The Unveiling of Lhasa
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Title: The Unveiling of Lhasa
Author: Edmund Candler
Release date: August 6, 2010 [eBook #33359]
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in
the original.
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THE UNVEILING
OF LHASA
BY
EDMUND CANDLER
AUTHOR OF 'A VAGABOND IN ASIA'
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP_
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
Publisher to H.M. India Office
41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
1905
[_All rights reserved_]
THESE PAGES,
WRITTEN MOSTLY IN THE DRY COLD WIND OF TIBET,
OFTEN WHEN INK WAS FROZEN AND ONE'S HAND TOO NUMBED
TO FEEL A PEN, ARE DEDICATED TO
COLONEL HOGGE, C.B.,
AND
THE OFFICERS OF THE 23RD SIKH PIONEERS,
WHOSE GENIAL SOCIETY IS ONE OF THE MOST PLEASANT
MEMORIES OF A RIGOROUS CAMPAIGN.
PREFACE
The recent expedition to Lhasa was full of interest, not only on account
of the political issues involved and the physical difficulties overcome,
but owing to the many dramatic incidents which attended the Mission's
progress. It was my good fortune to witness nearly all these stirring
events, and I have written the following narrative of what I saw in the
hope that a continuous story of the affair may interest readers who have
hitherto been able to form an idea of it only from the telegrams in the
daily Press. The greater part of the book was written on the spot, while
the impressions of events and scenery were still fresh. Owing to wounds
I was not present at the bombardment and relief of Gyantse, but this
phase of the operations is dealt with by Mr. Henry Newman, _Reuter's_
correspondent, who was an eye-witness. I am especially indebted to him
for his account, which was written in Lhasa, and occupied many mornings
that might have been devoted to well-earned rest.
My thanks are also due to the Proprietors of the _Daily Mail_ for
permission to use material of which they hold the copyright; and I am
indebted to the Editors of the _Graphic_ and _Black and White_ for
allowing me to reproduce certain photographs by Lieutenant Bailey.
The illustrations are from sketches by Lieutenant Rybot, and photographs
by Lieutenants Bailey, Bethell, and Lewis, to whom I owe my cordial
thanks.
EDMUND CANDLER.
LONDON,
_January, 1905._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
PAGES
A retrospect--Early visitors to Lhasa--The Jesuits--The
Capuchins--Van der Putte--Thomas Manning--The Lazarist
fathers--Policy of exclusion due to Chinese
influence--The Nepalese invasion--Bogle and Turner--The
Macaulay Mission--Tibetans invade Indian territory--The
expedition of 1888--The convention with China--British
blundering--Our treatment of the Shata Shapé--The
Yatung trade mart--Tibetans repudiate the
convention--Fiction of the Chinese suzerainty--A policy
of drift--Tibetan Mission to the Czar--Dorjieff and his
intrigues--The Dalai Lama and Russian designs--Our
great countermove--Boycotted at Khamba Jong--The
advance sanctioned--Winter quarters at Tuna 1-21
CHAPTER II
OVER THE FRONTIER
From the base to Gnatong--A race to Chumbi--A perilous
night ride--Forest scenery--Gnatong three years ago and
now--Gnatong in action--A mountain lake--The Jelap la
and beyond--Undefended barriers--Yatung and its Customs
House--Chumbi--The first Press message from
Tibet--Arctic clothing--Scenes in camp--A very
uncomfortable 'picnic' 22-34
CHAPTER III
THE CHUMBI VALLEY
The Tomos--A hardy race--Their habits and
diversions--Chinamen in exile--A prosperous valley--But
a cheerless clime--Kasi and his statistics--Trade
figures--Tibetan cruelties--Kasi as general
provider--Mountain scenery--The spirit of the
Himalayas--A glorious flora--The Himalayas and the
Alps--The wall of Gob-sorg--Chinamen and Tomos--A
future hill-station--Lingmathang--A cosy cave--The
Mounted Infantry Corps--Two famous regiments--Sport at
Lingmathang--The Sikkim stag--Gamebirds and
wildfowl--Gautsa camp 35-61
CHAPTER IV
PHARI JONG
Gautsa to Phari Jong--A wonderful old fortress--Tibetan
dirt--A medical armoury--The Lamas' library--Roadmaking
and sport--The Tibetan gazelle and other
animals--Evening diversions--Cold, grime, and
misery--Manning's journal--Bogle's account of
Phari--History of the fortress--The town and its
occupants--The mystery of Tibet--The significance of
the frescoes--Departure from Phari--The monastery of
the Red Lamas--Chumulari--The Tibetan New Year--Bogle's
narrative--The Tang la and the road to Lhasa 62-82
CHAPTER V
THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
A transport 'show'--Difficulties of the way--Vicissitudes
of climate--Frozen heights and sweltering
valleys--Disease amongst transport animals--A tale of
disaster--The stricken Yak Corps--Troubles of the
transport officer--Mules to the rescue--The coolie
transport corps--Carrying power of the transport
items--The problem and its solution--The ekka and the
yak--A providentially ascetic beast--Splendid work of
the transport service--Courage and endurance of
officers and men--The 12th Mule Corps benighted in a
blizzard--Rifle-bolts and Maxims
frost-jammed--Difficulties of a Russian advance on
Lhasa--The new Ammo Chu cart-road 83-98
CHAPTER VI
THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
The deadlock at Tuna--Discomforts of the garrison--The
Lamas' curse--The attitude of Bhutan--A diplomatic
triumph--Tedious delays--A welcome move forward--The
Tibetan camp at Hot Springs--The Lhasa Depon meets
Colonel Younghusband--Futile conferences--The Tibetan
position surrounded--Coolness of the Sikhs and
Gurkhas--The disarming--A sudden outbreak--A desperate
struggle--The action of the Lhasa General--The rabble
disillusioned in their gods--A beaten and bewildered
enemy--Reflections after the event--Tibetans in
hospital--Three months afterwards 99-114
CHAPTER VII
A HUMAN MISCELLANY
In a doolie to the base--Tibetan bearers--A retrospect--A
reverie and a reminiscence--Snow-bound at Phari--The
Bhutia as bearer--The Lepchas and their
humours--Mongolian odours--The road at last--Platitudes
in epigram--Lucknow doolie-wallahs--Their hymn of the
obvious--Meetings on the road--A motley of
races--Through a tropical forest--The Tista and
civilization 115-126
CHAPTER VIII
THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
The Tibetans responsible for hostilities--Their version of
the Hot Springs affair--Treacherous attack at
Samando--Wall-building--The Red Idol Gorge action--A
stiff climb--The enemy outflanked--Impressed
peasants--First phase of the opposition--Bad
generalship--Lack of enterprise--Erratic shooting--All
quiet at Gyantse--Enemy occupy Karo la--A booby
trap--Colonel Brander's sortie--Frontal attack
repulsed--Captain Bethune killed--Failure of flanking
movement--A critical moment--Sikhs turn the
position--Flight and pursuit--Second phase of the
opposition--Advanced tactics--Danger of being cut
off--The attack on Kangma--Desperate gallantry of the
enemy--Patriots or fanatics? 127-151
CHAPTER IX
GYANTSE (BY HENRY NEWMAN)
A happy valley--Devastated by war--Why the Jong was
evacuated--The lull before the storm--Tibetans
massing--The attack on the mission--A hot ten
minutes--Pyjamaed warriors--Wounded to the rescue--The
Gurkhas' rally--The camp bombarded--The labour of
defence work--Hadow's Maxim--Life during the
siege--Tibetans reinforced--They enfilade our
position--The taking of the 'Gurkha Post'--Terrible
carnage 152-169
CHAPTER X
GYANTSE--_continued_
Attack on the postal riders--Brilliant exploit of the
Mounted Infantry--Communications threatened--Clearing
the villages--A narrow shave--Arrival of
reinforcements--The storming of
Palla--House-fighting--Capture of the post--A fantastic
display--Night attacks--Seven miles of front--Advance
of the relief column--The Tibetans cornered--Naini
monastery taken--Capture of Tsaden--Our losses--The
armistice--Tibetans refuse to surrender the Jong--A
bristling fortress--The attack at dawn--The
breach--Gallantry of Lieutenant Grant and his
Gurkhas--Capture of the Jong 170-194
CHAPTER XI
GOSSIP ON THE ROAD TO THE FRONT
A garden in the forest--A jeremiad on transport--The
servant question--Jung Bir--British
Bhutan--Kalimpong--'The Bhutia tat'--Father
Desgodins--An adventurous career--A lost
opportunity--Chinese duplicity--Phuntshog--New arms and
new friends for Tibet--A mysterious Lama--Dorjieff
again--The inscrutable Tibetan 195-206
CHAPTER XII
TO THE GREAT RIVER
Failure of peace negociations--Opposition expected--Details
of force--March to the Karo la--Villages deserted--The
second Karo la action--The Gurkhas' climb--The Tibetan
rout--The Kham prisoners--Hopelessness of the Tibetans'
struggle--Their troops disheartened--Arrival at
Nagartse--Tedious delegates--The victory of a
personality--Brush with Tibetan cavalry--The last
shot--The Shapés despoiled--Modern rifles--Exaggerated
reports of Russian assistance--The Yamdok Tso--Dorje
Phagmo--Legends of the lake--The incubus of an
army--Why men travel--Wildfowl--Pehte--View from the
Khamba Pass--From the desert to Arcadia--The Tibetan of
the tablelands--The Tuna plateau--Homely scenes--A mood
of indolence--The course of the Tsangpo--The
Brahmaputra Irawaddy controversy--The projected Tsangpo
trip--Legendary geography--Lost opportunities 207-238
CHAPTER XIII
LHASA AND ITS VANISHED DEITY
The passage of the river--Major Bretherton drowned--The Kyi
Chu valley--Tropical heat--Atisa's tomb--Foraging in
holy places--First sight of the Potala--Hidden
Lhasa--Symbols of remonstrance--Prophecies of
invasion--And decay of Buddhism--Medieval
Tibet--Spiritual terrorism--Lamas' fears of
enlightenment--The last mystery unveiled--Arrival at
Lhasa--View from the Chagpo Ri--Entry into the
city--Apathy of the people--The Potala--Magnificence
and squalor--The secret of romance--A vanished
deity--'Thou shalt not kill'--Secret assassinations--A
marvellous disappearance--The Dalai Lama joins
Dorjieff--His personality and character--The verdict of
the Nepalese Resident--The voice without a soul--The
wisdom of his flight--A romantic picture--The place of
the dead 239-264
CHAPTER XIV
THE CITY AND ITS TEMPLES
Sullen monks--A Lama runs amok--The environs of Lhasa--The
Lingkhor--The Ragyabas--The cathedral--Service before
the Great Buddhas--The Lamas' chant--Vessels of
gold--'Hell'--White mice--The many-handed
Buddha--Silence and abstraction--The bazaar--Hats--The
Mongolians--Curio-hunting--The Ramo-ché--Sorcery--The
adventures of a soul--Lamaism and Roman
Catholicism--The decay of Buddhism--The three great
monasteries--Their political influence--Depung--An
ecclesiastical University--The 'impossible' Tibetan--An
ultimatum--Consternation at Depung--Temporizing and
evasion--An ugly mob--A political deadlock 265-285
CHAPTER XV
THE SETTLEMENT
An irresponsible administration--An insolent reply--Tibetan
haggling--Release of the Lachung men--Social relations
with the Tibetans--A guarded ultimatum--A diplomatic
triumph--The signing of the treaty--Colonel
Younghusband's speech--The terms--Political prisoners
liberated--Deposition of the Dalai Lama--The Tashe
Lama--Prospect of an Anglophile Pope--The practical
results of the expedition--Russia discredited--Why a
Resident should be left at Lhasa--China hesitates to
sign the Treaty--The 'vicious circle' again--Her
acquiescence not of vital importance--The attitude of
Tibet to Great Britain--Fear and respect the only
guarantee of future good conduct 286-304
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A COLD DAY IN TIBET _frontispiece_
HEADQUARTERS OF THE MISSION AT LHASA _to face p._ 6
CHORTEN " 12
PANORAMA OF A CONVENT " 12
TUNA VILLAGE " 20
CHINESE GENERAL MA " 30
ON THE ROAD TO GAUTSA " 30
ROCK SCULPTURES 41
PRAYING-FLAGS AND MANI WALL _to face p._ 54
OFFICERS' TENTS, MOUNTED INFANTRY CAMP, LINGMATHANG " 54
SUBADAR SANGAT SINGH, 1ST MOUNTED INFANTRY " 60
WOUNDED KYANG " 70
GOA, OR TIBETAN GAZELLE " 70
THE TANG LA " 76
PHARI JONG " 76
MOUNTED INFANTRY PONIES, TUNA CAMP " 94
YAK IN EKKA " 94
THE DEPON'S LAST CONFERENCE WITH COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND _to face p._ 102
TIBETANS RETREATING FROM SANGARS " 106
TURNING TIBETANS OUT OF THE SANGARS ON THE HILLSIDE " 106
DIAGRAMMATIC VIEW OF HOT SPRINGS ACTION " 110
THE TIBETAN DEAD " 118
FIELD-HOSPITAL DOOLIE WITH TIBETAN BEARERS " 118
TIBETAN SOLDIERS " 124
WOUNDED TIBETAN " 130
WOUNDED TIBETAN IN BRITISH HOSPITAL " 130
PIONEERS DESTROYING KANGMA WALL " 142
GYANTSE JONG " 154
GOLDEN-ROOFED TEMPLE, GYANTSE " 182
BUDDHAS IN PALKHOR CHOIDE " 182
TSACHEN MONASTERY " 198
GROUP OF SHAPÉS PARLEYING " 198
SKETCH OF THE KARO LA 213
KHAM PRISONERS _to face p._ 214
GURKHAS CLIMBING AT THE KARO LA " 214
PEHTÉ JONG " 222
GUBCHI JONG " 230
OLD CHAIN-BRIDGE AT CHAKSAM " 236
CROSSING THE TSANGPO " 236
THE POTALA " 244
ENTRY INTO LHASA " 250
CORNER OF COURTYARD OF ASTROLOGER'S TEMPLE, NECHANG _to face p._ 250
THE POTALA, WEST FRONT " 260
MOUNTED INFANTRY GUARD AT THE POTALA " 260
METAL BOWLS OUTSIDE THE JOKHANG " 268
STREET SCENE IN LHASA " 268
THE TSARUNG SHAPÉ " 274
MONGOLIANS IN LHASA " 274
THE TA LAMA " 286
SOLDIER OF THE AMBAN'S ESCORT " 286
COLONEL YOUNGHUSBAND AND THE AMBAN AT THE RACES " 290
THE TSARUNG SHAPÉ AND THE SECHUNG SHAPÉ LEAVING
LHALU HOUSE AFTER THE DURBAR _to face p._ 294
TIBETAN DRAMA PLAYED IN THE COURTYARD OF LHALU HOUSE " 298
THE UNVEILING OF LHASA
CHAPTER I
THE CAUSES OF THE EXPEDITION
The conduct of Great Britain in her relations with Tibet puts me in mind
of the dilemma of a big boy at school who submits to the attacks of a
precocious youngster rather than incur the imputation of 'bully.' At
last the situation becomes intolerable, and the big boy, bully if you
will, turns on the youth and administers the deserved thrashing. There
is naturally a good deal of remonstrance from spectators who have not
observed the byplay which led to the encounter. But sympathy must be
sacrificed to the restitution of fitting and respectful relations.
The aim of this record of an individual's impressions of the recent
Tibetan expedition is to convey some idea of the life we led in Tibet,
the scenes through which we passed, and the strange people we fought and
conquered. We killed several thousand of these brave, ill-armed men; and
as the story of the fighting is not always pleasant reading, I think it
right before describing the punitive side of the expedition to make it
quite clear that military operations were unavoidable--that we were
drawn into the vortex of war against our will by the folly and obstinacy
of the Tibetans.
The briefest review of the rebuffs Great Britain has submitted to during
the last twenty years will suffice to show that, so far from being to
blame in adopting punitive measures, she is open to the charge of
unpardonable weakness in allowing affairs to reach the crisis which made
such punishment necessary.
It must be remembered that Tibet has not always been closed to
strangers. The history of European travellers in Lhasa forms a
literature to itself. Until the end of the eighteenth century only
physical obstacles stood in the way of an entry to the capital. Jesuits
and Capuchins reached Lhasa, made long stays there, and were even
encouraged by the Tibetan Government. The first[1] Europeans to visit
the city and leave an authentic record of their journey were the Fathers
Grueber and d'Orville, who penetrated Tibet from China in 1661 by the
Sining route, and stayed in Lhasa two months. In 1715 the Jesuits
Desideri and Freyre reached Lhasa; Desideri stayed there thirteen years.
In 1719 arrived Horace de la Penna and the Capuchin Mission, who built
a chapel and a hospice, made several converts, and were not finally
expelled till 1740.[2] The Dutchman Van der Putte, first layman to
penetrate to the capital, arrived in 1720, and stayed there some years.
After this we have no record of a European reaching Lhasa until the
adventurous journey in 1811 of Thomas Manning, the first and only
Englishman to reach the city before this year. Manning arrived in the
retinue of a Chinese General whom he had met at Phari Jong, and whose
gratitude he had won for medical services. He remained in the capital
four months, and during his stay he made the acquaintance of several
Chinese and Tibetan officials, and was even presented to the Dalai Lama
himself. The influence of his patron, however, was not strong enough to
insure his safety in the city. He was warned that his life was
endangered, and returned to India by the same way he came. In 1846 the
Lazarist missionaries Huc and Gabet reached Lhasa in the disguise of
Lamas after eighteen months' wanderings through China and Mongolia,
during which they must have suffered as much from privations and
hardships as any travellers who have survived to tell the tale. They
were received kindly by the Amban and Regent, but permission to stay
was firmly refused them on the grounds that they were there to subvert
the religion of the State. Despite the attempts of several determined
travellers, none of whom got within a hundred miles of Lhasa, the
Lazarist fathers were the last Europeans to set foot in the city until
Colonel Younghusband rode through the Pargo Kaling gate on August 4,
1904.
[1] Friar Oderic of Portenone is supposed to have visited Lhasa in
1325, but the authenticity of this record is open to doubt.
[2] When in Lhasa I sought in vain for any trace of these buildings.
The most enlightened Tibetans are ignorant, or pretend to be so,
that Christian missionaries have resided in the city. In the
cathedral, however, we found a bell with the inscription, 'TE
DEUM LAUDAMUS,' which is probably a relic of the Capuchins.
The records of these travellers to Lhasa, and of others who visited
different parts of Tibet before the end of the eighteenth century, do
not point to any serious political obstacles to the admission of
strangers. Two centuries ago, Europeans might travel in remote parts of
Asia with greater safety than is possible to-day. Suspicions have
naturally increased with our encroachments, and the white man now
inspires fear where he used only to awake interest.[3]
[3] Suspicion and jealousy of foreigners seems to have been the
guiding principle both of Tibetans and Chinese even in the
earlier history of the country. The attitude is well illustrated
by a letter written in 1774 by the Regent at Lhasa to the Teshu
Lama with reference to Bogle's mission: 'He had heard of two
Fringies being arrived in the Deb Raja's dominions, with a great
retinue of servants; that the Fringies were fond of war, and
after insinuating themselves into a country raised disturbances
and made themselves masters of it; that as no Fringies had ever
been admitted into Tibet, he advised the Lama to find some method
of sending them back, either on account of the violence of the
small-pox or on any other pretence.'
The policy of strict exclusion in Tibet seems to have been synchronous
with Chinese ascendancy. At the end of the eighteenth century the
Nepalese invaded and overran the country. The Lamas turned to China for
help, and a force of 70,000 men was sent to their assistance. The
Chinese drove the Gurkhas over their frontier, and practically
annihilated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu. From this date
China has virtually or nominally ruled in Lhasa, and an important result
of her intervention has been to sow distrust of the British. She
represented that we had instigated the Nepalese invasion, and warned the
Lamas that the only way to obviate our designs on Tibet was to avoid all
communication with India, and keep the passes strictly closed to
foreigners.
