the
men. No layman or laywoman, of course, has any opportunity
of public influence— that is entirely reserved for the lamas; but
in the realm of commerce the women are usually supreme. Both
at Gyantse and at Lhasa my experience was the same. It was
the woman who managed the family trading, and if the man were
there at all it was only to help in carrying the goods backward
and forward between the bazaar and the town. I have at times
known a woman refer to her husband before she would sell me
any unusually good turquoise-studded charm box or other jewel,
but as a rule they seemed to dispose of the family possessions
without consulting any one. Any one who knows India will ap-
preciate from this fact alone the vast difference that the barrier of
the Himalayas causes. Some of these women are not bad-look-

194 THE OPENING OF TIBET

ing. I say this with some doubt, because beneath the dirt of
many years it is impossible to do more than guess at their com-
plexions. Their children are charming little things.

Into the home life of the Tibetans our almost complete igno-
rance of the language, coupled with the state of armed neutrality,
if not actual war, which so often characterized their attitude to-
ward us, made it difficult for us to enter. So far as I could —
far more than any one else except O'Connor, with whom I gen-
erally paid such visits, and whose fluency in Tibetan was as in-
valuable to both of us as it was exasperating and coveted by me
— I made a point of seeing the Tibetans, both lay and clerical,
in their homes.

On one occasion we went out for luncheon to a somewhat in-
teresting family. The man was the eldest son of the Maharajah of
Sikkim. At a period of stress in the relations between the Indian
Government and the royal family of Sikkim, this young man had
been given the choice between returning to the territory of Sik-
kim, or of forfeiting his succession. He elected to remain in
Tibet, and from that day he has never seen his relatives. The
present Crown Prince of Sikkim — one of the best known to Euro-
peans of all the young princes of India — assumed the position,
and, thanks entirely to the prudence and sympathy of Mr. Claude
White, promises to become a useful and loyal Rajah. To his
brother's house O'Connor and I went. Taring, his residence, is
situated seven or eight miles from Gyantse along the road to
Lhasa. It is a house of no great pretensions, prettily hidden
among trees. The young couple entertained us hospitably ; Prince
Namgyel was simply but richly dressed, his wife was wearing a
fine kincob and an exquisite head-dress in which the high aureole
commonly in use was barely recognizable under the strings of
pearls which webbed the whole thing. Servants there were in
half dozens, and the meal we had was full of interest. It began
with tea.

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 195

Tea in Tibet is a thing entirely after its own kind. It bears
not the vaguest resemblance to the pale, scented beverage of China
and Japan, nor to the milkless and lemon-flavored glassfuls of
Russia ; still less to the sugared slops which one finds in London.
Tea in Tibet is imported in the shape of bricks, which vary very
much in quality ; they are made in the province of Sze-chuan and
the tea-leaves are glued, with something that looks suspiciously
like sawdust, into hard blocks of which it would puzzle Mincing
Lane to distinguish the various grades. But for the veriest Tib-
etan child du-nyi is unmistakable for du-tang. Next to du-nyi
comes chuha, and the last and worst kind is known as gye-ha}

A corner is knocked off a five-pound brick and it is infused with
boiling water in a teapot. The tea is then poured into a cylindri-
cal bamboo churn and a large lump of salt is churned up into it ;
the amount of energy which is spent upon this churning is ex-
traordinary. I suppose the reason is that the heat should not be
lost before the tea is drinkable. The moment this is well churned
up, a pound of butter is also slid down into the bamboo and an-
other minute's furious work produces the liquid as it is drunk in
Tibet. If you are expecting the sweetened milky brew of Eng-
land, when you put your lips to it you will be disgusted. It is a
thickish chocolate colored mess, sometimes strengthened with a
little flour, to give it greater consistency. But if you will regard
it as soup you will find that it has certain very sound qualities as
a meal in itself. I have been actually glad to drink it after a long
day.

After tea our exiled hostess gave us the real luncheon. It be-
gan with a heaped bowlful of boiled eggs. The worst of these
meals in a new country is that you never know either how, or

* It is characteristically Eastern that these four grades of quality, first, sec-
ond, third, and fourth, should in Tibetan be called first, second, tenth, and
eighth. I make a small note like this in order to deter the matter-of-fact
European from contradicting the statements of Central Asian travelers merely
because they are logically impossible.

196 THE OPENING OF TIBET

how much to eat. The first question solves itself in Tibet because,
except as curiosities, there are no spoons or forks. But we did not
know how many courses were to follow, and it must be confessed
that the first draught of Tibetan tea is extraordinarily effective
in damping one's appetite. We tried two eggs apiece out of the
white heap and waited. The servants did not so much change the
dishes as accumulate them, and little by little other things came
straggling in from the kitchen. The next course was composed
of sweet chupatty-like things which had absolutely no taste what-
ever and were rather mealy in the mouth. Then came little balls
of forcemeat skewered by fours upon a straw. These we eat con-
scientiously, but a following dish of twenty different kinds of
sweets did not prepare us for the mo-mo which, as the Tibetan
pikce de resistance, we should have anticipated. These are dump-
lings of thick pudding wrapped round strange meat. I would
not for the world suggest that any mistake had been made by
the cook, but after the sweets, this mixture of suet and carrion
was almost more than we could stomach. However, the dish had
to be eaten, and eaten it was. Prince Namgyel was hospitality
itself and the drink he offered us was extraordinarily good. It
was a home-made whisky with all the peat reek of Irish potheen.
Only too conscious of the diminishing stores of the Mission, both
of us made a mental note of this excellent stuff and determined
that we would take off our host's hands as much as he was willing
to sell when our own supplies ran short.^ I remember noticing
behind me, nailed up against a pillar, two colored photographs.
One was of the new palace at Gangtok, the other, somewhat to my
surprise, was of our host's stepmother, the present Maharani.
This lady, still one of the most attractive looking of Tibetan wo-
men, was a daughter of the great aristocratic Lhasan family of

* Unfortunately, before another week had elapsed the Tibetans were bom-
barding the Mission, a state of war was declared, and poor Namgyel and his
wife had fled to his father's other property on the shores of Lake Tsomo.

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 197

Lheding. The circumstances immediately preceding her mar-
riage with the Maharajah, about seventeen years ago, drew a
good deal of attention at the time to a personality, the strength
of which is apparent after an acquaintance of five minutes. In
other circumstances she might have exercised the same power as
the Empress Dowager of China or as the mother of Queen Su-
pi-ya-lat; as it is, the political officer of Sikkim will, if you ask
him, assure you that she has long been a factor in our relations
with Tibet which by no means could be disregarded. Her two
eldest children were born to her husband's younger brother before
she reached Sikkim. This lapse cannot be explained away as an
instance of Tibetan polyandry, as no " wife " of a younger brother
is shared by the elder brothers. However, the matter was over-
looked.

The walls of Taring were painted with minute delicacy, and
the design of the invariably present animal acrobats — the bird on
the rabbit, on the monkey, on the elephant — was the best I ever
saw. We took leave of our kindly host and hostess, and the former
a day or two later rode into camp for a luncheon, which this time
was less of a change from the usual diet of the guest.

The servants of Tibetans, even of the highest, are abominably
dirty. It was a curious thing to see outside the tent, in which the
gleam of gold and brocade and light-blue silk mingled, the wait-
ing attendants with grimy faces and torn and dirty clothes. At
Chema I obtained permission from the lady herself to photo-
graph the belle of the Chumbi Valley. I wanted her to come out
to the doorway of her house, but she was much too aristocratic
a young woman to be so taken. I was asked to come into the
women's apartments, where, in an almost dark room, the lady,
most beautifully dressed and certainly looking extremely hand-
some, was seated on a raised platform, with her dirty maid stand-
ing behind her. I did not want the maid in the picture, and said
so. But Lady Dordem was firm ; she had three husbands in the

198 THE OPENING OF TIBET

room at the time, but she would not be taken without a chaperon.
She very properly argued that no one who saw the picture could
know that her natural protectors were at the photographer's
elbow. The photograph was not a success, for an enormously long
exposure was necessary and no contrast of any kind could be
obtained.

Tibetan women of the highest class travel very little, but when
they do, they wrap themselves in a huge shapeless rug, which al-
most conceals the fact that they are riding astride. The saddles
of the Tibetans are curious high structures, under which a beau-
tiful cloth is placed, and the whole is then concealed by rug after
rug. The rider is thus raised eight or nine inches from the horse's
back, which gives his mount a camel-like appearance. No Tib-
etan rides very fast, but the ponies are trained to amble at a pace
which gets over the ground as fast as any one would care to trot.
Shoes are not used, and the bits are merciful; but there is the
inevitable Oriental insensibility to the sufferings of a galled and
sore-backed brute. At these altitudes sores will not heal. When
the skin is broken the want of oxygen in the air delays the heal-
ing of the wound, but " out of sight, out of mind " is as true in
Tibet as elsewhere, and the beast is still ridden day after day.
On the crupper and bridle there are often fine filigree plates of
brass and sometimes good Chinese enamel. The stirrups are un-
necessarily heavy; a handsome dragon design is often embodied
in them.

I have said that the Tibetans are a courteous race. Unlike
Hindustani races, they not only have, but continually use, the
words for please (ro nang, literally " good help ") and thank you
(tu che). The greeting to a visitor, corresponding roughly with
" how do you do," is literally " sit and adhere to the carpet,"
while the farewell of a visitor may be translated " sit down
slowly." His host speeds his departing guest with an adjuration
to " walk slowly." The language is entirely distinct both from

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 199

Hindustani and Chinese. It is an agglutinative, monosyllabic
tongue, and neither the structure nor the fairly large vocabulary
is difficult to acquire. But the trouble is that almost from the
outset the practical colloquial language is found by the learner
to be an inextricable tangle of idioms. Experience of the East
should long have taught one never to say " why? " but the eccen-
tricities of the Tibetan wrench it from one at every turn. A thing
which is at once apparent is the indistinctness with which it is
muttered. If you were to say to a man " call me to-morrow
morning at six o'clock," " nga-la sang-nyin shoge chutseu druk-
la ketang" deliberately and slowly, he would smile politely, but
make not the slightest attempt to understand ; but if, on the other
hand, you threw at him something like " nyalsannin-shoshutsti-
dullaketn " you would be understood in a moment.

