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Transcriber's Note:


  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in
    the original.

  Some typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected. A
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TO LHASSA AT LAST




[Illustration: LHASSA. From a photograph.

_By permission, from "Black & White"_]




                   TO LHASSA AT LAST

                          BY

                   POWELL MILLINGTON

                      AUTHOR OF

    'IN CANTONMENTS' 'IN AND BEYOND CANTONMENTS'
                         ETC.


            Far hence, in Asia,
            On the smooth convent roofs,
            On the gold terraces
            Of holy Lassa,
            Bright shines the sun.
                               MATTHEW ARNOLD


            WITH A FRONTISPIECE

             _SECOND EDITION_


                  LONDON
    SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
                   1905

         [_All rights reserved_]




                    TO
       CAPTAIN S. H. SHEPPARD, D.S.O.
                   R.E.
      A COMRADE IN TIBET AND ELSEWHERE
           THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
                    BY
                THE AUTHOR

  _November 1904_




PREFACE


When the Sikkim-Tibet Mission Force marched to Lhassa, it carried along
with it, besides fighting men and diplomatists, a strong contingent that
represented literature and the deeper sciences. We were full of brains
in that Lhassa column. There were men in it who had made the subject of
Tibet their own before they had set foot in the country, and were
already qualified to discourse upon it, whether in its political, its
topographical, its ethnological, or its archaeological aspect. There was
a man who came with us armed only with a bicycle wheel and a cyclometer,
with which he has corrected all preconceived notions of Tibetan
distances. There was a man with a hammer (the 'Martol Walah Sahib' the
natives called him), who, if his pony stumbled over a stone, got off his
pony and beat the stone with his hammer, not really vindictively but
merely to find out what precious ore the stone might contain. Then there
was a man with a butterfly-net, who pickled the flies that got into his
eye, and chased those that did not with his butterfly-net and pickled
them also. There was a man too with a trowel, who did a lot of useful
weeding by the roadside. There was a committee too of licensed
curio-hunters, who collected curios with much enterprise and scientific
precision for the British Museum. Lastly, there was a select band of
press correspondents, who threw periodical literary light on our
proceedings from start to finish.

Who can doubt that all the above-named are not now, in this month of
November 1904, writing for their lives, so as to produce at the earliest
opportunity the results of their scientific or literary labours in the
shape of books that will give valuable information to the serious
student, or prove a substantial contribution to literature?

Apart from the above enterprises, a flood of Blue-books, compiled by the
authorised political and military officials, will doubtless also shortly
appear, even though that appearance may in some cases be but a swift
transference from the printing-press to the pigeonhole.

Surely, then, for one who is not ordered by authority to compile a
Blue-book, who has no gospel of Tibetan scientific discoveries to
proclaim to the world, and who has no harvest--in the shape of letters
previously sent to the press and capable of republication--ready at hand
for reaping, to sit down and write a book on Tibet, merely because he
happens to have been to Lhassa and back, is a work of supererogation
which needs a word of apology.

My apology is that this book will be avowedly a book by a 'man in the
street'--a man, that is, who occupied an inconspicuous single-fly tent
in a back street of the brigade camp. As such it will throw no searching
light upon the subject, but may afford a simple but distinctive view of
it, and one uncaught by the searchlights of the official minute, the
scientist's lore, and the war correspondent's art.

But, my prospective reader, as you finger this slight volume at the
bookstall, I trust that this preface may at once catch your eye, so
that, if what you want to read about Tibet is an elaborate appreciation
or a collection of solid information, you may drop the book like the
proverbial hot potato before that jealous-eyed man behind the stall
makes you buy it as a punishment for fingering it, and may seize instead
upon one of those weightier tomes that are now racing it through the
press.

                               POWELL MILLINGTON.

  _November 1904._




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                       PAGE
          PREFACE                                  v

       I. THE WRITING ON THE WALL                  1

      II. PRELIMINARIES                            6

     III. THE BASE                                13

      IV. TO GNATONG                              18

       V. MOUNTAIN SICKNESS: GNATONG: WAYSIDE
               WITTICISMS                         25

      VI. OVER THE JALAP-LA: CHUMBI: BEARDS       32

     VII. TO PHARI                                42

    VIII. TO KANGMA                               51

      IX. NAINI: TIBETAN WARFARE                  59

       X. AT GYANTSE: FIGHTING: FORAGING:
               TIBETAN RELIGIOUS ART              67

      XI. THE START FOR LHASSA: A DIGRESSION
               ON SUPPLY AND TRANSPORT            77

     XII. TO RALUNG: MORE SUPPLY MATTERS:
               A VISIT TO A MONASTERY             92

    XIII. THE KARO-LA                             99

     XIV. NAGARTSE: ENVOYS: DEMOLITIONS:
               BATHS: BOILING WATER              105

      XV. LAKE PALTI: DRAWING BLANK: PETE-JONG   112

     XVI. OVER THE KAMBA-LA: THE LAND OF
               PROMISE                           122

    XVII. THE CROSSING OF THE TSANGPO: A SAD
               ACCIDENT                          126

   XVIII. THE END OF THE CROSSING: THE 'CHIT'
               IN TIBET                          134

     XIX. MONASTERIES: FORAGING IN MONASTERIES:
               A DREAM                           140

      XX. REACHING LHASSA: SUPPLIES: MESSING:
               THE LHASSA BAZAAR                 149

     XXI. ENOUGH OF LHASSA: A TRIP DOWN
               COUNTRY: LIFE IN A POST: TRUE
               HOSPITALITY: A BHUTYA PONY        165

    XXII. THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY              181

   XXIII. BACK TO INDIA                          189

       *       *       *       *       *

    LHASSA. (From a photograph)       _Frontispiece_
              _By permission from 'Black and White'_




TO LHASSA AT LAST




CHAPTER I

THE WRITING ON THE WALL


'Ain't this ripping?' said I to my wife.

'Yes, delightful,' she said.

It really was rather nice. It had been quite hot in the plains, and was
pleasantly cool up here. My wife and family had preceded me and had been
settled for some weeks in the house which we had taken in the hills for
the hot weather, and now I had just arrived on two months' leave. We
were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room after dinner, a cosy
little room made homelike by a careful selection of draperies and
ornaments from the larger drawing-room in the plains.

'Just ripping,' I repeated with sad lack of originality. The ride up the
hill from the plains had been fatiguing. The fire was soporific. There
was whiskey and soda at my elbow and a cheroot in my mouth (I'm a
privileged husband and smoke in the drawing-room).

'Ripping,' I said for the third time, half dozing.

'Come, get up, lazy-bones, and go to bed. You are hopeless as you are.'

So I was led to bed. We put out the lamps, and on the hall table found
our bedroom candles, which we lit preparatory to climbing the stairs.
The staircase set me musing. Some hill houses have them, but they are
rare in the plains. The smallness of the rooms, the existence of that
narrow staircase, the domestic process of lighting the bedroom candles,
the necessity of not waking the baby, the sense of security and of
being cut adrift even temporarily from the ties of officialdom--all
suggested the peaceful conditions of life enjoyed by the small but solid
householder at home.

'We've got it at last,' I exclaimed.

'Got what?' asked my wife.

'Why, the life of the bank clerk at home,' I replied; 'that bank clerk
whom we have always envied, who lives at Tooting in a little house just
like this, with a creaking staircase just like this, who never gets
harried from pillar to post, who is peaceful and domestic, and gets fat
as soon as he can afford to. And here I am, for two months at any rate,
and I'm living in a Tooting villa just like the bank clerk, and in the
bosom of my family, and I'm going to get fat too.'

So up we went to bed, full of peace. There was a big black centipede
crawling on the bedroom wall, a sinister-looking object, looking on the
white surface like mysterious handwriting, bringing with it to the
fanciful mind suggestions of 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.' My wife has
a horror of centipedes. I was at once detailed to destroy it: a feat
soon accomplished.

'That dispels the bank clerk idea altogether, does it not?' one of us
remarked to the other. 'Bank clerks at Tooting don't have centipedes on
their bedroom walls, do they?'

When I had gone to my dressing-room, I heard the sound below of a key
turning in a lock. It was a servant opening the back door.

A moment later I heard the tread of the servant's bare feet on the
stairs. This was unusual. My bearer does not voluntarily visit me at
this hour.

Yes, it was the bearer. He came to the dressing-room door and presented
me with a telegram. It was 'urgent,' as denoted by the yellow colour of
the envelope. 'Urgent' telegrams when addressed to officers on leave are
apt to involve some interference with their plans.

I read the telegram and signed the receipt. The servant asked if he was
wanted any more. 'Yes, very much wanted,' I answered; 'but go downstairs
now and I'll call you later.'

Then came the process of breaking the news to my wife. It is difficult
not to be clumsy on these occasions. I went into the bedroom with the
telegram concealed somewhere on my person. There she sat unconcerned,
and I had to break it to her and did not know how to begin. I got to
within a foot or two of her and then stopped, held out a beckoning hand
to her, and said roughly:

'Come here.'

'What is it?' she said, sitting transfixed. There was something in my
face which alarmed her.

I beckoned again, and again said, 'Come here.'

'Oh!' she cried, 'take it off, take it off! It must be a centipede on my
shoulder that you are pointing at. I know it must be.'

'No, dear, it's not half so bad as that: it's only that I'm ordered to
Tibet.'




CHAPTER II

PRELIMINARIES


The next day was Sunday--not a good day on which to start preparations.
I had a great many things to do. The first was to visit the civil
surgeon, and be examined for fitness for residing in high altitudes. He
lived at the top of a steep hill himself, and as I arrived there on foot
but alive, he passed me without difficulty. Then my pony who had come
with me had to be despatched with the syce on two double marches to the
railway terminus. Then I had to procure free railway passes from the
station staff officer, whose office, the day being Sunday, was of course
closed. There was also the putting of oneself, on the one hand, and
one's wife and family on the other, on sound financial bases,
preparatory to an indefinite period of separation. There was also a lot
of sorting and packing to be done, and farewell visits to be made, where
these were officially expected of one. (One's real friends, of course,
one left without a thought.)

I got off on the Monday. People at home are often horror-struck at the
speed with which the married officer has to leave his family when
ordered on service. Fond parents have been known to forbid their
daughters marrying soldiers on this very account. They are quite wrong.
Given that you have to separate, it is much better to get the separation
over as quickly as possible. In this case the speed with which those
busy thirty-six hours passed between the receipt of the telegram and my
departure was a real godsend. A long-drawn-out anticipation of
separation would by comparison have been intolerable.

My wife came to the top of the road that leads to the plains to see me
off. The quickest mode of conveyance was the 'rickshaw.' There ought to
be some glamour of romance about a wife seeing her husband off to the
wars, but how could there be when the husband started in a rickshaw? I
stepped solemnly into the vehicle, and an officious 'jampani' tried to
tuck me up with a rug as though I had been something very dainty and
precious, while my wife, who still preserves a critical eye for Indian
manners and customs, exclaims:--

'Oh dear, oh dear, this is a funny country, when one's husband starts
for field service in a perambulator!'

The rickshaw carried me at break-neck pace to the plains, where, with my
ears singing from the sudden drop of 6,000 feet, and the heat oppressing
me, I took train to my former station, to which I had to make a detour
before proceeding to the base.

It was a terrible two days that I had here. Dismantling a furnished
house, packing and warehousing your household goods, paying your
outstanding bills, having parting drinks at your friends' expense,
giving certificates of saintly character to every black man who has ever
served you in any capacity during the past two years, and who drops from
the clouds for his 'chitthi' as soon as your final departure from the
station becomes known, sorting, repairing, and supplementing your camp
kit, fitting out yourself, your servant, and your horse with warm
clothing--these and countless other matters filled to the brim those
forty-eight hours.

At last I was in the train for Calcutta. I met two major-generals of my
acquaintance at different points during the journey. They both
congratulated me warmly on the quest upon which I was going, each
independently remarking, not upon the unexampled professional experience
that I was likely to acquire, but on the fact that Tibet was an A1 place
for curios! Nice and human of them, I thought, to put that first! One
of them, I fear, was rather incommoded by the numerous articles of kit
which I had with me in the carriage, and which overflowed somewhat into
his portion of it. He was, I knew, a great authority on the scientific
reduction of transport, and, when I apologised somewhat sheepishly for
crowding him, made some grim remark about the liberal scale of baggage
per officer that was doubtless being allowed to us; so I had to impress
upon him that I stood an even chance of being kept at the base, and so
had to be prepared for all emergencies, even a ten days' leave to
Darjiling. Whereat he smiled more grimly than ever.

Don't travel from Northern India to Calcutta in May, if you can help it.
It is not very hot when you start, but every mile you travel you find it
growing hotter. You get baked as you traverse the dry plains of the
United Provinces, you get fried as you reach a greasier climate further
South, and in the humid atmosphere of Lower Bengal the sensation is
that of being boiled. You get out of the train in Howrah station at
Calcutta done all to shreds.

After a few hours in Calcutta I took the Darjiling mail train which was
due the following morning at Siliguri, the latter being the base of the
Tibet Expedition. In the train I was accompanied by a throng of Calcutta
folk going up to Darjiling for their 'week-end.' Calcutta, apart from
other attributes, is a great emporium of drapery and millinery goods,
and it was quite natural to find myself sharing a carriage with a
gentleman who in the course of conversation revealed himself as the head
of a large firm of haberdashers. He was a delightful travelling
companion, and regaled me with tales illustrative of the humorous side
of his business. He was at his best when describing his most successful
corset fitter, a damsel blessed apparently both with a slim waist and a
strong arm. With the former she advertised the latest thing in corsets,
and with the latter she fitted the said corset on to figures less
graceful than her own. All went well till one day she surpassed herself
by transforming a certain stately matron into a veritable sylph. This
lady went home pleased and proud, but in an hour's time an indignant
letter accompanied by the fragments of a corset reached the manager, the
letter demanding the return of the money expended on the corset, on the
ground that the latter, on the wearer having cleared her throat with a
gentle cough, had burst in several places with a loud report.

But just then the train steamed into Siliguri station, and I had to
leave my friend and his pleasant tales of frills and furbelows and
plunge into war, bloody war.




CHAPTER III

THE BASE


I have been too long describing the preliminaries that were necessary
before joining the Expedition, but there is some excuse for doing so.
For after all those preliminaries, with their suddenness and their hurry
and rush, were distinctly typical of the Indian Frontier Expedition.
When soldiers serving the Imperial Government are ordered on a campaign,
they generally have some warning. Foreign politics have generally been
simmering in the pot for some time before the pot overboils. But on the
Indian Frontier some irresponsible ruffians perpetrate some sudden
outrage, which, without any word of warning, involves the instant
despatch of troops to the scene of action. The result is a scramble, an
individual example of which I have tried above to describe.

In all books on wars a constant comparison will be found drawn between
the school-boy and the soldier on service. I dare say I shall find
myself working that comparison to death. It occurred to me first as I
reached Siliguri, and, jostling with other fellows, rushed to the Staff
Office there, to discover what was my next destination. We felt like
schoolboys, who, at the beginning of term, rush to inquire whether they
have given us our remove, or who anxiously await the publication of the
notice which will tell them whether they are to represent their house at
football. There was the same excitement before we learnt our fate. There
was that boyish jubilation on the part of those who were off to the
front, and vulgar schoolboy language from those who were to be detained
at the base or in Sikkim.

My orders were to go to Gnatong as a temporary measure. This was
dubious, and might mean being stuck there or in a similar place
indefinitely, or might mean being eventually sent forward. Those who
knew it told me that Gnatong was a horrible place, that it snowed there
daily from October 1 till May 31, and rained from June 1 to September
30, that it was always in the clouds, and that it was approached by a
stony road, as steep as the side of a house, which would knock one's
pony's feet to bits. The height of the place was twelve thousand odd
feet, and it was situated in Sikkim some ten miles on the near side of
the Tibetan frontier.

I had to wait some days at Siliguri till my pony and some of my kit,
which the railway authorities had not let travel as fast as I had,
should catch me up.