Shortly before the Nepalese War, Warren Hastings had sent the two
missions of Bogle and Turner to Shigatze. Bogle was cordially received
by the Grand Teshu Lama, and an intimate friendship was established
between the two men. On his return to India he reported that the only
bar to a complete understanding with Tibet was the obstinacy of the
Regent and the Chinese agents at Lhasa, who were inspired by Peking. An
attempt was arranged to influence the Chinese Government in the matter,
but both Bogle and the Teshu Lama died before it could be carried out.
Ten years later Turner was despatched to Tibet, and received the same
welcome as his predecessor. Everything pointed to the continuance of a
steady and consistent policy by which the barrier of obstruction might
have been broken down. But Warren Hastings was recalled in 1785, and
Lord Cornwallis, the next Governor-General, took no steps to approach
and conciliate the Tibetans. It was in 1792 that the Tibetan-Nepalese
War broke out, which, owing to the misrepresentations of China,
precluded any possibility of an understanding between India and Tibet.
Such was the uncompromising spirit of the Lamas that, until Lord
Dufferin sanctioned the commercial mission of Mr. Colman Macaulay in
1886, no succeeding Viceroy after Warren Hastings thought it worth while
to renew the attempt to enter into friendly relations with the country.
The Macaulay Mission incident was the beginning of that weak and
abortive policy which lost us the respect of the Tibetans, and led to
the succession of affronts and indignities which made the recent
expedition to Lhasa inevitable. The escort had already advanced into
Sikkim, and Mr. Macaulay was about to join it, when orders were received
from Government for its return. The withdrawal was a concession to the
Chinese, with whom we were then engaged in the delimitation of the
Burmese frontier. This display of weakness incited the Tibetans to such
a pitch of vanity and insolence that they invaded our territory and
established a military post at Lingtu, only seventy miles from
Darjeeling.
We allowed the invaders to remain in the protected State of Sikkim two
years before we made any reprisal. In 1888, after several vain appeals
to China to use her influence to withdraw the Tibetan troops, we
reluctantly decided on a military expedition. The Tibetans were driven
from their position, defeated in three separate engagements, and pursued
over the frontier as far as Chumbi. We ought to have concluded a treaty
with them on the spot, when we were in a position to enforce it, but we
were afraid of offending the susceptibilities of China, whose suzerainty
over Tibet we still recognised, though she had acknowledged her
inability to restrain the Tibetans from invading our territory. At the
conclusion of the campaign, in which the Tibetans showed no military
instincts whatever, we returned to our post at Gnatong, on the Sikkim
frontier.
After two years of fruitless discussion, a convention was drawn up
between Great Britain and China, by which Great Britain's exclusive
control over the internal administration and foreign relations of Sikkim
was recognised, the Sikkim-Tibet boundary was defined, and both Powers
undertook to prevent acts of aggression from their respective sides of
the frontier. The questions of pasturage, trade facilities, and the
method in which official communications should be conducted between the
Government of India and the authorities at Lhasa were deferred for
future discussion. Nearly three more years passed before the trade
regulations were drawn up in Darjeeling--in December, 1903. The
negociations were characterized by the same shuffling and equivocation
on the part of the Chinese, and the same weak-kneed policy of
forbearance and conciliation on the part of the British. Treaty and
regulations were alike impotent, and our concessions went so far that we
exacted nothing as the fruit of our victory over the Tibetans--not even
a fraction of the cost of the campaign.
Our ignorance of the Tibetans, their Government, and their relations
with China was at this time so profound that we took our cue from the
Chinese, who always referred to the Lhasa authorities as 'the
barbarians.' The Shata Shapé, the most influential of the four members
of Council, attended the negociations on behalf of the Tibetans. He was
officially ignored, and no one thought of asking him to attach his
signature to the treaty. The omission was a blunder of far-reaching
consequences. Had we realized that Chinese authority was practically
non-existent in Lhasa, and that the temporal affairs of Tibet were
mainly directed by the four Shapés and the Tsong-du (the very existence
of which, by the way, was unknown to us), we might have secured a
diplomatic agent in the Shata Shapé who would have proved invaluable to
us in our future relations with the country. Unfortunately, during his
stay in Darjeeling the Shapé's feelings were lacerated by ill-treatment
as well as neglect. In an unfortunate encounter with British youth,
which was said to have arisen from his jostling an English lady off the
path, he was taken by the scruff of the neck and ducked in the public
fountain. So he returned to Tibet with no love for the English, and
after certain courteous overtures from the agents of 'another Power,'
became a confirmed, though more or less accidental, Russophile. Though
deposed,[4] he has at the present moment a large following among the
monks of the Gaden monastery.
[4] The Shata Shapé and his three colleagues were deposed by the
Dalai Lama in October, 1903.
In the regulations of 1893 it was stipulated that a trade mart should be
established at Yatung, a small hamlet six miles beyond our frontier. The
place is obviously unsuitable, situated as it is in a narrow pine-clad
ravine, where one can throw a stone from cliff to cliff across the
valley. No traders have ever resorted there, and the Tibetans have
studiously boycotted the place. To show their contempt for the treaty,
and their determination to ignore it, they built a wall a quarter of a
mile beyond the Customs House, through which no Tibetan or British
subject was allowed to pass, and, to nullify the object of the mart, a
tax of 10 per cent. on Indian goods was levied at Phari. Every attempt
was made by Sheng Tai, the late Amban, to induce the Tibetans to
substitute Phari for Yatung as a trade mart. But, as an official report
admits, 'it was found impossible to overcome their reluctance. Yatung
was eventually accepted both by the Chinese and British Governments as
the only alternative to breaking off the negociations altogether.' This
confession of weakness appears to me abject enough to quote as typical
of our attitude throughout. In deference to Tibetan wishes, we allowed
nearly every clause of the treaty to be separately stultified.
The Tibetans, as might be expected, met our forbearance by further
rebuffs. Not content with evading their treaty obligations in respect to
trade, they proceeded to overthrow our boundary pillars, violate grazing
rights, and erect guard-houses at Giagong, in Sikkim territory. When
called to question they repudiated the treaty, and said that it had
never been shown them by the Amban. It had not been sealed or confirmed
by any Tibetan representative, and they had no intention of observing
it.
Once more the 'solemn farce' was enacted of an appeal to China to use
her influence with the Lhasa authorities. And it was only after repeated
representations had been made by the Indian Government to the Secretary
of State that the Home Government realized the seriousness of the
situation, and the hopelessness of making any progress through the
agency of China. 'We seem,' said Lord Curzon, 'in respect to our policy
in Tibet, to be moving in a vicious circle. If we apply to Tibet we
either receive no reply or are referred to the Chinese Resident; if we
apply to the latter, he excuses his failure by his inability to put any
pressure upon Tibet.' In the famous despatch of January 8, 1903, the
Viceroy described the Chinese suzerainty as 'a political fiction,' only
maintained because of its convenience to both parties. China no doubt is
capable of sending sufficient troops to Lhasa to coerce the Tibetans.
But it has suited her book to maintain the present elusive and anomalous
relations with Tibet, which are a securer buttress to her western
dependencies against encroachment than the strongest army corps. For
many years we have been the butt of the Tibetans, and China their
stalking-horse.
The Tibetan attitude was clearly expressed by the Shigatze officials at
Khamba Jong in September last year, when they openly boasted that 'where
Chinese policy was in accordance with their own views they were ready
enough to accept the Amban's advice; but if this advice ran counter in
any respect to their national prejudices, the Chinese Emperor himself
would be powerless to influence them.' China has on several occasions
confessed her inability to coerce the Tibetans. She has proved herself
unable to enforce the observance of treaties or even to restrain her
subjects from invading our territory, and during the recent attempts at
negociations she had to admit that her representative in Lhasa was
officially ignored, and not even allowed transport to travel in the
country. In the face of these facts her exceedingly shadowy suzerainty
may be said to have entirely evaporated, and it is unreasonable to
expect us to continue our relations with Tibet through the medium of
Peking.
It was not until nine years after the signing of the convention that we
made any attempt to open direct communications with the Tibetans
themselves. It is astonishing that we allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked
so long. But this policy of drift and waiting is characteristic of our
foreign relations all over the world. British Cabinets seem to believe
that cure is better than prevention, and when faced by a dilemma have
seldom been known to act on the initiative, or take any decided course
until the very existence of their dependency is imperilled.
In 1901 Lord Curzon was permitted to send a despatch to the Dalai Lama
in which it was pointed out that his Government had consistently defied
and ignored treaty rights; and in view of the continued occupation of
British territory, the destruction of frontier pillars, and the
restrictions imposed on Indian trade, we should be compelled to resort
to more practical measures to enforce the observance of the treaty,
should he remain obstinate in his refusal to enter into friendly
relations. The letter was returned unopened, with the verbal excuse that
the Chinese did not permit him to receive communications from any
foreign Power. Yet so great was our reluctance to resort to military
coercion that we might even at this point have let things drift, and
submitted to the rebuffs of these impossible Tibetans, had not the
Dalai Lama chosen this moment for publicly flaunting his relations with
Russia.
The second[5] Tibetan Mission reached St. Petersburg in June, 1901,
carrying autograph letters and presents to the Czar from the Dalai Lama.
Count Lamsdorff declared that the mission had no political significance
whatever. We were asked to believe that these Lamas travelled many
thousand miles to convey a letter that expressed the hope that the
Russian Foreign Minister was in good health and prosperous, and informed
him that the Dalai Lama was happy to be able to say that he himself
enjoyed excellent health.
[5] A previous mission had been received by the Czar at Livadia in
October, 1900.
It is possible that the mission to St. Petersburg was of a purely
religious character, and that there was no secret understanding at the
time between the Lhasa authorities and Russia. Yet the fact that the
mission was despatched in direct contradiction to the national policy of
isolation that had been respected for over a century, and at a time when
the Tibetans were aware of impending British activity to exact
fulfilment of the treaty obligations so long ignored by them, points to
some secret influence working in Lhasa in favour of Russia, and opposed
to British interests. The process of Russification that has been carried
on with such marked success in Persia and Turkestan, Merv and Bokhara,
was being applied in Tibet. It has long been known to our Intelligence
Department that certain Buriat Lamas, subjects of the Czar, and educated
in Russia, have been acting as intermediaries between Lhasa and St.
Petersburg. The chief of these, one Dorjieff, headed the so-called
religious mission of 1901, and has been employed more than once as the
Dalai Lama's ambassador to St. Petersburg. Dorjieff is a man of
fifty-eight, who has spent some twenty years of his life in Lhasa, and
is known to be the right-hand adviser of the Dalai Lama. No doubt
Dorjieff played on the fears of the Buddhist Pope until he really
believed that Tibet was in danger of an invasion from India, in which
eventuality the Czar, the great Pan-Buddhist Protector, would descend on
the British and drive them back over the frontier. The Lamas of Tibet
imagine that Russia is a Buddhist country, and this belief has been
fostered by adventurers like Dorjieff, Tsibikoff, and others, who have
inspired dreams of a consolidated Buddhist church under the spiritual
control of the Dalai Lama and the military ægis of the Czar of All the
Russias.
These dreams, full of political menace to ourselves, have, I think, been
dispelled by Lord Curzon's timely expedition to Lhasa. The presence of
the British in the capital and the helplessness of Russia to lend any
aid in such a crisis are facts convincing enough to stultify the effects
of Russian intrigue in Buddhist Central Asia during the last
half-century.
The fact that the first Dalai Lama who has been allowed to reach
maturity has plunged his country into war by intrigue with a foreign
Power proves the astuteness of the cold-blooded policy of removing the
infant Pope, and the investiture of power in the hands of a Regent
inspired by Peking. It is believed that the present Dalai Lama was
permitted to come of age in order to throw off the Chinese yoke. This
aim has been secured, but it has involved other issues that the Lamas
could not foresee.
And here it must be observed that the Dalai Lama's inclination towards
Russia does not represent any considerable national movement. The desire
for a rapprochement was largely a matter of personal ambition inspired
by that arch-intriguer Dorjieff, whose ascendancy over the Dalai Lama
was proved beyond a doubt when the latter joined him in his flight to
Mongolia on hearing the news of the British advance on Lhasa. Dorjieff
had a certain amount of popularity with the priest population of the
capital, and the monks of the three great monasteries, amongst whom he
is known to have distributed largess royally. But the traditional policy
of isolation is so inveterately ingrained in the Tibetan character that
it is doubtful if he could have organized a popular party of any
strength.
It may be asked, then, What is, or was, the nature of the Russian menace
in Tibet? It is true that a Russian invasion on the North-East frontier
is out of the question. For to reach the Indian passes the Russians
would have to traverse nearly 1,500 miles of almost uninhabited country,
presenting difficulties as great as any we had to contend with during
the recent campaign. But the establishment of Russian influence in Lhasa
might mean military danger of another kind. It would be easy for her to
stir up the Tibetans, spread disaffection among the Bhutanese, send
secret agents into Nepal, and generally undermine our prestige. Her aim
would be to create a diversion on the Tibet frontier at any time she
might have designs on the North-West. The pioneers of the movement had
begun their work. They were men of the usual type--astute, insidious, to
be disavowed in case of premature discovery, or publicly flaunted when
they had prepared any ground on which to stand.
Our countermove--the Tibet Expedition--must have been a crushing and
unexpected blow to Russia. For the first time in modern history Great
Britain had taken a decisive, almost high-handed, step to obviate a
danger that was far from imminent. We had all the best cards in our
hands. Russia's designs in Lhasa became obvious at a time when we could
point to open defiance on the part of the Tibetans, and provocation such
as would have goaded any other European nation to a punitive expedition
years before. We could go to Lhasa, apparently without a thought of
Russia, and yet undo all the effects of her scheming there, and deal
her prestige a blow that would be felt throughout the whole of Central
Asia. Such was Lord Curzon's policy. It was adopted in a half-hearted
way by the Home Government, and eventually forced on them by the conduct
of the Tibetans themselves. Needless to say, the discovery of Russian
designs was the real and prime cause of the despatch of the mission,
while Tibet's violation of treaty rights and refusal to enter into any
relations with us were convenient as ostensible motives. It cannot be
denied that these grievances were valid enough to justify the strongest
measures.
In June, 1903, came the announcement of Colonel Younghusband's mission
to Khamba Jong. I do not think that the Indian Government ever expected
that the Tibetans would come to any agreement with us at Khamba Jong. It
is to their credit that they waited patiently several months in order to
give them every chance of settling things amicably. However, as might
have been expected, the Commission was boycotted. Irresponsible
delegates of inferior rank were sent by the Tibetans and Chinese, and
the Lhasa delegates, after some fruitless parleyings, shut themselves up
in the fort, and declined all intercourse, official or social, with the
Commissioners.[6]
[6] Their attitude was thus summed up by Captain O'Connor, secretary
to the mission: 'We cannot accept letters; we cannot write
letters; we cannot let you into our zone; we cannot let you
travel; we cannot discuss matters, because this is not the proper
place; go back to Giogong and send away all your soldiers, and we
will come to an agreement' (Tibetan Blue-Book).
At the end of August news came that the Tibetans were arming. Colonel
Younghusband learnt that they had made up their minds to have no
negociations with us _inside_ Tibet. They had decided to leave us alone
at Khamba Jong, and to oppose us by force if we attempted to advance
further. They believed themselves fully equal to the English, and far
from our getting anything out of them, they thought that they would be
able to force something out of us. This is not surprising when we
consider the spirit of concession in which we had met them on previous
occasions.
At Khamba Jong the Commissioners were informed by Colonel Chao, the
Chinese delegate, that the Tibetans were relying on Russian assistance.
This was confirmed later at Guru by the Tibetan officials, who boasted
that if they were defeated they would fall back on another Power.
In September the Tibetans aggravated the situation by seizing and
beating at Shigatze two British subjects of the Lachung Valley in
Sikkim. These men were not restored to liberty until we had forced our
way to Lhasa and demanded their liberation, twelve months afterwards.
The mission remained in its ignominious position at Khamba Jong until
its recall in November. Almost at the same time the expedition to
Gyantse was announced.[7]
[7] The situation was thus eloquently summarized by the Government of
India in a despatch to Mr. Brodrick, November 5, 1903: 'It is not
possible that the Tibet Government should be allowed to ignore
its treaty obligations, thwart trade, encroach upon our
territory, destroy our boundary pillars, and refuse even to
receive our communications. Still less do we think that when an
amicable conference has been arranged for the settlement of these
difficulties we should acquiesce in our mission being boycotted
by the very persons who have been deputed to meet it, our
officers insulted, our subjects arrested and ill-used, and our
authority despised by a petty Power which only mistakes our
forbearance for weakness, and which thinks that by an attitude of
obstinate inertia it can once again compel us, as it has done in
the past, to desist from our intentions.'
In the face of the gross and deliberate affront to which we had been
subjected at Khamba Jong it was now, of course, impossible to withdraw
from Tibetan territory until we had impressed on the Lamas the necessity
of meeting us in a reasonable spirit. It was clear that the Tibetans
meant fighting, and the escort had to be increased to 2,500 men. The
patience of Government was at last exhausted, and it was decided that
the mission was to proceed into Tibet, dictate terms to the Lamas, and,
if necessary, enforce compliance. The advance to Gyantse was sanctioned
in the first place. But it was quite expected that the obstinacy of the
Tibetans would make it necessary to push on to Lhasa.
Colonel Younghusband crossed the Jelap la into Tibet on December 13,
meeting with no opposition. Phari Jong was reached on the 20th, and the
fort surrendered without a shot being fired. Thence the mission
proceeded on January 7 across the Tang Pass, and took up its quarters on
the cold, wind-swept plateau of Tuna, at an elevation of 15,300 feet.
Here it remained for three months, while preparations were being made
for an advance in the spring. Four companies of the 23rd Pioneers, a
machine-gun section of the Norfolk Regiment, and twenty Madras sappers,
were left to garrison the place, and General Macdonald, with the
remainder of the force, returned to Chumbi for winter quarters. Chumbi
(10,060 feet) is well within the wood belt, but even here the
thermometer falls to 15° below zero.
A more miserable place to winter in than Tuna cannot be imagined. But
for political reasons, it was inadvisable that the mission should spend
the winter in the Chumbi Valley, which is not geographically a part of
Tibet proper. A retrograde movement from Khamba Jong to Chumbi would be
interpreted by the Tibetans as a sign of yielding, and strengthen them
in their opinion that we had no serious intention of penetrating to
Gyantse.
With this brief account of the facts that led to the expedition I
abandon politics for the present, and in the succeeding chapters will
attempt to give a description of the Chumbi Valley, which, I believe,
was untrodden by any European before Colonel Younghusband's arrival in
December, 1903.
I was in India when I received permission to join the force. I took the
train to Darjeeling without losing a day, and rode into Chumbi in less
than forty-eight hours, reaching the British camp on January 10.
CHAPTER II
OVER THE FRONTIER
CHUMBI,
_January 13._
From Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles. These, as in the dominions of
Namgay Doola's Raja, are mostly on end. The road crosses the Tibetan
frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty miles to the north-east.
From Observatory Hill in Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and north-west lie
Kinchenjunga and the tremendous chain of mountains that embraces
Everest. To the north-east stretches a lower line of dazzling rifts and
spires, in which one can see a thin gray wedge, like a slice in a
Christmas cake. That is the Jelap. Beyond it lies Tibet.
There is a good military road from Siliguri, the base station in the
plains to Rungpo, forty-eight miles along the Teesta Valley. By
following the river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents to Kalimpong and
Ari. The new route saves at least a day, and conveys one to Rungli,
nearly seventy miles from the base, without compassing a single tedious
incline. It has also the advantage of being practicable for
bullock-carts and ekkas as far as Rungpo. After that the path is a
6-foot mule-track, at its best a rough, dusty incline, at its worst a
succession of broken rocks and frozen puddles, which give no foothold to
transport animals. From Rungpo the road skirts the stream for sixteen
miles to Rungli, along a fertile valley of some 2,000 feet, through
rice-fields and orange-groves and peaceful villages, now the scene of
military bustle and preparation. From Rungli it follows a winding
mountain torrent, whose banks are sometimes sheer precipitous crags.