Some words used in Tibetan are very expressive ; the word for
a duck is " mud fowl " ; to awaken is to " murder sleep " ; a flower
is a " button (or canopy) of fire "; a general is a " Lord of the
Arrow " ; bribery could hardly be more neatly defined than by
the Tibetan " secret push." One peculiarity of the language is
the use of two opposites in conjunction to express the quality in
which they differ — thus : distance is literally " far-near " ; weight
is " light-heavy " ; height, to-men, is " high-low," and dang-to,
** oold-warm," means temperature. The honorific vocabulary is
an additional stumbling-block. For ordinary traveling pur-
poses it is hardly necessary ; the stranger will always be pardoned
if he prefaces his remarks with an apology for not being able to
spcok the language of courtesy ; but as every remark will instinc-
tively be made to him in that language in spite of his protest, he
will find himself very little advantaged. The vocabulary of the
Tibetan language is enormous, and it is very widely known ; such
comparatively delicate shades of meaning as are required to ex-
press slightly varying color shade in horses are ready in abund-
ance, and in Tibetan a chestnut horse with a black mane can be

200 THE OPENING OF TIBET

described in a word. It is not, perhaps, necessary to say more
than that there is ready for use in Tibetan a single word which
signifies " the interdependence of causes." *

The literature of the country is almost entirely religious. It
consists of the Kan-gyur, or sacred scriptures, in over one hun-
dred volumes; the Ten-gyur, or commentaries thereon, in three
hundred volumes, and countless tomes filled with the tales, para-
bles, biographies, and legends of the great teachers of the Lamaic
Church. These books are wonderful things. It is not the least
of the oddities of Tibet that in this unlettered country more beau-
tiful books are produced than anywhere else in the world. Before
the volume is opened, the covers alone present an example of
beauty and loving care which Grolier could never have secured
from the best of his binders. The outer cover is about thirty
inches by eleven inches ; it is of hard, close-grained wood, divided
into three panels ; each panel is carved with minute and exquisite
workmanship. In the center of each is one, or perhaps two Bud-
dhas seated on the lotus throne, cut in a quarter-inch relief.
Round him, with strong and free grace, the conventional foliage
of the Bo-tree fills the entire field, except immediately overhead,
where the gariida bird, all beak and eyes, sits keeping watch.
Above and below are rows of smaller images carved in exquisite
detail. The three panels are said to refer to the three conceptions
of the Buddha. If that be so it is the only instance of Maitreya,
or the coming Buddha, being represented squatting tailorwise in
the Oriental fashion.^ The whole cover is heavily gilt, and one
turns the leaf to find a silk veil, probably of olive-green, carnation,
and rose-madder, protecting the first page of the manuscript itself.

* This is hardly the occasion for a full account of either the written or the
spoken language. I may, however, in reference to the former, point out the
difficulty of the spelling. Thus the province of " U " is spelled " DBUS "
and "DE" (rice) is spelled "ABRAS." This is the spelHng of the first
syllable of De-bung monastery.

* This statement, like most statements which have long been accepted about
things Tibetan, is probably open to correction.

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 201

This page is made of fine stout paper, bearing in the middle what
looks exactly like the depressed plate mark of an etching; the
whole is of deep, rich-glazed Prussian blue, and in the inset panel
in the middle the opening words of the book are written in large
raised gold characters. The next page contains to the left a
miniature, and then the book begins. From one end to the other
it is painted in large regular letters of gold, some of the choicer
books having alternate lines of gold and silver. Although they
are no longer used, the holes through which the binding strap
originally ran through the leaves themselves in two places qre
still left clear and indicated by a thin gold circle. Cumbersome,
of course, these books are, but the care which is bestowed upon
them would have delighted the heart of William Morris.

Art in Tibet is still in a conventional state. It is true that
the technique of miniature painting upon an enormous scale has
been thoroughly mastered by them ; and, as I have said elsewhere,
the only parallel to the microscopic work used on the walls of
such buildings as the Palkhor choide, or the Nachung Chos-
kyong temple outside Lhasa, is that of the seventh and eighth
century illuminators of the Irish school.

A figure of Buddha in color was copied by myself from the
wall of the dining-room at Chang-lo. The original is of life
size and was evidently painted by one of the most capable artists
in Tibet. I do not remember ever having seen another similar
figure as strongly designed, minutely finished, or delicately
colored. The use, indeed, of gold, which it is impossible ade-
quately to reproduce, was both restrained and effective, and the
transparent brown mastic which covers it mellows the semi-
burnished surface. The rest of the wall was taken up with
figures almost as carefully painted by the same hand. The dis-
ciples of the Master stand or sit round him in varying attitudes
bearing the symbol of their identity, while the great teachers
of Buddhism smile blandly from the side walls dividing the

202 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Master from the " terrible " guardian monsters which confront
the outer world in every Buddhist shrine.

The general effect of a painted wall in Tibet is not dissimilar
from that of Italian tapestries of the best period, and I am in-
clined to think that the object of the designer in both cases is
the same. In spite of the enormous amount of work brought
into the smallest details of dress and the delicacy with which
the flower work is done, I doubt whether the intention of the
artist in either case is to produce figures to be examined by
themselves. The general arrangement and composition of a
Tibetan fresco is masterful. The ground is well covered, but
never crowded; the subordination of the less important to the
more important is never mistaken, and in the greatest as well
as the smallest matters the symbolism is unerring and full of
significance. But the veriest stranger might go into such painted
courts as those of the first floor of the Palkhor choide and re-
main perfectly contented with it merely as an almost moving
carpet of color and light.

Convention reigns supreme, but it does not take long for the
most prejudiced European to realize that these golden and blue
and red faced figures are essential to the artistic balance of the
picture, as well as the meaning of the legend before his eyes.
Of the color there is less to say. It is intensely strong, and
though one rapidly realizes that it is justified in the mass, it
is not only as open to criticism in the detail as a holiday crowd
of natives in India, but the secret of the extraordinary har-
monies so successfully produced remains as completely beyond
the power of European reproduction.

In the general arrangement for the internal decoration of an
important room in a good house, Gautama will always be found
in one form or another, seated either as a statue or in paint.
The upper wall is sometimes furnished on either side with the
close rows of pigeon-holes which serve the Tibetan for library

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 203

shelves. At times a more realistic form of oraamentation is
attempted, and here the limitations of the artist are plain indeed.
The religious subjects have, in the course of centuries, had their
treatment crystallized into a purely national style of representa-
tion, and the moment the artist strays beyond this preserve he
leans heavily upon the Chinese for support. Chinese perspective
is used by them; Chinese landscape, Chinese dresses and faces
are helplessly copied by Tibetan artists, careless of the fact that
neither in feature, robes, nor surroundings are the two races
alike. Once or twice I have seen a Tibetan attempt to represent
some well-known natural feature in the country. In these cases
it is necessary to read the description which generally accom-
panies the object to be perfectly certain what it is intended to
represent.

The Sinchen Lama, as has been said, caused an able artist
to record upon the walls of his room the incidents in the lives
of preceding reincarnations, and the story has been told of the
strange way in which he thereby foretold his own death and of
a pleasant proof thereby of his affection for his little dog. The
picture is difficult to photograph, and the only picture I was
able to take is marred, not only by the reflected light from the
windows behind, but by the fact that it is partially concealed by
the open door to the right, through which alone sufficient illu-
mination could be obtained. All but the head of the dog is
hidden. But that dog is in a way the test of art in Tibet ; there
is apparently no conventional method of representing a dog,
and if there had been one, it is clear that the Lama would not
have been satisfied with it, so this man was forced face to face
with nature as he had perhaps never been compelled before.
The portrait of the master of the dog is a piece of pure con-
vention, but the painting of the dog, intensely bad as it is from
every point of view but one, remains the touchstone of Tibetan
art. There is such a minute and laborious representation of

204 THE OPENING OF TIBET

every cirri of hair that one would hardly be surprised to find that
the artist had attempted to paint both sides of the dog at once.
Bad as it is, that picture at any rate achieves its purpose, for
that dog is as living, as recognizable, and as pat-able an object
as ever Briton Riviere created, and the affection of the lonely
reincarnation, cut off from the living world from birth to death,
for his one fearless and disinterested companion is apparent in
every stroke of the brush. But I must confess that of all the
acres of painted surface which I saw in Tibet this dog remains
the only attempt to represent a subject naturally.

At Gyantse the chief local artist received several commissions
from us which, as I have said, were never fulfilled, but I suspect
that a good deal of his earlier work afterward fell into the hands
of our men at the taking of Little Gobshi. Hundreds of
tangkas'^ were then found, but as they were of no interest or
value in the eyes of the native troops, the vast majority of them
were thrown on one side, and the heavy rain of the following
night disfigured the majority almost beyond recognition. These
tangkas are the most characteristic and portable expression of
modem Tibetan art. It says something for their good taste
that those which they account most highly are the plain-line
drawings in Indian red upon a gold background, or of gold upon
Indian red. Here the artist owes nothing to color or shade,
and some of the work is as strong and quaint as that of the
" Guthlac " designs in the British Museum.

The majority of these tangkas display a large central figure
surrounded by smaller flame- or smoke-framed pictures of the
deities of Lamaism. These pictures often leave much to be
desired on the score of propriety. It is one of the things which
must be taken into consideration with regard to Lamaism that
decency forms no part of it whatever. Immoral the Tibetan

* A tangka is a roll painting on canvas or silk, framed in rich Chinese
brocade, and generally resembling the kakemonos of Japan.

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RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 205

religion certainly is not, but to Western eyes its manifestations
often assume the strangest shape.^

Unfortunately a change has recently come over Tibetan
draftsmanship. There is a falling away from the austere
standard of other days, and there is a distinct tendency to-
ward merely pretty and pink and white designs of a Chinese
type. This is apparent not only in the coloring but in the
choice of subject. The colors used are curious; they are un-
doubtedly water-colors ground up with a large amount of body
color, and stiffened with glue or some such material. They
last indefinitely and, so far as can be guessed, the tints do
not fade. I do not think that the names of any artists are
preserved.

The jewelry of Tibet is exquisitely finished, and in a slight
degree suggestive of Byzantine work. I have in my possession
several objects that will serve as examples of the finest work
in the country. The crown came originally from the head of a
Buddha in Ne-nyeng Monastery. Nothing can exceed the deli-
cacy with which the figure of Buddha in carved turquoise is
inset into the central leaf. The foliation throughout is strong,
clean cut, and decided, and the general balance of the diadem
will, I think, be universally admitted. It is a good specimen
of the best Tibetan work, and the sparing use of turquoise in
its composition is the more satisfactory because it is clear
that neither time nor money was spared in its manufacture.
I bought two earrings in Lhasa. They are of gold and of the
usual design set with large pieces of turquoise. A square charm
box was also procured in Lhasa. It is of typical design, but
the stones and general workmanship are undoubtedly above the
average. I also obtained two beautiful charm boxes of gold and

*It is interesting to notice that of the two more valued kinds of tangka
those on a gold background are always austerely chaste, while those on a red
field leave much to be desired on the score of decency. I think that those also
on a dark blue background should be classed with the latter kind.

2o6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

turquoise. Both workmanship and stones are of the finest class.
The single earring touching the crown is that worn by men,
and it is worthy of notice that the lower drop is never real tur-
quoise. Even in the case of the highest dignitaries this pen-
dant is invariably blue porcelain-like glass. The encircling
necklace is of raw turquoise lumps set in silver and separated
one from another by large coral beads.

The brass work of the Tibetans exhibits their art in its high-
est form. The little gods which sit in rows along the altar
shelves of Tibet are models of good and restrained convention.
The finish is delicate, and the sheer technical skill with which
the artist manipulates his material is undeniable. The same
delicate workmanship is carried also into other objects of their
daily life or religion. Tibetans are capable of producing pottery
of a fair quality, but it is quite beyond their powers to water-
mark a design into the material.

The woven stufifs of Tibet are extremely interesting, and the
patterns are indigenous. I have elsewhere suggested that in
rugs alone a thriving and successful trade might be carried on
with the neighborhood of Gyantse. Most of their silks are
imported from China. It may fairly be said that nothing manu-
factured in Tibet is positively ugly, and though the hierocratic
tendencies which have checked the political independence of the
people of the country have also tended to confine its artists within
narrow channels, the very stiffness of the style has not been with-
out its definite use in educating the natural taste of the people.
The blaze of color inside a Tibetan gompa might be thought
garish by a student of the half tones of Europe, but it must
be remembered that in this land of thin pure air and blinding
light, harmonies and discords are to be judged by other stan-
dards than those of Europe.