There were several detached officers also waiting here, and the units
forming the reinforcements were coming in daily. We turned half the
refreshment room into a sort of station mess, having our meals at one
long table. I suppose a contemplative person would have noted those
accidental details which differentiated us from the ordinary travellers
by the Darjiling-Calcutta mails, who had their meals at the other long
table. There we were, the brutal and licentious soldiery feasting and
drinking and gambling with shameless _abandon_, while those worthy men
of affairs from Calcutta and their excellent ladies took their meals
hastily and in sober earnest alongside of us. Some of us must have
presented a queer spectacle. I remember in particular one youthful
officer, whom I afterwards lost sight of, but who was the most ardent
young Napoleon I have met for a long time. He had apparently started
growing his beard the day he left his cantonment. He was of the Esau
type, and the growth was brisk. The colour was ginger, not the chastened
sort that is sprinkled over with sugar, but the crude dark ginger you
get in jars. He affected short khaki shorts, as suitable for the
soldier in hill warfare. He also affected a khaki cardigan jacket. He
had left his helmet behind him, and wore only a khaki pugree with a
khaki 'kula' in the centre of it. I used to see ladies, who came in for
a quiet cup of tea, glancing sidelong at him. Some were doubtless
impressed, and went away enthusiastic about that young warrior. But in
the eyes of others I fancy I saw a twinkle.

At last my pony with his syce and the missing kit arrived, and I was
enabled to start for Gnatong the next day.




CHAPTER IV

TO GNATONG


I marched to Gnatong as a passenger--that is to say, though I
accompanied troops, I yet did no duty with them. The camping grounds _en
route_ were small clearings in the jungle, so small that not more than
two or three hundred men and two or three hundred animals could be
encamped at any one spot on a given day. Hence the reinforcements were
marching up in very small columns. It was one of these which I
accompanied as far as Gnatong.

About two or three days' marching takes you out of India into Sikkim,
but you are in the heart of the jungle almost as soon as you leave
Siliguri. For about seven days you hardly rise at all, merely following
the course upstream of the Teesta river, and later on of one of its
tributaries.

That belt of 'terai' jungle which fringes the skirt of the whole
Himalayan range has its own special charms. It is a fine sporting
country for those who are on pleasure bent and are mounted on elephants,
on which alone is it possible to penetrate the thick breast-high
undergrowth. Even for troops marching along a road running through its
midst, it has a certain fascination. The incessant call of the
jungle-fowl on either side of you, the constant shade, so unusual in
India, the bright orchids in the tree-tops, the heavy luxuriance of
vegetation that loads the air with scents that are generally sweet, the
gorgeous butterflies, the steamy hothouse atmosphere--all combine to
form a kind of sedative, suggestive of the lotus-flower, of pleasant
physical enervation, and perpetual afternoon. One could enjoy this
feeling as one sat idly on one's pony, till it was dispelled by the
rain. It rained very heavily all those days. Even when it did not rain
the air was so laden with moisture that the very clothes you wore were
always wet on the outside. The rain too was of the sort that did not
cool or stir the air; the thermometer stood perpetually at a high
figure, and existence on the inside of a mackintosh during one of those
showers was a protracted torture of prickly heat.

We reached Rangpo--the town that lies on the border of independent as
opposed to British Sikkim--after four days' marching. I call it a town,
for it certainly possessed one street and a bazaar, and swarmed with
natives other than those belonging to the force. The ordinary native of
Sikkim seems to be a half-breed, looking partly Aryan, partly Mongolian,
and less Aryan and more Mongolian as one penetrates further into the
country. Their women are rather picturesque. They do not give you quite
the same cheery unblushing greeting as you generally get from the
regular hill woman of Mongolian type, but they do not hide their faces
jealously from you, like the women on the plains of India. In dress they
largely affect black velveteen. It would be interesting to know from
where that velveteen comes, though I think it could, like the iridescent
shawls and the stocking suspenders that are so largely worn by the brave
men of Bengal, be traced to Manchester or Birmingham. It must have been
an enterprising bagman who first went round Sikkim and persuaded the
Sikkimese ladies that black velveteen was the match _par excellence_ for
their complexions.

At length we began to climb a little, ever so little, and after two more
days reached Lingtam in pouring rain. This was the last of our level
going; from here to Gnatong we were to climb continuously, and at as
steep a gradient as laden mule with straining breast-piece could hope to
tackle. The Lingtam camp was even smaller, more uneven, and damper than
the others had been. I found a convenient difficulty arising as to where
my tent could be fitted in, and simultaneously heard of the existence of
a bungalow at Sedonchan, three miles beyond. I was tied by no duty to
the column, so determined to reach Sedonchan that afternoon, and push on
to Gnatong the next day.

Those three miles to Sedonchan involved a climb of four thousand feet,
up a rough dripping bridle-path paved with cobbles, not nice
smooth-rounded cobbles, but roughly cut spiky stones. I have said the
path was paved with cobbles, but should have added that it had a
supplementary pavement of horse-shoes.

At first in my ignorance I thought of picking one up for luck, but a
yard ahead I saw another one, and then met others at close intervals all
the way, so decided that all that good fortune could not be meant for
me, and had better be left well alone. It was a good farrier who could
so shoe a horse that he would lose no shoe between Lingtam and Gnatong.

I don't know in the least what sort of place Sedonchan may be. It rained
all the time, some fourteen hours, that I stayed there, and was shrouded
in mist. So that if I ever went there again the place would still
possess the charm of novelty.

The next morning I found that my pony had shared the lot of most animals
along that road and cast a shoe. Farriers don't grow on the wayside in
Sikkim, so there was no alternative but to walk up to Gnatong. This
involved a climb of about six thousand feet, and then a drop into
Gnatong of about one thousand. I overtook the Royal Fusiliers during my
walk; they had camped for the night in a puddle called Jaluk which lies
half-way between Sedonchan and Gnatong. It was during this march of
theirs that I believe the following dialogue was overheard:--

'What-ho, Bill!' said Atkins No. 1. 'What do they mean by calling this
something country a something tableland? 'Tain't no something tableland,
this 'ere ain't.'

'Garrn,' answered Atkins No. 2, 'it's a something tableland right
enough, and this 'ere as we are climbing is the something legs of the
something table.'

Fill in the adjectives to taste, or _a la_ Mr. Kipling, and you get the
real flavour of the dialogue.




CHAPTER V

MOUNTAIN SICKNESS: GNATONG: WAYSIDE WITTICISMS


Those ailments which are described by the word sickness, joined to a
prefix, are of two kinds. Either the prefix is the cause of the disease,
as in the case of sea sickness, or the expression is a _lucus a non
lucendo_, as in the case of 'home sickness,' the cause of the sickness
being in the latter case the exact contradictory of the prefix.
Sometimes the two kinds are combined, as in the case of love sickness,
when both love itself and also the lack of love are the simultaneous
cause of the disorder.

Mountain sickness, on the other hand, may be of either kind, though not
of both at once. I have often had bad mountain sickness of the one kind
in the plains of India. Any one who has spent his boyhood scampering
over Scotch hills or in similar pastimes is peculiarly prone to this
form of the disease towards the end of a hot June. Ten days' leave, or
more if possible, is then the only remedy. I had never experienced the
other form till I reached Gnatong. I don't exactly know how doctors
describe it in diagnosis. I believe, though, that they attribute it in
some way to your blood not running up the hill as fast as you do
yourself, which results in blood collecting in your toes, which ought to
be running about your brain and lungs. Hence giddiness, nausea,
headache, loss of appetite, insomnia, difficulty in breathing, and,
saddest of all in some cases, an utter inability to enjoy either your
drink or your tobacco.

I got it badly with all the symptoms, including the last two. I was
supposed to be very busy helping to see each column onwards. They were
got through without difficulty--no one would stay at Gnatong an hour
longer than he could help. So I suppose I performed my share of the work
all right, though it was done from bed. There was no one there to
supervise my work, and I therefore did not have to go upon the sick
list; but even so the feeling of being incapacitated by some accidental
ailment at the beginning of an expedition, and of its possibly
preventing you from reaching the front, is one of the most trying of
ordeals.

The number of victims of mountain sickness at Gnatong was considerable.
There was an enterprising Parsi merchant who had opened a store there.
His wealth of tinned provisions and whiskey lay in the shop
comparatively disregarded, but he did a roaring trade in phenacetin and
Stearne's headache cure among the mountain sick.

Mountain sickness is like measles. If you get a really good go of it,
you are not likely to be soon attacked again by it, even though you
have to ascend to an altitude far higher than that at which you
originally succumbed. Many a man lay gasping for several days at
Gnatong, which was only twelve thousand odd feet up, and later on
climbed the Karo-La (16,800 feet) on his own flat feet, smiling.

'The last long streak of snow' was just fading as I reached Gnatong at
the end of May. It was not very cold, but bitterly raw and damp. I
occupied a hut, which contained a fireplace, and would have made myself
cosy and warm if the fire had not always smoked. This involved that
distressing dilemma between having a fire and also a roomful of smoke,
which had to be periodically emptied by opening the door and window, and
so letting in cold and rain and mist, or sitting in a chilly damp
atmosphere without a fire, but, on the other hand, without either smoke
or violent draughts. This is a petty detail, but I mention it, since to
the many people who spent their time mainly in posts on the line of
communication, and lived in huts, this must have been an ever-recurring
dilemma and a primary feature of their existence.

Gnatong had been an important place during the last Sikkim Expedition.
For the purposes of the present Expedition it has been renovated. The
men so employed had been merry fellows, with eyes for that nice,
innocent, feeble, but well-meant joke, which you appreciate on service,
even though in peace time you might elect to be bored by it. These hut
builders and road makers had been lavish of sign-posts. The Gnatong post
was placarded everywhere on the inside with the names of its tiny
streets. It appeared that we were occupying what was on the whole a
straggling but quite a fashionable part of London. I myself lived at
'Hyde Park Corner.' The post commandant, if I remember right, occupied a
mansion in 'Carlton Gardens.' We went for constitutionals up and down
'Rotten Row,' and found 'Buckingham Palace' used as a supply depot.

This art of writing mildly amusing notice-boards was not confined to
Gnatong. On a bit of the military road near Chumbi, where the roadmakers
had to revet it carefully to prevent it falling into the river, there
was a neat little sign-board describing this strip of roadway as 'The
Embankment.' Outside the dak bungalow at Rangpo was a large placard on
which was printed 'Mount Nelson Hotel. No Ragging allowed.' On the top
of the Natu-La--one of the passes dividing Sikkim from Tibet--there is
the following:

[Illustration]

Poor jokes all of them, aren't they? but just as poor fare can be eaten
with a relish after a hard day's marching; so poor jokes tickle the
mental palate of the simple soldier and the stupid officer on service,
just as effectively as do good ones.




CHAPTER VI

OVER THE JALAP-LA: CHUMBI: BEARDS


After a week of Gnatong I was ordered to Chumbi, where the
reinforcements and a portion of the old force had been concentrating
preparatory to what is officially described as 'the second advance to
Gyantse.'

My way lay through Kapap over the Jalap-La, and down through Langram and
Rinchingong, and thence to Chumbi. The _piece de resistance_ was the
part between Kapap and Langram. There is an easy uninteresting pass
between Gnatong and Kapap. Kapap itself looked a bleak dismal spot,
lying all in the clouds at the end of a long dark lake. From here you
rise to the top of the Jalap-La, which is about 14,900 feet high. The
suffix 'La' denotes a 'pass.' There was snow on the pass which covered
the road in some places. I got into a small drift once, my pony flopping
down suddenly till his girths were in the snow. He knew nothing about
snow in those days, and must have been very much astonished. One's first
acquaintance with so high an altitude impresses one greatly. There is
something so strange about the atmosphere that one feels as though one
were in another planet. The effect of the atmosphere on distances is
most curious. You see the details of a hill in the distance so clearly
that it seems far nearer than it is. Distance-judging by eye for
military purposes in high altitudes is an art governed by rules entirely
different from those that govern it at an ordinary elevation.

I was a bit weak after my attack of mountain sickness, and stuck to my
pony's back the whole way. I felt a natural anxiety with regard to the
native followers who accompanied me--an orderly, a syce, and a bearer.
They were all three plainsmen. Hills of any size whatever were quite
strange to them. Whether they would live at the height of Mont Blanc was
a question of some moment. I expected at any time to see one or other of
them lying down gasping like a freshly caught fish. I think they all
died in imagination many times before they reached the top of the pass.
They turned wild eyes of anguish and reproach towards me whenever I
waited to see how they were getting on. Eventually I found it best to
leave them to themselves, and only know that they arrived down the far
side alive, but expressing a poor opinion of Tibet as a country (for we
now were in Tibet).

The walk down to Langram was trying to the toes, but brought us off the
bare mountain tops and into a region of pine-woods, the very smell of
which is always comforting. Here I stopped the night, descending next
morning to Rinchingong, which is in the Chumbi valley, and stands
barely over 9,000 feet. Two miles above Rinchingong we had passed Yatun,
the frontier Tibetan village built against that Chinese wall which
stretched as a barrier right across the valley, but has since been
demolished by British dynamite. Here, besides the dwellings of some
Tibetan inhabitants, were the houses of the British official who
controls the Chinese customs in this direction, and of Miss Annie
Taylor, the lady missionary who has worked for long, and all alone,
among the Tibetans of the border, nursing them in sickness, and telling
them of Christianity. 'Ani' is Tibetan for nun, and the name 'Ani
memsahib' has therefore a double signification to those who use it.

The first glimpse of a building on the north side of the Jalap-La
proclaims the fact that you are no longer in India or under the
influence of Indian ideals of domestic or other architecture. The houses
in the Chumbi valley are not, however, as typically Tibetan as those
further north, being far more Chinese in appearance. It is, in fact,
curious that Chinese influence seems more prevalent in the Chumbi valley
than in any other part of Eastern Tibet, except Lhassa itself. The
number of Chinamen actually resident in the Chumbi valley is itself
large, and there seems to have been a great deal of inter-marriage here
at one time or another between the local Tibetans and Chinamen proper,
the women of such unions having of course been Tibetan, since the
Chinaman, when he goes roaming, invariably, I believe, leaves his women
folk at home.

The following day brought me into Chumbi. It was pleasant to be in a big
camp again, to join a large mess, and get the latest news from
headquarters.

The valley itself was a delightful spot to have reached. After the
unpleasantnesses of those heights that one had traversed, this valley
seemed a sheer Garden of Eden. It was a place to dally in, in which to
wander about accompanied by your best girl, picking wild flowers for
her, and listening with her to the humming of the bees, and the bubbling
of laughing brooks, rather than a place in which to concentrate an army
for an advance into the enemy's country.

Chumbi would make a glorious summer sanitarium for British troops in the
hot weather, provided that that projected route, which is to avoid the
passes and run through Bhutan to the Bengal Duars, ever becomes an
accomplished fact. Two thousand feet higher than most hill stations, and
yet below the really giddy heights, in a climate no hotter at any time
than an English summer, never parched with drought and never visited by
protracted spells of rain, not perched on an inconvenient hilltop away
from its water supply, but lying in a fertile valley, through which runs
a river of pure water that knows not the germ of enteric, with enough
flat spaces to hold commodious barracks and to provide good recreation
grounds, it seems that it would prove an altogether desirable haven for
the invalid soldiers from Calcutta and the Presidency district.

A week spent here was pleasant enough, enabling one, so to speak, to
recover one's breath after descending from those heights we had left
behind and before tackling those in front. I soon learnt, with the same
school-boy jubilation to which I have previously alluded, that I was to
accompany the advance.

Here, of course, at this rendezvous of troops many old friends ran
across one another. It was sometimes difficult for two friends to
recognise each other on account of the obstacles to recognition formed
by their respective beards. The soldier's service beard, in its various
forms and aspects, forms an interesting study. There is, of course, the
ordinary dull beard grown by an adequately but not outrageously hirsute
person and trimmed to a conventional shape, which makes the wearer
resemble any such normal being as a naval officer, a parson, or
respectable middle-aged civilian of everyday life. The only striking
feature of this beard is that it is productive of unexpected likenesses.
You have, for instance, known a brother officer for many years, and
never found him possessed of any of the glamour of royalty; you meet him
on service wearing his beard, and find he is the veritable double of the
Prince of Wales.

But there are other beards. There is, for instance, what may be called
the 'Infant prodigy' beard, a monstrosity adorning the chin of a quite
youthful officer. The latter may be put to serve under you. And it takes
time and much hardening of yourself against external influences before
you have the effrontery to order the young gentleman about, or tell him
off when he is in error. I remember an instance of a fairly senior
captain calling on a regimental mess and being entertained during his
visit by the only officer of that regiment then present. The latter
possessed an 'Infant prodigy' beard, which was also flecked with a few
abnormal grey hairs. I was in that mess too at the moment--in the
capacity of honorary member only--and followed the interview with
relish. The senior captain was becomingly deferential, and the
youngster's grey beard wagged with what appeared becoming dignity. At
last a light was brought in by a servant, for it was growing dark, which
flashed for a moment on Mr. Greybeard's shoulder strap, and revealed two
simple subaltern's stars. The gradual, almost imperceptible, change in
the senior captain's manner, and the corresponding falling from his high
estate of Mr. Greybeard were interesting to watch. The former soon got
up to go.