Then it strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a ladder of stone
steps over which no animal in the world can make more than a mile and a
half an hour. From the valley to Gnatong is a climb of some 10,000 feet
without a break. The scenery is most magnificent, and I doubt if it is
possible to find anywhere in the same compass the characteristics of the
different zones of vegetation--from tropical to temperate, from
temperate to alpine--so beautifully exhibited.
At ordinary seasons transport is easy, and one can take the road in
comfort; but now every mule and pony in Sikkim and the Terai is employed
on the lines of communication, and one has to pay 300 rupees for an
animal of the most modest pretensions. It is reckoned eight days from
Darjeeling to Chumbi, but, riding all day and most of the night, I
completed the journey in two. Newspaper correspondents are proverbially
in a hurry. To send the first wire from Chumbi I had to leave my kit
behind, and ride with poshteen[8] and sleeping-bag tied to my saddle. I
was racing another correspondent. At Rungpo I found that he was five
hours ahead of me, but he rested on the road, and I had gained three
hours on him before he left the next stage at Rora Thang. Here I learnt
that he intended to camp at Lingtam, twelve miles further on, in a tent
lent him by a transport officer. I made up my mind to wait outside
Lingtam until it was dark, and then to steal a march on him unobserved.
But I believed no one. Wayside reports were probably intended to deceive
me, and no doubt my informant was his unconscious confederate.
[8] Sheepskin.
Outside Rungli, six miles further on, I stopped at a little Bhutia's
hut, where he had been resting. They told me he had gone on only half an
hour before me. I loitered on the road, and passed Lingtam in the dark.
The moon did not rise till three, and riding in the dark was exciting.
At first the white dusty road showed clearly enough a few yards ahead,
but after passing Lingtam it became a narrow path cut out of a
thickly-wooded cliff above a torrent, a wall of rock on one side, a
precipice on the other. Here the darkness was intense. A white stone a
few yards ahead looked like the branch of a tree overhead. A dim
shapeless object to the left might be a house, a rock, a
bear--anything. Uphill and downhill could only be distinguished by the
angle of the saddle. Every now and then a firefly lit up the white
precipice an arm's-length to the right. Once when my pony stopped
panting with exhaustion I struck a match and found that we had come to a
sharp zigzag. Part of the revetment had fallen; there was a yard of
broken path covered with fern and bracken, then a drop of some hundred
feet to the torrent below. After that I led my beast for a mile until we
came to a charcoal-burner's hut. Two or three Bhutias were sitting round
a log fire, and I persuaded one to go in front of me with a lighted
brand. So we came to Sedongchen, where I left my beast dead beat, rested
a few hours, bought a good mule, and pressed on in the early morning by
moonlight. The road to Gnatong lies through a magnificent forest of oak
and chestnut. For five miles it is nothing but the ascent of stone steps
I have described. Then the rhododendron zone is reached, and one passes
through a forest of gnarled and twisted trunks, writhing and contorted
as if they had been thrust there for some penance. The place suggested a
scene from Dante's 'Inferno.' As I reached the saddle of Lingtu the moon
was paling, and the eastern sky-line became a faint violet screen. In a
few minutes Kinchenjunga and Kabru on the north-west caught the first
rays of the sun, and were suffused with the delicate rosy glow of dawn.
I reached Gnatong in time to breakfast with the 8th Gurkhas. The camp
lies in a little cleft in the hills at an elevation of 12,200 feet. When
I last visited the place I thought it one of the most desolate spots I
had seen. My first impressions were a wilderness of gray stones and
gray, uninhabited houses, felled tree-trunks denuded of bark, white and
spectral on the hillside. There was no life, no children's voices or
chattering women, no bazaar apparently, no dogs barking, not even a
pariah to greet you. If there was a sound of life it was the bray of
some discontented mule searching for stray blades of grass among the
stones. There were some fifty houses nearly all smokeless and vacant.
Some had been barracks at the time of the last Sikkim War, and of the
soldiers who inhabited them fifteen still lay in Gnatong in a little
gray cemetery, which was the first indication of the nearness of human
life. The inscriptions over the graves were all dated 1888, 1889, or
1890, and though but fourteen years had passed, many of them were barely
decipherable. The houses were scattered about promiscuously, with no
thought of neighbourliness or convenience, as though the people were
living there under protest, which was very probably the case. But the
place had its picturesque feature. You might mistake some of the houses
for tumbledown Swiss châlets of the poorer sort were it not for the
miniature fir-trees planted on the roofs, with their burdens of prayers
hanging from the branches like parcels on a Christmas-tree.
These were my impressions a year or two ago, but now Gnatong is all life
and bustle. In the bazaar a convoy of 300 mules was being loaded. The
place was crowded with Nepalese coolies and Tibetan drivers, picturesque
in their woollen knee-boots of red and green patterns, with a white star
at the foot, long russet cloaks bound tightly at the waist and bulging
out with cooking-utensils and changes of dress, embroidered caps of
every variety and description, as often as not tied to the head by a
wisp of hair. In Rotten Row--the inscription of 1889 still remains--I
met a subaltern with a pair of skates. He showed me to the mess-room,
where I enjoyed a warm breakfast and a good deal of chaff about
correspondents who 'were in such a devil of a hurry to get to a
God-forsaken hole where there wasn't going to be the ghost of a show.'
I left Gnatong early on a borrowed pony. A mile and a half from the camp
the road crosses the Tuko Pass, and one descends again for another two
miles to Kapup, a temporary transport stage. The path lies to the west
of the Bidang Tso, a beautiful lake with a moraine at the north-west
side. The mountains were strangely silent, and the only sound of wild
life was the whistling of the red-billed choughs, the commonest of the
_Corvidæ_ at these heights. They were flying round and round the lake in
an unsettled manner, whistling querulously, as though in complaint at
the intrusion of their solitude.
I reached the Jelap soon after noon. No snow had fallen. The approach
was over broken rock and shale. At the summit was a row of cairns, from
which fluttered praying-flags and tattered bits of votive raiment.
Behind us and on both sides was a thin mist, but in front my eyes
explored a deep narrow valley bathed in sunshine. Here, then, was Tibet,
the forbidden, the mysterious. In the distance all the land was that
yellow and brick-dust colour I had often seen in pictures and thought
exaggerated and unreal. Far to the north-east Chumulari (23,930 feet),
with its magnificent white spire rising from the roof-like mass behind,
looked like an immense cathedral of snow. Far below on a yellow hillside
hung the Kanjut Lamasery above Rinchengong. In the valley beneath lay
Chumbi and the road to Lhasa.
There is a descent of over 4,000 feet in six miles from the summit of
the Jelap. The valley is perfectly straight, without a bend, so that one
can look down from the pass upon the Kanjut monastery on the hillside
immediately above Yatung. The pass would afford an impregnable military
position to a people with the rudiments of science and martial spirit. A
few riflemen on the cliffs that command it might annihilate a column
with perfect safety, and escape into Bhutan before any flanking movement
could be made. Yet miles of straggling convoy are allowed to pass daily
with the supplies that are necessary for the existence of the force
ahead. The road to Phari Jong passes through two military walls. The
first at Yatung, six miles below the pass, is a senseless obstruction,
and any able-bodied Tommy with hobnailed boots might very easily kick it
down. It has no block-houses, and would be useless against a flank
attack. Before our advance to Chumbi the wall was inhabited by three
Chinese officials, a dingpon, or Tibetan sergeant, and twenty Tibetan
soldiers. It served as a barrier beyond which no British subject was
allowed to pass. The second wall lies across the valley at Gob-sorg,
four miles beyond our camp at Chumbi. It is roofed and loop-holed like
the Yatung barrier, and is defended by block-houses. This fortification
and every mile of valley between the Jelap and Gautsa might be held by a
single company against an invading force. Yet there are not half a dozen
Chinese or Tibetan soldiers in the valley. No opposition is expected
this side of the Tang la, but nondescript troops armed with matchlocks
and bows hover round the mission on the open plateau beyond. Our
evacuation of Khamba Jong and occupation of Chumbi were so rapid and
unexpected that it is thought the Tibetans had no time to bring troops
into the valley; but to anyone who knows their strategical incompetence,
no explanation is necessary.
Yatung is reached by one of the worst sections of road on the march; one
comes across a dead transport mule at almost every zigzag of the
descent. For ten years the village has enjoyed the distinction of being
the only place in Southern Tibet accessible to Europeans. Not that many
Europeans avail themselves of its accessibility, for it is a dreary
enough place to live in, shrouded as it is in cloud more than half the
year round, and embedded in a valley so deep and narrow that in
winter-time the sun has hardly risen above one cliff when it sinks
behind another. The privilege of access to Yatung was the result of the
agreement between Great Britain and China with regard to trade
communications between India and Tibet drawn up in Darjeeling in 1893,
subsequently to the Sikkim Convention. It was then stipulated that there
should be a trade mart at Yatung to which British subjects should have
free access, and that there should be special trade facilities between
Sikkim and Tibet. It is reported that the Chinese Amban took good care
that Great Britain should not benefit by these new regulations, for
after signing the agreement which was to give the Indian tea-merchants a
market in Tibet, he introduced new regulations the other side of the
frontier, which prohibited the purchase of Indian tea. Whether the story
is true or not, it is certainly characteristic of the evasion and
duplicity which have brought about the present armed mission into Tibet.
To-day, as one rides through the cobbled street of Yatung, the only
visible effects of the Convention are the Chinese Customs House with its
single European officer, and the residence of a lady missionary, or
trader, as the exigencies of international diplomacy oblige her to term
herself. The Customs House, which was opened on May 1, 1894, was first
established with the object of estimating the trade between India and
Tibet--traffic is not permitted by any other route than the Jelap--and
with a view to taxation when the trade should make it worth while. It
was stipulated that no duties should be levied for the period of five
years. Up to the present no tariff has been imposed, and the only
apparent use the Customs House serves is to collect statistics, and
perhaps to remind Tibet of the shadowy suzerainty of China. The natives
have boycotted the place, and refuse to trade there, and no European or
native of India has thought it worth while to open a market. Phari is
the real trade mart on the frontier, and Kalimpong, in British Bhutan,
is the foreign trade mart. But the whole trade between India and Tibet
is on such a small scale that it might be in the hands of a single
merchant.
The Customs House, the missionary house, and the houses of the clerks
and servants of the Customs and of the headman, form a little block.
Beyond it there is a quarter of a mile of barren stony ground, and then
the wall with military pretensions. I rode through the gate
unchallenged.
At Rinchengong, a mile beyond the barrier, the Yatung stream flows into
the Ammo Chu. The road follows the eastern bank of the river, passing
through Cheuma and Old Chumbi, where it crosses the stream. After
crossing the bridge, a mile of almost level ground takes one into Chumbi
camp. I reached Chumbi on the evening of January 12, and was able to
send the _Daily Mail_ the first cable from Tibet, having completed the
journey from Darjeeling in two days' hard riding.
The camp lies in a shallow basin in the hills, and is flanked by brown
fir-clad hills which rise some 1,500 feet above the river-bed, and
preclude a view of the mountains on all sides. The situation is by no
means the best from the view of comfort, but strategic reasons make it
necessary, for if the camp were pitched half a mile further up the
valley, the gorge of the stream which debouches into the Ammo River to
the north of Chumbi would give the Tibetans an opportunity of attacking
us in the rear. Despite the protection of almost Arctic clothing, one
shivers until the sun rises over the eastern hill at ten o'clock, and
shivers again when it sinks behind the opposite one at three. Icy winds
sweep the valley, and hurricanes of dust invade one's tent. Against this
cold one clothes one's self in flannel vest and shirt, sweater,
flannel-lined coat, poshteen or Cashmere sheepskin, wool-lined Gilgit
boots, and fur or woollen cap with flaps meeting under the chin. The
general effect is barbaric and picturesque. In after-days the trimness
of a military club may recall the scene--officers clad in
gold-embroidered poshteen, yellow boots, and fur caps, bearded like
wild Kerghizes, and huddling round the camp fire in this black
cauldron-like valley under the stars.
Officers are settling down in Chumbi as comfortably as possible for
winter quarters. Primitive dens have been dug out of the ground, walled
up with boulders, and roofed in with green fir-branches. In some cases a
natural rock affords a whole wall. The den where I am now writing is
warmed by a cheerful pinewood blaze, a luxury after the _angeiti_ in
one's tent. I write at an operating-table after a dinner of minal
(pheasant) and yak's heart. A gramophone is dinning in my ears. It is
destined, I hope, to resound in the palace of Potala, where the Dalai
Lama and his suite may wonder what heathen ritual is accompanied by 'A
jovial monk am I,' and 'Her golden hair was hanging down her back.'
Both at home and in India one hears the Tibet Mission spoken of
enviously as a picnic. There is an idea of an encampment in a smiling
valley, and easy marches towards the mysterious city. In reality, there
is plenty of hard and uninteresting work. The expedition is attended
with all the discomforts of a campaign, and very little of the
excitement. Colonel Younghusband is now at Tuna, a desolate hamlet on
the Tibetan plateau, exposed to the coldest winds of Asia, where the
thermometer falls to 25° below zero. Detachments of the escort are
scattered along the line of communications in places of varying cold
and discomfort, where they must wait until the necessary supplies have
been carried through to Phari. It is not likely that Colonel
Younghusband will be able to proceed to Gyantse before March. In the
meanwhile, imagine the Pioneers and Gurkhas, too cold to wash or shave,
shivering in a dirty Tibetan fort, half suffocated with smoke from a
yak-dung fire. Then there is the transport officer shut up in some
narrow valley of Sikkim, trying to make half a dozen out of three with
his camp of sick beasts and sheaf of urgent telegrams calling for
supplies. He hopes there will be 'a show,' and that he may be in it.
Certainly if anyone deserves to go to Lhasa and get a medal for it, it
is the supply and transport man. But he will be left behind.
CHAPTER III
THE CHUMBI VALLEY
CHUMBI,
_February, 1904._
The Chumbi Valley is inhabited by the Tomos, who are said to be
descendants of ancient cross-marriages between the Bhutanese and
Lepchas. They only intermarry among themselves, and speak a language
which would not be understood in other parts of Tibet. As no Tibetan
proper is allowed to pass the Yatung barrier, the Tomos have the
monopoly of the carrying trade between Phari and Kalimpong. They are
voluntarily under the protection of the Tibetans, who treat them
liberally, as the Lamas realize the danger of their geographical
position as a buffer state, and are shrewd enough to recognise that any
ill treatment or oppression would drive them to seek protection from the
Bhutanese or British.
The Tomos are merry people, hearty, and good-natured. They are
wonderfully hardy and enduring. In the coldest winter months, when the
thermometer is 20° below zero, they will camp out at night in the snow,
forming a circle of their loads, and sleep contentedly inside with no
tent or roofing. The women would be comely if it were not for the cutch
that they smear over their faces. The practice is common to the Tibetans
and Bhutanese, but no satisfactory reason has been found for it. The
Jesuit Father, Johann Grueber, who visited Tibet in 1661, attributed the
custom to a religious whim:--'The women, out of a religious whim, never
wash, but daub themselves with a nasty kind of oil, which not only
causes them to stink intolerably, but renders them extremely ugly and
deformed.' A hundred and eighty years afterwards Huc noticed the same
habit, and attributed it to an edict issued by the Dalai Lama early in
the seventeenth century. 'The women of Tibet in those days were much
given to dress, and libertinage, and corrupted the Lamas to a degree to
bring their holy order into a bad repute.' The then Nome Khan (deputy of
the Dalai Lama), accordingly issued an order that the women should never
appear in public without smearing their faces with a black disfiguring
paste. Huc recorded that though the order was still obeyed, the practice
was observed without much benefit to morals. If you ask a Tomo or
Tibetan to-day why their women smear and daub themselves in this
unbecoming manner, they invariably reply, like the Mussulman or Hindu,
that it is custom. Mongolians do not bother themselves about causes.
The Tomo women wear a flat green distinctive cap, with a red badge in
the front, which harmonizes with their complexion--a coarse, brick red,
of which the primal ingredients are dirt and cutch, erroneously called
pig's blood, and the natural ruddiness of a healthy outdoor life in a
cold climate. A procession of these sirens is comely and picturesque--at
a hundred yards. They wrap themselves round and round with a thick
woollen blanket of pleasing colour and pattern, and wear on their feet
high woollen boots with leather or rope soles. If it was not for their
disfiguring toilet many of them would be handsome. The children are
generally pretty, and I have seen one or two that were really beautiful.
When we left a camp the villagers would generally get wind of it, and
come down for loot. Old newspapers, tins, bottles, string, and cardboard
boxes were treasured prizes. We threw these out of our cave, and the
children scrambled for them, and even the women made dives at anything
particularly tempting. My last impression of Lingmathang was a group of
women giggling and gesticulating over the fashion plates and
advertisements in a number of the _Lady_, which somebody's _memsahib_
had used for the packing of a ham.
The Tomos, though not naturally given to cleanliness, realize the
hygienic value of their hot springs. There are resorts in the
neighbourhood of Chumbi as fashionable as Homburg or Salsomaggiore;
mixed bathing is the rule, without costumes. These healthy folk are not
morbidly conscious of sex. The springs contain sulphur and iron, and
are undoubtedly efficacious. Where they are not hot enough, the Tomos
bake large boulders in the ashes of a log fire, and roll them into the
water to increase the temperature.
Tomos and Tibetans are fond of smoking. They dry the leaves of the wild
rhubarb, and mix them with tobacco leaves. The mixture is called
_dopta_, and was the favourite blend of the country. Now hundreds of
thousands of cheap American cigarettes are being introduced, and a
lucrative tobacco-trade has sprung up. Boxes of ten, which are sold at a
pice in Darjeeling, fetch an anna at Chumbi, and two annas at Phari.
Sahibs smoke them, sepoys smoke them, drivers and followers smoke them,
and the Tomo coolies smoke nothing else. Tibetan children of three
appreciate them hugely, and the road from Phari to Rungpo is literally
strewn with the empty boxes.
There is a considerable Chinese element in the Chumbi Valley--a frontier
officer, with the local rank of the Fourth Button, a colonel, clerks of
the Customs House, and troops numbering from one to two hundred. These,
of course, were not in evidence when we occupied the valley in December.
The Chinese are not accompanied by their wives, but take to themselves
women of the country, whose offspring people the so-called Chinese
villages. The pure Chinaman does not remain in the country after his
term of office. Life at Chumbi is the most tedious exile to him, and he
looks down on the Tomos as barbarous savages. He is as unhappy as a
Frenchman in Tonquin, cut off from all the diversions of social and
intellectual life. The frontier officer at Bibi-thang told me that he
had brought his wife with him, and the poor lady had never left the
house, but cried incessantly for China and civilization. Yet to the
uninitiated the Chinese villages of Gob-sorg and Bibi-thang might have
been taken from the far East and plumped down on the Indian frontier.
There is the same far-Eastern smell, the same doss-house, the same
hanging lamps, the same red lucky paper over the lintels of the doors,
and the same red and green abortions on the walls.
Much has been written and duly contradicted about the fertility of the
Chumbi Valley. If one does not expect orange-groves and rice-fields at
12,000 feet, it must be admitted that the valley is, relatively
speaking, fertile--that is to say, its produce is sufficient to support
its three or four thousand inhabitants.
The lower valley produces buckwheat, turnips, potatoes, radishes, and
barley. The latter, the staple food of the Tibetans, has, when ground,
an appetizing smell very like oatmeal. The upper valley is quite
sterile, and produces nothing but barley, which does not ripen; it is
gathered for fodder when green, and the straw is sold at high prices to
the merchants who visit Phari from Tibet and Bhutan. This year the
Tibetan merchants are afraid to come, and the commissariat benefits by
a very large supply of fodder which ought to see them through the
summer.