Of the music of Tibet it is impossible to say much. The tem-
ple services are intoned on three or four notes, which, I should
say, approximate fairly well to those of our own scale. But

SPECIMENS OF CHINESE-TIBETAN WORK IN SILVER

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 207

the Tibetans have not reached the stage at which noise ceases
to be the first aim of the musician. By this I do not neces-
sarily mean that the noise is always an ugly one. The sound,
heard a mile away across the plain, of a temple gong beaten,
or the long seductive purr of a well-blown conch, comes into the
pictures of one's memory as not their least attractive feature.
But heard close at hand the music of Tibet is merely barbarous.
The temple orchestra usually consists of seven men; two of
them are occupied with one of the big trumpets, one to hold it up,
the other to blow it. These trumpets furnish a grating noise
approximating in depth to the length of the instrument. As
this is anything up to twelve, or, in the case of one trumpet
in Potala, eighteen feet, the note produced is low. Two other
men blow as seemeth good to them upon shorter trumpets, one
about four feet in length, the other a small sixteen-inch instru-
ment, generally made out of a human thigh-bone with copper
end pieces. Two men also will devote themselves to gyalings;
these are short reed-blown clarinets. The last and most im-
portant member of all is he who beats the drum. The drum is a
kind of warming-pan-like structure, and the parchment of its
three-foot head is struck with a sickle-shaped stick. By a con-
vention, which is like that of Europe, the drummer manages the
cyrhbals also. Powerful instruments these are, taking unques-
tioned command of the babel whenever used.

Besides all these the officiating Lama will from time to time
ring a sweet silvery-toned bell at, no doubt, the accurate inter-
vals, but it must be confessed that the general effect of a Tibetan
service is not unlike that of a farm yard, or a nursery, and
it may still be many years indeed before order is given to these
sounds confused. One or two tunes they have which can be
recognized. One of them is par excellence the melody of the
Orient. I do not know if it has a name, but Mrs. Flora Annie
Steel has sufficiently indicated its scope and cadence by wedding
to it the words, " Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

2o8 THE OPENING OF TIBET

The marriage customs of Tibet are like those of the vast
majority of mankind— the lady is bought. But one feature in
the preliminaries differentiates them strongly from the methods
of modern England. The girl's mother will firmly and re-
peatedly insist upon the ugliness and uselessness of her debu-
tante whenever a suggestion is made by the professional match-
maker of the village. This modesty, however, can be overcome
by a little -negotiation. Groomsmen and bridesmaids are, I
believe, as necessary to a smart wedding in Tibet as in America,
and, if Chandra Das is to be believed, the difficulty of knowing
whether a wedding present is expected or not' is overcome in
Lhasa by a simple device. The maiden presents a cheap little
katag or scarf to every one from whom she would like a wed-
ding gift. There is a slight religious service at the actual mar-
riage. The officiating lama, after prayer, declares the woman
to be from henceforth the bride of her husband alone — and his
brothers. The usual Oriental overeating accompanies the rite.
Divorce in Tibet is expensive, but easily obtained, though the
necessity for any such annulment of the marriage tie is greatly
reduced by the frequency of " Meredithian " marriages.

In private life the Tibetan is a cheerful body with, of course,
the defects of that amiable quality. Not infrequently he gets
drunk and he has at no time many morals. But he is a hard
worker, capable of enduring for weeks extremes of physical dis-
comfort which would incapacitate a native of India in a day,
and, above all, it must be set down to his credit that he is mer-
ciful to his beast. The tail-twisting of bullocks stops at our
frontier. He has, of course, no nerves, or it is possible that the
dogs which swarm over the country and form one of its most
prominent features would fare badly even at the hands of a
Buddhist.

They are an unmitigated nuisance, savage by day and noisy
by night. Every breed of dog known to the fancier seems to

RELIGION: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: ART 209

have been mixed in this sandy-coated pack. It is curious, how-
ever, that in spite of the out-of-door life which is led by them,
the type to which they have reverted is not that of the wolf
or collie, but rather that of the Esquimaux sledge dog. Some
of them are easily domesticated, and the puppies are friendly
little things only too anxious to be adopted. The typical Tibetan
terrier, a long-coated little fellow with a sharp nose, prick ears,
and, as a rule, black from muzzle to tail, we found but seldom
in a pure state.*

^The finest specimens of this breed are owned by Mrs. Claude White —
"Tippoo," " Jugri," and scantily coated " Nari " came up with us to Lhasa
with their master. But " Sebu," a sable freak in the same family, and beyond
question the most beautiful of them all, remained at Gangtok.

CHAPTER XII

^ INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA I9O2-4

BEFORE taking up again the story of the Expedition I
propose to sketch the internal affairs of Lhasa for the last
few years with somewhat greater detail than before. The key
to the situation in Tibet, which was now becoming desperate, is
to be found in the deliberate and steady determination of the
Tibetans to do away with the Chinese suzerainty. This is a
policy of long standing. Thirty-five years ago the spirit of in-
dependence was already abroad in Tibet, and there was a recog-
nized progressive party, headed by no less ^a dignitary than the
treasurer of Gaden monastery. Under the old regime, as is well
known, a consistent policy of regency, made possible only by the
equally systematic assassination of each successive young Grand
Lama before he reached the age of eighteen, resulted in a contin-
ual regency, and therefore also a continual opportunity for the as-
sertion and reassertion of the Chinese suzerainty, for no regent
could be appointed without the sanction of the Chinese Emperor.
The very election of the Dalai Lama himself was theoretically
subject to the approval of Peking, but this prerogative was sel-
dom, or never, exercised. In other parts of his dominions the
Chinese Emperor made undoubted use of his rights. At Urga, a
new Taranath Grand Lama, the third in importance in the Bud-
dhist world, was, on one occasion, peremptorily disqualified by his
majesty on the grounds that his immediate predecessor had been
a turbulent and seditious fellow, and that there was no good
ground for supposing that he had been reincarnated in any

210

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 211

human being. Against this the good people of MongoHa entered
a violent protest. They said that such a contention cut at the
root of their religion, and so much trouble did they give that
eventually the Emperor compromised ; he said that as the monks
of Urga had chosen a Mongolian to be their chief he would
allow the election to stand, but that on no account thencefor-
ward was a reincarnation to take place in the body of a Tibetan.
The descent of the spirit is thus regulated to-day. Again it is
necessary to remind the European reader with a sense of hu-
mor that these apparent absurdities are the source of very real
and often very bitter political feeling in the Far East, and that
the application of European habits of thought to these circum-
stances can only result in a total misapprehension of the whole
situation. The Tibetans see no absurdity in situations thus cre-
ated at a time when in other ways their national aspirations were
shaping a shrewd and Occidental policy.

The leader of the party died indeed before achieving success,
but it is worth notice that in the election of the present Dalai
Lama, in 1874, a change directly attributable to the dead re-
former's personality was made in the devolution of the spirit
of Avalokiteswara. In the old days the names of all babies born
at the time of the assassination of the previous Dalai Lama were
written on slips and put into a golden urn, which, it is reported,
levitated itself and thrice cast forth the slip of paper bearing
the name of the chosen child. This miracle is supposed to have
been somewhat assisted by the writing of the same name upon
every slip, and it was to guard against any such political manipu-
lation of this all-important choice that a new plan of selection
was then adopted. Acting upon the counsels of the chief ma-
gician of Nachung choskyong, the discovery of the new Dalai
Lama was intrusted to the pious clairvoyance of the Shar-tse
Abbot of Gaden. This man, acting upon instructions, went to
the Chos-kor Plain, to the east of Lhasa, and there on the surface

212 THE OPENING OF TIBET

of the Muli-ding-ki lake the new reincarnation was seen in his
mother's lap upon a lotus flower. After a brief search for
mother and child, Tubdan Gyatso, the present pontiff, was
c found at Paru-chude in the district of Tag-po. This method
of choosing a successor to the divine authority checkmated the
ordinary intrigues by which family influence as well as official
guardianship secured to the Chinese suzerain no small voice in
the acts of the doomed child's government. The last regent,
as has been said, was chosen from Gaden, though he also had
some connection with the Kun-de-ling in Lhasa.*

Eighteen years afterward, when, under other circumstances,
his life would have been brought to a sudden conclusion, Tub-
dan Gyatso was spared. This has been attributed by some to
the unrest prevailing during our troubles with India at that time ;
the treaty was then actually in process of construction in Cal-
cutta, and it is very likely that the recent war with ourselves
had suggested to the shrewder Tibetans that the time had come
finally to take their affairs into their own hands. China had
been of no use to them in their dispute with India, and to have
" reincarnated " the Dalai Lama at that moment meant a repe-
tition of the usual opportunity for the exertion of Chinese in-
fluence which would have been peculiarly inopportune and even
disastrous. He was therefore allowed to survive maturity,
but only as a religious pontiff, the temporal power remaining
in the hands of the regent. But as soon as the treaty was signed
the last vestige of Chinese influence in Tibet was thrown off by
a coup d'etat, in 1895, strangely resembling that of King Alex-
ander of Servia under similar circumstances : Tubdan Gyatso de-
clared himself temporal sovereign as well as religious autocrat,
cast the regent into prison, and poisoned him almost immediately.

^ It is impossible to obtain very accurate information upon a point like this.
A Tibetan has his ' ' La-lis ' ' out of his mouth before a name is even men-
tioned.

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 213

Such was the position in 1901. There were at this time three
important men in Lhasa : the Dalai Lama, Dorjieff, and the " Pre-
mier " — the Shata Shape.* The last of the triumvirate was a
man who had been brought into prominence some years ago by
an unfortunate incident in Darjeeling, The story is well known :
a Tibetan was ducked in the fountain for insolence displayed by
him or by one of his countrymen toward an Englishwoman in
a rickshaw. The man's rudeness did not, perhaps, justify so
drastic a punishment, but it was not altogether unnatural, and
it was our misfortune rather than our fault that we thus in-
curred the perpetual and bitter hatred of the man, who, in the
course of a few years, was destined to become prime minister of
Tibet; for the victim was no other than the Shata Shape, then
exiled and under a temporary cloud. He never forgot or for-
gave, and it is not surprising that when the opportunity pre-
sented itself he flung himself heart and soul into the change of
policy advocated by Dorjieff. Sufficient reference has already
been made to the career of Dorjieff; of the Dalai Lama, we only
know from Chinese sources that he is a headstrong and some-
what conceited man, not without strength of character, but in-
tolerant of restraint in any form. Physically he is a tall and
powerfully built man with unusually oblique eyes.

Opposed to them stood the various representatives and dele-
gates of the ruling priestly caste, greatly swayed by the tradi-
tional respect and homage which the Grand Lama's position
inspires in the least dutiful of his subjects, but stubbornly refus-
ing to depart from their ancient principles and the policy of
seclusion which had stood Tibet and themselves in good stead
for so long. In all else the Dalai Lama was able to have his way,
but neither the introduction of a Russian protectorate, nor the
presence of Russian representatives in Lhasa, would the Tsong-du
tolerate in any form whatever, or for an instant. To neither side
* He is also known as Shaffi Phen-tso Dorje.

214 THE OPENING OF TIBET

were the claims or the opinions of the Chinese of the shghtest
moment. The return of Dorjieff in December with the unoffi-
cial understanding between Russia and Tibet was, therefore, the
inauguration of a difficult period for the Dalai Lama.