'Damn that fellow! I mistook him for the colonel,' is what I am sure he
said to himself when he got outside.

Then there is what may be called the 'British workman' beard--that is,
the beard which is allowed to grow in its own sweet way, and may adopt
any of the sizes or shapes that one sees on the faces of such British
workmen as never visit a barber. This type also is productive of strange
likenesses, not to public personages or one's own compeers, but to the
men of the British working class whom one has known in old days. There
were many officers so adorned who made excellent gamekeepers or gillies,
and in particular I remember a certain stalwart major whose beard grew
in two inverted horns that splayed outwards on his chest, and who was
the very image of my father's old gardener. I once very nearly addressed
him as 'Horton' by mistake, for that happened to have been the
gardener's name.




CHAPTER VII

TO PHARI


The 'second advance' began in due course. The first few camping grounds
were small, so that we had to proceed on the three days' march to Phari
in several columns, two columns a day leaving Chumbi together, but
halting at separate camping grounds on the way up, and meeting again at
Phari.

This march to Phari was, until we actually reached the Phari plain,
quite the wettest I have known. It rained incessantly. The first day we
climbed a few miles up to Lingmatam. (How like one another the names of
places in this part of the world are! It took me months to distinguish
between Lingtam, Langram, and Lingmatam.) From Lingmatam (a sopping,
spongy, flat little plain nestling in the hills, that had obviously only
just missed its proper vocation of being a lake instead of a plain) we
marched up a rough bridle-path through pine-woods to Dhota. We had a
very long train of pack-mule transport in our column, and the checks up
that steep narrow winding path were interminable, while rain fell the
whole time. Whenever anything went wrong with a mule's load, which of
course happened frequently owing to the steepness and roughness of the
track, it was impossible to take the mule aside to adjust the load, for
there was no room at the side, and the mule had to be halted where he
was till the adjustment was completed. This involved the halting of say
five hundred mules, who happened to be behind the mule who had first
been halted. And when the latter at last moved off, it of course took an
appreciable interval of time before the next mule followed suit.
Multiply that appreciable interval by the number of mules in the rear,
say five hundred, and you find that it takes perhaps a full half-hour
before the five-hundredth is at last on the move again. Thus that
initial adjustment of a refractory load has cost the rear of the column
half an hour's delay, and by the end of the half-hour you may be sure
that the load of another mule has got loose, and the whole process has
to be repeated. This is just an instance of the trials of a transport
officer, and of his faithful servants, the transport driver and the
pack-mule.

I remember, during one such check, being seated on my pony at a point of
the road where it was impossible to dismount for lack of space, with one
mule's head buried in my pony's tail and another mule's tail flicking my
pony's nose, the rain trickling off my helmet and down my neck, and,
worst of all, a strong aroma rising from the khud beneath where lay the
remains of a mule who had met his death at that spot at a date that was
palpably neither very recent nor yet innocuously remote. To be bound
almost literally hand and foot in the vicinity of a bad smell is a form
of torture which in its way gives points to any inquisition.

Dhota lies at a considerable height above Lingmatam, and, before we
reached camp, many of the mule drivers were somewhat exhausted with
their climb. There was a certain amount of almost inevitable straggling
on the part of some of them--a most unfortunate occurrence, for it
resulted in a few leaving their mules to their own devices just when the
control of the latter was most necessary. For after emerging from the
pine forest a few miles below Dhota we came on to a hillside on which
grew ever so little of the deadly aconite plant. A check would occur
somewhere to the column. Those mules who were left standing without
their drivers would--as is the nature of the beast--try to improve the
shining hour by picking up a little grazing from the roadside. Here and
there a mule would swallow some aconite, and the chances were that
before he reached camp he would foam at the mouth and quickly expire. A
few, though poisoned, reached camp alive, and of these a small
proportion were saved by drastic remedies. But the deaths that day from
aconite poisoning almost reached double figures--a regrettable
occurrence, for the mule is an animal for whom, when one knows him, one
entertains affection, and, besides this, each mule carries two maunds of
useful provisions on his back, and we were not too well off for
transport. After another wet night on another wet camping ground, we
marched into Phari. We had left the green valley of the Chumbi; we had
mounted upwards through the pine forests beyond; we had emerged into a
region of rugged scenery where great rocky precipices hung over us. We
wondered what still wilder regions we were now approaching as we still
climbed higher. But all of a sudden, as it seemed, we had reached the
end of our climb and found ourselves on a level green plain with rolling
green downs around us, the sort of homely gentle scene that meets you
when, for instance, you cross the border between England and Scotland,
or pass on the railway the lower fells of Cumberland--a scene suggestive
of sheep grazing on rich close turf, and of comfortable homesteads
hidden away in the folds of the hills. This abrupt transition brought to
the mind the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It seemed that we had
climbed to the top of the world that had hitherto been ours, and were
starting afresh on a new level.

This sensation was chiefly illusory; for that level green plain and
those rolling green downs deceived one with their greenness, and proved
on closer inspection to be but indifferent pastures, while after a mile
or two the plain bent round a corner, and we came in view of such mighty
irregularities of the earth's surface as left no doubt as to our being
still in the very heart of the mountains. For as we turned that corner,
suddenly, as with a sudden flash, and all lit up with the sunlight that
had just dispelled the clouds, Chumalari stood before us, his white top
only a few miles away, but many thousand feet above us, and so reaching
to a height in the sky that to the stranger's eye was almost appalling.

To us men the romance of scenery is very elusive. I have known nice old
ladies to whom a fine sunset was a real substantial joy, giving them the
same nocturnal exhilaration that baser clay can only acquire by
absorbing a bottle of champagne. Given a male mind properly swept and
garnished for the time being by some potent influence--preferably of
course a sweet influence of the feminine gender--even the most
businesslike and prosaic of us can, if only for short intervals at a
time, empty ourselves of the things of this ugly world and assimilate a
little of nature's beauty. But in ordinary humdrum life, when that
sweet feminine influence is no longer at his side (or, if still at his
side, has lost much of its old magic by having been so foolish as to be
now his mere wife), the ordinary brutal humdrum man regards the finest
waterfall in the world as merely a good place at which to dilute his
whiskey, finds blue sunlit waters rather trying to the eyes, and
execrates the glorious sweep of the mountain in front of him as
conducive to perspiration and shortness of breath as he climbs it. We
can't help it, we men; we are built that way; it is the nature of the
beast. But even so when by some strange accident we are taken unawares,
and some rare and magnificent glory of nature suddenly confronts us,
and, without our consenting or even against our will, pierces that crust
of sordid matter-of-factness that usually encases us so securely, as did
that great white mountain Chumalari that day when we met him on the
Phari plain, then we too abandon ourselves and for once in a way find
ourselves drinking in the beauty as greedily as ever that old lady
drinks in her sunset.

A few miles along the plain brought us to Phari.




CHAPTER VIII

TO KANGMA


All our little columns concentrated at Phari. Our camp was just outside
the 'jong' or fort. Phari-jong was quite typical of the genus 'jong,'
looking from the outside like the sort of mediaeval castle that sometimes
adorns the foreground of a drop-scene in a theatre. On the inside it was
rather extra-typical, being even more rambling, darker, and dirtier than
most jongs. A grim humorist had selected the topmost garret as the
post-office. This selection gave the local postmaster, who was also
possessed of grim humour, the vastest entertainment. For the little
columns came pouring in day after day, bringing all sorts of folk who
were pining for their letters. Every one, as soon as he was off duty,
went head-down to the post-office. We were now at a level of 15,000
feet, and the climb, at that altitude, of several hundred feet of rough
Tibetan passages and staircases was a great strain on the lungs to any
one unused to it.

The postmaster sat in his office, cool and comfortable, while all day
long officers, British rank and file, sepoys and followers, poured in
for their letters, every one arriving panting, with his tongue lolling
out, and quite unable to state his requirements for at least two
minutes. The postmaster made a point of asking every one most politely
what he wanted at the very moment of his arrival, so as not to keep him
waiting, and grinned diabolically at the desperate efforts of the latter
to splutter out his name and address. When, as one of the victims in
question, I went for my letters, and had duly provided him with my share
of the entertainment, I asked him whether he was not enjoying himself,
and he assured me it was the best fun he had ever had in his life.

From Phari to Kangma we marched in two columns, of which I accompanied
the second.

The 'Tang-La' was our first halting-place--a bleak spot very much swept
by the wind. From there we marched to Tuna, and thence to Dochen, with
Chumalari on our right, showing us a new view of himself as we rounded
each spur that jutted out into the plain. We passed many herds of the
Kiang or wild ass, some of us galloping after them in an attempt to get
a close view; but they are fleet and wary, and evaded us altogether. The
simple peasant of that part of Tibet has been known to allude to the
Kiang as the 'children of Chumalari,' and thus to explain their
sanctity, for Chumalari himself is a sacred mountain. Whether belief in
this origin of the Kiang is orthodox, or merely a local superstition, I
do not know.

Hereabouts we passed the 'hot springs,' where still lay what was left
of the corpses of many Tibetans who had fallen in the fight that had
occurred there some months before. We had, I am told, once actually
buried these corpses when we found that the enemy were making no effort
in that direction; but the Tibetans, holding curious theories on the
subject, had again unearthed them. The principle that apparently governs
Tibetan obsequies is the desirability of making a corpse fulfil its
natural function as food for animals. Hence exposure of corpses as food
for wolves or vultures causes them no pang. They even, it is said, so
far elaborate the above principle as to regard a corpse as specially
honoured when given as food to the domestic pig, the origin of this
development of the principle being of course really utilitarian; for the
high-placed Tibetan, since in his life he 'feeds high and lives soft,'
must of necessity in his death be specially nutritious. Lama-fed pork
is--so they say--regarded as the greatest of delicacies.

Leaving Dochen and the lake, on the bank of which it lies, we turned up
a valley to our left, and emerged at Kalatso, the name given to the post
which adjoins the lake of the same name. From here we marched along the
Kalatso plain to Menza. The next day was to bring us into Kangma.

My commanding officer was with the first column, and had given me orders
to ride on early on alternate days to meet him at the camp ahead of me
before he left the latter. His hour for leaving each such camp would be
9 A.M., by which hour I had to arrive there. I had to bring a sergeant
with me on each occasion. It was fifteen miles from Menza to Kangma. The
road was rather rough, so they said, but one could cover the distance in
two hours and a half, so I decided to start with the sergeant at
half-past six. At a quarter-past six I found that my pony had bruised a
fetlock against a stone in the night and was distinctly lame. I could
not get another mount, and had to share the sergeant's, and we had
little more than our two hours and a half for the journey. It so
happened that I had just been reading a story of primitive life in
Western America, called 'The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,' in which
a very sound method by which two men can travel on one horse is alluded
to. A. starts on horseback at, say, eight miles an hour, and B. on foot
at, say, four miles. When A. has gone a given distance he dismounts,
ties the horse to the nearest tree or stone, and proceeds on foot. Up in
due course comes B., mounts the horse, and, riding on, should overtake
A. just when A. has finished his fair share of walking; after which the
process is repeated to the end of the journey.

I was A. and the sergeant was B. The road was quite deserted, and the
part through which we were going was at that time reported quite
peaceful, so there was practically no risk in leaving the pony alone for
short spells at a time. It was a most comfortable arrangement
altogether. We travelled at the average rate of six miles an hour. Each
of us had a pleasant ride alternating with a pleasant walk. Even the
pony, though, when on the move, kept going pretty hard, yet had pleasant
breathers between whiles. We arrived punctually at 8.55 A.M., of course
to find that the first column had decided to halt a day at Kangma, and
that therefore there need not have been any hurry. But then, of course,
that is always the way in such cases.

We had one great adventure just before we reached Kangma. I had been
walking, and the sergeant had just caught me up, on the pony, when two
shots rang out. I located them as coming from a village a short way off.
The sergeant affirmed that they were both volleys. I was in a beastly
funk, and perhaps the sergeant was not altogether unmoved. Just then two
mounted infantrymen, fully armed, rode up from the Kangma direction. I
have great respect for mounted infantrymen, but I have known them spin
yarns. We asked whether there were any of the enemy about, to which they
replied that their name was legion, or words to that effect, and that
they were all around us. This being so, it did not seem to matter in
which direction we went; so we pushed on, indulging in the pleasure of
each other's company for the time being (instead of one riding ahead
while the other walked). Shortly we rounded a corner, and another shot
rang out, followed by the appearance of two more mounted infantrymen. We
asked the latter what the firing was about, and they told us that the
commandant of the donkey corps, who was just round the next corner with
his donkeys, was making a fine bag of pigeons.




CHAPTER IX

NAINI: TIBETAN WARFARE


We were all halted a day or two at Kangma. There was some truth after
all in the yarn of the first two mounted infantrymen whom we had met on
the road, for some of the enemy had been located not far away, and a
flying column had gone out after them. The enemy evaded the column
successfully, and the latter returned after no other incident except the
death of a man and one or two mules from the effects of drinking water
which the brave enemy, ignorant of such Western vagaries as the Geneva
Convention, had artfully poisoned.

Some unladen mules, of which we stood in considerable need, were brought
in that same day by a small escort from Gyantse. They had been fired on
_en route_, and so everything began to point to the chance of a bit of
fighting in the near future.

From here onwards we amalgamated into one column, and that first march
out of Kangma was particularly typical of the inconveniences of a
comparatively long column when marching on a narrow hill-road. It may
seem strange, but was really quite natural, that our small force with
its transport should occupy five miles of road-way, which was, I
believe, its approximate length, and to get this five-mile-long serpent
to crawl successfully through the 'Red Idol gorge,' and later on wriggle
over a certain very narrow, rather ricketty bridge, that barred the way
close to camp, was a matter of many tedious hours. Horribly cold it was
too that afternoon, as one waited for one's kit to turn up, the valley
just there being a veritable chimney that drew a terrific draught up
from the Gyantse direction.

Our labours were also beginning to increase somewhat, owing both to the
compressed fodder from India having run out, and our being no longer in
a peaceful region, where we could procure fodder by contract. Both at
Kangma and here we had to send out foraging parties. We were still
observing a most courteous attitude towards the enemy, and were paying
the villagers handsome sums for what fodder we took, provided any
villagers showed themselves. However, in many cases the villages were
completely deserted.

That afternoon a reconnoitring party of mounted infantry returned with
one man badly wounded, and the report that the village of Naini, seven
miles ahead, was strongly held by the enemy. This meant fighting on the
morrow.

On the morrow we marched early to Naini, and disposed ourselves for
battle. Below the road, and quite out of range from the village, were
some convenient fields of young barley, upon which we closed up all the
transport, and removed the loads. We were dreadfully punctilious at that
period of hostilities about commandeering fodder or damaging crops, and
as soon as the fight began I remember the late Major Bretherton--the
chief Supply and Transport officer--sending me with a delightfully
worded message to the commandants of transport units regarding the
extent to which their animals might graze. I was to tell them that,
though all damage to crops was to be rigidly avoided, yet if by any
chance a mule did so far forget himself as to nibble a blade or two of
young barley, the matter need not on the present occasion be taken too
seriously, as the only ground available for closing up the transport was
the ground on which that nice young barley was growing. So while 'all
day long the noise of battle rolled' a hundred feet above them and two
hundred yards away, the transport animals did themselves 'top-hole' on
the enemy's best young barley; a good thing too, for they got precious
little fodder when they reached camp that night.

I got a good view of the Naini fight, seeing most of it in company with
the General's Staff. A portion of the Gyantse garrison had come out to
assist, and peppered the village and lamasarai from a high hill above,
while our own column enveloped them from other directions. We made some
fine big holes in their walls, and many a bee's nest of laymen and
fighting monks was disturbed by a well-directed shell. Later on came the
turn of the infantry at what must have been unpleasantly close quarters.

The fighting in Tibet was of course, in one sense, quite a minor matter.
But, on the other hand, it was quite a distinctive kind of fighting,
and, as such, does not deserve to be ignored. My share in those fights
was mainly that of an interested spectator, and in this capacity I give
my opinion of it.

I should say that for any one who, like myself, never had to go within a
certain distance of the position, there could be no more gentlemanly
way of getting your baptism of fire than on a Tibetan battlefield. The
jingal, for instance, is a delightful weapon at that range. Of course,
if a jingal bullet hit you (a heavy rough-hewn thing of about three
inches diameter), it would make a hole that it would take a lot of
surgery to fill up. But normally, in the latter stages of its flight,
the jingal bullet lets you know it is coming. Furthermore, except at
close range, it is very inaccurate. So if what you desire on the
battlefield is mild excitement, with the minimum of risk, I would
recommend exposing yourself to jingal-fire at, say, from six to twelve
hundred yards.