The idea that the valley is unusually fertile probably arose from the
well-to-do appearance of the natives of Rinchengong and Chumbi, and
their almost palatial houses, which give evidence of a prosperity due to
trade rather than agriculture.
The hillsides around Chumbi produce wild strawberries, raspberries,
currants, and cherries; but these are quite insipid in this sunless
climate.
The Chinese Custom's officer at Yatung tells me that the summer months,
though not hot, are relaxing and enervating. The thermometer never rises
above 70°. The rainfall does not average quite 50 inches; but almost
daily at noon a mist creeps up from Bhutan, and a constant drizzle
falls. In June, July, and August, 1901, there were only three days
without rain.
At Phari I met a venerable old gentleman who gave me some statistics.
The old man, Katsak Kasi by name, was a Tibetan from the Kham province,
acting at Phari as trade agent for the Bhutanese Government. His face
was seared and parchment-like from long exposure to cold winds and rough
weather. His features were comparatively aquiline--that is to say, they
did not look as if they had been flattened out in youth. He wore a very
large pair of green spectacles, with a gold bulb at each end and a red
tassel in the middle, which gave him an air of wisdom and distinction.
He answered my rather inquisitive questions with courtesy and
decision, and yet with such a serious care for details that I felt quite
sure his figures must be accurate.
[Illustration: ROCK SCULPTURES.]
If statistics were any gauge of the benefits Indian trade would derive
from an open market with Tibet, the present mission, as far as
commercial interests are concerned, would be wasted. According to Kasi's
statistics, the cost of two dozen or thirty mules would balance the
whole of the annual revenue on Indian imports into the country. The idea
that duties are levied at the Yatung and Gob-sorg barriers is a mistake.
The only Customs House is at Phari, where the Indian and Bhutanese
trade-routes meet. The Customs are under the supervision of the two
jongpens, who send the revenue to Lhasa twice a year.
The annual income on imports from India, Kasi assured me, is only 6,000
rupees, whereas the income on exports amounts to 20,000. Tibetan trade
with India consists almost entirely of wool, yaks'-tails, and ponies.
There is a tax of 2 rupees 8 annas on ponies, 1 rupee a maund on wool,
and 1 rupee 8 annas a maund on yaks'-tails. Our imports into Tibet,
according to Kasi's statistics, are practically nil. Some piece goods,
iron vessels, and tobacco leaves find their way over the Jelap, but it
is a common sight to see mules returning into Tibet with nothing but
their drivers' cooking utensils and warm clothing.[9]
[9] The only articles imported to the value of £1,000 are cotton
goods, woollen cloths, metals, chinaware, coral, indigo, maize,
silk, fur, and tobacco.
The only exports to the value of £1,000 are musk, ponies, skins,
wool, and yaks'-tails.
Appended are the returns for the years 1895-1902:
Year. Value of Articles Value of Articles Total Value of
Imported into Exported from Imports and
Tibet. Tibet. Exports.
Rs. Rs. Rs.
1895 416,218 634,086 1,050,304
1896 561,395 781,269 1,342,664
1897 674,139 820,300 1,494,436
1898 718,475 817,851 1,536,326
1899 962,637 822,760 1,785,397
1900 730,502 710,012 1,440,514
1901 734,075 783,480 1,517,555
1902 761,837 805,338 1,567,075
_Customs House Returns, Yatung._
At present no Indian tea passes Yatung. That none is sold at Phari
confirms the rumour I mentioned that the Chinese Amban, after signing
the trade regulations between India and Tibet in Darjeeling, 1893,
crossed the frontier to introduce new laws, virtually annulling the
regulations. Indian tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and treaty obligations.
She has placed every obstacle in the way of Indian trade, and insulted
our Commissioners; yet the despatch of the present mission with its
armed escort has been called an act of aggression.
When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be angry with him for helping
us, he said they would certainly cut off his head if he remained in the
fort after we had left. There is some foundation in travellers' stories
about the punishment inflicted on the guards of the passes and other
officials who fail to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
towards Lhasa.
Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when we entered the valley are
still detained there, as far as I can gather, as hostages for the good
behaviour of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does not fit the
crime. The guards of a pass are punished for letting white men through,
quite irrespective of the opposing odds.
The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging, but the ordeal is so
severe that it often proves fatal. I asked Kasi some questions about the
magisterial powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
remained in the fort some days after we occupied it. He told me that
they could not pass capital sentence, but they might flog the prisoners,
and if they died, nothing was said. Several victims have died of
flogging at Phari.
The natives in Darjeeling have a story of Tibetan methods, which have
always seemed to me the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say, the
criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he cannot tell whether it is
night or day. Cobras and scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of
venom are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness, for it is
still enough, and seek or avoid as he has courage. Food is sometimes
thrown in to tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his agony. I
asked Kasi if there were any truth in the tale. He told me that there
were no venomous snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a dark
prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes died of scorpion bites; he
added that only the worst offenders were punished in this way. The
modified version of the story is gruesome enough.
It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials to receive their pay in
grain, it being understood that their position puts them in the way of
obtaining the other necessaries of life, and perhaps a few of its
luxuries. Kasi, being an important official, receives from the Bhutan
Government forty maunds of barley and forty maunds of rice annually. He
receives, in addition, a commission on the trade disputes that he
decides in proportion to their importance. He is now an invaluable
servant of the British Government. At his nod the barren solitudes round
Phari are wakening into life. From the fort bastions one sees sometimes
on the hills opposite an indistinct black line, like a caterpillar
gradually assuming shape. They are Kasi's yaks coming from some blind
valley which no one but a hunter or mountaineer would have imagined to
exist. Ponies, grain, and fodder are also imported from Bhutan and sold
to the mutual gratification of the Bhutanese and ourselves. The yaks are
hired and employed on the line of communications.
It is to be hoped that the Bhutanese, when they hear of our good prices,
will send supplies over the frontier to hasten our advance. But we must
take care than no harm befalls Kasi for his good services. When I asked
him how he stood with the Tibetan Government, he laid his hand in a
significant manner across his throat.
LINGMATHANG,
_February._
Before entering the bare, unsheltered plateau of Tibet, the road to
Lhasa winds through seven miles of pine forest, which recalls some of
the most beautiful valleys of Switzerland.
The wood-line ends abruptly. After that there is nothing but barrenness
and desolation. The country round Chumbi is not very thickly forested.
There are long strips of arable land on each side of the road, and
villages every two or three miles. The fields are terraced and enclosed
within stone walls. Scattered on the hillside are stone-built houses,
with low, over-hanging eaves, and long wooden tiles, each weighed down
with a gray boulder. One might imagine one's self in Kandersteg or
Lauterbrunnen; only lofty praying flags and _mani_-walls brightly
painted with Buddhistic pictures and inscriptions dispel the illusion.
There is no lack of colour. In the winter months a brier with large red
berries and a low, foxy-brown thornbush, like a young osier in March,
lend a russet hue to the landscape. Higher on the hills the withered
grass is yellow, and the blending of these quiet tints, russet, brown,
and yellow, gives the valley a restful beauty; but in cloud it is
sombre enough.
Three years ago I visited Yatung in May. In springtime there is a
profusion of colour. The valley is beautiful, beyond the beauty of the
grandest Alpine scenery, carpeted underfoot with spring flowers, and
ablaze overhead with flowering rhododendrons. To try to describe
mountains and forests is a most unprofitable task; all the adjectives of
scenic description are exhausted; the coinage has been too long debased.
For my own part, it has been almost a pain to visit the most beautiful
parts of the earth and to know that one's sensations are incommunicable,
that it is impossible to make people believe and understand. To those
who have not seen, scenery is either good, bad, or indifferent; there
are no degrees. Ruskin, the greatest master of description, is most
entertaining when he is telling us about the domestic circle at Herne
Hill. But mountain scenery is of all the most difficult to describe. The
sense of the Himalayas is intangible. There are elusive lights and
shades, and sounds and whispers, and unfamiliar scents, and a thousand
fleeting manifestations of the genius of the place that are impossible
to arrest. Magnificent, majestic, splendid, are weak, colourless words
that depict nothing. It is the poets who have described what they have
not seen who have been most successful. Milton's hell is as real as any
landscape of Byron's, and the country through which Childe Roland rode
to the Dark Tower is more vivid and present to us than any of
Wordsworth's Westmoreland tarns and valleys. So it is a poem of the
imagination--'Kubla Khan'--that seems to me to breathe something of the
spirit of the Yatung and Chumbi Valleys, only there is a little less of
mystery and gloom here, and a little more of sunshine and brightness
than in the dream poem. Instead of attempting to describe the
valley--Paradise would be easier to describe--I will try to explain as
logically as possible why it fascinated me more than any scenery I have
seen.
I had often wondered if there were any place in the East where flowers
grow in the same profusion as in Europe--in England, or in Switzerland.
The nearest approach I had seen was in the plateau of the Southern Shan
States, at about 4,000 feet, where the flora is very homelike. But the
ground is not _carpeted_; one could tread without crushing a blossom.
Flowers are plentiful, too, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and
on the hills on the Siamese side of the Tennasserim frontier, but I had
seen nothing like a field of marsh-marigolds and cuckoo-flowers in May,
or a meadow of buttercups and daisies, or a bank of primroses, or a wood
carpeted with bluebells, or a hillside with heather, or an Alpine slope
with gentians and ranunculus. I had been told that in Persia in
springtime the valleys of the Shapur River and the Karun are covered
profusely with lilies, also the forests of Manchuria in the
neighbourhood of the Great White Mountain; but until I crossed the
Jelapla and struck down the valley to Yatung I thought I would have to
go West to see such things again. Never was such profusion. Besides the
primulas[10]--I counted eight different kinds of them--and gentians and
anemones and celandines and wood sorrel and wild strawberries and
irises, there were the rhododendrons glowing like coals through the pine
forest. As one descended the scenery became more fascinating; the valley
narrowed, and the stream was more boisterous. Often the cliffs hung
sheer over the water's edge; the rocks were coated with green and yellow
moss, which formed a bed for the dwarf rhododendron bushes, now in full
flower, white and crimson and cream, and every hue between a dark
reddish brown and a light sulphury yellow--not here and there, but
everywhere, jostling one another for nooks and crannies in the rock.[11]
[10] Between Gnatong and Gautsa, thirteen different species of
primulas are found. They are: _Primula Petiolaris_, _P. glabra_,
_P. Sapphirina_, _P. pusilia_, _P. Kingii_, _P. Elwesiana_, _P.
Capitata_, _P. Sikkimensis_, _P. Involucra_, _P. Denticulata_,
_P. Stuartii_, _P. Soldanelloides_, _P. Stirtonia_.
[11] The species are: _Rhododendron campanulatum_, purple flowers;
_R. Fulgens_, scarlet; _R. Hodgsonii_, rose-coloured; _R.
Anthopogon_, white; _R. Virgatum_, purple; _R. Nivale_, rose-red;
_R. Wightii_, yellow; _R. Falconeri_, cream-coloured; _R.
cinndbarinum_, brick-red ('The Gates of Tibet,' Appendix I., J.
A. H. Louis).
These delicate flowers are very different from their dowdy cousin, the
coarse red rhododendron of the English shrubbery. At a little distance
they resemble more hothouse azaleas, and equal them in wealth of
blossom.
The great moss-grown rocks in the bed of the stream were covered with
equal profusion. Looking behind, the snows crowned the pine-trees, and
over them rested the blue sky. And here is the second reason--as I am
determined to be logical in my preference--why I found the valley so
fascinating. In contrasting the Himalayas with the Alps, there is always
something that the former is without. Never the snows, and the water,
and the greenery at the same time; if the greenery is at your feet, the
snows are far distant; where the Himalayas gain in grandeur they lose in
beauty. So I thought the wild valley of Lauterbrunnen, lying at the foot
of the Jungfrau, the perfection of Alpine scenery until I saw the valley
of Yatung, a pine-clad mountain glen, green as a hawthorn hedge in May,
as brilliantly variegated as a beechwood copse in autumn, and
culminating in the snowy peak that overhangs the Jelapla. The valley has
besides an intangible fascination, indescribable because it is
illogical. Certainly the light that played upon all these colours seemed
to me softer than everyday sunshine; and the opening spring foliage of
larch and birch and mountain ash seemed more delicate and varied than on
common ground. Perhaps it was that I was approaching the forbidden land.
But what irony, that this seductive valley should be the approach to
the most bare and unsheltered country in Asia!
Even now, in February, I can detect a few salmon-coloured leaf-buds,
which remind me that the month of May will be a revelation to the
mission force, when their veins are quickened by the unfamiliar warmth,
and their eyes dazzled by this unexpected treasure which is now
germinating in the brown earth.
Four miles beyond Chumbi the road passes through the second military
wall at the Chinese village of Gob-sorg. Riding through the quiet
gateway beneath the grim, hideous figure of the goddess Dolma carved on
the rock above, one feels a silent menace. One is part of more than a
material invasion; one has passed the gate that has been closed against
the profane for centuries; one has committed an irretrievable step.
Goddess and barrier are symbols of Tibet's spiritual and material
agencies of opposition. We have challenged and defied both. We have
entered the arena now, and are to be drawn into the vortex of all that
is most sacred and hidden, to struggle there with an implacable foe, who
is protected by the elemental forces of nature.
Inside the wall, above the road, stands the Chinese village of Gob-sorg.
The Chinamen come out of their houses and stand on the revetment to
watch us pass. They are as quiet and ugly as their gods. They gaze down
on our convoys and modern contrivances with a silent contempt that
implies a consciousness of immemorial superiority. Who can tell what
they think or what they wish, these undivinable creatures? They love
money, we know, and they love something else that we cannot know. It is
not country, or race, or religion, but an inscrutable something that may
be allied to these things, that induces a mental obstinacy, an
unfathomable reserve which may conceal a wisdom beyond our philosophy or
mere callousness and indifference. The thing is there, though it has no
European name or definition. It has caused many curious and unexplained
outbreaks in different parts of the world, and it is no doubt symbolized
in their inexpressibly hideous flag. The element is non-conductive, and
receives no current from progress, and it is therefore incommunicable to
us who are wrapped in the pride of evolution. The question here and
elsewhere is whether the Chinese love money more or this inscrutable
dragon element. If it is money, their masks must have concealed a
satisfaction at the prospect of the increased trade that follows our
flag; if the dragon element, a grim hope that we might be cut off in the
wilderness and annihilated by Asiatic hordes.
Unlike the Chinese, the Tomos are unaffectedly glad to see us in the
valley. The humblest peasant is the richer by our presence, and the
landowners and traders are more prosperous than they have been for many
years. Their uncompromising reception of us makes a withdrawal from the
Chumbi Valley impossible, for the Tibetans would punish them
relentlessly for the assistance they have given their enemies.
A mile beyond Gob-sorg is the Tibetan village of Galing-ka, where the
praying-flags are as thick as masts in a dockyard, and streams of paper
prayers are hung across the valley to prevent the entrance of evil
spirits. Chubby little children run out and salute one with a cry of
'Backsheesh!' the first alien word in their infant vocabulary.
A mile further a sudden turn in the valley brings one to a level
plain--a phenomenally flat piece of ground where one can race two miles
along the straight. No one passes it without remarking that it is the
best site for a hill-station in Northern India. Where else can one find
a racecourse, polo-ground, fishing, and shooting, and a rainfall that is
little more than a third of that of Darjeeling? Three hundred feet above
the stream on the west bank is a plateau, apparently intended for
building sites. The plain in the valley was naturally designed for the
training of mounted infantry, and is now, probably for the first time,
being turned to its proper use.
LINGMATHANG,
_March 18._
I have left the discomforts of Phari, and am camping now on the
Lingmathang Plain. I am writing in a natural cave in the rock. The
opening is walled in by a sangar of stones 5 feet high, from which
pine-branches support a projecting roof. On fine days the space between
the roof and wall is left open, and called the window; but when it
snows, gunny-bags are let down as purdahs, and the den becomes very warm
and comfortable. There is a natural hearth, a natural chimney-piece, and
a natural chimney that draws excellently. The place is sheltered by high
cliffs, and it is very pleasant to look out from this snugness on a
wintry landscape, and ground covered deep with snow.
Outside, seventy shaggy Tibetan ponies, rough and unshod, averaging 12·2
hands, are tethered under the shelter of a rocky cliff. They are being
trained according to the most approved methods of modern warfare. The
Mounted Infantry Corps, mostly volunteers from the 23rd and 32nd
Pioneers and 8th Gurkhas, are under the command of Captain Ottley of the
23rd. The corps was raised at Gnatong in December, and though many of
the men had not ridden before, after two months' training they cut a
very respectable figure in the saddle. A few years ago a proposal was
made to the military authorities that the Pioneers, like other
regiments, should go in for a course of mounted infantry training. The
reply caused much amusement at the time. The suggestion was not adopted,
but orders were issued that 'every available opportunity should be taken
of teaching the Pioneers to ride in carts.' A wag in the force naturally
suggests that the new Ekka Corps, now running between Phari and Tuna,
should be utilized to carry out the spirit of this order. Certainly on
the road beyond the Tangla the ekkas would require some sitting.
The present mission is the third 'show' on which the 23rd and 32nd have
been together during the last nine years. In Chitral and Waziristan they
fought side by side. It is no exaggeration to say that these regiments
have been on active service three years out of five since they were
raised in 1857. The original draft of the 32nd, it will be remembered,
was the unarmed volunteer corps of Mazbi Sikhs, who offered themselves
as an escort to the convoy from Lahore to Delhi during the siege. The
Mazbis were the most lawless and refractory folk in the Punjab, and had
long been the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi they were
employed in the trenches, rushing in to fill up the places of the killed
and wounded as fast as they fell. It will be remembered that they formed
the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags to blow up the Cashmere
Gate. A hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed during the siege.
With this brilliant opening it is no wonder that they have been on
active service almost continually since.
A frontier campaign would be incomplete without the 32nd or 23rd. It was
the 32nd who cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and carried the
battery guns to the relief of Chitral. The 23rd Pioneers were also
raised from the Mazbi Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
history of the two regiments is very similar. The 23rd distinguished
themselves in China, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and numerous frontier
campaigns. One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with the Gordon
Highlanders under Major (now Sir George) White, they captured the Afghan
guns at Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments meet again as
members of the same corps on the Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most
cordial relations exist between the men, and one can hear them
discussing old campaigns as they sit round their pinewood fires in the
evenings. They and the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur fame)
turn out together every morning for exercise on their diminutive steeds.
They ride without saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at the jumps. The other
day, when a Mazbi Sikh took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise riding in carts.'
At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of sport of a desultory kind.
The neighbouring forests are the home of that very rare and little-known
animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal of the species to
fall to a European gun was shot by Major Wallace Dunlop on the
Lingmathang Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley wounded a
buck which he was not able to follow up on account of a heavy fall of
snow. Lately one or two shao--does in all cases--have come down to visit
the plain. While we were breakfasting on the morning of the 16th, we
heard a great deal of shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village dogs, had broken
through the jungle on the hillside and emerged on the plain a hundred
yards from our camp. We mounted at once, and Ottley deployed the mounted
infantry, who were ready for parade, to head the beast from the hills.
The shao jinked like a hare, and crossed and recrossed the stream
several times, but the poor beast was exhausted, and, after twenty
minutes' exciting chase, we surrounded it. Captain Ottley threw himself
on the animal's neck and held it down until a sepoy arrived with ropes
to bind its hind-legs. The chase was certainly a unique incident in the
history of sport--a field of seventy in the Himalayas, a clear spurt in
the open, no dogs, and the quarry the rarest zoological specimen in the
world. The beast stood nearly 14 hands, and was remarkable for its long
ears and elongated jaw. The sequel was sad. Besides the fright and
exhaustion, the captured shao sustained an injury in the loin; it pined,
barely nibbled at its food, and, after ten days, died.