The existence of this understanding was a fact that he could
neither openly avow nor, on the other hand, entirely conceal.
The solemn anti-foreigner covenant, signed by the Tsong-du,
was obstinately pleaded by the opposition and nothing could be
done. The Dalai Lama changed his methods. Not for a moment
did he abandon the policy which promised to secure for himself
and for his country the apparently gratuitous protettion of
Russia and freedom from the ever-present dread of the English ;
and he did not attempt to conceal his not unnatural dislike for the
short-sighted policy of the Tsong-du, by which he now found
himself as much thwarted as by any possible interference of
China. But in their existing mood it was impossible to coerce
the members of the National Council, so for the future he de-
termined to use the wide powers he was able to wield without
1 reference to it, and he believed that their scope was extensive
enough to carry through his matured Russophile policy, not so
much by the deliberate choice of the Tsong-du, as of necessity,
and he set himself determinedly to bring about that necessity.
This was no easy task. There was no trouble then with India,
and the self-confident Tibetans attached small value to any in-
ducements that Russia could hold out. Tibet had succeeded easily
in regaining her independence of China, and could conceive no
reason for putting herself again under obligation to any man.
But with shrewder foresight the Dalai Lama saw that some such
protection from the north or from the south was ultimately in-
evitable. He chose to make a truce with Russia. Apart from
the practical inducements offered by Dorjieff, it must be remem-
bered in his choice of an ally that he was acting upon a principle
well known in the East. Long before his days the worn out

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 215

shoes and moldy bread of the men of Gibeon had persuaded
Joshua that it was safe to make a treaty of peace with so distant
a tribe. The moral effect of an alliance with either was, as he
knew well, a guarantee for the non-interference of the other.
Now India is but a fortnight away, while Russia, by the quick-
est route, is full four months' journey distant.

So soon, therefore, as he could make the Tsong-du recognize
the necessity for outside support, he knew that the assistance of
Russia, as being the more distant friend, would, as a matter of
course, be preferred by it to the traditional and imminent men-
ace of Indian influence. He set himself to bring this recognition
about, and it was clear that if friction could in some way be
established in his relations with India, he would have gone far
toward obtaining his end. In achieving his purpose, he had
neither scruples nor difficulty. Reference has been made before
to the policy of aggression he adopted, but the acts may be briefly
recapitulated here. The frontier regulations of Sikkim were
violated in a flagrant manner ; the grazing rights near Giao-gong
were encroached upon in a way which he was well aware we
could not much longer suffer. A customs house and a barrier
were actually erected and occupied, and British subjects kept
out by force from a small portion of the British Empire. Even-
tually the arrival of a letter from Lord Curzon, in the middle
of 1902, offered him an opportunity he was not slow to use. The
letter was returned unopened, without apology or comment of
any kind. Such, it will be remembered, was the situation imme-
diately before the arrival of the Mission at Kamba-jong.

Under this new regime the Tsong-du were little consulted.
It was Tubdan's intention to use them afterward, but rather
for the mere purpose of ratifying an inevitable policy than of
asking them their opinion upon its wisdom. No definite infor-
mation of their attitude seems to have been sent to Russia.
Rifles were from time to time received and stored at Norbu-ling

2i6 THE OPENING OF TIBET

under the Dalai Lama's personal supervision, and Dorjieff con-
tinued to distribute small but valuable European-made gifts
among the leading men of Lhasa. The action of the Indian
government in sending Mr. Claude White to enforce the rights
of the Sikkimese over their grazing grounds was interpreted by
the Grand Lama as an act of overt hostility, and was used to
hasten the catastrophe — all the more readily, perhaps, because
of the repeated warnings of the old Amban Yu-kang that the
Tibetan policy with regard to the English was both foolish and
ultra vires: his protests were, however, consistently and inso-
lently ignored. At last, however, it seems that the Shata Shape
recoiled before the lengths to which the Dalai Lama, now utterly
in the toils of Dorjieff, was prepared to go. The exact circum-
stances of their quarrel are not known, but it is clear that in
1903 the Shata Shape was deposed from office and thrown into
prison; where, I believe, the unfortunate man remains. The
story of this incident is not without interest.

We get glimpses of the internal affairs of Lhasa about this
time, which reveal sufficiently clearly the chaos which was then
reigning. To any demur on the part of his colleagues in the
government, the Dalai Lama opposed ill temper instead of ar-
gument, and soon made the unfortunate discovery that the slight-
est threat of resignation from temporal affairs — which one might
have supposed to be no unwelcome idea to his harassed colleagues
— speedily reduced the most insubordinate member of the
Tsong-du to submissiveness.

But the dissatisfaction of Tibet with the Russophile tenden-
cies of the Grand Lama could not thus be checked, and the co-
operation of England and China in the advance of the Mission
to Kamba-jong was a rebuff for the Grand Lama that could not
be misinterpreted. The great astrologer of Tibet, the Lama of
Re-ting, was asked about this time to interpose the influence of
the stars against the encroachment of the British. It is remark-

A TIBETAN POLITICAL AGENT

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 217

able that in his answer he makes the definite charge that the
troubles from which Tibet was suffering were due to the fact
that bribes of European money had been unlawfully accepted
by Tibetan officials.

On the 3d or 4th of October, it was asserted that 150 Russian
rifles * were brought to the Potala by Dorjieff. At this time the
latter's influence reached its highest point, and it was regretfully
admitted in Lhasa that even the Shapes themselves were obliged
to curry favor with him to get anything done or even listened
to by the Dalai Lama. About this time, owing to the direct
intervention of Dorjieff, the Dalai Lama took the arbitrary
and high-handed step to which we have referred. On the 13th
of October he sent for and imprisoned at Norbu-ling the four
ministers of state and the representatives of the Three Monas-
teries. He accused the Shata Shape of having taken bribes ; the
other members were charged with having concealed from the
Dalai Lama important facts connected with the boundary dis-
pute, with having taken money from Ugyen Kazi ^ on the occa-
sion of the presentation of an elephant, with being behindhand
in their biennial reports, and, in general, with disobedience to his
Holiness, and with attempting to carry on the business of the
country contrary to his intentions and orders. In order to carry
through this coup-de-main, he once again threatened to resign
and adopt the meditative life unless his action were indorsed.

He was completely successful.

* It was believed in Lhasa that weapons were continually arriving in camel
loads, bnt it is more probable that they were barrels only. The Tip arsenal
across the river was working at high pressure, and even during our brief ex-
perience of Tibetan munitions of war it was possible to observe a very distinct
improvement in the manufactured cartridges; the rifles here made consisted,
as a rule, of a local Martini lock adjusted somewhat carelessly to an old Euro-
pean-made barrel of some discarded pattern.

* Ugyen Kazi, horsedealer and diplomatist, is the most conspicuous figure
on the Tibetan frontier. He was used by the Indian Government in 1902 as
the bearer of the letters to the Dalai Lama which were returned unopened to
Lord Curzon. A commanding presence and a quick humor also has this man,
who might use Elizabeth's scratching on the Hatfield window for his motto.

2i8 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Almost the last act of these unhappy men was a refusal to
attend the annual review on the plain between Sera and Lhasa
on the day when the Emperor of China is customarily saluted
by obeisance made toward the east. It is probable that they
refused to attend this yearly ceremony in order to avoid offend-
ing either the Emperor or the Dalai Lama, either by abandoning
or persisting in the old custom which the latter seems now to
have forbidden for the future, and it is not without significance
that, in order to save themselves from internal treachery, the
four deposed Shapes had bound themselves by an oath to stand
or fall together.

The points were put upon the i's of the situation by a remark
of the Amban's about this time that even if ambassadors were
sent to meet the British at any point, and even if they succeeded
in coming to an agreement, the Tsong-du would refuse to ratify
the treaty. Of the four Shapes or Kalons, the monk official
Te-kang, the Shata Shape, and Sho-kang were the more respon-
sible and respectable officers ; the last, by name Hor-kang, a man
of somewhat weak character, who had been in office but four
months, committed suicide almost immediately in terror. Their
places were taken by the Ta Lama as ecclesiastical member, the
head of the house of Yutok, the Tsarong Depen, and the Tse-
chung Shape; none of them, with the exception of the Yutok
Shape, of any social position or strength of mind.

The Ta Lama, whom we repeatedly met at one time or an-
other, was a gentlemanlike old priest, verging on his second
childhood and incapable of keeping his attention fixed on any
subject for more than a minute or so at a time. The Yutok
Shape was a phlegmatic fatalist who seemed fully aware of the
impossibility of doing anything fof his country with the scanty
authority he possessed. The other two were negligible quan-
tities and were clearly appointed for the sole purpose of allow-
ing a freer hand to the Dalai Lama's personal eccentricities.

THE TA LAMA AT TASKI-TSE
The chief executive member of the hierarchy under the Dalai Lama

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 219

With this ramshackle government the affairs of Tibet were car-
ried on; every now and then the Amban, who had already re-
ceived notice of his dismissal, tried, in a weak manner, to settle
the matter by a personal appeal to the Grand Lama or the Tsong-
du, but the treatment of the Mission at Kamba-jong is witness
enough to the small importance that was attached to Chinese
representations at this period. In December, 1903, the Shapes,
by instruction of the Dalai Lama, definitely refused transport
to the Amban. This, by preventing his approaching Colonel
Younghusband, was tantamount to an active refusal to allow
China to interfere in any way. It was the last straw ; he angrily
demanded that their refusal to obey the orders of the Chinese
Emperor should be set down in writing. It was probably some-
what to his surprise that the Dalai Lama instantly acquiesced and
assumed full responsibility for the action. Tibet had decided
to act as an independent kingdom, and as soon as the gauntlet
had been thrown down, troops were moved out from Lhasa along
the southern road to Phari. Yu-kang then rather weakly offered
to pay his own transport expenses, but this was as steadily re-
fused as before. For some time now the Amban had been unable
to obtain an answer from the Dalai Lama even to questions
wholly unconnected with the dispute with ourselves; from this
moment he was an insignificant and ultimately a disgraced man.
The arrival of the new Amban, Yu-tai, was about this time an-
nounced from Chyando, and Yu-kang made his preparations to
return. His degradation was no loss to us. He had been acting
upon the confidential orders of Yung-lu for many years and un-
doubtedly supported the Tibetans in their refusal to negotiate
with the English, relying upon assurances received from Yung-lu
that Lhasa would be occupied by Russian troops in the spring
of 1903. This corroborates Dorjieff's boast, and our minister in
Peking obtained from Prince Ching an admission that he had
heard the report. Nor when pressed did the Russian minister in

220 THE OPENING OF TIBET

Peking deny that there was a certain rapprochement " on religious
grounds " ; but Yung-lu's death shortly afterward and the first
rumblings of the Japanese war cloud effectually held the hand of
Russia. The Dalai Lama therefore found himself in the posi-
tion of having paved the way for advances on Russia's part from
which nothing was to be expected, while from our side he could
only await that demand for satisfaction and a clearer understand-
ing which he had himself deliberately provoked.

By this time even the pious citizens of Lhasa were grumbling
against their divine ruler. They whispered that the Potala Lama,
as he is not infrequently called in Lhasa, after having murdered
the regent of Tibet and imprisoned the Shapes, was about to con^-
summate his folly by losing the country itself as well. The wild-
est confusion prevailed in official circles ; no man trusted his near-
est friend ; the Amban, trying perhaps to retrieve his credit at the
last moment, appears now and then in a whirl of fussy and impo-
tent ill temper, making demands that his master must be obeyed,
that transport must be provided for him, that the La-chung men
must be released at once.^ No one paid him the slightest atten-
tion, and at last he seems to have subsided upon receipt of an un-
pleasant communication from Peking, intimating that his punish-
ment would be decided upon after he had returned ; and this is the
end of Yu-kang.