A very different tale would be that of the fighter in the firing line.
Most of the fights in Tibet involved not only street-fighting but
house-fighting, and this species of fun generally began immediately
after a steep climb of several hundred feet. I can imagine few greater
physical and moral trials in modern warfare than that endured by those
officers and men of ours, who, while gasping for breath after a race up
a steep <DW72> in that rare air, penetrated in small parties first
through narrow streets, then into dingy courtyards, and lastly into
byres and store-rooms and living-rooms that were generally pitch dark,
not knowing from what hole or corner, or with what murderous form of
clumsy firearm, they might not at any moment be fired upon by an unseen
foe at close quarters. For the sake of those who went through this trial
and were not found wanting, Tibetan warfare should not be despised.

The fight at Naini was waged for many weary hours. Its spectacular charm
had soon worn off. The juxtaposition of fierce excitement and deadly
boredom is a strange feature of warfare. There, two hundred yards away,
men were killing one another, and here were some of us positively
yawning!

Late in the afternoon, our pride of conquest somewhat chastened by the
pangs of hunger, we marched onwards to Gyantse. As we drew nearer we
heard what seemed like a very irregular artillery salute fired by very
drunken gunners in honour of some personage entitled to a very large
number of guns. It was only the jingals in the Gyantse-jong firing away
at us patiently and solemnly, in the pious hope that they one day might
hit something. Their main objective was a ricketty bridge across the
Gyantse river which we had to cross before reaching our camp. Some
jingal bullets did on occasion fall fairly near the bridge, and one mule
was actually hit in the act of crossing. The crossing of that bridge
took till late into the night. All the way from Naini the path was
intersected with irrigation nullahs, of which most were full of water.
This caused many checks, which culminated in the block at the bridge.
The latter began to fall to pieces before all the transport was over,
some animals occasionally falling off into the water. The last of the
rearguard reached camp about midnight.




CHAPTER X

AT GYANTSE: FIGHTING: FORAGING: TIBETAN RELIGIOUS ART


The ten days or so spent at Gyantse were occupied in fighting, in
waiting, through periodical armistices, for the result of negotiations
which came to nothing, in sightseeing and in foraging for our present
needs, and for the advance to Lhassa.

The two fights here alluded to were the taking of Tsechin and the taking
of Gyantse-jong. At the former I again had a front seat in the stalls,
watching the show in company with the headquarters' Staff, but had to
leave, with some aggravating message to camp, just as the curtain was
rising on the last act. During that long day, at the end of which
Gyantse-jong was taken, I saw very little of the fighting till just the
very climax, when certain duties took me to the village Pala, where the
Staff were watching the final phase. No boredom on this occasion, but
intense excitement. The final assault on the jong was a sight well worth
remembering, coming as it did at the close of so tedious an action. The
artistic effect of the Maxim on what one might call spectacular warfare
is, I think, greater than that of artillery. Shells going off at
intervals of course bring out the tragedy of war by the awful noise
which they make, but the rapid ping-ping-ping of the Maxim sets your
blood tingling and really excites you. It was a glorious spectacle, that
last assault. The rush through the breach of those Ghurkhas and their
comrades into that frowning impregnable-looking jong to the tune of
artillery, dynamite, and Maxims would have appealed to the veriest man
of peace. And as the jong became ours, the cheer that went up from
every point where troops and followers stood in knots, watching the
outcome, was a glorious climax to that long day.

A flying column that followed the retreating enemy to Dongtse failed to
catch them up, but returned with a fine haul of useful forage. Foraging
had for some time been the order of the day, except when fighting
interfered with it. The Gyantse plain is very rich, with villages dotted
about at close intervals, all standing among rich crops and nominally
containing plenteous stores of what were our staple needs. But the art
of hiding such stores is possessed in a high degree by the Tibetan. Some
officers, who later on had much practice in foraging, became experts in
finding the hidden store-rooms, knowing at a glance at what point on a
given wall in an upper chamber the wall painting ceased to be of a
permanent nature, and was merely a temporary daub concealing the rough
cement and pile of loose unbaked bricks which blocked the doorway of
what, after use of crowbar and mallet, proved a veritable mine of grain
or barley flour.

Of course, while at Gyantse, the towns and lamasarais of Gyantse and
Tsechin were our happiest hunting-grounds. In one lofty room alone we
one day found eight thousand maunds of barley flour, all neatly bagged
and sealed with a Tibetan official seal, doubtless a mobilisation
reserve of the Tibetan army, and, alongside of it, another similar room
filled with loose grain to a height which we could never really explore,
since the weight of the grain made it impossible to open the door more
than an inch or so, from which small aperture our requirements trickled
out by the mule load. If we had had enough transport to carry on from
Gyantse all the supplies which we found there, our commissariat problems
would have been easy.

As we foraged on the days following these fights our way was strewn with
corpses. The warriors from the Kham country, who formed a large part of
the Tibetan army, were glorious in death, long-haired giants, lying as
they fell with their crude weapons lying beside them, and usually with a
peaceful, patient look in their faces. As types of physical humanity
they could not be easily excelled. I remember one day one of the Kham
men, a prisoner, was helping me to set in order a refractory watermill
stone with which I was trying to grind wheat into flour. My commanding
officer came to see how I was getting on and caught sight of the
prisoner. He gazed at him in admiration and then exclaimed:

'By Jove! what a fine corpse he would make!'

Very brutal of him I thought it was till I had seen more corpses, and
then I realised the true artistic insight of the remark.

I suppose it would be no more possible for an ordinary person to do
justice to Gyantse as a sightseer than for any one who had had no
classical education to visit Rome or Athens in the true academic spirit.
Just as the key to those places lies in a knowledge of classical
history, mythology, and archaeology, so would the true key to Gyantse lie
in a knowledge of the history of Buddhism in general, and of the Tibetan
variations of Buddhism in particular. The main tenets of Buddhist
doctrine, as one may acquire them in a handbook or an occasional
magazine article, afford very little clue to Tibetan religious art.
Buddha himself one can understand, and one becomes quite to know and
admire the gently supercilious, ever-smiling expression that is
faithfully caught in every statue and picture of him which one sees. And
one can understand the motive in exemplifying the variations of human
fortune by pictures of the wheel of life which show types of all the
degrees of human happiness and unhappiness--instances of indescribable
tortures at one side of the wheel, lesser miseries adjoining it,
followed by similar gradations so arranged that as we go round the
circle we come at last to fair scenes of ideal human bliss. But the
application of the same kind of gradation to deities worshipped, and to
the representations of them given in art, is not so easily understood.
There is a certain highly symmetrical edifice standing in Gyantse
monastery. The centre of it consists of one huge Buddha reaching from
the ground to the height of, I should say, one hundred and fifty feet.
Round this are built tiers upon tiers of small shrines; each tier
contains one less shrine than the tier below it. The shrines are of
equal size, so that the general effect of the whole edifice is that of a
pyramid. You rise from tier to tier by a narrow hidden staircase. Each
shrine contains one idol. If you start at a certain point on any of the
tiers, and go round that tier, you will first enter the shrine of a
perfect Buddha, for whom you will feel at least some reverence. The next
shrine will contain an idol that impresses you less, and has about it
some taint of the world. The next is a thoroughly worldly idol, the next
is ugly, the next is obviously wicked, and the next a demon. The demons
grow in demoniacal qualities till suddenly you arrive again at the
Buddha from whom you started. The tiers above are all arranged on the
same principle, except that, the number of shrines decreasing by one in
each case, the gradation from Buddha to demon grows more abrupt as you
ascend.

Then again, in the most holy of spots, not only in Gyantse but even, for
instance, in the audience hall in the sacred 'Pota-La,' or
palace-monastery of Lhassa, one comes across images of what to European
eyes appears the lewdest character, and similar representations are
constantly found on the painted scrolls, which everywhere are seen
hanging in the monasteries.

Such strange excrescences on the external face of a religion that ranks
so high in regard to the spirituality of its essential tenets, and the
extent and depth of its influence on human life, as does Buddhism, seem
only to point to the endless intertwinings of religions that must ever
have been in process since the world began. Here we have, for instance,
one of the noblest and purest of religions tainted--at any rate as
regards the art which is ancillary to it--with those twin poisons of
demon-worship and priapism; all contact with which one would have
imagined it to have been pure enough and strong enough to throw off
centuries ago.

That strange similarity on less essential points that exists between
religions which are far removed from each other, both in history and in
doctrine, makes one long to read some really comprehensive history of
human religion that will, by dipping down into the furthest depths of
the past, reveal to us the answer to such problems as, for instance, the
strong and apparently family likeness between the joss-sticks and tallow
altar-lamp of the Buddhist, and the incense and wax-candle of ornate
Christian ritual.

Though it would appear that what is barbaric may survive, in the form
of ritual, as an acknowledged and in some cases, it may be, even a
helpful adjunct to a religion which in every other respect has cast off
all that is barbarous, yet some of those demons and those licentious
pictures that we saw in Tibet seemed to the Western mind altogether too
vile to be thus explained away.

But, even so, what fool shall rush in and criticise the East?




CHAPTER XI

THE START FOR LHASSA: A DIGRESSION ON SUPPLY AND TRANSPORT


Suddenly the order came that we were to march to Lhassa forthwith. Who
should and who should not form the Lhassa column must have been a
difficult question to settle. To perform invidious tasks of this sort
must be the most trying feature of generalship. It would be hard to find
an occasion on any expedition when, to the individual soldier, going on
seemed to mean so much, and staying behind so little. Forbidden cities
are so fascinating, and the idea of assisting in drawing aside a pardah
so appeals to our rude imaginations, that the desire to reach Lhassa
was especially great. Those high passes in front of us, the shores of
the great Palti lake and the upper Brahmaputra, that we knew not how we
should cross, all seemed also to point to a varied adventure, and there
was a spice of excitement in the thought of marching through a country,
on the resources of which we should have largely to maintain ourselves,
while as yet we knew hardly anything of their kind and extent.

We left the sad Gyantse garrison behind us, and marched off one morning
in threatening weather that soon turned to rain, our path for the first
few miles lying across a veritable bog. We consisted of the whole of a
British and a section of a native mountain battery, of a wing of the
Royal Fusiliers, of two companies of mounted infantry (drawn from
various native regiments, and consisting of Sikhs, Ghurkhas, and
Pathans) of the 8th Ghurkha Rifles, several companies of the 32nd Sikh
Pioneers and the 40th Pathans, one company of Sappers and Miners, and
two machine gun detachments. Several field hospitals or sections of
field hospitals accompanied us, besides, of course, many other
miscellaneous necessities such as ammunition column, treasure, supply
column, post-office, veterinary establishment, and field park. The
telegraph department was conspicuous by its absence, it being a feature
of the advance to Lhassa that we left the telegraph behind at Gyantse--a
proceeding which doubtless had both its inconvenient and its convenient
results. Last but not least came the transport. One may divide this into
regular and irregular. The regular transport consisted of the whole or
portions of five Indian mule corps, the 6th, the 7th, the 9th, the 10th,
and the 12th; the irregular of a cooli corps, and two locally raised
corps--one of yaks and the other of donkeys.

Our transport was so big an item and so big a necessity that a short
sketch of it as it ploughed through the sodden fields outside Gyantse
that wet July morning may not come amiss.

The average Indian transport pack mule, aged probably fifteen to
eighteen years old, is the finest old soldier we have got. If, like Lord
Roberts's gray arab, he were allowed to record his services round his
neck, he would display a fine collection of medals and clasps. Allowing
that he is now fifteen and that he joined the ranks ten years ago, and
allowing as a general principle that where a frontier expedition of any
size takes place the bulk of the regular mule transport of the army in
India is required for it, we can take it that at the age of six he had a
rough breaking-in to war conditions in Chitral; that, after a year or so
of peace, he carried convoy stores or troops' baggage over many weary
marches in the Malakand or the Tochi valley, or in Tirah. In 1900, as
likely as not, he was entrained one hot midsummer day, carried off to
Calcutta, and shipped to China. As an alternative he may have been
wanted in South Africa. Later on he very probably served in the Mahsud
blockade. Between whiles he has had a few spells of cantonment life, but
has probably spent his hot weathers daily carrying the needful water
supply up to some hill station, perched on a hilltop, from a reservoir
two thousand feet below, and a portion of his cold weathers in the
feverish sham warfare of manoeuvres. All the time he has preserved the
same dogged, cheery temperament, getting out of the train at the base of
an expedition, seeing there the familiar sights that portend field
service, then having a good roll in the dust, getting up and shaking
himself, as though to say, 'Here we are again,' like the clown in the
pantomime; or plodding along through rain or snow or hot weather
duststorm with two maunds on his back, and only wondering casually what
will be the next practical joke which his masters will perpetrate on
him. His is a rough lot, but he takes it kindly, and with good grain and
fodder is not unhappy.

The mule driver also is a man of parts. Compare him with that fine
soldier--the cavalryman. The former has to feed, groom, fit and clean
the gear of, and sometimes forage for, three or four animals instead of
one, as is the case of the latter. Further, the cavalryman mounts his
beast, while the mule driver marches on foot.

The case of the mule and his attendant came before the Government of
India a few years ago, who decided to improve their status. They have
since accomplished a great deal by introducing an organised corps system
among Indian transport. The system was worked experimentally for some
years, and is now an authorised and accomplished fact. The mule and his
driver, instead of, as was formerly the case, being no men's children in
particular, belong to their troop, to their subdivision, and to their
corps. Every corps is distinguishable by its uniform, and is commanded
by a British officer, who has under him his own permanent subordinate
staff, and who is responsible for the well-being and efficiency of all
the men and beasts in his charge.

The enhancement of efficiency and well-being, and, perhaps more than
all, of the personal self-respect of the individual driver, which has
been the result both of the new organised discipline and of the new
_esprit de corps_, is very marked. It remains only to prove conclusively
that in the field, the inter-organisation of transport can be
sufficiently maintained to serve its object, without interfering with
other military considerations. The allotting of their transport to
combatant units, according to their exact requirements, without
destroying the organisation of the transport units themselves, often
constitutes a problem which a chief transport officer has difficulty in
solving. The _via media_, which on this Expedition has afforded a
solution, has been to let the transport organisation, if necessary, go
to the winds on the march itself, but to give it the first claim to
consideration when once a column has reached camp.

Those irregular corps which supplemented the permanent military pack
transport were most indispensable but delightfully heterogeneous. It may
be interesting to describe the journey of, say, a maund of rice from
Siliguri to Lhassa on these various forms of transport. Wrapped in its
waterproof to keep off the rain torrents, the rice was dumped into a
bullock-cart at Siliguri. If the road did not collapse from a landslip
at any awkward moment and so drop the bullock-cart and its contents _en
masse_ into the Teesta river--a not infrequent occurrence--the rice-bag
probably reached Rangpo. From there it probably proceeded for a few
marches on the back of a pack bullock, a patient beast who moved slowly,
and whose feet in that damp climate got very tender, and on those stony
paths very sore. Later on it reached steep gradients where the pack
bullock could no longer carry it, and it was handed over for several
marches to a cooli. The cooli would be a native of some hill district of
India (Panch, for instance, or Darjiling). He and the comrades to whom
he passed it on would take it over either the Jalap-La or the Natu-La,
down into the Chumbi valley. From here a pack mule or an 'irregular'
pack pony would take it up to Phari. From here across the Phari plain
through Tuna and Kalatso and as far as Menza it would lie in an ekka,
for this was flat country, and it had seemed worth while and eventually
proved a signal success to drag up from India several hundred of those
plainly built but strong little two-wheeled carts called ekkas, which
hold five maunds each, and can be used on almost any road, however
rough, provided it is wide enough to hold both wheels. These ekkas had
been run up behind their ponies as far as possible, then taken to
pieces, and carried in fragments on the backs of coolis over the passes
and up on to the Phari plain, where, at a height of 15,000 feet, they
were put together again and plied to and fro, at first greatly to the
astonishment of the resident Tibetan, who had never seen any wheels
other than prayer-wheels. Most of the ekkas were drawn by ponies of the
small 'country-bred' type brought from India, but the casualties among
these were sometimes replaced by draught yaks.

From Menza onwards our rice-bag had a choice of mounts. It might go on a
pack mule, or meander slowly along on the back of a pack yak, or, with
the other bag alongside it, entirely eclipse from human view the most
miniature of donkeys, who, nevertheless, if allowed ample time to look
about him, and to pick up weird grazing by the roadside, would
eventually arrive in camp none the worse, and with his load intact after
a uniform progress of about one mile an hour.