Sikkim stags are sometimes shot by native shikaris, and there is great
rivalry among members of the mission force in buying their heads. They
are shy, inaccessible beasts, and they are not met with beyond the wood
limit.
The shooting in the Chumbi Valley is interesting to anyone fond of
natural history, though it is a little disappointing from the
sportsman's point of view. When officers go out for a day's shooting,
they think they have done well if they bring home a brace of pheasants.
When the sappers and miners began to work on the road below Gautsa, the
blood-pheasants used to come down to the stream to watch the operations,
but now one sees very few game-birds in the valley. The minal is
occasionally shot. The cock-bird, as all sportsmen know, is, with the
exception of the Argus-eye, the most beautiful pheasant in the world.
There is a lamasery in the neighbourhood, where the birds are almost
tame. The monks who feed them think that they are inhabited by the
spirits of the blest. Where the snow melts in the pine-forests and
leaves soft patches and moist earth, you will find the blood-pheasant.
When you disturb them they will run up the hillside and call
vociferously from their new hiding-place, so that you may get another
shot. Pheasant-shooting here is not sport; the birds seldom rise, and
when they do it is almost impossible to get a shot at them in the thick
jungle. One must shoot them running for the pot. Ten or a dozen is not a
bad bag for one gun later in the year, when more snow has fallen.
At a distance the blood-pheasant appears a dowdy bird. The hen is quite
insignificant, but, on a closer acquaintance, the cock shows a delicate
colour-scheme of mauve, pink, and green, which is quite different from
the plumage of any other bird I have seen. The skins fetch a good price
at home, as fishermen find them useful for making flies. A sportsman
who has shot in the Yatung Valley regularly for four years tells me that
the cock-bird of this species is very much more numerous than the hen.
Another Chumbi pheasant is the tracopan, a smaller bird than the minal,
and very beautifully marked. I have not heard of a tracopan being shot
this season; the bird is not at all common anywhere on this side of the
Himalayas.
Snow-partridge sometimes come down to the Lingmathang hills; in the
adjacent Kongbu Valley they are plentiful. These birds are gregarious,
and are found among the large, loose boulders on the hill-tops. In
appearance they are a cross between the British grouse and the
red-legged partridge, having red feet and legs uncovered with feathers,
and a red bill and chocolate breast. The feathers of the back and rump
are white, with broad, defined bars of rich black.
Another common bird is the snow-pigeon. Large flocks of them may be seen
circling about the valley anywhere between Phari and Chumbi. Sometimes,
when we are sitting in our cave after dinner, we hear the tweek of
solitary snipe flying overhead, but we have never flushed any. Every
morning before breakfast I stroll along the river bank with a gun, and
often put up a stray duck. I have frequently seen goosanders on the
river, but not more than two or three in a party. They never leave the
Himalayas. The only migratory duck I have observed are the common teal
and Brahminy or ruddy sheldrake, and these only in pairs. The latter,
though despised on the plains, are quite edible up here. I discredit the
statement that they feed on carrion, as I have never seen one near the
carcasses of the dead transport animals that are only too plentiful in
the valley just now. After comparing notes with other sportsmen, I
conclude that the Ammo Chu Valley is not a regular route for migratory
duck. The odd teal that I shot in February were probably loiterers that
were not strong enough to join in the flight southwards.
Near Lingmathang I shot the ibis bill (_Ibidorhynchus Struthersi_), a
bird which is allied to the oyster catchers. This was the first Central
Asian species I met.
GAUTSA,
_February._
Gautsa, which lies five miles north of Lingmathang, nearly half-way
between Chumbi and Phari, must be added to the map. A week or two ago
the place was deserted and unnamed; it did not boast a single cowherd's
hut. Now it is a busy camp, and likely to be a permanent halting-place
on the road to Phari. The camp lies in a deep, moss-carpeted hollow,
with no apparent egress. On three sides it is flanked by rocky cliffs,
densely forested with pine and silver birch; on the fourth rises an
abrupt wall of rock, which is suffused with a glow of amber light an
hour before sunset. The Ammo Chu, which is here nothing but a 20-foot
stream frozen over at night, bisects the camp. The valley is warm and
sheltered, and escapes much of the bitter wind that never spares Chumbi.
After dinner one prefers the open-air and a camp fire. Officers who have
been up the line before turn into their tents regretfully, for they know
that they are saying good-bye to comfort, and will not enjoy the genial
warmth of a good fire again until they have crossed the bleak Tibetan
tablelands and reached the sparsely-wooded Valley of Gyantse.
CHAPTER IV
PHARI JONG
_February 15._
Icy winds and suffocating smoke are not conducive to a literary style,
though they sometimes inspire a rude eloquence that is quite unfit for
publication. As I write we are huddling over the mess-room brazier--our
youngest optimist would not call it a fire. Men drop in now and then
from fatigue duty, and utter an incisive phrase that expresses the
general feeling, while we who write for an enlightened public must
sacrifice force for euphemism. A week at Phari dispels all illusions;
only a bargee could adequately describe the place. Yet the elements,
which 'feelingly persuade us' what we are, sometimes inspire us with the
eloquence of discomfort.
At Gautsa the air was scented with the fragrance of warm pine-trees, and
there was no indication of winter save the ice on the Ammo Chu. The
torrent roared boisterously beneath its frozen surface, and threw up
little tentacles of frozen spray, which glistened fantastically in the
sun. Three miles further up the stream the wood-belt ends abruptly;
then, after another three miles, one passes the last stunted bush; after
that there is nothing but brown earth and yellow withered grass.
Five miles above Gautsa is Dotah, the most cheerless camp on the march.
The wind blows through the gorge unceasingly, and penetrates to the
bone. On the left bank of the stream is the frozen waterfall, which
might be worshipped by the fanciful and superstitious as embodying the
genius of the place, hard and resistless, a crystallized monument of the
implacable spirit of Nature in these high places.
At Kamparab, where we camped, two miles higher up the stream, the
thermometer fell to 14° below zero. Close by is the meeting-place of the
sources of the Ammo Chu. All the plain is undermined with the warrens of
the long-haired marmots and voles, who sit on their thresholds like a
thousand little spies, and curiously watch our approach, then dive down
into their burrows to tell their wives of the strange bearded invaders.
They are the despair of their rivals, the sappers and miners, who are
trying to make a level road for the new light ekkas. One envies them
their warmth and snugness as one rides against the bitter penetrating
winds.
Twelve miles from Gautsa a turn in the valley brings one into view of
Phari Jong. At first sight it might be a huge isolated rock, but as one
approaches the bastions and battlements become more distinct. Distances
are deceptive in this rarefied air, and objects that one imagines to be
quite close are sometimes found to be several miles distant.
The fort is built on a natural mound in the plain. It is a huge rambling
building six stories high, surrounded by a courtyard, where mules and
ponies are stabled. As a military fortification Phari Jong is by no
means contemptible. The walls are of massive stonework which would take
heavy guns to demolish. The angles are protected from attacking parties
by machicolated galleries, and three enormous bastions project from each
flank. These are crumbling in places, and the Pioneers might destroy the
bastion and breach the wall with a bag or two of guncotton. On the
eastern side there is a square courtyard like an Arab caravanserai,
where cattle are penned. The fortress would hold the whole Tibetan army,
with provisions for a year. It was evacuated the night before we
reconnoitred the valley.
The interior of the Jong is a warren of stairs, landings, and dark
cavernous rooms, which would take a whole day to explore. The walls are
built of stone and mud, and coated with century-old smoke. There are no
chimneys or adequate windows, and the filth is indescribable. When Phari
was first occupied, eighty coolies were employed a whole week clearing
away refuse. Judging by the accretion of dirt, a new-comer might class
the building as medieval; but filth is no criterion of age, for
everything left in the same place becomes quickly coated with grime an
inch thick. The dust that invades one's tent at Chumbi is clean and
wholesome compared to the Phari dirt, which is the filth of human
habitation, the secretion of centuries of foul living. It falls from the
roof on one's head, sticks to one's clothes as one brushes against the
wall, and is blown up into one's eyes and throat from the floor.
The fort is most insanitary, but a military occupation is necessary. The
hacking coughs which are prevalent among officers and men are due to
impurities of the air which affect the lungs. Cartloads of dirt are
being scraped away every day, but gusts of wind from the lower stories
blow up more dust, which penetrates every nook and cranny of the
draughty rooms, so that there is a fresh layer by nightfall. To clear
the lower stories and cellars would be a hopeless task; even now rooms
are found in unexpected places which emit clouds of dust whenever the
wind eddies round the basement.
I explored the ground-floor with a lantern, and was completely lost in
the maze of passages and dark chambers. When we first occupied the fort,
they were filled with straw, gunpowder, and old arms. A hundred and
forty maunds of inferior gunpowder was destroyed, and the arms now
litter the courtyard. These the Tibetans themselves abandoned as
rubbish. The rusty helmets, shields, and breastplates are made of the
thinnest iron plates interlaced with leathern thongs, and would not
stop an arrow. The old bell-mouthed matchlocks, with their wooden
ground-rests, would be more dangerous to the Tibetan marksmen than the
enemy. The slings and bows and arrows are reckoned obsolete even by
these primitive warriors. Perhaps they attribute more efficacy to the
praying-wheels which one encounters at every corner of the fort. The
largest are in niches in the wall to left and right of the gateway; rows
of smaller ones are attached to the banisters on the landings and to the
battlements of the roof. The wheels are covered with grime--the grime of
Lamas' hands. Dirt and religion are inseparable in Tibet. The Lamas
themselves are the most filthy and malodorous folk I have met in the
country. From this it must not be inferred that one class is more
cleanly in its habits than another, for nobody ever thinks of washing.
Soap is not included in the list of sundries that pass the Customs House
at Yatung. If the Lamas are dirtier than the yak-herds and itinerant
merchants it is because they lead an indoor life, whereas the pastoral
folk are continually exposed to the purifying winds of the tablelands,
which are the nearest equivalent in Tibet to a cold bath.
I once read of a Tibetan saint, one of the pupils of Naropa, who was
credited with a hundred miraculous gifts, one of which was that he could
dive into the water like a fish. Wherein the miracle lay had often
puzzled me, but when I met the Lamas of the Kanjut Gompa I understood
at once that it was the holy man's contact with the water.
Phari is eloquent of piety, as it is understood in Tibet. The better
rooms are frescoed with Buddhistic paintings, and on the third floor is
a library, now used as a hospital, where xylograph editions of the
Lamaist scriptures and lives of the saints are pigeon-holed in lockers
in the wall. The books are printed on thin oblong sheets of Chinese
paper, enclosed in boards, and illuminated with quaint coloured
tailpieces of holy men in devotional attitudes. Phari fort, with its
casual blending of East and West, is full of incongruous effects, but
the oddest and most pathetic incongruity is the chorten on the roof,
from which, amidst praying-flags and pious offerings of coloured
raiment, flutters the Union Jack.
_February 18._
The troops are so busy making roads that they have very little time for
amusements. The 8th Gurkhas have already constructed some eight miles of
road on each side of Phari for the ekka transport. Companies of the 23rd
Pioneers are repairing the road at Dotah, Chumbi, and Rinchengong. The
32nd are working at Rinchengong, and the sappers and miners on the
Nathula and at Gautsa.
We have started football, and the Gurkhas have a very good idea of the
game. One loses one's wind completely at this elevation after every
spurt of twenty yards, but recovers it again in a wonderfully short
time. Other amusements are sliding and tobogganing, which are a little
disappointing to enthusiasts. The ice is lumpy and broken, and the
streamlets that run down to the plain are so tortuous that fifty yards
without a spill is considered a good run for a toboggan. The funniest
sight is to see the Gurkha soldiers trying to drag the toboggan uphill,
slipping and tumbling and sprawling on the ice, and immensely enjoying
one another's discomfiture.
To clear the dust from one's throat and shake off the depression caused
by weeks of waiting in the same place, there is nothing like a day's
shooting or exploring in the neighbourhood of Phari. I get up sometimes
before daybreak, and spend the whole day reconnoitring with a small
party of mounted infantry. Yesterday we crossed a pass which looked down
into the Kongbu Valley--a likely camping-ground for the Tibetan troops.
The valley is connected to the north with the Tuna plateau, and is
almost as fertile in its lower stretches as Chumbi. A gray fortress
hangs over the cliff on the western side of the valley, and above it
tower the glaciers of Shudu-Tsenpa and the Gora Pass into Sikkim. On the
eastern side, at a creditable distance from the fort, we could see the
Kongbu nunnery, which looked from where we stood like an old Roman
viaduct. The nuns, I was told, are rarely celibate; they shave the head
and wear no ornaments.
Riding back we saw some burrhel on the opposite hills, too far off to
make a successful stalk possible. The valley is full of them, and a week
later some officers from Phari on a yak-collecting expedition got
several good heads. The Tibetan gazelle, or goa (_Gazella
hirticaudata_), is very common on the Phari plateau, and we bagged two
that afternoon. When the force first occupied the Jong, they were so
tame that a sportsman could walk up to within 100 yards of a herd, and
it was not an uncommon thing for three buck to fall to the same gun in a
morning. Now one has to manoeuvre a great deal to get within 300 yards
of them.
Sportsmen who have travelled in other parts of Tibet say the goa are
very shy and inaccessible. Perhaps their comparative tameness near Phari
may be accounted for by the fact that the old trade route crosses the
plateau, and they have never been molested by the itinerant merchants
and carriers. Gazelle meat is excellent. It has been a great resource
for the garrison. No epicure could wish for anything better.
Another unfamiliar beast that one meets in the neighbourhood of Phari is
the kyang, or Tibetan wild ass (_Equus hemionus_), one or two of which
have been shot for specimens. The kyang is more like a zebra than a
horse or donkey. Its flesh, I believe, is scorned even by
camp-followers. Hare are fairly plentiful, but they are quite
flavourless. A huge solitary gray wolf (_Canis laniger_) was shot the
other day, the only one of its kind I have seen. Occasionally one puts
up a fox. The Tibetan species has a very fine brush that fetches a fancy
price in the bazaar. At present there is too much ice on the plain to
hunt them, but they ought to give good sport in the spring.
It was dark when we rode into the Jong. After a long day in the saddle,
dinner is good, even though it is of yak's flesh, and it is good to sit
in front of a fire even though the smoke chokes you. I went so far as to
pity the cave-dwellers at Chumbi. Phari is certainly very much colder,
but it has its diversions and interests. There is still some shooting to
be had, and the place has a quaint old-world individuality of its own,
which seasons the monotony of life to a contemplative man. One is on the
borderland, and one has a Micawber-like feeling that something may turn
up. After dinner there is bridge, which fleets the time considerably,
but at Chumbi there were no diversions of any kind--nothing but dull,
blank, uninterrupted monotony.
_February 20._
For two days half a blizzard has been blowing, and expeditions have been
impossible. Everything one eats and drinks has the same taste of argol
smoke. At breakfast this morning we had to put our _chapatties_ in our
pockets to keep them clean, and kept our meat covered with a soup-plate,
making surreptitious dives at it with a fork. After a few seconds'
exposure it was covered with grime. Sausages and bully beef, which had
just been boiled, were found to be frozen inside. The smoke in the
mess-room was suffocating. So to bed, wrapped in sheepskins and a
sleeping-bag. Under these depressing conditions I have been reading the
narratives of Bogle and Manning, old English worthies who have left on
record the most vivid impressions of the dirt and cold and misery of
Phari.
It is ninety years since Thomas Manning passed through Phari on his way
to Lhasa. Previously to his visit we only know of two Englishmen who
have set foot in Phari--Bogle in 1774, and Turner in 1783, both
emissaries of Warren Hastings. Manning's journal is mostly taken up with
complaints of his Chinese servant, who seems to have gained some
mysterious ascendancy over him, and to have exercised it most
unhandsomely. As a traveller Manning had a genius for missing effects;
it is characteristic of him that he spent sixteen days at Phari, yet
except for a casual footnote, evidently inserted in his journal after
his return, he makes no mention of the Jong. Were it not for Bogle's
account of thirty years before, we might conclude that the building was
not then in existence.
On October 21, 1811, Manning writes in his diary: 'We arrived at Phari
Jong. Frost. Frost also two days before. I was lodged in a strange
place, but so were the natives.' On the 27th he summarized his
impressions of Phari:--'Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke, misery, but good
mutton.'
Manning's journal is expressive, if monosyllabic. He was of the class
of subjective travellers, who visit the ends of the earth to record
their own personal discomforts. Sensitive, neurotic, ever on the
look-out for slights, he could not have been a happy vagabond. A dozen
lines record the impressions of his first week at Phari. He was cheated;
he was treated civilly; he slighted the magistrates, mistaking them for
idle fellows; he was turned out of his room to make way for Chinese
soldiers; he quarrelled with his servant. A single extract portrays the
man to the life, as if he were sitting dejectedly by his yak-dung fire
at this hour brooding over his wrongs:--
"The Chinaman was cross again." Says I, "Was that a bird at the
magistrate's that flapped so loud?" Answer: "What signifies whether it
was a bird or not?" Where he sat I thought he might see; and I was
curious to know if such large birds frequented the _building_. These are
the answers I get. He is always discontented and grumbling, and takes no
trouble off my hands. Being younger, and, like all Asiatics, able to
stoop and crouch without pain or difficulty, he might assist me in many
things without trouble to himself. A younger brother or any English
young gentleman would in his place of course lay the cloth, and do other
little services when I am tired; but he does not seem to have much of
the generous about him, nor does he in any way serve me, or behave to me
with any show of affection or goodwill: consequently I grow no more
attached to him than the first day I saw him. I could not have thought
it possible for me to have lived so long with anyone without either
disliking him or caring sixpence for him. He has good qualities, too.
The strangeness of his situation may partly excuse him. (I am more
attached to my guide, with all his faults, who has been with me but a
few days.) My guide has behaved so damnably ill since I wrote that, that
I wish it had not come into my mind.'
I give the extract at length, not only as an illuminating portrait of
Manning, but as an incidental proof that he visited the Jong, and that
it was very much the same building then as it is to-day. But had it not
been for the flapping of the bird which occasioned the quarrel with his
Chinese servant, Manning would have left Phari without a reference to
the wonderful old fortress which is the most romantic feature on the
road from India to Gyantse. Appended to the journal is this footnote to
the word _building_, which I have italicized in the extract: 'The
building is immensely large, six or more stories high, a sort of
fortress. At a distance it appears to be all Phari Jong. Indeed, most of
it consists of miserable galleries and holes.'
Members of the mission force who have visited Phari will no doubt
attribute Manning's evident ill-humour and depression during his stay
there to the environments of the place, which have not changed much in
the last ninety years. But his spirits improved as he continued his
journey to Gyantse and Lhasa, and he reveals himself the kindly,
eccentric, and affectionate soul who was the friend and intimate of
Charles Lamb.
Bogle arrived at Phari on October 23, 1774. He and Turner and Manning
all entered Tibet through Bhutan. 'As we advanced,' he wrote in his
journal, 'we came in sight of the castle of Phari Jong, which cuts a
good figure from without. It rises into several towers with the
balconies, and, having few windows, has the look of strength; it is
surrounded by the town.' The only other reference he makes to the Jong
shows us that the fortress was in bad repair so long ago as 1774. 'The
two Lhasa officers who have the government of Phari Jong sent me some
butter, tea, etc., the day after my arrival; and letting me know that
they expected a visit from me, I went. The inside of the castle did not
answer the notion I had formed of it. The stairs are ladders worn to the
bone, and the rooms are little better than garrets.'
The origin of the fort is unknown. Some of the inhabitants of Phari say
that it was built more than a hundred years ago, when the Nepalese were
overrunning Sikkim. But this is obviously incorrect, as the
Tibetan-Nepalese War, in which the Chinese drove the Gurkhas out of
Tibet, and defeated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu, took
place in 1788-1792, whereas Bogle's description of the Jong was written
fourteen years earlier. A more general impression is that centuries ago
orders came from Lhasa to collect stones on the hillsides, and the
building was constructed by forced labour in a few months. That is a
tale of endurance and suffering that might very likely be passed from
father to son for generations.