Meanwhile the new Amban was slowly making his progress
toward Lhasa. He had started in November, 1902, and fifteen
months seems an inordinate time for even a Chinese official to take
in covering the distance which separates Lhasa from Peking. He

* Two men from Sikkim had been caught by the Tibetans and detained by
them during our stay at Kamba-jong. It was almost universally reported that
they had been tortured and put to death in Shigatse, but on our arrival in
Lhasa they were found to be still in prison there, and on the 17th of August
Colonel Younghusband had them released. This incident at one time seemed
likely to give rise to serious complications, but thus it ended happily, and the
men themselves made no charge of brutality against their Tibetan jailers.

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 221

had asked for an escort of 2,000 men to accompany him, but
as a matter of fact he found it difficult to provide for the needs
of the bare hundred whom he was allowed to take. He had been
selected for the post because he was the brother of Sheng-tai who
had concluded the unfortunate treaty of 1890, and it was re-
garded as only fitting and just by the Oriental mind that the
harm done by one member of a family should be rectified by an-
other. On his way he met Mr. Nicholls, an American, at Ta-
chien-lu, the frontier city, where he seems to have spent some
time in extracting money from the Chinese prefect and the Tib-
etan *' gyalpo " alike. He seems to have asserted his intention
of restoring Chinese authority, and he admitted no sympathy with
the Tibetan desire for seclusion, arguing that if Sze-chuan was
open to foreigners there could be no reason why the pretensions
of the Tibetans should ^be permitted for a moment. He moved
on to Batang for the same dubious purposes .that had detained
him at Ta-chien-lu.^

On the 1 2th of February, the belated official reached Lhasa and
assumed the reins of government. Later in the same month Dor-
jieff's influence began to wane. The intrigues with Russia had
been overdone and were the common talk of the town. It was
' known and widely resented that the Dalai Lama had sent back to
St. Petersburg a Buriat who had come to Dorjieff, bringing with
him a large sum of money. Moreover, the new Amban, whatever
his moral deficiencies, had at least some energy at first. He tried
to carry things with a high hand, and one of his first actions was
severely to censure the inaction of a Chinese representative, who
had been ordered south to confer with Younghusband ; he seems
also to have given our Kamba-jong acquaintance, Ho, a bad

* Mr. Nicholls notes that at this place the hair and scraps of the finger-nails
of the Dalai Lama were sold at enormous prices in the market, and Mr. Wil-
ton tells me that there is a constant demand in Peking for scraps, however
dirty, of his Holiness' clothing, and even more repulsive relics of the great
Reincarnation

222 THE OPENING OF TIBET

quarter of an hour on the ground that he had misappropriated
Government money. A week after his arrival he made an official
visit to the Dalai Lama, and for three hours attempted to bring
him to reason ; it was not, however, of much use, and on his return
to the Residency the Amban set himself to the re-organization and
reform of the military arrangements in Tibet so far as the Chinese
soldiery was concerned. On one point at least he failed as com-
pletely as his predecessor; he, too, first requested and finally de-
manded that he should be allowed transport to go to Tuna to meet
Younghusband, or Yun-hai-phun, as they transliterated the name.
This the Dalai Lama courteously but firmly refused. At a sub-
sequent visit the Amban seems to have moderated his tone, but to
no effect ; the Dalai Lama again cheerfully accepted the responsi-
bility for every obstacle that was placed in the way of the Am-
ban's intended journey, and refused to permit the strengthening
of the Chinese garrisons at the frontier and in Lhasa, The mood
of the Tibetans at this period was anything but conciliatory. The •
Tongsa Penlop, who had written offering his services as mediator
once again, was told that only after a retreat to Yatung and pay-
ment of damages for our trespass at Phari would the question
of negotiation be opened.

But the display of temper was not confined to officials. About
this time levies from the province of Kams were called up, but
they refused to come, alleging that no proper rations had been
served out to them; a promise of proper supplies (which, by the
way, was never performed) induced them to send about a thou-
sand men for the defense of Lhasa, but in other parts of the coun-
try the demands of the Dalai Lama were met with a blank refusal.
Upon the top of this came the news of the disaster at Guru and
of our occupation of Gyantse jong. The discontent redoubled.
Dorjieff felt that, now or never, the time was come for action if
he wished to save his life. He seems to have argued to himself
that if a successful attack could be made upon the small British

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 223

garrison at Chang-lo, time would be gained and his policy justi-
fied, for the moment at least. On the other hand, if such an at-
tack were unsuccessful his own liberty and even his own life
would be in danger ; he therefore planned and ordered the attack
on the Mission post on May 5th, and straightway fled the coun-
try, posting north along the Sining highway, and ultimately
branching off along the Urga road.*

About this time the Tsarong Depen asked that troops should
be sent to Nagartse to oppose the advance of the British troops.
He especially objected, it is said, to the English habit of taking
photographs. The Paro Penlop in Bhutan was stealthily ap-
proached by the Dalai Lama at the same time with the object of
inducing the Bhutanese, in the absence of the Tongsa Penlop, to
destroy the British lines of communication,^ and a second mes-
senger was sent in haste to Russia as the former envoy had not
returned.

High ofilicials now began to talk among themselves almost
without concealment of the foolishness of the Dalai Lama, but
no one dared to say much to him. The news that Russia was get-
ting the worst of it in Korea had reached Tibet. A report of the
fight on the Karo la was received with consternation in Lhasa,
but the Grand Lama merely observed that it was time to send
forward the Golden Army ^ and, if necessary, all the male inhabi-
tants of Lhasa also. The rumor that Gyantse jong had been
retaken and the British garrison there exterminated to a man
helped to restore public confidence a little, and about the same
time a letter of sympathy came from Bhutan causing dispropor-
tionate satisfaction. It is significant that the Chinese Amban re-

^ Rumors of a subsequent meeting between himself and the Dalai Lama have
as yet no confirmation, but it is not improbable that at Urga or some similar
place the two men have since met.

' The Paro Penlop ranks second, and consistently opposed the Anglophile
tendencies of the Tongsa Penlop. He is, however, now discredited.

' This is the monkish reserve which supplies a personal escort to the Dalai
Lama. It is often loosely used to describe the fighting lamas as a whole.

224 THE OPENING OF TIBET

fused to believe in the killing of even a couple of Chinese at Dzara
during the Karo la fight, pointing out that the English had not
killed one of his countrymen throughout the expedition, and
bluntly declaring his belief that these two had been assassinated
there by Tibetans.

Such, then, was the position until the middle of July, when the
Dalai Lama heard that Gyantse Jong had been again recaptured
and that the English were on the point of starting for Lhasa. He
lost no time. Disguised in the plain dirty crimson of a common
monk the mortal body of Tubdan Gyatso fled away from his an-
cient residence and hallowed cathedral in Lhasa, carrying within
him the incarnate soul of Avalokiteswara. He set his golden
feet along the Nakchu-ka road and never looked back till he was
eight days' journey from the capital. With him went the Chief
Magician, he who many years ago had helped to place Tubdan
upon the throne, and in later years had foretold only too truly
that the " year of the wood dragon " (i.e., 1904) would spell dis-
aster for Tibet. These two men at the present moment are at
Urga, where a religious jehad is being organized, and it is quite
clear that no finality in our relations with Tibet can be secured
until they are persuaded of the foolishness of opposing the rights
of India, or until, as is far more likely, they have been quietly
put out of the way by the hierarchs whose ancient regime they
have so rudely offended.

As to the negotiations which we had so far vainly endeavored
to begin, it should be remembered that the terms which Colonel
Younghusband was instructed to demand from the Tibetans were
in themselves neither burdensome nor indeed as heavy as we had
a right to demand. Briefly stated, they included a demand that
the frontier should be rectified, that an indemnity should be paid
of an amount and in a manner to be subsequently decided, that
foreign political influence should be totally excluded from Tibet,
and that no concessions for mines, railways, or telegraphs should

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 225

be granted without the knowledge and the assent of the Indian
Government. Trade markets were to be estabhshed at Gyantse
and Gartok, a place far on the road from Shigatse to Leh, and
another clause permitted trade from India to pass freely along
any existing highway of commerce. A Resident in Gyantse was
to be appointed, but no representative of British interests, po-
litical or commercial, was to be posted at Lhasa, As a guar-
antee for the payment of the indemnity the Chumbi Valley
was to be occupied by the British. The suzerainty of the
Chinese was frankly recognized throughout the document, and
it need hardly be said that Russia was not referred to. Colo-
nel Younghusband had frankly expressed his opinion that it
would be cheaper and more effectual in the long run to have
a Resident in Lhasa, and if the Government had not com-
mitted themselves to an opposite policy by their promises to Rus-
sia it is possible that this suggestion, which to some extent
commended itself to Lord Curzon also, might have been adopted.
We shall see later the actual course of negotiations and the form
which this treaty eventually assumed. For the moment it is only
necessary to remember that Lord Curzon's absence from India on
leave from the end of April to the beginning of December placed
him somewhat at a disadvantage. He has, however, in the fullest
manner, acknowledged his indebtedness to Lord Ampthill, Gov-
ernor of Madras and acting Viceroy of India during Lord Cur-
zon's furlough, for the steady way in which the policy, which had
been begun and shaped by himself, was consistently pressed for-
ward by his successor. The latter, who was thus in office during
the actual advance to Lhasa and the signing of the treaty, is a
man of capacity far beyond his years. Difficult as his position
was — and the difficulty was added to by the ultimate uncertainty
prevailing as to the length of his tenure of office* — it was uni-

*Lord Curzon's return to India was indefinitely delayed owing to Lady
Curzon's sudden illness. She had been ailing for some time. On the 2ist of

226 THE OPENING OF TIBET

versally recognized that he had dealt with a new and increasingly
difficult situation with firmness and restraint, and the Home Gov-
ernment regarded themselves as under a deep obligation to him.

One advantage of the sending of the expedition has been, as
Lord Curzon is probably very well aware, that public attention has
now been definitely drawn to a matter which had been allowed to
be shelved almost too long. However much some of the less re-
sponsible members of the Opposition in England may regret it,
it cannot again seriously be contended by them that our position
on the northern frontier of India was this time safe. I have re-
ferred to the warnings that reached Lord Curzon of the gradual
insinuation of Russian influence at Lhasa, and the expedition
proved conclusively that those rumors considerably underesti-
mated the importance of the occasion. There is no reason in the
world why Russia should not obtain a predominating influence in
Lhasa except the plain one that it is incompatible with our own
clearly recognized interests. If such a consideration is held not
to have justified the sending of the Mission, there is little more
to be said, but to those who recognize the importance of safe-
guarding our Indian frontiers without possibility of mistake, a
few more considerations as to the policy to be observed in the fu-
ture with regard to Tibet may here be offered.