On one or other of these animals the rice-bag would eventually reach
Lhassa, or, if it foregathered with the Lhassa column on its way up, it
might be handed over to one of the coolis who accompanied that column.
It probably reached Lhassa intact, its waterproof bag having protected
it from all weathers; but it might also have got a small hole somewhere
among its ample coverings, and lost a pound or two on the way, or--for
such is human nature--arrive still weighing the original eighty pounds,
but containing a stone or two in the place where some few odd pounds of
rice ought to have been.

The manners and customs of our various transport animals would form an
interesting study in natural history. The yak, to the uninitiated
intruder, was of course the most striking. The mule we know, and the
donkey we know, and the cooli was more or less of the same species as
ourselves; but the yak was a novelty. The yak is a buffalo in
petticoats. This seems an incongruous combination, for the _a priori_
idea of a buffalo is of something fierce, and of petticoats, of
something not fierce. But in this case petticoat influence has
altogether prevailed, for the yak is the mildest natured of animals. He
moves very slowly, takes life very quietly, and is content with little
here below, or rather here above, for if you take him below 9,000 feet
he pines for the heights. I believe he is really at his cosiest when
lying in a snowdrift on a winter's day with his petticoats around him
and only his horns showing. He then feels really well tucked up.

Both yaks and donkeys were very cheap forms of transport. It is true
that yaks had a way of dying and donkeys of deserting, but even so their
initial cost was very small, they needed very few drivers in proportion
to their numbers, and possessed the art of living on the country. An
animal that along a line of communications of some four hundred miles'
length, and lying in an inhospitable country, neither asks you to bring
him up fodder or even grain from the base, nor yet expects you to go
foraging for him, is indeed a treasure.

The yak and donkey drivers were Tibetans, as also were many of the
hospital ambulance carriers. The most noticeable points about these
Tibetans were that they were inveterate gamblers, and were also very
much married. The idea of accompanying us without their womenkind was
quite foreign to them, and we had to accede to their prejudices in the
matter. Merry little souls those women mostly were. Their foreheads and
noses usually smeared with that pigment of sows' blood which proclaims
to the world the Tibetan woman's chastity, they were ever to be seen
laughing or chaffing one another, either on the march or else in camp,
over their domestic duties or their knitting. Their stocking-knitting
was of a high order, except that the art of 'turning a heel' was unknown
to them.

I remember passing a knot of them one day as we climbed one of the worst
passes that we had to encounter on the march--a climb of four thousand
feet without a break. Hill people know better than any one the
advantage of breathing rhythmically, and the Tibetan loves to acquire
this rhythm by singing over any work that strains him at all. Tibetan
men and women, as they thresh their corn with the flail, chant pretty
ditties in unison, and Tibetan boatmen on the Sangpo will sometimes sing
to their work. And here was this band of women singing cheerily as they
climbed that mountain side, and never pausing in their song. They were
well up with the advance guard too, and the chorus could be heard all
down the column--a novel sort of band with which to cheer a British army
onwards on a toilsome march!

The cooli too, especially he who hied from the hinterland of Darjiling,
was as merry a soul as you meet on a day's march. Some were quite boys,
not more than sixteen, yet the way they shouldered their loads was
wonderful. The regulation load was eighty pounds, but I have often seen
quite a youngster with a hundred pounds on his back, taking it steadily
along up thousands of feet, and taking it as a matter of course, and
giving you a grinning greeting as you passed him. When off duty, they
would be for ever skipping about like mountain goats, skylarking, and
pulling one another about. The supervising staff of Ghurkhas, too, all
had the jolly Ghurkha face. For a cheery family party it would be hard
to beat that cooli corps.

But that Lhassa column with its train of transport has got well out of
the bog by now, and it behoves us to overtake it.




CHAPTER XII

TO RALUNG: MORE SUPPLY MATTERS: A VISIT TO A MONASTERY


From Gyantse to Ralung is a steady upward incline, and took us three
days. It rained most of the time, both day and night; it was difficult
to get dry again when once you were wet, and there was a good deal of
discomfort experienced in all quarters. One camping ground was
particularly unpleasant, which for the most part consisted of ploughed
land that was not only soaking with the rain, but had recently been
irrigated. As we had risen considerably higher than the Gyantse plain,
the crops on this and similar ground had hardly begun to show. In fact,
from here onwards for many days to come, there seemed very little
chance of obtaining any grazing for our animals. We had taken all the
transport we could, and loaded it with as many supplies as possible, all
selected according to our known needs on the one hand, and the possible
but unknown resources of the country on the other; but even so our
prospects were not rosy. The mule, for instance, cannot live on grain
alone: he must have fodder, and one mule in a very few days will consume
as much fodder as is equivalent in weight to his own authorised load.
Hence, if you provide a mule with a reserve of fodder to last him that
number of days and make him carry it, you might just as well leave him
behind, since he will then be able to carry nothing else except his own
fodder. This, in a country where fodder is not locally procurable, is,
at any rate in the case of the pack mule, one of the great problems of
army transport, and we were brought face to face with it more than once
during this march. Grain too is heavy stuff, or, in other words, gets
quickly consumed. We used over two hundred maunds a day, or more than a
hundred mule loads, and so could not start our march with many days'
supply in reserve without excluding other things that also had to be
carried. The next heaviest item was tsampa (the Tibetan barley flour
which we were now using as a substitute for the 'ata' or coarsely ground
wheat flour usually consumed by natives). Of this we used seventy maunds
daily, and so had only a few days in reserve. Meat, though a large item,
is much more tractable stuff, for it walks on its four feet till you
kill it. It can even be of use in carrying other things. For instance,
we had made up our minds that, if sheep and cows ran short, we would eat
each yak that, on account of the depletion of supplies, had no longer a
load to carry! The other items of food, though many of them costly and
highly essential, were none of them very bulky, and of these we had been
able to bring along some weeks' reserve.

Our more pressing needs were therefore confined to fodder and grain and
tsampa, and many were the foraging parties that went forth on arrival in
camp, or that made a detour from the line of march in search of these
articles, some drawing blank, some getting very little, and some
occasionally a fair haul. At Ralung we got a fair haul. There is a very
fine monastery there, situated up a valley five miles from where we
camped. I remember spending a very pleasant afternoon there. I had gone
there, immediately after arriving in camp, with my commanding officer to
see what could be got out of the place. We found some whole barley, some
tsampa, and a fair stock of straw. My commanding officer left me there
to await the necessary transport while he went back to camp to send it.
I really had a very pleasant time, being hospitably entertained both by
the monks and also the nuns--especially the latter. They brought me out
'chang' to drink, a home-brewed light wine, made I believe from barley,
and the carcass of a sheep that had been cooked whole, and from which
you were expected to pick off your individual requirements. It had
already had a lot taken from it, and from a certain self-assertiveness
that there was about it, I concluded that it had been a standing dish
for a considerable period, and contented myself with my own sandwiches.
Then they came and talked to me through the interpreter whom I had with
me, and quite a youthful little nun in a picturesque woolly red cap came
and sat beside me and did her knitting. My overcoat had been wet through
for three days, and the sun coming out gave me a chance of drying it.
Quite warm and cosy it all was, with ladies' society and all thrown in.
I was quite sorry when, after several hours of waiting, a long
serpent-shaped line of mules slowly trailed up the valley and came for
the grain, the tsampa, and the straw.

We were paying again for what we foraged, and I remember doling out what
must have seemed to the recipients a prodigious number of rupees.
Tibetan monasteries are undeniably rich, but, especially in outlying
parts, I fancy they do all their buying and selling in kind. For
instance, they collect their taxes in kind, and it is certainly feasible
for them to obtain labour, clothing, and such necessaries without having
recourse to coin. The fact that the average Lama was unused to dealing
in large sums of money seemed to always have one of two opposite
effects. He either did not seem to grasp the fact that a large sum of
money really represented 'articles of value,' and had no desire whatever
to part with any of his possessions in exchange for it, or else, being
either less ignorant and knowing its value, or more simple-minded and
attracted by its glitter, he would accept the money with pronounced
greed.

The effect of all the coin that we took to and left in the country must
have had a curious economic effect on Tibet. For a country that trades
largely by barter to be suddenly flooded with rupees should, according
to the ordinary principles of political economy, raise the current
prices of all commodities to an extraordinary extent. However, Tibet,
queer country that it is, has probably a political economy all of its
very own, and will arrange such a matter entirely differently from
Western expectation.

Even our rupees, as such, were not always approved, a distinction being
sometimes drawn between those enfaced with King Edward's head and those
enfaced with Queen Victoria's. The latter were approved on the ground
that they were 'Kampani' rupees, the Queen's face being apparently
regarded as the trade mark of the East India Company, of which the past
generation of Tibetans must have heard and passed on the memory to their
children, who still thought it was in existence. A new symbol, such as
that of a man's head, was thus naturally viewed at first with
suspicion.




CHAPTER XIII

THE KARO-LA


The next day brought us just under the Karo-La pass, and we camped at a
height of 16,600 feet, with a great mass of snow so near us on the
hillside that, while the sun was still up, it quite hurt our eyes to
look in that direction. Avalanches of snow kept falling from the mass,
coming down with a great thud that was almost startling. There was a
little mountain sickness that night; but, considering the height and the
fatigue that had been involved in reaching it, there was remarkably
little. A very little reconnoitring to the front in the early afternoon
had revealed the enemy in position a mile or so the other side of the
pass. They had built two walls, one behind the other, on what appeared
to be admirably selected ground. They seemed in fact to have been
studying tactics to some purpose.

It was pleasant to get up the next morning in a sharp frost, and to get,
as it were, one glimpse into winter--a glimpse, however, that only
lasted till the sun got up. Cold for the past few months had not been
our bugbear, but rain, and to-day there was no rain, the sky was
cloudless, and the air crisp and fresh, and as soon as the sun was up,
even moderately warm.

A few minutes' walk took us to the top of the pass, 16,800 feet. From
there the road descended gradually, but the headquarters' Staff, whom
for the moment I was accompanying, kept to the hillside at the same
level as the top of the pass till they came to a good _coin de vantage_
from which to view the first phase of the fight. For it was obvious that
we were to be opposed.

The artillery stayed close by us, while two parties of Ghurkhas were
sent to scale the heights on either side, and the Fusiliers and some
more infantry sent along the valley to attack the formidable-looking
walls which the Tibetans had erected ahead of us.

It soon appeared that the enemy had decided at the last to leave the two
walls down in the valley, behind either of which they could have
assuredly made a useful stand, and had instead betaken themselves to the
top of an almost inaccessible ridge overlooking the walls and about two
thousand feet above them, on what was to us the right side of the
valley. From near the top of this ridge a jingal soon began firing, and
kept up an intermittent cannonade for several hours. Our artillery fired
a great many rounds in that direction, but it was difficult to ascertain
what effect they had. It was apparent that the brunt of the fighting
during this phase of the action would fall upon the right party of
Ghurkhas, who now in the distance, as they climbed steadily up the steep
cliffs to our right front, looked like a string of tiny ants. They must
have climbed two to three thousand feet before they reached the ridge,
and thus gone into action at a height bordering on 20,000 feet. Before
they could get near the enemy they had to cross a steep strip of snow.
Ploughing through that within range of the enemy must have been somewhat
trying. They got near them at last and accounted for a good many,
including, it was afterwards ascertained, two important leaders. The
ridge on which the Tibetans made their stand contained several caves, in
which the enemy proceeded to hide, so that what followed must have been
a species of ratting, which resulted in the capture of a good many
prisoners.

Meanwhile the rest of our forces moved onwards, and the 40th Pathans
were at length sent in pursuit of several of the enemy who were seen
escaping upwards in the direction of a glacier, while the artillery from
their new position kept the latter moving with a few rounds of
shrapnel. After a lot of ammunition, breath, and muscular tissue had
been expended in this uphill pursuit, there was no sign left anywhere of
the enemy on or below the skyline. They had apparently disappeared over
the glacier.

We were then ready to march to camp. After a very short distance we
passed Zara, a small village alongside of which is a Chinese rest-house.
Close to the village we came upon our enemy's camp standing as they had
left it in the morning. We got from it a good deal of tsampa and found
more in the village itself, where they had evidently stored their
reserve of this, their only article of food. We were in need of firewood
too, and found a lot of useful logs lying about the camping ground, not
to mention a large number of tent poles made of good seasoned wood,
which burnt well that night in our own camp.

We camped about five miles further on, and about a thousand feet lower
down. To descend into a somewhat more plentiful air was a relief after
a night and a day on the Karo-La.

Our great difficulty that night was the lack of fodder. The mules had
had a long day and no grazing, and there was not a blade of anything to
give them. We did the best we could by doling out an extra pound of
grain per animal, which was issued, after a long soaking, in small
quantities at frequent intervals. This helped to fill the gaps left by
the lack of fodder. A weed resembling vetch with a small purple flower
grew on the hillside. We also cut some of this and gave it to the mules,
who ate some of it, but on the whole preferred any loose ends of their
next-door neighbours' jules or blankets. There was a great deal of
woollen texture consumed that night, and some of the jules were a sorry
sight in the morning.

The noise made at night by hungry mules who have no fodder is very
distressing. That night they kept up a constant complaining.




CHAPTER XIV

NAGARTSE: ENVOYS: DEMOLITIONS: BATHS: BOILING WATER


Next day we reached Nagartse. This is a village surmounted by a jong
which is perched at the end of a rocky ridge which runs from higher
hills close down to a corner of the Lake Palti. There is one monastery
inside the jong itself, and another on the hillside close by. There was
a belt of standing crops close to the jong which were more advanced than
those on the other side of the Karo-La. On the whole we appeared to have
reached something of an oasis. If the enemy had decided to make a stand
against us here, we should have had very little difficulty in ousting
them. It would have been quite easy to send our mountain guns up on to
the ridge above the jong, and a very few shells from that position would
have probably secured a speedy evacuation. As a matter of fact, after a
little parleying, they decided to evacuate, and we were to be free of
the jong and all it contained, while of course we respected all property
of theirs that pertained to religion.

From here onwards we were constantly met by deputations of envoys. The
sight, which first of all used greatly to tickle the fancy, of important
Tibetan personages under bright umbrellas and riding splendid mules
splendidly caparisoned, and led by servants in gorgeous liveries, soon
grew quite common. At every point of any importance along the line of
our advance, this or a similar cavalcade would come hurrying up. What
exactly used to take place at the interviews which followed, I am not
privileged to know, but apparently fresh reasons were advanced on each
occasion for our not going further on our way to Lhassa, and fresh
specious promises of considering our demands in a conciliatory though
vague spirit were never wanting. But after a pleasant talk of many hours
the purple and fine linen used to ride away baffled.

We halted at Nagartse for two nights. We found it a useful place to have
captured. Unfortunately it contained little grain, of which now we were
growing very short, but we found in it a large storehouse of bagged
tsampa, which was very welcome. It proved also to have been used by the
enemy as an arsenal, and several boxes of gunpowder were discovered in
it, hidden away in a barn among quantities of straw. We had grown wary
in searching jongs since the day, a fortnight or so before, when some
accident such as a lighted match falling through a flooring in
Gyantse-jong had caused the explosion of a store of gunpowder which had
done much havoc among a party of Fusiliers close by, several of whom
had been seriously injured.

The gunpowder found at Nagartse was destroyed by us, and certain
portions of the buildings demolished, the latter process producing a
fine haul of firewood in the shape of the beams and rafters of the
demolished houses. That process of demolition, in which the Sappers and
Miners were past masters, is one of the dirtiest jobs I know. I was
there to collect wood from the _debris_, which the Sappers and Miners
demolished. As each wall falls it throws up a cloud of dust, and the
filth of ages in small particles enters your eyes, your ears, your hair,
and your mouth, and covers your clothes: no small matter when the
clothes in which you stand may be the only suit you possess, and the
function of having a bath cannot be undertaken lightly, but needs due
warning, ample preparation, and assured leisure.