Bogle's description of the town might have been written by an officer of
the garrison to-day, only he wrote from the inmate's point of view. He
noticed the houses 'so huddled together that one may chance to overlook
them,' and the flat roofs covered with bundles of straw. He knocked his
head against the low ceilings, and ran against the pillars that
supported the beams. 'In the middle of the roof,' he wrote, 'is a hole
to let out smoke, which, however, departs not without making the whole
room as black as a chimney. The opening serves also to let in the light;
the doors are full of holes and crevices, through which the women and
children keep peeping.' Needless to say nothing has changed in the last
hundred and thirty years, unless it is that the women are bolder. I
looked down from the roof this morning on Phari town, lying like a
rabbit-warren beneath the fort. All one can see from the battlement are
the flat roofs of low black houses, from which smoke issues in dense
fumes. The roofs are stacked with straw, and connected by a web of
coloured praying-flags running from house to house, and sometimes over
the narrow alleys that serve as streets. Enormous fat ravens perch on
the wall, and innumerable flocks of twittering sparrows. For warmth's
sake most of the rooms are underground, and in these subterranean dens
Tibetans, black as coal-heavers, huddle together with yaks and mules.
Tibetan women, equally dirty, go about, their faces smeared and blotched
with caoutchouc, wearing a red, hoop-like head-dress, ornamented with
alternate turquoises and ruby-coloured stones.
In the fort the first thing one meets of a morning is a troop of these
grimy sirens, climbing the stairs, burdened with buckets of chopped ice
and sacks of yak-dung, the two necessaries of life. The Tibetan coolie
women are merry folk; they laugh and chatter over their work all day
long, and do not in the least resist the familiarities of the Gurkha
soldiers. Sometimes as they pass one they giggle coyly, and put out the
tongue, which is their way of showing respect to those in high places;
but when one hears their laughter echoing down the stairs it is
difficult to believe that it is not intended for saucy impudence. Their
merriment sounds unnatural in all this filth and cold and discomfort.
Certainly if Bogle returned to Phari he would find the women very much
bolder, though, I am afraid, not any cleaner. Could he see the
Englishmen in Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.
Often in civilized places I shall think of the group at Phari in the
mess-room after dinner--a group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a
blackened, smut-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from head to foot,
bearded like wild men of the woods, and sitting round a yak-dung fire,
drinking rum. After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might qualify
for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one day in Piccadilly one may
encounter a half-remembered face, and something familiar in walk or gait
may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in 'Jimmy's,' memories of
argol-smoke and frozen moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune
or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was once dreamed of among the
unattainable luxuries of life.
_March 26-28._
Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong. It seems impossible,
unnatural, that we are going on. After a week or two the place becomes
part of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there. It is difficult
to imagine life anywhere else. One feels as if one could never again be
cold or dirty, or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of that gray
fortress with its strange unknown history, standing alone in the
desolate plain. For my own part, speaking figuratively--and unfigurative
language is impotent on an occasion like this--the place will leave an
indelible black streak--very black indeed--on a kaleidoscopic past.
There can be no faint impressions in one's memories of Phari Jong. The
dirt and smoke and dust are elemental, and the cold is the cold of the
Lamas' frigid hell.
All the while I was in Phari I forgot the mystery of Tibet. I have felt
it elsewhere, but in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable folk
who had lived in the rooms where we slept, and fled in the night, were
content with their smut-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and
chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these murky environments
any spiritual instincts could survive to inspire the religious
frescoings on the wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of
designs is significant and symbolical. One's first impression is that
these allegories and metaphysical abstractions must have been
meaningless to the inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot
dissociate the artistic expression of religious feeling from cleanliness
and refinement, or at least pious care. One feels that they must be the
relics of a decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but in
ignorant superstition, like other fetishes all over the world. Yet this
feeling of scepticism is not so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At
first one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely animal and
sensual, and to attribute their religious observances to the fear of
demons who will punish the most trivial omission in ritual.
Next one begins to wonder if they really believe in the efficacy of
mechanical prayer, if they take the trouble to square their conscience
with their inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to be
absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there may come a suspicion that
the better classes, though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma
and definite convictions about things spiritual and natural that are
not easily upset. Perhaps before we turn our backs on the mystery of
Tibet we will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross materialists
and philistines--we who are always groping and grasping after the
particular, while they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.
After all, devious and unscrupulous as their policy may have been, the
Tibetans have had one definite aim in view for centuries--the
preservation of their Church and State by the exclusion of all foreign
and heretical influences. When we know that the Mongol cannot conceive
of the separation of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is only
natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual or otherwise, to a
foreign Court should introduce the first elements of dissolution in a
system of Government that has held the country intact for centuries. And
let it be remarked that Great Britain is not responsible for this
deviation in a hitherto inveterate policy.
But to return to Phari. My last impression of the place as I passed out
of its narrow alleys was a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of
yak-dung over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel, and muttering
the sacred formula that was to release him from all rebirth in this
suffering world. The wish seemed natural enough.
It was a bright, clear morning when we turned our backs on the old fort
and started once more on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we
passed the miserable little village of Chuggya, which is apparently
inhabited by ravens and sparrows, and a diminutive mountain-finch that
looks like a half-starved robin. A mile to the right before entering the
village is the monastery of the Red Lamas, which was the lodging-place
of the Bhutanese Envoy during his stay at Phari. The building, which is
a landmark for miles, is stone-built, and coated over with red earth,
which gives it the appearance of brick. Its overhanging gables,
mullioned windows without glass, that look like dominoes in the
distance, the pendent bells, and the gay decorations of Chinese paper,
look quaint and mystical, and are in keeping with the sacred character
of the place. Bogle stopped here on October 27, 1774, and drank tea with
the Abbot. It is very improbable that any other white man has set foot
in the monastery since, until the other day, when some of the garrison
paid it a visit and took photographs of the interior. The Lamas were a
little deprecatory, but evidently amused. I did not expect them to be so
tolerant of intrusion, and their clamour for backsheesh on our departure
dispelled one more illusion.
At Chuggya we were at the very foot of Chumulari (23,930 feet), which
seems to rise sheer from the plain. The western flank is an abrupt wall
of rock, but, as far as one can see, the eastern side is a gradual
ascent of snow, which would present no difficulties to the trained
mountaineer. One could ride up to 17,000 feet, and start the climb from
a base 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Chumulari is the most sacred
mountain in Tibet, and it is usual for devout Buddhists to stop and
offer a sacrifice as they pass. Bogle gives a detailed account of the
service, the rites of which are very similar to some I witnessed at
Galingka on the Tibetan New Year, February 16.
'Here we halted,' he wrote in his journal, 'and the servants gathering
together a parcel of dried cow-dung, one of them struck fire with his
tinder-box and lighted it. When the fire was well kindled, Parma took
out a book of prayers, one brought a copper cup, another filled it with
a kind of fermented liquor out of a new-killed sheep's paunch, mixing in
some rice and flour; and after throwing some dried herbs and flour into
the flame, they began their rites. Parma acted as chaplain. He chanted
the prayers in a loud voice, the others accompanying him, and every now
and then the little cup was emptied towards the rock, about eight or ten
of these libations being poured forth. The ceremony was finished by
placing upon the heap of stones the little ensign which my fond
imagination had before offered up to my own vanity.'
Most of the flags and banners one sees to-day on the chortens and roofs
of houses, and cairns on the mountain-tops, must be planted with some
such inaugural ceremony.
Facing Chumulari on the west, and apparently only a few miles distant,
are the two Sikkim peaks of Powhunri (23,210 feet) and Shudu-Tsenpa
(22,960 feet). From Chuggya the Tangla is reached by a succession of
gradual rises and depressions. The pass is not impressive, like the
Jelap, as a passage won through a great natural barrier. One might cross
it without noticing the summit, were it not for the customary cairns and
praying-flags which the Lamas raise in all high places.
From a slight rise on the east of the pass one can look down across the
plateau on Tuna, an irregular black line like a caterpillar, dotted with
white spots, which glasses reveal to be tents. The Bamtso lake lies
shimmering to the east beneath brown and yellow hills. At noon objects
dance elusively in the mirage. Distances are deceptive. Yaks grazing are
like black Bedouin tents. Here, then, is the forbidden land. The
approach is as it should be. One's eyes explore the road to Lhasa dimly
through a haze. One would not have it laid out with the precision of a
diagram.
CHAPTER V
THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
To write of any completed phase of the expedition at this stage, when I
have carried my readers only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity
that requires an apology. My excuse is that to all transport officers,
and everyone who was in touch with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will
be remembered as the very backbone of resistance, the most implacable
barriers to our advance.
The expedition was essentially a transport 'show.' It is true that the
Tibetans proved themselves brave enemies, but their acquired military
resources are insignificant when compared with the obstacles Nature has
planted in the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the passes, the
severity of the climate, the sterility of the mountains and tablelands,
make the interior of the country almost inaccessible to an invading
army. That we went through these obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was
a matter of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to many members of
the expeditionary force.
To appreciate the difficulties the mission force had to contend with,
one must first realize the extraordinary changes of climate that are
experienced in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna. Choose the coldest day
in the year at Kew Gardens, expose yourself freely to the wind, and then
spend five minutes in the tropical house, and you may gather some idea
of the sensation of sleeping in the Rungpo Valley the night after
crossing the Jelapla.
When I first made the journey in early January, even the Rungpo Valley
was chilly, and the vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the
change very keenly in March, when I made a hurried rush into Darjeeling
for equipment and supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the
pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was warm and sunny in the
daytime, in places where there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were
beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw, migratory duck were coming
up the valley in twos and threes from the plains of India--even a few
vultures had arrived to fatten on the carcasses of the dead transport
animals. The morning after leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at
13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale and rock. When I
crossed the Jelapla half a hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet
of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take advantage of every
protuberance in the rock to prevent myself from being blown over the
_khud_. The road was impassable for mules and ponies. The cold was
numbing. The next evening, in a valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was
suffering from the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and vegetation
is equally striking--from glaciers and moraines to tropical forests
brilliant with the scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet I
had not seen an insect of any kind for two months, but in the Sikkim
valleys the most gorgeous butterflies were abundant, and the rest-house
at Rungpo was invested by a plague of flies. In the hot weather the
climate of the Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most stations
in the plains of India. The valleys are close and shut in, and the heat
is intensified by the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders. In
the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious. The Supply and
Transport Corps, who were left behind at stages like Rungpo through the
hot weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time on the whole than the
half-frozen troops at the front, and they were left out of all the fun.
Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the severity of climate,
and the scarcity of fodder and fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend
with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest,
foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst
fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred
buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven
camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died
by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally
purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they
reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected;
the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no
precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and
at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were massed on
the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after
much patient care, the disease was stamped out.
Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted
struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superstitious
natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were
attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left
the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in
climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the
Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds
from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female
yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases,
the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The
epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried
off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven
through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous
mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were
formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.
Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high
altitudes, where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless corps. The
few survivors were exterminated by pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January
23, the 3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437; two months
afterwards all but 70 had died. On March 21, 80 exhausted beasts
straggled into Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and 2nd Yak
Corps, which originally numbered 2,300 heads. The officers, who, bearded
and weather-beaten, deserted by many of their followers, after months of
wandering, reached our camp with the remnants of the corps, told a story
of hardship and endurance that would provide a theme for an epic.
The epic of the yaks does not comprise the whole tale of disaster.
Rinderpest carried off 77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps
was segregated for two months with foot and mouth disease. Amongst other
casualties there were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony corps, and
the Tibet pony corps raised locally. The animals were hastily mobilized
and incompletely equipped, overworked and underfed. Cheap and inferior
saddlery was issued, which gave the animals sore backs within a week.
The transport officer was in a constant dilemma. He had to overwork his
animals or delay the provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently
needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no rest, but worked till they
dropped. Of the original draft of mules that were employed on the line
to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per cent. died. It is no good trying to blink
the fact that the expedition was unpopular, and that at the start many
economical shifts were attempted which proved much more expensive in the
end. Our party system is to blame. The Opposition must be appeased,
expenses kept down, and the business is entered into half-heartedly. In
the usual case a few companies are grudgingly sent to the front, and
then, when something like a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps
at the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade follows, and
Government wakes to the necessity of grappling with the situation
seriously.
But to return to the spot where the evil effects of the system were
felt, and not merely girded at. To replace and supplement the local
drafts of animals that were dying, trained Government mule corps were
sent up from the plains, properly equipped and under experienced
officers. These did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in Lhasa on
August 3 in as good condition as one could wish. Of all transport
animals, the mule is the hardiest and most enduring. He does not
complain when he is overloaded, but will go on all day, and when he
drops there is no doubt that he has had enough. Nine times out of ten
when he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent to extremes of
heat and cold. On the road from Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules
fell over a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally submerged.
Their drivers could not pull them out, and, to solve the dilemma, went
on and reported them dead. The next day an officer found them and
extricated them alive. They had been exposed to 46° of frost. They still
survive.
Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in good condition, unless it
is the Balti and Ladaki coolie. Several hundred of these hardy
mountaineers were imported from the North-West frontier to work on the
most dangerous and difficult sections of the road. They can bear cold
and fatigue and exposure better than any transport animal on the line,
and they are surer-footed. Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but
were afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are excellent workers
at high altitudes, and sing cheerily as they toil up the mountains with
their loads. I have seen them throw down their packs when they reached
the summit of a pass, make a rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer
lustily like school-boys. But the coolies were not all equally
satisfactory. Those indented from the Nepal durbar were practically an
impressed gang. Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm clothing did
not seem to reconcile them to hard work, and after a month or two they
became discontented and refractory. Their officers, however, were men of
tact and decision, and they were able to prevent what might have been a
serious mutiny. The discontented ones were gradually replaced by Baltis,
Ladakis, and Garwhalis, and the coolies became the most reliable
transport corps on the line.
Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression current at the time,
was got into working order, and a system was gradually developed by
which the right animal, man, or conveyance was working in the right
place, and supplies were sent through at a pace that was very creditable
considering the country traversed.
From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a distance of sixty miles,
the ascent in the road is scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a
few contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this section of the
line was worked by bullock-carts. Government carts are built to carry 11
maunds (880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs with 15 or 16
maunds. As the carrying power of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is
only 2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport in a mountainous
country, where there can be no road for vehicles, is nearly five times
as difficult and complicated as in the plains. And this is without
making any allowance for the inevitable mortality among transport
animals at high elevations, or taking into account the inevitable
congestion on mountain-paths, often blocked by snow, carried away by the
rains, and always too narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.
In the beginning of March, when the line was in its best working order,
from 1,500 to 2,000 maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of these, only
400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the rest was stored at Gantok or
consumed on the road. Later, when the line was extended to Gyantse, not
more than 100 maunds a day reached the front.
In the first advance on Gyantse, our column was practically launched
into the unknown. As far as we knew, no local food or forage could be
obtained. It was too early in the season for the spring pasturage. We
could not live on the country. The ever-lengthening line of
communication behind us was an artery, the severing of which would be
fatal to our advance.
One can best realize the difficulties grappled with by imagining the
extreme case of an army entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it
must be remembered, can only carry its own food for ten days. That is
to say, in a country where there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can
make at the most nine marches. On the ninth day beasts and drivers will
have consumed all the supplies taken with them. Supposing on the tenth
day no supply-base has been reached, the convoy is stranded, and can
neither advance nor retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary
convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed nothing to the
advance of the army. Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding,
guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still await transport at the
base.
Fortunately, the country between our frontier and Lhasa is not all
desert. Yet it is barren enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with
such short preparation, we were able to push through troops to Gyantse
in April, when there was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in Lhasa
in August with a force of more than 4,000 fighting men and followers.
Before the second advance to Gyantse the spring crops had begun to
appear. Without them we could not have advanced. All other local produce
on the road was exhausted. That is to say, for 160 miles, with the
important exception of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our own
supplies. The mules carried their own grain, and no more. Gyantse once
reached, the Tibetan Government granaries and stores from the
monasteries produced enough to carry us on. But besides the transport
mules, there were 100 Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200
mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers' mounts, to be fed,
and these carried nothing--contributed nothing to the stomach of the
army.
How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an
army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal
was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two
possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and
impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not
require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and
fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that
providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.
The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from
the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab on
the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400
pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth
to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved
the situation.
The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu
Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.
The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the
transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes
nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of grass, tamarisk, and
tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and
wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy
disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation.
The red and white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the Tibetans hang
about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and
frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.
If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced
to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in
their passage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did
better. Yet I have often passed the Lieutenant in command of the corps
lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning.
Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of
spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in
adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think
it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.
The final advance from Gyantse to Lhasa was a comparatively easy matter.
Crops were plentiful, and large supplies of grain were obtained from the
monasteries and jongs on the road. We found, contrary to anticipation,
that the produce in this part of Tibet was much greater than the
consumption. In many places we found stores that would last a village
three or four years. Our transport animals lived on the country. We
arrived at Lhasa with 2,600 mules and 400 coolies. The yak and donkey
corps were left at the river for convoy work. It would have been
impossible to have pushed through in the winter.
All the produce we consumed on the road was paid for. In this way the
expense of the army's keep fell on the Lhasa Government, who had to pay
the indemnity, and our presence in the country was not directly, at any
rate, a burden on the agricultural population of the villages through
which we passed.
Looking back on the splendid work accomplished by the transport, it is
difficult to select any special phase more memorable than another. The
complete success of the organization and the endurance and grit
displayed by officers and men are equally admirable. I could cite the
coolness of a single officer in a mob of armed and mutinous coolies,
when the compelling will of one man and a few blows straight from the
shoulder kept the discontented harnessed to their work and quelled a
revolt; or the case of another who drove his diseased yaks over the snow
passes into Chumbi, and after two days' rest started with a fresh corps
on ten months of the most tedious labour the mind of man can imagine,
rising every day before daybreak in an almost Arctic cold, traversing
the same featureless tablelands, and camping out at night cheerfully in
the open plain with his escort of thirty rifles. There was always the
chance of a night attack, but no other excitement to break the eternal
monotony. But it was all in the day's work, and the subaltern took it
like a picnic. Another supreme test of endurance in man and beast were
the convoys between Chumbi and Tuna in the early part of the year, which
for hardships endured remind me of Skobeleff's dash through the Balkans
on Adrianople. Only our labours were protracted, Skobeleff's the
struggle of a few days. Even in mid-March a convoy of the 12th Mule
Corps, escorted by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, were overtaken by
a blizzard on their march between Phari and Tuna, and camped in two feet
of snow with the thermometer 18° below zero. A driving hurricane made it
impossible to light a fire or cook food. The officers were reduced to
frozen bully beef and neat spirits, while the sepoys went without food
for thirty-six hours. The fodder for the mules was buried deep in snow.
The frozen flakes blowing through the tents cut like a knife. While the
detachment was crossing a stream, the mules fell through the ice, and
were only extricated with great difficulty. The drivers arrived at Tuna
frozen to the waist. Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten,
and thirty men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had
to be carried in on mules. On the same day there were seventy cases of
snow-blindness among the 8th Gurkhas.
Until late in April all the plain was intersected by frozen streams.
Blankets were stripped from the mules to make a pathway for them over
the ice. Often they went without water at night, and at mid-day, when
the surface of the ice was melted, their thirst was so great that many
died from overdrinking.
Had the Tibetans attacked us in January, they would have taken us at a
great disadvantage. The bolts of our rifles jammed with frozen oil. Oil
froze in the Maxims, and threw them out of gear. More often than not the
mounted infantry found the butts of their rifles frozen in the buckets,
and had to dismount and use both hands to extricate them.