To begin with, we have discovered for the first time the true
nature of southern Tibet. It is far from resembling the dreary
waterless deserts of the north, so well described by Sven Hedin
and others, and it must also be admitted that it in no way sub-
stantiates the impression left upon the mind by the reports sent
in by the secret surveyors. Apart from the fact that the native

September she developed peritonitis of an aggravated and complicated kind.
For three weeks she lay in Walmer Castle between life and death, and few
indeed of those who watched the struggle day by day had any hopes that she
could ^ultimately throw off the disease. However, to the sincere relief of
every one who had at heart the best interests of India, Lord Curzon, on the 24th
of November, was able to leave her to continue her convalescence at Highcliflfe,
and returned to take up the threads of his work at Calcutta.

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 227

of India has no eye for the beauties of nature, and would as soon
make a day's journey across a desert as a park, it must be remem-
bered that the very manner in which these invaluable men were
obliged to carry out their work precluded the possibility of much
observation. To go on walking from day to day, intent only
upon counting every footfall and faithfully registering the hun-
dreds and the thousands upon a Tibetan rosary, naturally debars
a traveler from such observations as would have suggested to the
Indian authorities both the stored-up and the potential wealth
of the great alluvial river-flats of southern Tibet.

I do not know that there are many feats in the world of adven-
ture, endurance, and pluck that will compare favorably with that
of the Indian native intrusted with the work of secret exploration
in Tibet. In the first place it must be remembered that to secure
the brains necessary for the work a class of native has to be em-
ployed which, by tradition at least, is not the pluckiest in the
peninsula. The wonder therefore is doubled when one remembers
the splendid work of such men as Krishna (better known as
A.K.) or Kintup (K.P.), for the moral courage needed to persist
in an enterprise like this can hardly be overestimated. The men
employed are of necessity entirely without companions and with-
out resources ; they are engaged upon one of the most hazardous
occupations that remain in the world, that of a spy in a barbarous
country, and should they fail for one minute in all those months
and years of exile, they know that no mercy will be extended to
them ; and I think it but fair to add that not one of them would
in any emergency betray the Government whose servant he is.
There is a known case of a man who actually consented to be be-
trayed by his colleague as a spy in order that one at least of the
two might be able to escape and bring back to India the priceless
notes and calculations collected during a year of travel. For
three years Kintup was sold into slavery and endured it without
complaining.

228 THE OPENING OF TIBET

But this is not all ; a life of exploration, apart from the dangers
and hardships of it, is one of unremitting toil ; the mere physical
endurance needed to travel in this brain-benumbing way, count-
ing each step, hardly daring to raise the eyes from the track at
one's feet lest a number should be missed, or lest suspicion should
be aroused, is incredible. One man measured the length of the
Ling-kor, the road round Lhasa, by counting the prostrations
necessary, afterward solemnly repeating the whole process over a
measured mile. Another man is known to have traveled 2,500
miles, counting every footstep over mountain ranges. Atma Ram
did the same thing in one of Captain Bower's expeditions for a
distance of 2,080 miles. Nain Singh counted his steps from Leh
to Assam — look at it on the map. When the story of Asian explo-
ration is finally and worthily written, the work of these lonely
spies, twirling incessantly within their wheels rolls of blank paper
instead of prayers, which are laboriously and minutely filled up
night after night with the day's observation, must receive a place
of honor second to none. Hurree Chunder Mookerjee in " Kim '*
is a character drawn, I believe, immediately from the record of
Krishna's work.

To return to the question of protecting the northern frontier
of India. It seems a fair estimate that, so far as supplies are
concerned, a force of a hundred thousand men could without diffi-
culty rely upon the produce of the luxuriant valleys of the Tsang-
po and the Nyang chu. It was no friend of England's who
remarked that the natural frontiers of India were less the Hima-
layas than the impenetrable deserts which lie a hundred miles
north of Lhasa, and it is a serious consideration for us that if
Russia's influence should ever predominate in Lhasa, the actual
ground to be fought for, diplomatically or otherwise, is that which
lies across the barrier formed by the Himalayas. The advanced
base, whether of the defending or of the encroaching force, must
lie in these valleys. If the fertile fields of southern Tibet cannot

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 229

enter into the calculations of an invading nation, that nation will
have to rely upon the trans-Siberian railway as its base, and I
need hardly say that this is tantamount to ridiculing the whole
danger of invasion through Tibet. Such, baldly stated, is the
situation.

To secure immediate access to this glacis of granaries is the ob-
vious policy for the British Government to pursue, and it cannot
be said too insistently that the recognition of this necessity in no
way whatever involves interference with the internal affairs of
Tibet. As to a protectorate, the very idea of undertaking respon-
sibility for an additional eighteen hundred miles of frontier is
ridiculous. This, however, is a different matter. To secure this
advantage there is little constructive work needed. An alterna-
tive route to the prohibitive hardships of the Natu la is now being
surveyed along the valleys of the Di chu and the Ammo chu. It
ll is proposed to push rail-head from some point on the line in the
neighborhood of Dam dim as far up the lower slopes of the Hima-
layas as is feasible without a rack; and then to construct a cart-
road, with an easy gradient, along the valley to the head waters
of the Di chu, crossing into Bhutanese territory near Jong-sa, and
at a height of 9,000 feet, overpassing at its lowest point the great
mountain wall which here hems in the right bank of the Ammo
chu. From this height there is almost a level run into Rinchen-
gong. Once in the Chumbi Valley the difficulties of a second ex-
pedition will have been largely overcome, for even as this work
is published the road from Rinchen-gong to Kamparab is re-
ceiving the last touches from the engineers who have worked on
it so long. From Kamparab there is a level natural road which
has been steadily used throughout the present expedition for
wheeled traffic as far as Kang-ma. The road is practicable for
carts for a few miles further still, and the construction of the road
I have mentioned over the Jong-sa la would enable stores, un-
loaded at rail-head, to be carried, without bulk broken, on wheeled

230 THE OPENING OF TIBET

carts to within thirty miles of Gyantse itself. It is hardly neces-
sary to comment upon this. We have, I repeat, no wish in the
world to interfere with Tibet so long as Tibet does not imperil
our tranquillity in Bengal. While we ourselves seek no exclusive
rights in the country, we have at the same time no intention of
allowing any other power to secure them. So long as the Tibe-
tans cordially co-operate with ourselves in excluding foreign po-
litical influence, so long will we assist them to the best of our
power by doubling the existing barriers along the common fron-
tier. But it must be patent to the shallowest that the simple lay-
ing of this road will in future put us in a position to insist, should
our friendliness be insufficient to win the loyalty and good faith
of the hierarchy of Lhasa. It is but bare justice to credit Captain
O'Connor with the original suggestion of its construction in any
practicable form.

Inseparable from this cart-road is the question of trade. Else-
where I have referred to the staple products of the country. On
our side it seems clear that tea is beyond all competition the chief
export from India which the Tibetans would buy profusely and
with gratitude should the opportunity be fairly presented to them.
But a curious and unfortunately not an extraordinary thing is
the unwillingness of the Darjeeling tea-planters to recognize the
real necessities of the case. They are ready to supply their ordi-
nary tea in its ordinary form to any extent, but they seem quite
unwilling to manufacture the tea in that shape in which alone the
Tibetans recognize the article. I believe that after some pressure
the institute of planters in the Darjeeling district have sent two
men to the Chinese tea fields to learn the method of making bricks
of tea, such as the Tibetans require, but it seems strange that it
should have required an expedition to teach them such an obvious
act of commercial prudence.

This, then, is in brief the truth about our future relations with
Tibet, and in whatever terms the treaty now signed may eventu-

INTERNAL HISTORY OF LHASA 1902-4 231

ally be ratified, the fact remains unalterable, that by the simple
construction of a road the northern frontier of India can now be
safeguarded at an expense which is ridiculously small in compari-
son with the millions lavished on the north-west, and one which
by sheer encouragement of trade will be recouped within ten
years. Roads are the great pioneers of peace, and those who
know their north-west frontier best will be the first to admit the
almost instant result of their construction even in the most hos-
tile districts. But the matter may safely be left in the hands of
Lord Curzon.

CHAPTER XIII

LAMAISM

NO account of an expedition to Lhasa would be complete
without some reference to the technical side of the religion
of the country. I have before referred to its application to the
people and the effect it produces upon their life, but a certain
amount of information as to the ecclesiastical aspect of Lamaism
is necessary to a full understanding of the real position which
Buddhism occupies in Central Asia. I have no intention of
wearying the reader with minute formulae, but the spirit which
underlies this Buddhism is worthy of some study.

The origin of Buddhism in Tibet is explained by the Tibetans
themselves in a somewhat amusing way. It is said that in old
days Tibet was a country of ravines and mountain tops and tor-
rents, varied by huge lakes. Buddha in person then visited the
land, and found that the inhabitants were monkeys. He ques-
tioned the monkeys and asked them why they were not men and
good Buddhists. They answered, not without reason, that with
the country in its existing state there was no opportunity for the
development of their own bodies, let alone their religious im-
pulses. To this Buddha replied : " If you will promise to become
men and good Buddhists I will give you a good and fertile land
to live in." The agreement having been struck, Buddha there
and then drained off the waters from the land which is now
known as the plain of Gyantse by an underground channel
through the Himalayas into the Ganges near Gaya. The Tibetans

232

LAMAISM 22,z

on their side kept their promise, and though of course they knew
not Darwin, became both men and, as they assert, good Buddhists.

As a matter of fact, the moment at which Buddhism became the
established religion of Tibet can be ascertained with some ap-
proach to certainty. The Tibetan King Srong-tsan-gambo, to
whom reference has been made in the first chapter, must have
been a man of considerable foresight. It is not in the least likely
that it was the influence of his two wives, one of whom was a
Chinese, and the other a Nepalese princess, which decided him to
adopt Buddhism as the religion of his country, though both of
them may have helped to strengthen him in his intention. The
truth is that he recognized the enormous value which would at-
tach to the identification of Buddhism with his new capital. In
India, as he saw clearly enough. Buddhism was being driven
headlong before the re-encroaching tides of Hinduism. Had
Buddhism remained a living force in India, no other place in Asia
could have attempted to compete in local religious importance
with, say, Gaya. But when Buddhism became an exile from the
land of its birth, Srong-tsan-gambo made use of his opportunity.
He recognized both the importance of having its central authority
located in Lhasa, and the peculiar suitability of that place to his
aims. In the seventh century, therefore, the official metropolis of
Buddhism was transferred from the plains of Northern India to
the mountain fastnesses of Tibet, and here in a couple of centuries
the new religion established itself in the mystic and fascinating
seclusion which veils it to this day.

This King of Tibet sent to India for learned Buddhist fathers,
and, with the unquestioned autocracy of an Oriental tyrant, he
imposed the new faith upon his people. There are few relics, ex-
cept, perhaps, in the cathedral of Lhasa itself, of this primeval
state of Lamaism, but that it underlies and was the founda-
tion of all that we now see is beyond doubt. The Buddhism
which was first introduced into Tibet was of the ampler form

234 THE OPENING OF TIBET

taught by the school of Asanga. It was in its original state the
" greater vehicle," without any other accretions than those which
Asanga's opportunism compelled him to adopt from the Hindu
ritual and mythology. But, as I have said before, the present con-
dition of Lamaism is such that Buddha himself would hardly
recognize a phase or a phrase of it. The interesting part of this
development is that it has been going on without any outside In-
terference whatever. Secured by their geographical position,
securer still by their overweening pride in the sacro-sanctity of
their capital and the learning of their doctors, the Tibetans devel-
oped Lamaism along lines which betray no foreign influence. But
this does not imply that the new religion was not severely tested
and tried. There were molding forces enough in the religious
party strife to distribute countless lines of cleavage through the
fibers of the parent Buddhist stock. From the first the difficulty
of communications in this country and the laxity which neces-
sarily followed when the strong hand of an autocratic monarchy
slackened, produced a large number of special and local develop-
ments of the Buddhist faith. It would be tedious to do more than
note again that the first universal supremacy of any church in
Tibet was that created by Kublai Khan in the middle of the thir-
teenth century, when he recognized the spiritual autocracy of
the Grand Lama of the Sakya Monastery.