Many of us who serve in India have, for considerations of health, which
to the Englishman at home seem absurd, but are nevertheless proved by
Anglo-Indian experience to be imperative, had to abjure the cold bath.
For such a hot bath is the only form of complete ablution. Your tent, if
you do not exceed your scale of transport, will be small and will have
no bath-room attached; then for preparing the bath, you have to remove
all the ordinary contents of the tent outside into the open. Then will
follow the setting in position of whatever form of camp bath you may
possess, or may be able to borrow. Meanwhile an extra allowance of
firewood has to be procured and the water made hot. By the time all is
ready and you are beginning to take off your clothes a considerable time
will have passed. If, during that period, some exigency of field service
does not arise which requires you to leave all those preparations
regretfully, and postpone the bath to another day, you are lucky. Even
if you get through with your project without being disturbed, it is as
likely as not that the day for getting your clothes washed being a
movable feast, you will have nothing to put on that will not seem a
defilement to your freshly polished skin. Getting water hot enough was
sometimes difficult when you wanted as much as is necessary for a bath,
if the wind blew high and firewood was scanty. But this was nothing
compared with the difficulty experienced in such forms of cookery as
were associated with boiling water. The temperature at which water boils
at an altitude of, say, 15,000 feet is, I believe, some forty degrees
lower than boiling point on the sea-level. I wondered for a long time
why my tea never seemed to have been made with boiling water, and I am
afraid a certain faithful youth who used to make it for me got rather
harsh treatment till my scientific education was sufficiently advanced
to absolve him. Tea that is served up at a temperature of forty degrees
below the normal boiling point can never be very nice. And it got cool
very quickly, which of course was natural. When I returned to India the
other day, I could not make out why I was always burning my tongue over
my tea, till I remembered that of course the tea which I was now
drinking was made with water that boiled at an ordinary boiling
temperature, and so remained too hot to drink till it had been allowed
to stand for a decent interval.

It was in its effect upon rice as part of the natives' ration that this
low boiling point was really of serious import. Rice well boiled is a
good ration for natives, but there was many a case of indigestion and
colic attributed to the rice which had been spuriously boiled at one of
these high altitudes, but never really cooked.




CHAPTER XV

LAKE PALTI: DRAWING BLANK: PETE-JONG


We left Nagartse in very wretched weather, and for the next few days
marched in rain and camped in rain. A spell of bad weather like this,
bad enough as it is for every one, man or beast, is perhaps worst of all
for the mules who carry the tents, for a thoroughly soaked tent is
literally twice its normal weight; and ours on this occasion, after the
initial soaking, got no drier for several days in succession.

We were now marching alongside the Lake Palti. Once or twice the clouds
broke for an hour or so, and the sun and sky lit up the lake, and so
showed it us in its true colour--that unique shade of turquoise, unlike
anything in water scenery that the most travelled of us had ever seen
before. I forget whether any scientific explanation of the peculiar
colour was forthcoming among the learned, but the water of the lake
being distinctly brackish may contain certain salts which, being diluted
throughout the whole extent of the lake, produces some faint effect of
colour on the water, and this, in combination with the sky's reflection,
results in the turquoise shade which we so admired.

The Tibetans, with that large-mindedness which characterises their
disposal of their dead, do not forget the fishes of the Lake Palti, and
in that region corpses are made away with by being thrown into the lake.

It would thus appear that, what with its salts and functions as a
cemetery, the lake supplied but indifferent drinking water. At one or
two camps that we occupied by its side, there were no streams flowing
down from the hills, so we had to be content with the lake, but no ill
effects resulted.

Many were the fish that were caught in Lake Palti, as we skirted its
banks, and that embellished those dinners that were now getting so
plain. The regular trout fishing appliances--greenheart rod, reel and
silk-spun line, catgut cast and choice Zulu or March-brown
fly--accounted for large numbers; but side by side with the sportsman so
equipped would stand some sepoy or follower with a lengthy stick, a bit
of string, and a bent pin baited with a bit of tsampa, whose efforts
would be crowned with success quite similar. Really accommodating fish
those were, that gave the skilled angler the entertainment he sought,
and yet did not disdain that humbler one who with simpler devices fished
only for the pot.

Yasig was our first camp out of Nagartse.

There was a village two miles from camp, but it contained no supplies,
and was deserted except for a few old women. In those days, to the
casual traveller through Tibet, old women would have appeared to form
the bulk of the population. A useful thing, an old woman! You can use
her as a cat's-paw. Though afraid to go yourself into the vicinity of
the invading foe, you can yet send your old woman to watch over your
interests in the village, to feed and milk the cows that you have left
hidden there, to perform such small agricultural functions generally as
may save the farm from utter ruin, and to return periodically with the
latest news of the foe. That seemed to be the idea which dominated the
Tibetans in this matter, and perhaps it was a sound one. I can certainly
imagine no more effective 'chowkidar' upon a village than an ancient,
toothless, slatternly Tibetan woman, who greets you with tongue out and
thumbs upturned (the conventional symbols of submission), and weeps long
and loud from the moment you approach her until you leave her. I believe
Aristotle has defined tragedy as 'a purging of the emotions with
sympathy and a kind of horror.' According to this definition the sight
of these old women was essentially tragic. You went to a village hoping
to find in it a stock of good things, and you found only this old woman
and nothing else. You were sorry for the old girl, of course; but when
you saw the filth encasing her and the lice enveloping her, you were
filled indeed with 'a kind of horror,' and rode away promptly with your
emotions thoroughly purged after the correct Aristotelian method. The
Tibetan of course knew that this would happen, and this was why he sent
his old woman to guard his property.

We hoped not to draw blank at the next halt, for here we came to the
village Pete, surmounted by Pete-jong, an important landmark on our
route. But now we began to discover that some one had stolen a march on
us, and was looting ahead of us. It appeared that, of the army that had
opposed us at the Karo-La, one portion had disappeared over the glacier,
but that another was in retreat towards Lhassa, and was feeding itself
somewhat ruthlessly on the country as it went. From reports that reached
us, it appeared also that the paymasters of the Tibetan army regarded
their duties lightly, and that the force in front of us, consisting
mainly of mercenaries, had no compunction in looting not only the bare
means of subsistence, but also any supplementary stores which by a
generous calculation might seem equivalent in value to the arrears of
their pay. Even so it was not so much what they took that spoilt our
chance of finding stores to purchase, as the fact that each act of
looting on their part at once became known in all the villages ahead,
with the result that stores of all kinds, but especially grain and
tsampa, were being hidden away from the reach of either the Tibetan army
or ourselves with the utmost possible despatch. Hence our prospects
again became far from rosy. There was fortunately some grazing at
Pete-jong for the animals, but both grain and tsampa were growing
short. A day or two more, without some addition of these articles, would
see us depleted.

Pete-jong, a fine square-topped fort, built on a rock, overtopped by
high mountains on one side, and overlooking the blue waters of Lake
Palti on the other, looked magnificent, and more than ever reminded one
of that drop-scene in the theatre. 'What a shame,' my wife says, 'to
draw such horrid comparisons!' But I tell her they are not horrid
really. In fact, a short sojourn in Tibet, a country freed from the
obscurities of a thick atmosphere, and full of great dense mountains and
lakes, and of startlingly crude contrasts of bright colours, quite
revolutionises for the time being one's ideas of landscape art. In one
of those diffident modern impressionist pictures, in which the artist is
afraid to make his sky or water really blue, or his snow really white,
or his mountain-tops really lofty or distinct, one finds nothing that
appeals to one's sense of vivid truth. But in that drop-scene above
alluded to, lit up as it would be by glaring footlights, or in that
glorious wealth of colour that is daubed by machinery on to even so low
a thing as a tradesman's almanac, or, again, in that magic lantern slide
reflected on a sheet, which gave to one as a child such romantic ideas
of nature rampant in Switzerland or the Holy Land, there is more that
represents the clear form and crude colour of the uplands of Tibet than
would ever be found in the works of any up-to-date Royal Academician. As
memory fades, and one becomes used again to denser atmospheres and to
features of the earth's surface that are less pronounced, I suppose
one's ideas will revert to their normal orthodoxy.

Pete-jong, fair and romantic from the outside, is the reverse within. We
left a few troops there, making it a post on our line of communication
(as we had done also in the cases of Nagartse and Ralung). I was sorry
for the Pete-jong garrison. The lower part of the jong was occupied by
byres and barns and dark chambers, all of them empty of all but filth.
Through the centre of the jong, and through the rock on which it was
built, a rough stone track, half path, half staircase, ran upwards,
mostly in pitch darkness. From the walls at the side, from the roof
overhead, and from the ground beneath, moisture seemed to be always
exuding, the walls and roof being all slimy and musty, while greasy mud
oozed perpetually from the interstices of the stones on the floor. No
sunlight ever reached this dark passage, so that the moisture could dry
no faster than it was replenished by that hidden spring in the rock
which apparently was its source. The only suitable habitable rooms were
high up at the top of the jong, and these were designed as barracks,
hospital, store depot, and post commandant's quarters. But every time
any one went outside the jong from his quarters, he had to go down this
slimy black artery and return the same way.

After halting one night at Pete-jong the column marched on in soaking
rain to the foot of the Kamba-La. Here we were to leave Lake Palti and
mount the pass that stood above our camp.




CHAPTER XVI

OVER THE KAMBA-LA: THE LAND OF PROMISE


About a thousand feet of zig-zag climbing were to bring us to the top of
the pass, where we would again for the moment stand over 16,000 feet.
The morning was fairly fine, and the clouds high. It took hours, of
course, before our five-mile-long column had reached the top. We toiled
up slowly, many of us with sad misgivings, for that supply column in the
rear was grievously light, and its further depletion would mean much to
all of us. To any one whose thoughts were for official reasons specially
driven into this channel, the moment of arrival at the cairn that marked
the summit of the Kamba-La was perhaps the most critical moment of the
Expedition, if not even its veritable turning point. Since leaving
Gyantse we had marched through a country that seemed to grow more and
more destitute of the supplies we needed. Chance had given us an
occasional largess, and here and there we had lighted upon something of
an oasis; but latterly in places upon which we had set our hopes we had
found nothing. And here we were leaving even the sparsely cultivated
shores of the Lake Palti, climbing into the barren mountains, and then
descending into the unknown. But, as that eventful summit was reached,
what a view met our gaze! Beyond us a deep gully sloped down to a valley
four thousand feet below. The descent for the first two thousand feet
would be over bare bleak hillside: after that we would descend across
the wood-line, below which firewood, at any rate (an article for which,
in certain altitudes, yak-dung had often been substituted), would be
found in plenty. And below that belt of forest, and on either side of a
broad river, we saw thick green crops that meant grazing galore, and
here and there among the crops large prosperous-looking villages, or
stately monasteries that should assuredly be well stocked with grain and
tsampa and other delights. One thought of Moses when he caught his first
glimpse of the promised land!

Our only fear was of the Tibetan army fleeing in front of us--whether
they might not have looted this valley also, and frightened the
inhabitants into hiding all their stores. But the valley was so large
and prosperous-looking that it seemed certain that their depredations
could not have affected the whole of it. So we went down the hill with
glad hearts. The first two villages we passed, as we entered the main
valley, were empty, and for a moment we were afraid again; but a mile
further on we came upon a large village--that of Kamba Baji--which on
inspection proved a veritable mine of wealth.

We camped for that night beside it, and spent the afternoon probing its
resources. The Kazi (or headman) of Kamba Baji was our friend from the
first. He gave us all he had, taking our coin in exchange in the spirit
in which it was offered. He owned a great deal of land up and down the
valley, and that land and its products both then and afterwards, he
placed ungrudgingly at our service, even though the rupees which he
received in exchange, albeit generous payment, hardly compensated him
for the annoyance which, as a substantial country gentleman, he must
have felt at our unwarrantable intrusion upon his property. Our
relations remained cordial ever afterwards. His house lay on the road
which the escort to the post always took between Chaksam and Pete-jong.
For that escort, as they rode up, two elderly handmaidens of the Kazi's
household were ever found waiting with brimful jugs of new milk in their
arms, with which to refresh the travellers.




CHAPTER XVII

THE CROSSING OF THE TSANGPO: A SAD ACCIDENT


The following day we marched down the Tsangpo or Brahmaputra to Chaksam
Ferry. A small column of mounted infantry had ridden ahead of us and
captured the local flotilla, which consisted of two large rectangular
ferry boats, capable each of holding about twenty mules, a hundred men,
or two hundred maunds of stores. Each boat was decorated with a roughly
carved figure-head representing a horse. One horse had lost one of its
ears, which rather detracted from its otherwise imposing appearance. The
party that had preceded us to capture the ferry had also, by the time
the main column arrived, penetrated the monastery which overlooked the
river, made friends with the monks, and engaged the services of the
local ferrymen, who all belonged to the monastery. The monks also placed
at our disposal several skin boats. These were curious craft. They
resembled the Welsh coracle in shape, being quite square, but were a
great deal larger, and capable of holding several people at a time. They
consisted merely of skins stretched over thin stays of wood, were very
light, and drew very little water. A man rowed them from one end,
sitting on the gunwale, any old bit of rope being used in place of
rowlocks to attach the rough peel-shaped oars to the sides of the boat.
Sometimes two boats were tied together to make one, in which case one
boatman would row at one end of the now oblong craft, while another,
sitting opposite him and facing him on the gunwale at the far end, would
assist by 'backing water.' Progress was slow in any case.

We had brought with us several 'Berthon' boats, which, consisting as
they did only of canvas stretched on to a wooden framework, and being
divisible into two halves, had been carried along on the backs of
coolies without much difficulty. We had with us also a useful gang of
Attock boatmen, men who knew how to circumvent the eddies and currents
of the Indus in its upper reaches, and who did not fail us on the
Tsangpo. With the two large ferry boats, the skin boats, the Berthon
boats, the Attock boatmen, and the contingent of Tibetan boatmen from
the monastery, all ready to hand, it was possible to begin the crossing
of the river without a moment's delay. Meanwhile, in order to reduce the
number of mules that would otherwise be largely monopolising the large
ferry boats, it was decided to swim some mules across--a work which was
taken in hand at once. At the same time the sappers, who in the
field-park had brought up various appliances for facilitating ferry
work, made haste to set hawsers, 'travellers,' and wires in position for
immediate use. As soon as these contrivances were in working order,
which was not long, the crossing proceeded at a pace which exceeded our
expectations.

But, before the crossing had well begun, the saddest event of the Tibet
Expedition had occurred. We had lost a good many men in action on
various occasions, and a few officers. In the preceding winter there had
been deaths more or less frequent from such ills as flesh is heir to.
But to fall in action is a special contingency which all soldiers have
to face, and to die by disease is the usual lot of mankind. At the loss
of comrades in these ways we grieve, but do not grieve with any
amazement. Far different from this normal grief was our feeling when we
heard that some sepoys, and with them Major Bretherton, our chief Supply
and Transport officer, had, while crossing the river, been caught by one
of several eddies formed by the sharp jutting out of a certain rocky
headland into midstream, been capsized, sucked down by the eddies, and
drowned.

The gloom that was cast was, as I have said, greater than that cast by
the loss of comrades in action. The ill luck in the case of Major
Bretherton seemed cruel. A moment before we had seen him full of health,
cheery and active, confident of seeing in a few days a happy termination
to the anxieties which in this march to Lhassa, with necessarily slender
commissariat, had been largely borne by himself. We had known him not
only as decorated for past services, but as having, during these past
few months, by his able and perpetual and unsparing work, ever daily
enhanced a reputation that was already assured. Thus here was one, full
of life and ripe for honour, cut off in his prime. Upon the Kamba-La, a
day ago, we had thought with a laugh of him as Moses viewing the
promised land, and now, as a lump came into the throat, the same thought
recurred, but this time full of sadness, for Lhassa, the promised land,
to help us to reach which he had striven for nearly a year, was the land
which he himself was not to see.

His body was carried down the Tsangpo, and we grieved at this, for we
could not pay it the honour we desired. But why should we have grieved?
For there, a pioneer always, who had ever gloried in exploring the
confines of the Indian Empire, he had but followed his bent, pursuing
the mysterious course of that river whose outlet still baffles us.

       *       *       *       *       *

A melancholy sequel to the death of an officer on field service, whether
occurring in this or in any other way, is the inevitable auction of his
effects, for the conveyance of few of which to the base is transport
likely to be available. A committee of adjustment assembles, and, after
reserving only such articles as will be obviously acceptable to his
relations as mementoes and can easily be carried, puts up the remainder
to auction. To be auctioneer of the effects of a comrade is not an
enviable post. I had to auction Major Bretherton's things, and found
that the adoption of the correct, breezy, businesslike auctioneer's
manner was up-hill work. A man so stamps his individuality on his
belongings that often some well-worn familiar garment, as for instance
the 'coat-warm British' with fur-lined collar that the officer had been
used to wear on cold mornings, brings, as you hold it up to sale, many
sad associations. And yet you must look round inquiringly, you must
snatch on to the first bid, and appeal loudly for a higher. When the
topmost bid is reached and no other is forthcoming, you must throw the
coat to the buyer with a careless air and collect his rupees.