I think these men who took the convoys through to Tuna; the 23rd, who
wintered there and supplied most of the escort; and the 8th Gurkhas, who
cut a road in the frost-bound plain, may be said to have broken the back
of the resistance to our advance. They were the pioneers, and the troops
who followed in spring and summer little realized what they owed to
them.
The great difficulties we experienced in pushing through supplies to
Tuna, which is less than 150 miles from our base railway-station at
Siliguri, show the absurdity of the idea of a Russian advance on Lhasa.
The nearest Russian outpost is over 1,000 miles distant, and the country
to be traversed is even more barren and inhospitable than on our
frontier.
Up to the present the route to Chumbi has been viâ Siliguri and the
Jelap and Nathu Passes, but the natural outlet of the valley is by the
Ammo Chu, which flows through Bhutan into the Dooars, where it becomes
the Torsa. The Bengal-Dooars Railway now extends to Madhari Hat, fifteen
miles from the point where the Torsa crosses the frontier, whence it is
only forty-eight miles as the crow flies to Rinchengong in the Chumbi
Valley. When the projected Ammo Chu cart-road is completed, all the
difficulty of carrying stores into Chumbi will be obviated. Engineers
are already engaged on the first trace, and the road will be in working
order within a few months. It avoids all snow passes, and nowhere
reaches an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. The direct route will
shorten the journey to Chumbi by several days, bring Lhasa within a
month's journey of Calcutta, and considerably improve trade facilities
between Tibet and India.
CHAPTER VI
THE ACTION AT THE HOT SPRINGS
The village of Tuna, which lies at the foot of bare yellow hills,
consists of a few deserted houses. The place is used mainly as a
halting-stage by the Tibetans. The country around is sterile and
unproductive, and wood is a luxury that must be carried from a distance
of nearly fifty miles.
It was in these dismal surroundings that Colonel Younghusband's mission
spent the months of January, February, and March. The small garrison
suffered all the discomforts of Phari. The dirt and grime of the squalid
little houses became so depressing that they pitched their tents in an
open courtyard, preferring the numbing cold to the filth of the Tibetan
hovels. Many of the sepoys fell victims to frost-bite and pneumonia, and
nearly every case of pneumonia proved fatal, the patient dying of
suffocation owing to the rarefied air.
Colonel Younghusband had not been at Tuna many days before it became
clear that there could be no hope of a peaceful solution. The Tibetans
began to gather in large numbers at Guru, eight miles to the east, on
the road to Lhasa. The Depon, or Lhasa General, whom Colonel
Younghusband met on two occasions, repeated that he was only empowered
to treat on condition that we withdrew to Yatung. Messages were sent
from the Tibetan camp to Tuna almost daily asking us to retire, and
negociations again came to a deadlock. After a month the tone of the
Tibetans became minatory. They threatened to invest our camp, and an
attack was expected on March 1, the Tibetan New Year. The Lamas,
however, thought better of it. They held a Commination Service instead,
and cursed us solemnly for five days, hoping, no doubt, that the British
force would dwindle away by the act of God. Nobody was 'one penny the
worse.'
Though we made no progress with the Tibetans during this time, Colonel
Younghusband utilized the halt at Tuna in cementing a friendship with
Bhutan. The neutrality of the Bhutanese in the case of a war with Tibet
was a matter of the utmost importance. Were these people unfriendly or
disposed to throw in their lot with their co-religionists, the Tibetans,
our line of communications would be exposed to a flank attack along the
whole of the Tuna Plain, which is conterminous with the Bhutan frontier,
as well as a rear attack anywhere in the Chumbi Valley as far south as
Rinchengong. The Bhutanese are men of splendid physique, brave, warlike,
and given to pillage. Their hostility would have involved the despatch
of a second force, as large as that sent to Tibet, and might have
landed us, if unprepared, in a serious reverse. The complete success of
Colonel Younghusband's diplomacy was a great relief to the Indian
Government, who were waiting with some anxiety to see what attitude the
Bhutanese would adopt. Having secured from them assurances of their good
will, Colonel Younghusband put their friendship to immediate test by
broaching the subject of the Ammo Chu route to Chumbi through Bhutanese
territory. Very little time was lost before the concession was obtained
from the Tongsa Penlop, ruler of Bhutan, who himself accompanied the
mission as far as Lhasa in the character of mediator between the Dalai
Lama and the British Government. The importance of the Ammo Chu route in
our future relations with Tibet I have emphasized elsewhere.
I doubt if ever an advance was more welcome to waiting troops than that
which led to the engagement at the Hot Springs.
For months, let it be remembered, we had been marking time. When a move
had to be made to escort a convoy, it was along narrow mountain-paths,
where the troops had to march in single file. There was no possibility
of an attack this side of Phari. The ground covered was familiar and
monotonous. One felt cooped in, and was thoroughly bored and tired of
the delay, so that when General Macdonald marched out of Phari with his
little army in three columns, a feeling of exhilaration communicated
itself to the troops.
Here was elbow-room at last, and an open plain, where all the army corps
of Europe might manoeuvre. At Tuna, on the evening of the 29th, it was
given out in orders that a reconnaissance in force was to be made the
next morning, and two companies of the 32nd Pioneers would be left at
Guru. The Tibetan camp at the Hot Springs lay right across our line of
march, and the hill that flanked it was lined with their sangars. They
must either fight or retire. Most of us thought that the Tibetans would
fade away in the mysterious manner they have, and build another futile
wall further on. The extraordinary affair that followed must be a unique
event in military history.
The morning of the 30th was bitterly cold. An icy wind was blowing, and
snow was lying on the ground. I put on my thick sheepskin for the first
time for two months, and I owe my life to it.
About an hour after leaving Tuna, two or three Tibetan messengers rode
out from their camp to interview Colonel Younghusband. They got down
from their ponies and began chattering in a very excited manner, like a
flock of frightened parrots. It was evident to us, not understanding the
language, that they were entreating us to go back, and the constant
reference to Yatung told us that they were repeating the message that
had been sent into the Tuna camp almost daily during the past few
months--that if we retired to Yatung the Dalai Lama would send an
accredited envoy to treat with us. Being met with the usual answer,
they mounted dejectedly and rode off at a gallop to their camp.
Soon after they had disappeared another group of horsemen were seen
riding towards us. These proved to be the Lhasa Depon, accompanied by an
influential Lama and a small escort armed with modern rifles. The rifles
were naturally inspected with great interest. They were of different
patterns--Martini-Henri, Lee-Metford, Snider--but the clumsily-painted
stocks alone were enough to show that they were shoddy weapons of native
manufacture. They left no mark on our troops.
According to Tibetan custom, a rug was spread on the ground for the
interview between Colonel Younghusband and the Lhasa Depon, who
conferred sitting down. Captain O'Connor, the secretary of the mission,
interpreted. The Lhasa Depon repeated the entreaty of the messengers,
and said that there would be trouble if we proceeded. Colonel
Younghusband's reply was terse and to the point.
'Tell him,' he said to Captain O'Connor, 'that we have been negociating
with Tibet for fifteen years; that I myself have been waiting for eight
months to meet responsible representatives from Lhasa, and that the
mission is now going on to Gyantse. Tell him that we have no wish to
fight, and that he would be well advised if he ordered his soldiers to
retire. Should they remain blocking our path, I will ask General
Macdonald to remove them.'
The Lhasa Depon was greatly perturbed. He said that he had no wish to
fight, and would try and stop his men firing upon us. But before he left
he again tried to induce Colonel Younghusband to turn back. Then he rode
away to join his men. What orders he gave them will never be known.
I do not think the Tibetans ever believed in our serious intention to
advance. No doubt they attributed our evacuation of Khamba Jong and our
long delay in Chumbi to weakness and vacillation. And our forbearance
since the negociations of 1890 must have lent itself to the same
interpretation.
As we advanced we could see the Tibetans running up the hill to the left
to occupy the sangars. To turn their position, General Macdonald
deployed the 8th Gurkhas to the crest of the ridge; at the same time the
Pioneers, the Maxim detachment of the Norfolks, and Mountain Battery
were deployed on the right until the Tibetan position was surrounded.
The manoeuvre was completely successful. The Tibetans on the hill,
finding themselves outflanked by the Gurkhas, ran down to the cover of
the wall by the main camp, and the whole mob was encircled by our
troops.
It was on this occasion that the Sikhs and Gurkhas displayed that
coolness and discipline which won them a European reputation. They had
orders not to fire unless they were fired upon, and they walked right
up to the walls of the sangars until the muzzles and prongs of the
Tibetan matchlocks were almost touching their chests. The Tibetans
stared at our men for a moment across the wall, and then turned and
shambled down sulkily to join their comrades in the redan.
No one dreamed of the sanguinary action that was impending. I
dismounted, and hastily scribbled a despatch on my saddle to the effect
that the Tibetan position had been taken without a shot being fired. The
mounted orderly who carried the despatch bore a similar message from the
mission to the Foreign Office. Then the disarming began. The Tibetans
were told that if they gave up their arms they would be allowed to go
off unmolested. But they did not wish to give up their arms. It was a
ridiculous position, Sikh and Mongol swaying backwards and forwards as
they wrestled for the possession of swords and matchlocks. Perhaps the
humour of it made one careless of the underlying danger. Accounts differ
as to how this wrestling match developed into war, how, to the delight
of the troops, the toy show became the 'real thing.' Of one thing I am
certain, that a rush was made in the south-east corner before a shot was
fired. If there had been any firing, I would not have been wandering
about by the Tibetan flank without a revolver in my hand. As it was, my
revolver was buried in the breast pocket of my Norfolk jacket under my
poshteen.
I have no excuse for this folly except a misplaced contempt for Tibetan
arms and courage--a contempt which accounted for our only serious
casualty in the affair of 1888.[12] Also I think there was in the margin
of my consciousness a feeling that one individual by an act of rashness
might make himself responsible for the lives of hundreds. Hemmed in as
the Tibetans were, no one gave them credit for the spirit they showed,
or imagined that they would have the folly to resist. But we had to deal
with the most ignorant and benighted people on earth, most of whom must
have thought our magazine rifles and Maxims as harmless as their own
obsolete matchlocks, and believed that they bore charms by which they
were immune from death.
[12] When Colonel Bromhead pursued a Tibetan unarmed. Called upon to
surrender, the Tibetan turned on Colonel Bromhead, cut off his
right arm, and badly mutilated the left.
The attack on the south-east corner was so sudden that the first man was
on me before I had time to draw my revolver.[13] He came at me with his
sword lifted in both hands over his head. He had a clear run of ten
yards, and if I had not ducked and caught him by the knees he must have
smashed my skull open. I threw him, and he dragged me to the ground.
Trying to rise, I was struck on the temple by a second swordsman, and
the blade glanced off my skull. I received the rest of my wounds, save
one or two, on my hands--as I lay on my face I used them to protect my
head. After a time the blows ceased; my assailants were all shot down or
had fled. I lay absolutely still for a while until I thought it safe to
raise my head. Then I looked round, and, seeing no Tibetans near in an
erect position, I got up and walked out of the ring between the rifles
of the Sikhs. The firing line had been formed in the meantime on a mound
about thirty yards behind me, and I had been exposed to the bullets of
our own men from two sides, as well as the promiscuous fire of the
Tibetans.
[13] The reports sent home at the time of the Hot Springs affair were
inaccurate as to the manner in which I was wounded, and also
Major Wallace Dunlop, who was the only European anywhere near me
at the time. Major Dunlop shot his own man, but at such close
quarters that the Tibetan's sword slipped down the barrel of his
rifle and cut off two fingers of his left hand. General Macdonald
and Captain Bignell, who shot several men with their revolvers,
were standing at the corner where the wall joined the ruined
house, and did not see the attack on myself and Dunlop.
The Tibetans could not have chosen a spot more fatal for their stand--a
bluff hill to the north, a marsh and stream on the east, and to the west
a stone wall built across the path, which they had to scale in their
attempted assault on General Macdonald and his escort. Only one man got
over. Inside there was barely an acre of ground, packed so thickly with
seething humanity that the cross-fire which the Pioneers poured in
offered little danger to their own men.
The Lhasa General must have fired off his revolver after I was struck
down. I cannot credit the rumour that his action was a signal for a
general attack, and that the Tibetans allowed themselves to be herded
together as a ruse to get us at close quarters. To begin with, the
demand that they should give up their arms, and the assurance that they
might go off unmolested, must have been quite unexpected by them, and I
doubt if they realized the advantage of an attack at close quarters.
My own impression is that the shot was the act of a desperate man,
ignorant and regardless of what might ensue. To return to Lhasa with his
army disarmed and disbanded, and without a shot having been fired, must
have meant ruin to him, and probably death. When we reached Gyantse we
heard that his property had been confiscated from his family on account
of his failure to prevent our advance.
The Depon was a man of fine presence and bearing. I only saw him once,
in his last interview with Colonel Younghusband, but I cannot dissociate
from him a personal courage and a pride that must have rankled at the
indignity of his position. Probably he knew that his shot was suicidal.
The action has been described as one of extreme folly. But what was left
him if he lived except shame and humiliation? And what Englishman with
the same prospect to face, caught in this dark eddy of circumstance,
would not have done the same thing? He could only fire, and let his men
take their chance, God help them!
And the rabble? They have been called treacherous. Why, I don't know.
They were mostly impressed peasants. They did not wish to give up their
arms. Why should they? They knew nothing of the awful odds against them.
They were being hustled by white men who did not draw knives or fire
guns. Amid that babel of 1,500 men, many of them may not have heard the
command; they may not have believed that their lives would have been
spared.
Looking back on the affair with all the sanity of experience, nothing is
more natural than what happened. It was folly and suicide, no doubt; but
it was human nature. They were not going to give in without having a
fling. I hope I shall not be considered a pro-Tibetan when I say that I
admire their gallantry and dash.
As my wounds were being dressed I peered over the mound at the rout.
They were walking away! Why, in the name of all their Bodhisats and
Munis, did they not run? There was cover behind a bend in the hill a few
hundred yards distant, and they were exposed to a devastating hail of
bullets from the Maxims and rifles, that seemed to mow down every third
or fourth man. Yet they walked!
It was the most extraordinary procession I have ever seen. My friends
have tried to explain the phenomenon as due to obstinacy or ignorance,
or Spartan contempt for life. But I think I have the solution. They
were bewildered. The impossible had happened.
Prayers, and charms, and mantras, and the holiest of their holy men, had
failed them. I believe they were obsessed with that one thought. They
walked with bowed heads, as if they had been disillusioned in their
gods.
After the last of the retiring Tibetans had disappeared round the corner
of the Guru road, the 8th Gurkhas descended from the low range of hills
on the right of the position, and crossed the Guru Plain in extended
order with the 2nd Mounted Infantry on their extreme left. Orders were
then received by Major Row, commanding the detachment, to take the left
of the two houses which were situated under the hills at the further
side of the plain. This movement was carried out in conjunction with the
mounted infantry. The advance was covered by the 7-pounder guns of the
Gurkhas under Captain Luke, R.A. The attacking force advanced in
extended order by a series of small rushes. Cover was scanty, but the
Tibetans, though firing vigorously, fired high, and there were no
casualties. At last the force reached the outer wall of the house, and
regained breath under cover of it. A few men of the Gurkhas then climbed
on to the roof and descended into the house, making prisoners of the
inmates, who numbered forty or fifty. Shortly afterwards the door, which
was strongly barricaded, was broken in, and the remainder of the force
entered the house.
During the advance a number of the Tibetans attempted to escape on mules
and ponies, but the greater number of these were followed up and killed.
The Tibetan casualties were at least 700.
Perhaps no British victory has been greeted with less enthusiasm than
the action at the Hot Springs. Certainly the officers, who did their
duty so thoroughly, had no heart in the business at all. After the first
futile rush the Tibetans made no further resistance. There was no more
fighting, only the slaughter of helpless men.
It is easy to criticise after the event, but it seems to me that the
only way to have avoided the lamentable affair at the Hot Springs would
have been to have drawn up more troops round the redan, and, when the
Tibetans were hemmed in with the cliff in their rear, to have given them
at least twenty minutes to lay down their arms. In the interval the
situation might have been made clear to everyone. If after the
time-limit they still hesitated, two shots might have brought them to
reason. Then, if they were mad enough to decide on resistance, their
suicide would be on their own heads. But to send two dozen sepoys into
that sullen mob to take away their arms was to invite disaster. Given
the same circumstances, and any mob in the world of men, women, or
children, civilized or savage, and there would be found at least one
rash spirit to explode the mine and set a spark to a general
conflagration.
It was thought at the time that the lesson would save much future
bloodshed. But the Tibetan is so stubborn and convinced of his
self-sufficiency that it took many lessons to teach him the disparity
between his armed rabble and the resources of the British Raj. In the
light of after-events it is clear that we could have made no progress
without inflicting terrible punishment. The slaughter at Guru only
forestalled the inevitable. We were drawn into the vortex of war by the
Tibetans' own folly. There was no hope of their regarding the British as
a formidable Power, and a force to be reckoned with, until we had killed
several thousand of their men.
After the action the Tibetan wounded were brought into Tuna, and an
abandoned dwelling-house was fitted up as a hospital. An empty cowshed
outside served as an operating-theatre. The patients showed
extraordinary hardihood and stoicism. After the Dzama Tang engagement
many of the wounded came in riding on yaks from a distance of fifty or
sixty miles. They were consistently cheerful, and always ready to
appreciate a joke. One man, who lost both legs, said: 'In my next battle
I must be a hero, as I cannot run away.' Some of the wounded were
terribly mutilated by shell. Two men who were shot through the brain,
and two who were shot through the lungs, survived. For two days
Lieutenant Davys, Indian Medical Service, was operating nearly all day.
I think the Tibetans were really impressed with our humanity, and looked
upon Davys as some incarnation of a medicine Buddha. They never
hesitated to undergo operations, did not flinch at pain, and took
chloroform without fear. Their recuperative power was marvellous. Of the
168 who were received in hospital, only 20 died; 148 were sent to their
homes on hired yaks cured. Everyone who visited the hospital at Tuna
left it with an increased respect for the Tibetans.
* * * * *
Three months after the action I found the Tibetans still lying where
they fell. One shot through the shoulder in retreat had spun as he fell
facing our rifles. Another tore at the grass with futile fingers through
which a delicate pink primula was now blossoming. Shrunk arms and shanks
looked hideously dwarfish. By the stream the bodies lay in heaps with
parched skin, like mummies, rusty brown. A knot of coarse black hair,
detached from a skull, was circling round in an eddy of wind. Everything
had been stripped from the corpses save here and there a wisp of cloth,
looking more grim than the nakedness it covered, or round the neck some
inexpensive charm, which no one had thought worth taking for its occult
powers. Nature, more kindly, had strewn round them beautiful spring
flowers--primulas, buttercups, potentils. The stream 'bubbled oilily,'
and in the ruined house bees were swarming.
Ten miles beyond the Springs an officer was watering his horse in the
Bamtso Lake. The beast swung round trembling, with eyes astare. Among
the weeds lay the last victim.
CHAPTER VII
A HUMAN MISCELLANY
The Tibetans stood on the roofs of their houses like a row of
cormorants, and watched the doolie pass underneath. At a little distance
it was hard to distinguish the children, so motionless were they, from
the squat praying-flags wrapped in black skin and projecting from the
parapets of the roof. The very babes were impassive and inscrutable.
Beside them perched ravens of an ebony blackness, sleek and well
groomed, and so consequential that they seemed the most human element of
the group.
My Tibetan bearers stopped to converse with a woman on the roof who wore
a huge red hoop in her hair, which was matted and touzled like a
negress's. A child behind was searching it, with apparent success. The
woman asked a question, and the bearers jerked out a few guttural
monosyllables, which she received with indifference. She was not visibly
elated when she heard that the doolie contained the first victim of the
Tibetan arms. I should like to have heard her views on the political
situation and the question of a settlement. Some of her relatives,
perhaps, were killed in the mêlée at the Hot Springs. Others who had
been taken prisoners might be enlisted in the new doolie corps, and
receiving an unexpected wage; others, perhaps, were wounded and being
treated in our hospitals with all the skill and resources of modern
science; or they were bringing in food-stuffs for our troops, or setting
booby-traps for them, and lying in wait behind sangars to snipe them in
the Red Idol Gorge.