Sakya lies well to the south of Tashi-lhunpo, far from the influ-
ences of Lhasa, and here the Red Cap faction flourished exceed-
ingly. There is a legend in connection with Kublai Khan's action
which is credible enough. In wide sympathy with all forms of
religious endeavor, Kublai Khan determined to put the claims of
the various creeds to ^ practical test ; none was excluded. A cer-
tain miracle — it was the levitation of a wine cup from the table
to the Emperor's lips— was to be performed if possible by the
representatives of the different creeds. Those championing the
Christian faith were perhaps unwise in accepting this challenge

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LAMAISM 235

to make a public advertisement of supernatural powers. The
lamas, on their side, no doubt, took private and material means
to secure the success of their own incantations, and the failure
of the Christians to achieve the marvel put the coping-stone to
the strength of Buddhism in Central Asia.

It is not unlikely that the supernatural powers claimed to this
day among certain sections of the lamas had their origin in this
curious legend. Madame Blavatsky has drawn attention to these
claims, and it may be doubted whether much popular enthusiasm
would ever have been displayed for the shadowy tenets of The-
osophy if it had not been for these attractive suggestions. Per-
sonally, I only once came in contact with a lama who made, or
had made for him, a definite claim to supernatural power. Nyen-
de-kyi-buk is from time to time called upon to produce lamas of
unusual sanctity. They are always forthcoming. These men
have their spiritual capacity proved by their ability to pass certain
tests, of which several were described to me. The first thing to
be proved is their capacity to transmit their personality in a visible
form to Lhasa, Gyantse, and Tashi-lhunpo within the space of a
few seconds. Another and probably a more difficult feat upon
which to satisfy their examiners consists in their ability to crawl
through the keyhole of their locked cell. The Abbot of Nyen-de-
kyi-buk had successfully passed these tests, but one felt that the
rules of courtesy forbade one from making any direct request that
he should repeat on the spot even the simplest of his miracles.
But supernatural powers are, of course, claimed in a very definite
manner by all the wizards and magicians of the country, and also
by the Dalai Lama and other high officials.

It is perhaps unfair to class the pretense of the magigian to
keep off hail from the crops by his prayers as an illustration of
witchcraft, for a not dissimilar claim is implied even in Christian
services ; but it would be difficult to find a hard and fast point at
which to draw a dividing line between such a pretension as this

236 THE OPENING OF TIBET

and that which underlies the claims of the austerer members of
the Red-cap faction to the supernatural powers to which I have
just referred. The earlier teachers of Lamaism are undoubtedly
credited with curious non-human capacities, and the manner in
which these mighty men of old encountered and defeated the ob-
stacles devised by their enemies, or put in their path by the con-
ditions of nature, is probably the basis of the Theosophist con-
tention.

I have been at some pains to ascertain the origin of this belief,
which Madame Blavatsky has been perhaps chiefly responsible
for spreading. The following most learned teachers may be
quoted here as having been the source of much of her doctrine :

1. Nub-chen-nam-kar-ning-po.—A Red-cap Lama, who trans-
ported himself at will through the air.

2. Niih-chen-sang-gyi-ye-she. — This man had even dared to
see Shin-je himself, the god of Hell. He was also able to split
rocks with a stroke of his purbu.

3. Nal-jor-gyal-wa-chok-yung. — A mighty teacher of the
Red-cap school.

4. Khan-dro-ye-she-tso-gyal. — A woman disciple of the Guru
Rinpoche. She exercised supernatural powers.

5. Dog-mi-pal-gi-ye-she. — He meditated on a snow-field with
such success that the welfare and the misery of the world alike
were visible to him, and he was obeyed by the goddesses them-
selves.

6. Nyak-chen-ye-she-scheun-nu.—A Lama of the Red-cap
sect, who obtained water from a rock in the desert by touching
it with his finger.

7. Tub-chen-pal-gyi-sing-ge. — A Bhutanese, whom the gods
and goddesses were compelled to obey.

8. N ga-dag-cho-gyal. — This Lama lived at Samye. He lived
without eating and made himself invisible at will.

LAMAISM 237

9. Nal-jor-wang-chuk-chempo. — A pupil of the Guru Rin-
poche, of great but unspecified supernatural powers.

10. Na-nam-dor-je-dud-jom. — A pupil of the Guru Rinpoche,
who could project himself through the air.

11. Ba-mi-ye-she.—A pupil of the Guru Rinpoche. This
man, like Enoch, passed into Nirvana without going through
the pains of death.

12. Sok-po-lha-pal. — This man, the fourth of the Guru's
great disciples, had the power of killing a tiger by touching
its neck with his hands.

13. Na-nang-ye-she. — This Lama was learned enough to be
able to fly through the air like a bird,

14. Khar-chen-pal-gyi-wong-chuk, — This great interpreter of
Khar-chen wrought wonders with his purbu.

15. Shu-po-pal-ki-sing-ge. — A Tibetan "doctor," who con-
trolled the sea.

16. Ko-wa-pal-tse. — A Hindu. His supernatural gifts are not
specified.

17. Na-jal-den-ma-tse-mang.—K Hindu magician of the Red-
cap school.

18. Gyal-wo-lo-deu.—A Hindu pundit (who brought brass
images to life!).

19. Kyu-chung.—A youthful Hindu interpreter, who spoke
the language of birds.

20. Kun-chok-jang-ne.—A Hindu pundit who controlled the
elements.

21. Nal-joy-pal-gyi-dor-je. — This man was able to walk as
easily over precipices as over the ground.

22. Lo-che-ma-thog-rin-chen.— With his magical powers he
was able to tear off great boulders from the mountain side and
crush them to powder in his hands.

23. Wo-den-pal-gyi-wang-chuk.— This teacher could swim
through water as quickly and as easily as a fish.

238 THE OPENING OF TIBET

24. Nal-jor-den-pa-nam-khe. — This great Lama was so
skilled in magic lore that he could catch by the ear even the
"flesh-licking" bison. (This is the repeated statement of a
Tibetan lama, but if the yak is intended, it neither " licks flesh "
nor much minds being held by the ear.)

25. Dub-chen-gyal-wo-chang-chub.— While meditating he
was levitated into the air and so remained.

I have given these uncouth names in ordef to place upon a
proper footing the supernatural claims of theosophists for Tibe-
tan Lamaism. I have myself no doubt that, in these traditions
lies the origin of many of their beliefs, and I am glad to provide
such material for acquiescence or argument as these supply.^

The word Mahatma is not known in Tibet, and, though he
must know little of the East who will definitely say that any
apparent variation therein of the ordinary course of nature,
whether due to hypnotism or not, is incredible, I do not think,
on the whole, that any particular occult knowledge will come to
us from Tibet. Formulae and details of ritual we did indeed
find in overwhelming numbers, and the credulity and superstition
of the common people may once have suggested that there really
is something in these claims to theurgy, but the success with
which a monotoned imprecation impresses a crowd of worship-
ers in a Tibetan gompa is, we found, due merely to the policy
of extinguishing knowledge which the lamas have adopted.

To return to the history of the Church, Buddhism, in its
earliest shape, was an agnostic rather than an atheistic form of
religion. Buddha's scheme of retribution implies a belief in a
First Cause, but when on a certain occasion he was asked to ex-
press an opinion upon the validity or otherwise of the traditional

* This list is, I believe, a complete one of all the "red letter" doctors of
the Lamaic Church who wrought miracles. It is included in the full " ong
kur-wa" or " power-sendingj" equipment of a Lamaic wizard.

LAMAISM 239

deities known to Asia, he declined to admit the necessity of a
categorical answer. He may have thought that it was convenient
for common people of low intelligence, whose minds could only
grasp a truth objectively, to have some external and tangible
crystallization of truths, however far they might be from that
which he saw. More than that cannot, I think, be found in the
earliest form of Buddhism. There were, however, few even
among the earliest Buddhists who were strong enough to drink
this pure milk of the Word, and we find that even before Asanga
had fused the two creeds. Buddhism was peopled with many
semi-deities.

After the " Buddhas " and the Bodisats — a large class, consist-
ing of those who have, so to speak, qualified themselves to be
Buddhas, but whose self-denial has not yet and may never be
called upon — there is a class of divinity which is very strikingly
prominent in Tibet. These are the tutelary or guardian deities,
chiefly of the " Towo " or " terrible " aspect. These were the
original gods of the country, and after Buddha, who is always
conceived as having made a personal mission tour through the
land, had converted these hideous human monsters to his own
austerer faith, he permitted them to retain their aspect and even
their powers of doing harm, in order, as he said, that they might
defend the faith and the chosen people from outside rattack. This
retention has had a natural result. There is no .doubt that the
inclusion of these " terrible " guardians in the Lamaic Pantheon
has been the chief cause of the people remaining at heart devil-
worshipers. We can imagine that at first the apostles of Bud-
dhism found their work considerably smoothed for them by ac-
cepting the devil-gods of the aboriginal inhabitants. In this they
after all only carried out Asanga's own policy in India, but the
result, which they might have foreseen, has been that, except for
the external veneer of Buddhism, devil-worship has absorbed its
conqueror.

240 THE OPENING OF TIBET

These terrible deities are the gods of the common people of
Tibet. The mild-eyed Buddha is to them only a vague means
of escape from the tyranny of these loathsome and misshapen
monsters, aureoled with the fire of hell, who with dripping fangs
and beastly deformities are far more present and practical than
the master. They are placed, naturally enough, at the gates and
in the forecourts of temples, either in actual carved shape, or,
as is far more common, painted upon the walls. Upon these the
eye of the passer-by rests, and it is probable that he rarely asks
for any higher sanction for his religious duties than that which
they afford. They terrify him into obedience to his lama, and
that is all that the lama requires. For an adequate conception
of the real effect of Lamaism upon the Tibetans, it is hardly
necessary to go higher up in the scale than these tutelary deities.

Vaguely known to the common Tibetans by their colored fig-
ures upon wayside rocks are such semi-deities as Dolma, in her
three hues of green, red, and white, and in the same class may
perhaps be placed the eight ladies in whom Colonel Waddell
recognizes aboriginal deities adopted en bloc by the incoming
Buddhists. They are of comely complexion, and certainly do
-not look as if butter would melt in their mouths. This, however,
is not the case if the fearsome tales which were told to me by
one of our interpreter lamas have any foundation in fact. They
are probably merely the spouses of the male tutelary deities, and
•derive any importance they may possess from the reflection of
their consorts' terrors. A very common figure in wall paintings
is the god of wealth. He is represented with a red face, and
down his left forearm runs the mongoose by which jewels * are
fetched from the center of the earth. Conventionally there is
a rank and degree for every member of this supernatural com-
pany; but even the educated Tibetan is quite willing to allow

* Jewels are conventionally represented in Tibetan art
like turnips of different colors.