The prices that different articles fetch at these auctions is often
amazing. The demand of course depends on whether the force as a whole
has grown short of the particular article now for sale, and whether it
can or cannot be obtained by the individual through the post. Beyond
Gyantse there was no regular parcels post, so that of many articles we
were feeling a keen want. Accordingly, a few sheets of note paper and a
few envelopes held up in the hand as one enticing 'lot' would on that
occasion fetch two rupees. At another similar auction I remember
half-pounds of tobacco going for five rupees each, and one-rupee packets
of 'Three Castles' cigarettes also for five rupees.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF THE CROSSING: THE 'CHIT' IN TIBET


The Sappers and Miners, the coolis, the boatmen, the various units
employed on fatigue, and the mule drivers must have been heartily glad
when the crossing was all over. We were leaving both yaks and donkeys
behind here (to work with convoys between Gyantse and Chaksam), so that
we did not have to accomplish the feat of embarking and disembarking
these somewhat clumsy animals; but even so, the amount of labour that
had been involved was immense. I am told that, at any rate in Indian
frontier warfare, there has hitherto been no instance of a force of this
size crossing a river of this dimension without the aid of a pontoon
bridge (the materials for which it would have been impossible on this
occasion to carry with us). Further, the actual breadth of the river
gave no idea of the difficulty of crossing it. The swiftness of the
current, the whirlpools, and the speed with which the river, fed as it
was by mountain streams, rose and fell, constituted the main
difficulties. Further, in addition to the main channel which was the
chief obstacle, there was a second channel beyond it, which, though not
wide and sometimes fordable, constituted an additional delay to the
crossing. As the last boatload crossed, the river was rising fast, and I
am told that the amount of spare material left at the ends of the long
rope, which was the main factor in swinging the large boats across
without letting them drift down-stream, could be measured by the inch.
Another inch or so in the rise of the river, and a corresponding
widening of the stream, would have left that rope all too short for the
work it had to accomplish, and our crossing might have been
indefinitely delayed, for afterwards the river still continued rising.

We left the Tsangpo fairly well stocked with provisions. During the
march of forty-five miles to Lhassa we were informed that we should come
across all that we required. The road from North Chaksam followed the
course of the river for three miles; then, taking a sharp turn to the
left, entered another wide valley watered by another river, the course
of which we were to trace up-stream as far as Lhassa.

On the first day out of Chaksam I had rather an amusing experience of
the value set by a Tibetan on a 'chit' written by a British officer. In
this respect the Tibetan out-herods Herod. India is the land of the
'chit.' The word is an abbreviation of 'chitthi,' a letter, and in its
shortened form is specially applied to a certificate of good character
given to a servant or to any pass in guarantee of respectability on any
simple recognition of services rendered. A native barber in India who
has cut your hair three times will ask for a 'chit' as a guarantee that
he has done so. But the Tibetan, whether sophisticated lama or simple
peasant, was even more susceptible to the charms of a 'chit,' those
charms of course possessing for him something of the mystical, since he
never understood its contents. Any 'chit' was apparently regarded as a
sort of talisman, and was displayed by the owner with pride and
confidence to every one, especially the next British officer who came
his way.

On that day I was sent ahead with the advance guard to see what supplies
each village contained. I had no transport with me nor means of
collecting the supplies, and through an oversight had taken no one with
me to send back with messages to the rear as to the result of my
discoveries in each village. There was no use in telling a villager to
point out to the officer who would come after me what stores I had
unearthed; for the villagers, though well paid, would always evade
supplying stores if possible. The only expedient left was to make use of
those charms which were possessed by the 'chit.' In the first village I
found fifty maunds of tsampa; so, solemnly taking out my pocket book, I
wrote on a leaf of it 'fifty maunds of tsampa in a top-room of the house
with the big red door,' and, tearing this out of the book, presented it
with grave dignity to the owner of the house. At the next villages I
acted similarly. Some hours after I reached camp the officer in charge
of the transport that had been detailed for foraging reached camp in due
possession of my fifty maunds of tsampa and all the other articles that
I had enumerated in the subsequent chits. It had turned out exactly as I
had hoped. That officer had entered the various villages in turn, and
the proud possessors of the chits, innocent of their real purport, had
come up to him and presented them with childlike simplicity for him to
read, and of course they had given him just the information which they
did not want to give him, but which he required, and which I had had no
other means of conveying to him.

It was playing it rather low down perhaps, but, after all, we wanted the
supplies.




CHAPTER XIX

MONASTERIES: FORAGING IN MONASTERIES: A DREAM


There were at least two fair-sized monasteries which during the next few
days we visited to obtain supplies. Monasteries seem to vary in
character as they vary in size. Buddhism seems, in fact, to have left
its mark upon Tibet in the manner of some great flood. Here on a lone
hilltop stands a tiny monastery stagnant, like some small pool left by
the flood, the monks few in number, their persons sordid, their minds
vacant, and what remains of their religion stale or even polluted; while
elsewhere in larger monasteries religion is clearer and more vital, and
life less stagnant. This is a pure generalisation, and doubtless men,
holy after their lights, often live in remote hovels, and in the chiefer
centres religion may often be dreamy or callous, and sordid vices be not
unknown. But perhaps, merely as a generalisation, the above may hold
good.

A foraging visit to a monastery was often marked by several phases, in
which the relations between visitor and visited underwent considerable
change. The officer in charge of the foraging party would ride up to the
monastery with his escort. They would have been seen coming, and after a
few signs of hurrying and preparation and the fluttering of several red
monastic skirts in the breeze, a small select deputation of monks would
descend from the main building to meet the intruders. This deputation
would first and foremost bring with it a white muslin rag as an emblem
of peace. Along with the rag would be carried peace-offerings, of which
the most common would be a tray of whole-wheat parched and salted, or a
small basket of eggs, which, on nearer acquaintance later in the day,
would usually be found to be neither new-laid nor fresh, but simply
'eggs.'

With the aid of an interpreter a pleasant conversation would ensue. The
officer would then probably produce his hand-camera and snapshot the
head lama, after which he would try to get to business. He would ask how
much of such and such article the monastery could sell us. The monks
would shake their heads, flutter their skirts, jerk up their thumbs, and
in a shrill falsetto repeat the word 'Menduk' (which means 'nothing').
After a little more parley they would confess to having, say, twenty
bagfuls of tsampa or whatever was required. Even the naming of a high
rate and the jingling of a bag of rupees in their faces would not make
them raise the above figure. You would then, if you were the officer,
proceed within the monastery and demand to be shown the said twenty
bagfuls. You would be led with great pomp and circumstance upstairs and
along dark passages and past rows of cells till you were ushered into a
small pantry or storeroom, where, with a gesture of pompous satisfaction
at having so completely fulfilled your requirements, the head monk would
point to a few handfuls of tsampa lying at the bottom of a small
elongated wooden trough. You would feel a little annoyance at this, and
show signs of it. The head monk, as by a happy inspiration, would
suddenly beckon you to accompany him, and, after another long meandering
through the monastery, would lead you to a large doorway into a large
darkened hall, which, when your eyes became accustomed to the dim light,
you would recognise as the main 'gompa' or temple of the monastery. Here
his hand would steal into yours, which he would caress, while with his
free hand he pointed to the chief image of Buddha, which he was
apparently wishing you to admire. Of course you admired him, but you
wanted tsampa, and this was obviously merely a ruse to detain you from
your quest. British choler would then rise, and, going out of the temple
with somewhat irreverent haste, you would begin to express yourself
forcibly in terms which you made the interpreter translate. The
interpreter had probably an axe of his own to grind, and it was doubtful
how many of your trenchant phrases, even if fit to repeat in a
monastery, got actually translated. But after a great show of meaning
business, and a few threats of stronger measures in the background, you
probably got, say, fifty maunds of tsampa from a proper storeroom which
the lamas had previously refrained from showing you. A little later a
few more threats and the threatening crack of a whip round the head of a
'chela' or two would send the monks all skipping about in trepidation,
and the door of the main storeroom would be opened to you, in which you
would find, it might be, two hundred maunds (or three days' supply for
the force) of the desired article. After this you were all friends. No
ill-will was borne on either side. The junior monks or 'chelas' would
assist in bagging the flour, and in carrying it down to the place where
the mules were waiting for it. The money would be doled out and counted
with the greatest good humour, there would be another proffer of parched
wheat and rotten eggs, and you would depart with the head lama's
blessing.

After one such visit I dreamed a dream. I knocked in a boisterous
swash-buckling manner at Tom Gate, the main gate of my old
college--Christ Church. Behind me, stretching up St. Aldate's to Carfax,
were a string of pack mules, fitted with empty bags, forage nets, and
loading ropes. The gate was opened by those of the porters whom I knew
years ago. One, an old soldier, saluted me. Then it occurred to me that
I was a Japanese officer, and that in the year 2004 the Japanese army
were invading England. I was at the head of a foraging party, and we had
come to loot the House. We had a fine time. We started of course by
ringing up the Dean. He too blessed me, and when I asked him for some of
that old Burgundy that I know was a speciality of the senior common-room
cellar, he showed me round the cathedral and pointed out the restored
shrine of St. Frideswide. This was not what I wanted, and I told him so.
I brought the mules in from outside, and set them to graze on the neat
plots of turf that encircle 'Mercury' the fountain, and told him they
must all go away laden with the good things of the Christ Church larder
and cellar, at which he protested. Some undergraduates emerged in cap
and gown from a lecture room and began to show fight. We drove them into
Peckwater at the point of the bayonet.

Then the Steward and the Junior Censor appeared, and the latter began to
reason with us in what I considered a tone unbecoming to a private
person resident in an invaded country. I raised a heavy knout which I
carried, and was going to flog the Junior Censor where he stood, when
the Steward intervened, and, giving hurried orders to all the scouts and
porters that stood around watching the scene, soon produced the finest
store of provisions that we had met with in all our campaigning. The
mules were marched out of Tom Gate, up St. Aldate's, along the Corn and
out to Port Meadow, where we were encamped, laden with sirloins of beef,
with turkeys, with geese and ducks and fowls and pheasants, with beer in
the barrel and port wine in the case, while I remember taking special
personal possession of a mould of 'aspic of larks' which I fancied for
my supper.

But then I woke, and by doing so felt done out of that aspic of larks,
which would have been a pleasant change from the fare of those days.

Quite a silly dream of course; but on recalling it with my waking
thoughts, and feeling sympathy for the Dean and students of Christ
Church, I felt some too for those poor lamas whom we had invaded the day
before.




CHAPTER XX

REACHING LHASSA: SUPPLIES: MESSING: THE LHASSA BAZAAR


The mode of our arrival in the environs of Lhassa was something of an
anti-climax. We had marched four hundred miles, fought a few fights, and
provided ourselves throughout our journey with the necessaries of life,
much against the will of the enemy, and here we were at Lhassa, where an
exciting climax to our march, such as a good fight in the Lhassa plain,
would have been highly artistic. Here stood the Debun monastery, and
there further on the Sara monastery, full of monks who at that time
hated us. A few good shells in those monasteries would have set the
monks buzzing in consternation like swarming bees disturbed. There
glistened in the sun the gilded roof of the chief astrologer's house,
that would have made grand loot and have looked so well in the British
Museum. There ahead of us rose majestically on its conical hill the
Pota-La, that _piece de resistance_ which would have really taxed our
efforts, and by its side on a similar hill the Medical College,
challenging us by its proud eminence to seize it. But such wild schemes
were not to be realised. These ways were not our ways. We marched
quietly into a swampy camp, sat down, and began to negotiate. Those that
negotiated were busy men, for the amount of talking that the
representatives of the Tibetan Government got through, and that needed
listening to, before anything was settled, must have been immense. The
rest of us were not often very busy. 'Those also serve who only stand
and wait' was our motto.

There was reluctance at first on the part of the monasteries to sell us
supplies, but this was shortly overcome. We had for one day to feed the
natives of the force on peas soaked overnight in water as a substitute
for tsampa, while waiting for supplies to come in; but from the time
when the latter began to do so till we left Lhassa we felt no pinch. The
large monasteries were our chief purveyors, but besides these the
Chinese community of Lhassa comprised certain considerable merchants who
at the instigation of the Amban placed their wares at our disposal from
the very first. A Chinese market was a great boon to us, for the
Chinaman, especially if at all influenced by other civilisations, has
ideas on dietetics more nearly approximating to both those of the
British and of the native of India than do the Tibetan's ideas. To the
ordinary Tibetan the sucking of mouthfuls of tsampa at irregular
intervals from a dirty leather bag which he hangs from his neck
represents an adequate idea of diet. The monks and richer laymen of
course do themselves better; but such dainties as they indulge in did
not appeal to our palates, nor to those of Indian natives. Their butter,
for instance, which at times both British and native had to make use of,
had always a special flavour of its own--a flavour which in an
indefinable way suggests Tibet and its many associations, being allied
to a blend of such smells as that of Tibetan fuel, of joss-stick
incense, and of temple floors smeared with grease. Few Europeans and
fewer natives could eat Tibetan butter with relish. The Chinaman, on the
other hand, provided us with flour sufficiently fine to bake with, with
white and brown sugar, with that solidified form of molasses called
'goor,' and with dried fruits. Latterly we had often had to mix tsampa
with flour to eke out our stock of the latter when baking bread for
British troops. The result, though not unwholesome, was of a deep brown
colour, and hardly palatable. If once cut into overnight, a tsampa loaf
would have subsided into something very stodgy by morning, though, if
all consumed at a sitting, it would not be found so heavy.

During the latter part of our march we had run out of most of such
delicacies as a supply column usually carries, and, as I have already
mentioned, no arrangement could be made to bring up the loads and loads
of parcels which were now accumulating at Gyantse for most individuals
and messes belonging to the column. In those days, in our attitude
towards food, we reverted very much to the proverbial school-boy. We
were frankly greedy in thought, word, and deed. The most favourite of
interesting conversations was to discuss the ideal menu at a first-rate
London restaurant. But sometimes these imaginings grew too painful. I
remember well a case of two officers at noon on a comparatively hot day,
sitting by the wayside at a halt.

'Ah,' said one, 'what I should really like now would be a large
tumblerful of good iced hock-cup.'

These idle words touched a tender spot in the other officer, to whom
hock-cup happened to be the beau-ideal of drinks.

'Shut up!' the latter answered angrily, a fierce light in his eye; 'if
you mention hock-cup again, I'll break your head!'

Jam, as we marched to Lhassa, though not a necessity, was our primary
desideratum. With long days in the open air and also with considerable
fatigue to undergo, you craved for the sustenance of sweet things. Till
sugar also began to run short, we used to make treacle from it. Like the
school-boy, we, as a rule, thought little of alcohol. Just as water at
that altitude boils at a low temperature, so did it need only a little
fiery spirit to give the desired tingle to the blood. Most messes had
soon run out of whiskey, and rum in small quantities from the supply
column took its place.

I am inclined to think that, delightful as messing in a large mess is,
something is lost by having no personal share in your own catering. A
mess president, of course, especially on service, has a vast weight upon
his shoulders. He has to foresee the wants of many hungry mouths months
ahead, and fit them in to a scanty allowance of transport. But his
function is of a special kind. The ordinary member of a mess simply eats
what is put before him, notes whether it is good, bad, or indifferent,
and thinks no more about it. On the other hand, if, with the aid of a
purely experimental cook, you run your own messing, quite a new vista of
energy is at once opened out to you. It becomes intensely interesting.
You become very greedy, of course, and a good dinner becomes the mark of
a successful day, and a bad dinner that of an unsuccessful one; but even
so the arts of catering and of the supervision of cooking, when
practised in difficulties, are not in themselves sordid, but demand
skill and forethought of a high order. One wants company of course. I
messed on the method of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt with another officer.
He was of the lean, I the fat kind. He breakfasted at eleven, or (if on
the march) when he reached camp. I ate a huge breakfast the moment I was
out of bed, and ran to a lunch later, which my messmate scorned. So,
after all, we only met at dinner, but then that is the only meal at
which company is a necessity. He dined usually on curry and rice, which
I have always disliked, while I had roast meat served up to me in chunks
on a dish, much as my dog gets it at home. Thus we got all the mutual
advantages of each other's company when that was desirable, without the
effort of subscribing to each other's tastes. We found it a most
workmanlike arrangement. When, on reaching Lhassa, we had ample leisure,
we began to grow fastidious, and to insist upon our cooks enlarging the
culinary horizon. A little harsh treatment soon taught the youth who fed
me to turn out a passable omelette, and a little more coercion resulted
in quite eatable rissoles. In the end, when he came to take orders for
dinner, he would rattle off a string of high-sounding dishes with French
names, which would have really made a fine feast, if served otherwise
than on enamelled iron plates, set upon a table cloth of advertisement
sheets from a stale newspaper. Once I had a comrade to lunch on a sunny
day, and, thinking to do him well, produced somewhere from the bottom of
my kit a long disused but spotless bed sheet, and made use of this as a
table cloth. My friend asked for its removal before the second course,
complaining of incipient snow-blindness. When I got to India and to
polite society, and began wiping my mouth with a table napkin, I
discovered that on the first few occasions the napkin used to come away
in my pocket. Of course, on making use of it, one thought subconsciously
that it was one's handkerchief, and so tucked it away as such.