The bearers started again; the hot sun and the continued exertion made
them stink intolerably. Every now and then they put down the doolie, and
began discussing their loot--ear-rings and charms, rough turquoises and
ruby-coloured stones, torn from the bodies of the dead and wounded. For
the moment I was tired of Tibet.
I remembered another exodus when I was disgusted with the country. I had
been allured across the Himalayas by the dazzling purity of the snows. I
had escaped the Avernus of the plains, and I might have been content,
but there was the seduction of the snows. I had gained an upper story,
but I must climb on to the roof. Every morning the Sun-god threw open
the magnificent portals of his domain, dazzling rifts and spires, black
cliffs glacier-bitten, the flawless vaulted roof of Kinchenjunga--
'Myriads of topaz lights and jacinth work
Of subtlest jewellery.'
One morning the roof of the Sun-god's palace was clear and cloudless,
but about its base hung little clouds of snow-dust, as though the
Olympians had been holding tourney, and the dust had risen in the tracks
of their chariots. All this was seen over galvanized iron roofs. The
Sun-god had thrown open his palace, and we were playing pitch and toss
on the steps. While I was so engrossed I looked up. Columns of white
cloud were rising to obscure the entrance. Then a sudden shaft of
sunlight broke the fumes. There was a vivid flash, a dazzle of
jewel-work, and the portals closed. I was covered with bashfulness and
shame. It was a direct invitation. I made some excuse to my companion,
said I had an engagement, went straight to my rooms, and packed.
But while the aroma of my carriers insulted the pure air, and their
chatter over their tawdry spoil profaned the silent precincts of
Chumulari, their mountain goddess, I thought more of the disenchantment
of that earlier visit. I remembered sitting on a hillside near a
lamasery, which was surrounded by a small village of Lamas' houses.
Outside the temple a priest was operating on a yak for vaccine. He had
bored a large hole in the shoulder, into which he alternately buried his
forearm and squirted hot water copiously. A hideous yellow trickle
beneath indicated that the poor beast was entirely perforated. A crowd
of admiring little boys and girls looked on with relish. The smell of
the poor yak was distressing, but the smell of the Lama was worse. I
turned away in disgust--turned my back contentedly and without regret on
the mysterious land and the road to the Forbidden City. At that moment,
if the Dalai Lama himself had sent me a chaise with a dozen outriders
and implored me to come, I would not have visited him, not for a
thousand yaks. The scales of vagabondage fell from my eyes; the spirit
of unrest died within me. I had a longing for fragrant soap, snowy white
linen, fresh-complexioned ladies and clean-shaven, well-groomed men.
And here again I was returning very slowly to civilization; but I was
coming back with half an army corps to shake the Dalai Lama on his
throne--or if there were no throne or Dalai Lama, to do what? I wondered
if the gentlemen sitting snugly in Downing Street had any idea.
At Phari I was snow-bound for a week, and there were no doolie-bearers.
The Darjeeling dandy-wallahs were no doubt at the front, where they were
most wanted, as the trained army doolie corps are plainsmen, who can
barely breathe, much less work, at these high elevations. At last we
secured some Bhutias who were returning to the front.
The Bhutia is a type I have long known, though not in the capacity of
bearer. These men regarded the doolie with the invalid inside as a piece
of baggage that had to be conveyed from one camp to another, no matter
how. Of the art of their craft they knew nothing, but they battled with
the elements so stoutly that one forgave them their awkwardness. They
carried me along mountain-paths so slippery that a mule could find no
foothold, through snow so deep and clogging that with all their toil
they could make barely half a mile an hour; and they took shelter once
from a hailstorm in which exposure without thick head-covering might
have been fatal. Often they dropped the doolie, sometimes on the edge of
a precipice, in places where one perspired with fright; they collided
quite unnecessarily with stones and rocks; but they got through, and
that was the main point. Men who have carried a doolie over a difficult
mountain-pass (14,350 feet), slipping and stumbling through snow and ice
in the face of a hurricane of wind, deserve well of the great Raj which
they serve.
On the road into Darjeeling, owing to the absence of trained
doolie-bearers, I met a human miscellany that I am not likely to forget.
Eight miles beyond the Jelap lies the fort of Gnatong, whence there is a
continual descent to the plains of India. The neighbouring hills and
valleys had been searched for men; high wages were offered, and at last
from some remote village in Sikkim came a dozen weedy Lepchas, simian in
appearance, and of uncouth speech, who understood no civilized tongue.
They had never seen a doolie, but in default of better they were
employed. It was nobody's fault; bearers must be had, and the
profession was unpopular. I was their 'first job.' I settled myself
comfortably, all unconscious of my impending fate. They started off with
a wild whoop, threw the doolie up in the air, caught it on their
shoulders, and played cup and ball with the contents until they were
tired. I swore at them in Spanish, English, and Hindustani, but it was
small relief, as they didn't take the slightest notice, and I had
neither hands to beat them nor feet to kick them over the _khud_. My
orderly followed and told them in a mild North-Country accent that they
would be punished if they did it again; there is some absurd army
regulation about British soldiers striking followers. For all they knew,
he was addressing the stars. They dropped the thing a dozen times in ten
miles, and thought it the hugest joke in the world. I shall shy at a
hospital doolie for the rest of my natural life.
There is a certain Mongol smell which is the most unpleasant human odour
I know. It is common to Lepchas, Bhutanese, and Tibetans, but it is
found in its purest essence in these low-country, cross-bred Lepchas,
who were my close companions for two days. When we reached the heat of
the valley, they jumped into the stream and bathed, but they emerged
more unsavoury than ever. It was a relief to pass a dead mule. At the
next village they got drunk, after which they developed an amazing
surefootedness, and carried me in without mishap.
After two days with my Lepchas we reached Rungli (2,000 feet), whence
the road to the plains is almost level. Here a friend introduced me to a
Jemadar in a Gurkha regiment.
'He writes all about our soldiers and the fighting in Tibet,' he said.
'It all goes home to England on the telegraph-wire, and people at home
are reading what he says an hour or two after he has given _khubber_ to
the office here.'
'Oh yes,' said the Jemadar in Hindustani, 'and if things are well the
people in England will be very glad; and if we are ill and die, and
there is too much cold, they will be very sorry.'
The Jemadar smiled. He was most sincere and sympathetic. If an
Englishman had said the same thing, he would have been thought
half-witted, but Orientals have a way of talking platitudes as if they
were epigrams.
The Jemadar's speech was so much to the point that it called up a little
picture in my mind of the London Underground and a liveried official
dealing out _Daily Mails_ to crowds of inquirers anxious for news of
Tibet. Only the sun blazed overhead and the stream made music at our
feet.
I left the little rest-hut in the morning, resigned to the inevitable
jolting, and expecting another promiscuous collection of humanity to do
duty as _kahars_. But, to my great joy, I found twelve Lucknow
doolie-wallahs waiting by the veranda, lithe and erect, and part of a
drilled corps. Drill discipline is good, but in the art of their trade
these men needed no teaching. For centuries their ancestors had carried
palanquins in the plains, bearing Rajas and ladies of high estate,
perhaps even the Great Mogul himself. The running step to their strange
rhythmic chants must be an instinct to them. That morning I knew my
troubles were at an end. They started off with steps of velvet,
improvising as they went a kind of plaintive song like an intoned
litany.
The leading man chanted a dimeter line, generally with an iambus in the
first foot; but when the road was difficult or the ascent toilsome, the
metre became trochaic, in accordance with the best traditions of
classical poetry. The hind-men responded with a sing-song trochaic
dimeter which sounded like a long-drawn-out monosyllable. They never
initiated anything. It was not custom; it had never been done. The laws
of Nature are not so immutable as the ritual of a Hindu guild.
We sped on smoothly for eight miles, and when I asked the _kahars_ if
they were tired, they said they would not rest, as relays were waiting
on the road. All the way they chanted their hymn of the obvious:--
'Mountains are steep;
_Chorus_: Yes, they are.
The road is narrow;
Yes, it is.
The sahib is wounded;
That is so.
With many wounds;
They are many.
The road goes down;
Yes, it does.
Now we are hurrying;
Yes, we are.'
Here they ran swiftly till the next rise in the hill.
Waiting in the shade for relays, I heard two Englishmen meet on the
road. One had evidently been attached, and was going down to join his
regiment; the other was coming up on special service. I caught fragments
of our crisp expressive argot.
_Officer going down_ (_apparently disillusioned_): 'Oh, it's the same
old bald-headed maidan we usually muddle into.'
_Officer coming up_: '... Up above Phari ideal country for native
cavalry, isn't it?... A few men with lances prodding those fellows in
the back would soon put the fear of God into them. Why don't they send
up the --th Light Cavalry?'
_Officer going down_: 'They've Walers, and you can't feed 'em, and the
--th are all Jats. They're no good; can't do without a devil of a lot of
milk. They want bucketsful of it. Well, bye-bye; you'll soon get fed up
with it.'
The doolie was hitched up, and the _kahars_ resumed their chant:
'A sahib goes up;
Yes, he does.
A sahib goes down;
That is so.'
The heat and the monotonous cadence induced drowsiness, and one fell to
thinking of this odd motley of men, all of one genus, descended from the
anthropoid ape, and exhibiting various phases of evolution--the
primitive Lepcha, advanced little further than his domestic dog; the
Tibetan _kahar_ caught in the wheel of civilization, and forming part of
the mechanism used to bring his own people into line; the Lucknow
doolie-bearer and the Jemadar Sahib, products of a hoary civilization
that have escaped complexity and nerves; and lord of all these, by
virtue of his race, the most evolved, the English subaltern. All these
folk are brought together because the people on the other side of the
hills will insist on being obsolete anachronisms, who have been asleep
for hundreds of years while we have been developing the sense of our
duty towards our neighbour. They must come into line; it is the will of
the most evolved.
The next day I was carried for miles through a tropical forest. The damp
earth sweated in the sun after last night's thunder-storm, and the
vegetation seemed to grow visibly in the steaming moisture. Gorgeous
butterflies, the epicures of a season, came out to indulge a love of
sunshine and suck nectar from all this profusion. Overhead, birds
shrieked and whistled and beat metal, and did everything but sing. The
cicadas raised a deafening din in praise of their Maker, seeming to
think, in their natural egoism, that He had made the forest, oak, and
gossamer for their sakes. We were not a thousand feet above the sea.
Thousands of feet above us, where we were camping a day or two ago, our
troops were marching through snow.
The next morning we crossed the Tista River, and the road led up through
sal forests to a tea-garden at 3,500 feet. Here we entered the most
perfect climate in the world, and I enjoyed genial hospitality and a
foretaste of civilization: a bed, sheets, a warm bath, clean linen,
fruit, sparkling soda, a roomy veranda with easy-chairs, and outside
roses and trellis-work, and a garden bright with orchids and
wild-turmeric and a profusion of semi-tropical and English flowers--all
the things which the spoilt children of civilization take as a matter of
course, because they have never slept under the stars, or known what it
is to be hungry and cold, or exhausted by struggling against the forces
of untamed Nature.
At noon next day, in the cantonments at Jelapahar, an officer saw a
strange sight--a field-hospital doolie with the red cross, and twelve
_kahars_, Lucknow men, whose plaintive chant must have recalled old days
on the North-West frontier. Behind on a mule rode a British orderly of
the King's Own Scottish Borderers, bearded and weather-stained, and
without a trace of the spick-and-spanness of cantonments. I saw the
officer's face lighten; he became visibly excited; he could not restrain
himself--he swung round, rode after my orderly, and began to question
him without shame. Here was civilization longing for the wilderness, and
over there, beyond the mist, under that snow-clad peak, were men in the
wilderness longing for civilization.
A cloud swept down and obscured the Jelap, as if the chapter were
closed. But it is not. That implacable barrier must be crossed again,
and then, when we have won the most secret places of the earth, we may
cry with Burton and his Arabs, 'Voyaging is victory!'
CHAPTER VIII
THE ADVANCE OF THE MISSION OPPOSED
The intention of the Tibetans at the Hot Springs has not been made
clear. They say that their orders were to oppose our advance, but to
avoid a battle, just as our orders were to take away their arms, if
possible, without firing a shot. The muddle that ensued lends itself to
several interpretations, and the Tibetans ascribe their loss to British
treachery. They say that we ordered them to destroy the fuses of their
matchlocks, and then fired on them. This story was taken to Lhasa, with
the result that the new levies from the capital were not deterred by the
terrible punishment inflicted on their comrades. Orders were given to
oppose us on the road to Gyantse, and an armed force, which included
many of the fugitives from Guru, gathered about Kangma.
The peace delegates always averred that we fired the first shot at Guru.
But even if we give the Tibetans the benefit of the doubt, and admit
that the action grew out of the natural excitement of two forces
struggling for arms, both of whom were originally anxious to avoid a
conflict, there is still no doubt that the responsibility of continuing
the hostilities lies with the Tibetans.
On the morning of April 7 ten scouts of the 2nd Mounted Infantry, under
Captain Peterson, found the Tibetans occupying the village of Samando,
seventeen miles beyond Kalatso. As our men had orders not to fire or
provoke an attack, they sent a messenger up to the walls to ask one of
the Tibetans to come out and parley. They said they would send for a
man, and invited us to come nearer. When we had ridden up to within a
hundred yards of the village, they opened a heavy fire on us with their
matchlocks. Our scouts spread out, rode back a few hundred yards, and
took cover behind stones. Not a man or pony was hit. Before retiring,
the mounted infantry fired a few volleys at the Tibetans who were lining
the roofs of two large houses and a wall that connected them, their
heads only appearing above the low turf parapets. Twice the Tibetans
sent off a mounted man for reinforcements, but our shooting was so good
that each time the horse returned riderless. The next morning we found
the village unoccupied, and discovered six dead left on the roofs, most
of whom were wounded about the chest. Our bullets had penetrated the two
feet of turf and killed the man behind. Putting aside the question of
Guru, the Samando affair was the first overt act of hostility directed
against the mission.
After Samando there was no longer any doubt that the Tibetans intended
to oppose our advance. On the 8th the mounted infantry discovered a wall
built across the valley and up the hills just this side of Kangma, which
they reported as occupied by about 1,000 men. As it was too late to
attack that night, we formed camp. The next morning we found the wall
evacuated, and the villagers reported that the Tibetans had retired to
the gorge below. This habit of building formidable barriers across a
valley, stretching from crest to crest of the flanking hills, is a
well-known trait of Tibetan warfare. The wall is often built in the
night and abandoned the next morning. One would imagine that, after
toiling all night to make a strong position, the Tibetans would hold
their wall if they intended to make a stand anywhere. But they do not
grudge the labour. Wall-building is an instinct with them. When a
Tibetan sees two stones by the roadside, he cannot resist placing one on
the top of the other. So wherever one goes the whole countryside is
studded with these monuments of wasted labour, erected to propitiate the
genii of the place, or from mere force of habit to while away an idle
hour. During the campaign of 1888 it was this practice of strengthening
and abandoning positions more than anything else which gained the
Tibetans the reputation of cowardice, which they have since shown to be
totally undeserved.
On April 8, owing to the delay in reconnoitring the wall, we made only
about eight miles, and camped. The next morning we had marched about
two miles, when we found the high ridge on the left flank occupied by
the enemy, and the mounted infantry reported them in the gorge beyond.
Two companies of the 8th Gurkhas under Major Row were sent up to the
hill on the left to turn the enemy's right flank, and the mountain
battery (No. 7) came into action on the right at over 3,000 yards. The
enemy kept up a continuous but ineffectual fire from the ridge, none of
their jingal bullets falling anywhere near us. The Gurkhas had a very
difficult climb. The hill was quite 2,000 feet above the valley; the
lower and a good deal of the other slopes were of coarse sand mixed with
shale, and the rest nothing but slippery rock. The summit of the hill
was approached by a number of step-like shale terraces covered with
snow. When only a short way up, a snowstorm came on and obscured the
Gurkhas from view. The cold was intense, and the troops in the valley
began to collect the sparse brushwood, and made fires to keep themselves
warm.
On account of the nature of the hillside and the high altitude, the
progress of the Gurkhas was very slow, and it took them nearly three
hours to reach the ridge held by the enemy. When about two-thirds of the
way up, they came under fire from the ridge, but all the shots went
high. The jingals carried well over them at about 1,200 yards. The enemy
also sent a detachment to meet them on the top, but these did not fire
long, and retired as the Gurkhas advanced. When the 8th reached the
summit, the Tibetans were in full flight down the opposite slope, which
was also snow-covered. Thirty were shot down in the rout, and fifty-four
who were hiding in the caves were made prisoners.
In the meanwhile the battery had been making very good practice at 3,000
yards. Seven men were found dead on the summit, and four wounded,
evidently by their fire.
But to return to the main action in the gorge. The Tibetans held a very
strong position among some loose boulders on the right, two miles beyond
the gully which the Gurkhas had ascended to make their flank attack. The
rocks extended from the bluff cliff to the path which skirted the
stream. No one could ask for better cover; it was most difficult to
distinguish the drab-coated Tibetans who lay concealed there. To attack
this strong position General Macdonald sent Captain Bethune with one
company of the 32nd Pioneers, placing Lieutenant Cook with his Maxim on
a mound at 500 yards to cover Bethune's advance. Bethune led a frontal
attack. The Tibetans fired wildly until the Sikhs were within eighty
yards, and then fled up the valley. Not a single man of the 32nd was hit
during the attack, though one sepoy was wounded in the pursuit by a
bullet in the hand from a man who lay concealed behind a rock within a
few yards of him. While the 32nd were dislodging the Tibetans from the
path and the rocks above it, the mounted infantry galloped through them
to reconnoitre ahead and cut off the fugitives in the valley. They also
came through the enemy's fire at very close quarters without a casualty.
On emerging from the gorge the mounted infantry discovered that the
ridge the Tibetans had held was shaped like the letter S, so that by
doubling back along an almost parallel valley they were able to
intercept the enemy whom the Gurkhas had driven down the cliffs. The
unfortunate Tibetans were now hemmed in between two fires, and hardly a
man of them escaped.
The Tibetan casualties, as returned at the time, were much exaggerated.
The killed amounted to 100, and, on the principle that the proportion of
wounded must be at least two to one, it was estimated that their losses
were 300. But, as a matter of fact, the wounded could not have numbered
more than two dozen.
The prisoners taken by the Gurkhas on the top of the ridge turned out to
be impressed peasants, who had been compelled to fight us by the Lamas.
They were not soldiers by inclination or instinct, and I believe their
greatest fear was that they might be released and driven on to fight us
again.
The action at the Red Idol Gorge may be regarded as the end of the first
phase of the Tibetan opposition. We reached Gyantse on April 11, and the
fort was surrendered without resistance. Nothing had occurred on the
march up to disturb our estimate of the enemy. Since the campaign of
1888 no one had given the Tibetans any credit for martial instincts, and
until the Karo la action and the attack on Gyantse they certainly
displayed none. It would be hard to exaggerate the strategical
difficulties of the country through which we had to pass. The progress
of the mission and its escort under similar conditions would have been
impossible on the North-West frontier or in any country inhabited by a
people with the rudiments of sense or spirit. The difficulties of
transport were so great that the escort had to be cut down to the finest
possible figure. There were barely enough men for pickets, and many of
the ordinary precautions of field manoeuvres were out of the question.
But the Tibetan failed to realize his opportunities. He avoided the
narrow forest-clad ravines of Sikkim and Chumbi, and made his first
stand on the open plateau at Guru. Fortunately for us, he never learnt
what transport means to a civilized army. A bag of barley-meal, some
weighty degchies, and a massive copper teapot slung over the saddle are
all he needs; evening may produce a sheep or a yak. His movements are
not hampered by supplies.
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