LAMAISM 241

these complications of mythology to be understanded of the
priests alone, and it is practically sufficient for the traveler to
recognize at sight the four terrible guardian deities of the four
quarters of Heaven, Tamdin, so called because of the horse's
head and neck which are always to be found in the flames with
which his head is crowned, Shin-je, the god of Hell, and Pal-
den-lhamo.

Besides these are the mischievous gods which the lamas use
to subjugate the common folk — gods of lesser and local influ-
ence. They are malignant sprites with strictly limited powers.
They have a thousand different shapes. Some are gnomes or
hobgoblins, creeping and peeping among the rocks. Some are
gigantic brutes a mile in height, with tiny mouths which pre-
vent them swallowing even the smallest crumb; naturally they
suffer from hunger, and in their agonized writhings they are the
immediate cause of earthquakes. Others again confine them-
selves to peaks and passes — the noi-jins ^ are of this class. They
do not, however, do much harm to mankind except that of course
avalanches are their work, and they seem also to be responsible
for breathing out what the Tibetans call la-druk—" the poison
of the pass." This, of course, is merely the attenuated air which
even in the hardiest Tibetan will bring on mountain sickness and
nausea. Then there are imps who hide themselves during the
-day and come out and hold high revels all the night. They
ride over the hills and plains on foxback, and if you hear one of
these animals yelping in the distance, you may be sure that it
is being over-driven and beaten sorely by one of these " lan-de."
However, as the only whip which they are allowed to use is
the hemlock stalk, the wounds cannot be very severe.

Every village and every district has its own particular god,
and it is part of the duties and the emoluments of the lamas to

^ The first word in Nichi-kang-sang is really Noi-jin,
but it is never so pronounced.

242 THE OPENING OF TIBET

instruct travelers (for a moderate fee) as to the deity proper to
be invoked at the entrance of each commune. Fevers and dis-
eases of all kinds are caused by minute but malignant sprites.
Thus, when you see a rainbow, you may know that these in-
finitely small folk are sliding down it Iris-like to the water at its
foot, and then beware of that place, for ague lies thereby. If
one wished to put into a fanciful form the last theories at home
about malaria, this would be as pretty a way of telling them as
any. They amuse themselves (here, perhaps, we have the miss-
ing anopheles) by playing on guitars. Some of these spirits
live solely on odors. They inhabit the air, and flit like fairies to
and fro. They feed upon any kind of scent or stench, good or bad,
and butchers burn oflfal round their shops in order that by a more
overpowering smell than that of their own wares, these spirits
may be attracted away. Finally, there are the shri, the com-
monest and perhaps the most dreaded spirits of them all. It is
to be noticed that they are chiefly dangerous because they attack
children.*

These spirits really represent to the common Tibetan peasant
all the religious influences that he knows, and for him the
elaborate structure of Lamaism is only a shield and defense
against a very real terror which waits for him a hundred times
a day beside his path and about his bed. For the lamas, on the
other hand, there is much in the ritual of their church, and if
they do not actually disbelieve in the existence of these malig-
nant spirits, they feel perfectly secure behind the protection af-

* Children are very well treated in Tibet. Of course they are left unwashed,
and if they have any kind of disease they are left to grow out of it if it is so
ordained. The result of these two customs is that skin disease among the
children is unpleasantly common. But they are well-fed, never ill-treated,
and have, on the whole, a very good time. From the very beginning they
were never afraid of our troops, and the first word of Hindustani that was
learned by the Tibetans as a whole was the " salaam " which the three-year-
old mites ran beside us and squeaked continually. Afterward " salaam " was
a well-recognized form for exchanging salutations among their seniors.

LAMAISM 243

forded by their rites and ceremonies. But for them an entirely
different set of emotions and motives comes into play. The
attitude of the lamas is in its way not less credulous and un-
taught than is that of the poorer people, but the spur which
drives them to religious observances is not the fear of earthly
mischief, by whomsoever caused ; it is a very different and a very
interesting goad of their own making — a blind horror of the
consequences of that reincarnation upon which the whole fabric
of Lamaism is built. This is a most interesting question.

It is difificult for a Christian to realize how terrible a weapon
this article of faith can become. For him this world, good or
bad, is at least the last world in which things earthly will affect
him. Of the next he knows only by the eye of faith, and the
terror inspired by the most material conception of hell is un-
questionably mitigated by the fact that the most earnest Chris-
tian believer cannot really know what it is that awaits the wicked
after death.* Indeed, if it were not so, if there were no such
modifying circumstance attached to the formulae of Christianity,
life for a devout man could hardly fail to be— if on his own
behalf perhaps, certainly on that of his friends— an agony of
pain. This, I fancy, it rarely is— at least, on this account.
There is another distinction to be remembered. The human
mind is notoriously incapable of conceiving the notion of eter-
nity. But the Oriental can throw his conceptions forward in
a vastly greater degree than the European. Whether we deny
it or not, our conception of time is dominated by our habitual
method of measurement. For us a year is not merely a conve-
nient form of expression, it is a hampering unit from which we
cannot shake ourselves free. For a Tibetan the life is the unit
of repetition, and it must be remembered that a lifetime is an

* I am aware of the Roman article " Ignis Inferni est corporeus et ejusdem
speciei cum hoc nostro elementari." But this statement is so much qualified
by the many supernatural properties claimed for the flame that even a Roman
Catholic cannot clearly fix his conception of the means of punishment.

244 THE OPENING OF TIBET

infinitely longer time for a man than are his seventy years. A
lama's conception of eternity is, therefore, of a terrible depth
compared with ours, and, what is far more, he believes from
his earliest days that failure on his part to acquire merit in this
world will result not in an instantaneous and irrevocable judg-
ment, after which at least no action of his own can do him good,
but in a never-ending repetition in some form of life in this world
of the very same struggle that he is now enduring. And the
ingenuity with which the lamas have conceived the lowest, filthi-
est and most obscene envelopes in which the sentient and in-
telligent human mind and soul may, after death, be re-impris-
oned, would do credit to a monkish theologian anticipating
cases for the canon law. Herein lies the rub of it all.

The means of punishment is ever under his eye. Here is
an example. The ordinary man in the country will slip his outer
garment down over his shoulders and spend a lazy hour, in the
heat of the sun, in detecting and exterminating the almost in-
visible vermin which inhabit his robe. But to the lama this is
forbidden, for there can never be an hour in his skin-tormented
life in which he does not remember that his loathsome parasites
may have deserved their present fate by carelessness in some
point of ritual during their life on earth — nay, that he may even
himself be then awaiting the imminent moment in which he
shall join their creeping company.

If the reader can seriously understand that this is not a mere
theoretical truth, but an actual daily terror to the educated
classes in Tibet, he may go some way toward understanding
one at least of the myriad terrors which a belief in the theory
of reincarnation necessitates. If, then, it is clear that the men-
tal terrors of the Tibetans, whether they are called by the name
of superstition or of religion, have provided for the profess-
ing Buddhists, high and low alike, an ample sanction for the
due observance of the rules of life, it remains to be seen what

LAMAISM 245

general effect these rules have upon the life and morals of the
inhabitants.

One thing at least is clear in the case of nearly every religion
of importance. The influence of religion has in almost every case
been used to inculcate not only such virtues as tended to secure
the material prosperity of the nation, but such also as make
for the permanence of society and the sanitary benefit of the
members of the faith. As an example, it is sufficient to point
to Islam. Mahomet, whatever his spiritual deficiencies, had a
keen and certain eye for the necessities of a nation living in the
tropics, surrounded by hostile tribes in every direction. The
trend of his regulations is obvious enough. Every line of the
Koran breathes of sanitation on earth, and, after death on the
field of battle, of the hope of an eternity of pleasure. It is
easy to understand why the devotees of so straight a creed have
never ebbed from their widest flow. But in Tibet, after a sanc-
tion had been obtained, which for strength has been surpassed
by nothing elsewhere held out for the admiration or terror of
men, we find that the religion thereby enforced is not merely
neglectful of the development or even of the continued existence
of its professing members, but is even detrimental to it.

Buddhists are, of course, confronted with the same difficulty
by which Christians also are faced. Nothing is more charac-
teristic of the two faiths than the repeated injunction to suffer
injuries meekly and take no life. I do not propose to discuss
so difficult a theological compromise as that at which the Chris-
tian nations of the world have arrived in this matter, but it may
be pointed out that Buddhists must again and again have found
it difficult to adopt even an approximation to this rule of life,
surrounded as they are by races to whom such laws were patent
foolishness. Christianity in Europe, strong within itself and
its friendly co-religionists, is in a different case. In Tibet the sac-
rosanct character of the country has saved the inhabitants again

246 THE OPENING OF TIBET

and again from hostile attack ; and this, combined with the neces-
sity of keeping a serf people in an unarmed condition, has made
of the Tibetans a quiet race unused to war. I do not for a mo-
ment wish to say that the Tibetan was found by us wanting in
individual pluck, but it is a long step from the innate courage
of an untutored and misled barbarian to the effective self-confi-
dence of the same man properly officered and buoyed up with
all the confidence that religion and discipline can instil. Herein
lies a characteristic of Buddhism which, from a- political point of
view, cannot be classed otherwise than as a serious fault. So
long as the earth remains divided into races whose first duty
is self-preservation, so long, deplorable as it may be from an
ideal point of view, a religion which does not also help to pro-
tect the nation as well as defend the family, stands little chance
of propagating its own good influences. Now, Lamaism has
no such tendencies. It does not make of the man a good fighter,
and it certainly does not make of him either an intelligent citizen
or a good father of a family. I suppose that under these three
heads almost every human virtue can be classed. That it does
not help him in his civic life is obvious enough, for absolute
servitude, mental and physical, is the political result of Lama-
ism upon its flock. So far as concerns his domestic relations,
it seems clear that the polyandry practised in Tibet is not likely
to lead to a high standard of morals. The results of the
large proportion of women who, in consequence, have no chance
of becoming wives, and the complication in family relationships
that results from these strange marital customs, might be less
harmful if, as happens in Sumatra and on the coasts of Malabar,
the women undertook also the government of the country. But
they do not ; far from it ; they have no voice whatever in the gov-
ernment of the country ; they still remain merely the toys or the
beasts of burden of their male acquaintances. It need not be
said that, in the conventional sense of the word, morals are
unknown in Tibet.

LAMAISM 247

But it must not be supposed that Tibetans are therefore de-
void of characteristics which, after all, may rank as high as the
virtues of sterner moralists. They are courteous and hospitable,
and so long as they do not feel that their wits are being chal-
lenged, their word may be relied upon and their kindliness taken
for granted. They are industrious and, as we have seen, capable
of extraordinary physical activity. It is true that this activity
finds its vent rather in the muscles of the legs than in those of
the fingers, but this is only to be expected. They remain dirty,
but dirtiness is a merely relative expression. If you must have
your daily tub you will not travel far, except on the high roads
of this world — I had almost said of England. But far more
than this fact, which must be known to a traveler within even
a limited radius, there remains the fact that dirt — so far, I mean,
as affects the human being — is far less offensive in high and cold
altitudes than it would be in London, and it is hardly too much
to say that there was no one in the expedition who did not, after
a comparatively short time, come to look upon the dirtiness of
those who surrounded him with a mere mental shrug of the shoul-
ders.^ It has been before suggested that the cold of Phari was one
of the reasons of its supreme filth, and this is borne out by every
experience of Tibet. ^ I do not think that many of even those
stalwarts who bathe in the Serpentine on Christmas morning
would cut a valiant figure on the Tang la, where the thermometer
is sometimes fifty-nine degrees l