Tobacco, without a parcels post to bring it to us, became very scarce.
The Sahib missed his pipe or cheroot, and the native his
'hubble-bubble,' and both alike took to the 'Pedro' cigarette, the
produce of an enterprising firm whose custom extended to Lhassa. Vendors
of Pedros had followed us on the march, and, apart from this, the Lhassa
bazaar abounded in the article, getting it, I suppose, through China or
by the trade route that lies through Nepal. By a rough estimate it would
appear that for two months at least four thousand souls smoked an
average of ten Pedros daily. The rate grew very much enhanced with the
constant demand, and I know of one needy officer who, in view of the
fortune thus doubtless made by the firm, has announced his intention of
going head-down for home and offering his hand and heart to Miss Pedro,
if he finds such a person existing.

Shopping in the camp bazaar was the ladylike way in which we often spent
our mornings. We had only been in camp at Lhassa for twenty-four hours,
when a bazaar was formed just outside camp by Tibetan, Chinese, and
Nepali traders. It needed a little supervision to prevent disputes and
disorder, but the provost-marshal quickly had it in hand. An attempt to
fix rates for various more necessary articles was not wholly successful,
human nature on the buyer's part crying out for the article at all cost,
and human nature on the seller's seizing an easy chance of profit. There
were vegetables in that bazaar and sticks of wild rhubarb. There was
'ata,' in small quantities, which the sepoy would buy greedily as a
change from his tsampa. There were packets of white loaf sugar fetching
exorbitant prices, and thick Chinese candles with bits of stick for
wicks. Later on, when we had moved from our first camp to that which we
occupied for the greater part of the time, the bazaar developed. The
vendors by that time had discovered our childish mania for curios, and
brought with them each morning such trinkets as would attract our fancy.
Skins of all kinds would be brought for sale; the skins of very young
lambs, almost as curly as real Astrakan, which, made up together in
winter linings for lamas' robes, seemed equally adaptable to the opera
cloaks of our sisters and cousins and aunts at home; skins too of the
lynx, the marmot, the wolf, and the snow fox. And women would come
wearing heavy earrings set with turquoises and 'charm boxes' similarly
set, which they wore as lockets at the neck. They would take these off
to sell to you and haggle, like the veritable Eastern traders that they
were, with you for the price.

Besides the Tibetan or Chinese candle, we also found imported candles of
European manufacture. But most imports for household use appeared to be
Japanese, as, for instance, soap and matches; neither of these were of
good quality, and Japan does not seem to take pains to appear at her
best in the Lhassa market. But to get a new cake of soap, even if it did
crumble away quickly, was a luxury, and the return to a land of matches
was a great relief. I remember an officer who on the march had latterly
possessed himself of a Tibetan flint and steel and learnt to light a
cigarette with them.

There are just about half a dozen prime necessities of no great bulk
which always seem to run out sooner than expected on field service. A
reserve in a supply column of the following would always come in useful:
of matches, three mule loads; of wax candles, seven mule loads; of soap,
ten mule loads; of some strong forbidding kind of tobacco that in times
of privation would go a very long way, ten mule loads; of chocolate
creams and barley sugar, thirty mule loads. Sixty such mules laid out
per brigade would be much blessed.

When relations with the Tibetans had become less strained, we used to go
in organised parties to visit the bazaar in Lhassa city itself. These
parties reminded one of a Sunday-school treat. The part of curate would
be played by some field-officer who would collect his school children
outside camp. These would consist of those officers, soldiers, sepoys,
and followers whose turn it was to go. He would conduct us with careful
supervision from the camp to the city, and there let us loose for two
hours to play in the bazaar. The bazaar was one circular street,
surrounding the cathedral which, though once or twice entered by
favoured individuals, was out of bounds for us.

In the city the same kinds of things were for sale as were brought to
the camp bazaar, but there was a larger variety of imported goods. How
some of those things ever got to Lhassa was a mystery. In one shop I saw
a whole row of small looking-glasses 'made in Austria,' and beside them
a score or so of penknives 'made in Germany.' The British tradesman's
pictorial almanac will, I suppose, be found hanging on the gates of the
new Jerusalem; it had certainly penetrated Lhassa, usually in the form
of a royal family group. One coronation group on the wall of a Kashmiri
shop was especially fine. Strangest of all to find was a bicycle of the
Rover pattern--quite out of gear, but doubtless interesting to the
Tibetan as a Western curio. He may have thought it was a species of
Christian prayer-wheel.

I was short of dinner plates, and bought one. It was of tin, and had
stamped on it a comprehensive lesson in both political and physical
geography. All round the rim faces of clocks were stamped. Each face was
encircled with a scroll containing the name and the number of the
population of some large city of the world, while the clock in the
centre showed what the time was in that city when the clock in London
stood at twelve noon. The population of London as stamped on the plate
stood at quite a low figure, but London was selected as the honoured
city whose clock should stand at the precise hour of noon, and the whole
geography lesson was in English. One would therefore come to the
conclusion that the plate was a British product, dating back to the
period of some not very recent census. To have traced that plate from
Birmingham to Lhassa would have been interesting.

Beggars swarmed in the bazaar. One man earned an obviously ample
livelihood by carrying his grandfather on his back through the streets.
The grandfather was certainly the quintessence of decrepitude, and as
such would appeal to the benevolent, who apparently never thought of
suggesting to the young man that it would be better to leave grandfather
at home in bed, and go out unencumbered to earn an honest living.
Malefactors in chains are also seen crawling about, a peripatetic prison
being apparently less felt by the Lhassa exchequer than one of bricks
and mortar.




CHAPTER XXI

ENOUGH OF LHASSA: A TRIP DOWN COUNTRY: LIFE IN A POST: TRUE HOSPITALITY:
A BHUTYA PONY


Since I reached India, I have been told that every moment I spent in the
romantic environs of Lhassa must have been intensely interesting, and
that to have been to Lhassa is the envy of the world. I suppose, like
the brute one is, one got _blase_ and indifferent to one's good fortune,
but it is certain that those 'crowded hours of glorious life' began to
pall. We did the best we could to while away the time. An energetic race
committee provided gymkhanas and a 'sky meeting' (just, says the
intelligent foreigner, what a British army _would_ indulge in, on
arrival at such a place). A football tournament followed. Football at
thirteen thousand feet is like playing the game at an ordinary
level--with an eighty-pound load on your back. Less strain on the lungs
was a rifle meeting. To escort our military or political betters to the
city on a state visit was another mild form of entertainment. The
Chinese Amban often received such visits. The ordinary officer who
formed part of the escort did not take part in the actual visit. He
stayed outside on the doorsteps. Sometimes he was known to go into the
Amban's kitchen, where an elderly matron gave him a cup of tea.

Luckily, though it rained generally once in the twenty-four hours, it
did so mostly at night, so that we were seldom confined to our tents in
the daytime. Even so, we felt rather like prisoners. Going out beyond
the vicinity of the camp meant going out armed, and proceeding to any
distance meant being accompanied by an escort, such precautions having
been specially indicated by the attack made on two officers by a
certain fanatical lama.

It is not surprising that the life we led left many gaps which it was
hard to fill. I was glad when one day I got orders to go on a ten days'
trip down the line as far as Pete-jong and back.

These ten days initiated me into the life of those portions of the force
who had been left to man posts on the line of communications.

The native soldier soon makes himself very much at home in his post. He
has deeply regretted not going to the front, but with a useful belief in
'kismet' makes the best of things. The relief from marching and the
ample leisure to cook food are redeeming features. The post-commandant,
if the only British officer on the spot, feels his circumstances more
acutely. Not only does he grieve at being left behind, but since in
ordinary times no life is more social than that of a British officer, he
at first feels his loneliness greatly. He may love his men, he may
be--in the wording of that common Hindustani metaphor--veritably their
'father and mother,' but still he cannot go to them for company. He can
exchange few ideas with them, and as regards social intercourse, he is
almost as much alone as if he were on a desert island. If, however, by
any chance there are two officers together in one post, they should
enjoy themselves. For though ordinary regimental life is, as I said
above, the most social in the world, it yet also suffers from the
disabilities of its own sociability. In a regimental mess you know
twenty men well, and may go on knowing them so for twenty years, but
perhaps you will never know any one of them really intimately. To share
a post on the line of communications with one other officer for a few
months should result in an intimacy. That is almost a new military
experience.

If a post-commandant had shooting or fishing within reach of his post,
he usually, even though alone, soon found life bearable. Sometimes
foraging to collect a reserve of rations for the march down was his only
recreation, and this soon palled. He was not necessarily always alone,
for the traffic up and down the line was sometimes brisk, and he would
perhaps once or twice in a week be invaded by some officer who was
travelling up or down with the post or with a convoy.

It was my lot to be often such an invader, and for sheer genuine
hospitality commend me to the officers in charge of the posts on the
Sikkim-Tibet line of communications. It shames me to think of the way
they have entertained me, and of my utter inability to return their
hospitality. May I have a chance some time!

I had to go down to Chaksam with the mounted infantry postal escort
which travelled the whole distance in one day, going as light as
possible, my syce on one mule, my bedding on a second, and a mule driver
on a third, and without either cook or orderly. It was a case of
'sponging' wherever I went, for I knew those kind hosts down the line
would forbid me to live off bully-beef and biscuits. Looking over my
belongings before I left, I found a tinned oxtongue, which by an
oversight had remained unregarded and uneaten somewhere at the bottom of
a kit bag for many months. A convoy too had just come in, and from it I
seized one of a few pots of jam. Thus armed I visited Chaksam and
Pete-jong. These two articles were all that I could proffer in return
for hospitality, but both under present conditions were dainty rarities,
and, my hosts assured me, quite paid for my keep. At Chaksam, where the
tongue was left, and where there was a doctor as well as a
post-commandant, I was afterwards informed that the doctor, as soon as I
was gone, promptly found the post-commandant suffering from acute
enteritis, so put him on to milk diet and wolfed all the tongue himself!

The postal service from Gyantse to Lhassa was performed by mounted
infantry, each garrison _en route_ containing a detachment of mounted
infantrymen, who took the post from stage to stage. The stages were
pretty far apart. The first was from Gyantse to Ralung, over thirty
miles; the second over the Karo-La to Nagartse, a distance of nearly
thirty; the third from Nagartse to Pete-jong, eighteen miles; the fourth
from Pete-jong to Chaksam, thirty-two; and the fifth and last from
Chaksam to Lhassa, about forty-five. The work thus done by the mounted
infantry between Lhassa and Gyantse was considerable. A fairly hefty
sepoy, carrying rifle and accoutrements and a few mail bags, is no mean
weight to put on the back of a thirteen-hand pony, even for a short
distance, and it is surprising how well the ponies, some of them
ordinary country-breds from the plains of India, stood those long
marches. Keeping them shod was a considerable difficulty, for the
combination of damp weather and stony roads knocked the shoes off very
quickly, and the stock of the latter was limited.

Having done my work at Chaksam and Pete-jong, I returned to the former
place with the post, prepared to proceed to Lhassa the next day; but it
had been raining in torrents for some days past, and, though mail bags
and the like could be taken across the river in skin boats, there was no
chance of taking my pony and mules across till the flood subsided. After
three days it was found possible to take the animals over at Parte (the
crossing which the column subsequently used on the march down), ten
miles up the river, and the following day I was able to reach Lhassa
with the upward post.

I shall not easily forget that day. It has been made memorable to me by
the vagaries of a certain Bhutya pony ridden by an officer who was
accompanying me. To get one's kit and oneself over forty-five miles of
indifferent roadway in one day, especially when you have no change of
mount, involves early rising. We got up at four o'clock, after sleeping
in the domestic temple of a Tibetan farm-house on a sacred but not very
clean floor. We sent our kit on ahead, and also my syce, who was mounted
on a mule, in charge of part of the mounted infantry postmen. The
remainder of the latter accompanied our two selves a little later. My
companion had not ridden his pony for some time, and the latter,
disliking the process of being mounted, began by suddenly sidling away
when his master was only half on his back, with the result that his
master came off and tumbled to the ground, still keeping hold of the
reins. The pony, anxious to be free, danced a jig on his master's
stomach. Luckily, being of a hard-footed hill-breed, his feet were not
shod, so that no serious injury resulted, as would have been the case if
the trampling had been done in iron shoes. At length the pony broke away
from the reins and scampered off, leaving his rider to recover the
breath that had been squeezed out of his body and to pick himself up.
This was an awkward beginning to the day's march, but, finding no bones
broken, and the pony having, for the occasion, allowed himself to be
caught, my friend mounted, successfully this time, and we proceeded on
our way. After some miles we overtook and passed the other party, and
pushed on till, finding we had gone twenty miles from Chaksam, were in a
pleasant spot suitable for resting in, and were uncommonly hungry, we
dismounted, took our ponies' bridles off, tied the animals up, gave them
their grain, and set to work upon our own sandwiches.

We rested an hour, and, thinking our surroundings too pleasant to leave
abruptly, we decided on another half-hour's rest. Just as we had done
so, and were looking forward to a spell of peaceful contemplation of
romantic scenery, as seen through the beautifying haze of
tobacco-smoke, one of us noticed that the Bhutya was fidgeting with his
head rope. He was on the edge of a field of green peas that were
tickling his fancy. As we looked, by some device known only, I should
think, to Bhutya ponies, he slipped the neck rope over one ear. Before
we could get at him he had slipped it over the other and was free. The
only man who had ever been known to catch the pony when he was free was
his own syce, whom his master had left at Chaksam. Here we were twenty
miles from Chaksam and twenty-five from Lhassa, and my friend with many
bruises on his body already contracted that morning, and a sore hip
that, though not preventing him riding, yet hurt him every time that he
tried to walk.

The party that we had overtaken now came up, and, after sending on most
of the escort so as not to detain His Majesty's mails, we proceeded to
try all the dodges known to us of catching a refractory pony. I suppose,
if we had been cowboys trained to use the lasso, we should have had no
trouble. As it was, we experienced much.

A feeding-bag full of grain held out coaxingly at arm's length made the
pony laugh. I tried him with a bit of commissariat biscuit, at which--as
is often the way of people--he snorted. I tried stalking him from behind
my own pony, and got fairly near him, only to find his two heels
perilously near our two heads. We laid a grand snare, in the shape of
two mule loading ropes joined together, and stretched across a tempting
patch of the green-pea field, where not a trace of the rope could be
seen, while the men at each end of the rope lounged peacefully and
innocently with reassuring looks upon their faces which we thought would
not prevent the pony being quietly urged into the space between them.
This ruse nearly succeeded. The pony stalked along, grazing as he went,
till his feet were against the rope, at which the men holding it, after
raising it a little, tried to run to the rear and so encircle the pony.
But before they had gone far he was kicking and tugging with his chest
against the rope, and in a moment had wrenched it out of the hands of
one of the men, and the next minute, after a series of derisive
buckjumps, was in the next field munching young wheat.

After fifty minutes of fruitless manoeuvring we decided on a new plan.
Half a mile further on, the road left the open space where we now were,
and, running close to the side of the river, was flanked on the other
side by almost precipitous rocks. The road here, therefore, formed a
perfect defile, and we decided to proceed on our way, ignoring the
Bhutya and trusting to his gregarious instinct and a little wholesome
neglect on our part to induce him to follow us of his own initiative. We
moved off in a body--mules, ponies, and men. The Bhutya, tired of green
peas and young wheat, looked after us and followed us at a gentle trot.
We left my syce in ambush just outside the defile, but this proved
unnecessary; for the pony, now quite anxious about being left behind,
pushed his way in ahead of the last mounted infantryman, so that at last
we had him in a trap. But to catch hold of him, now that he was in the
trap, still taxed our efforts. A mounted infantryman grabbed him once by
the forelock, and nearly got wrenched off his own pony by doing so,
while the Bhutya leapt away, leaving in the man's hand enough of his own
forelock to stuff a good pincushion. My syce had now come up. He was an
elderly man, more intelligent in these matters than any of those
present. He tempted the pony with bits of a tsampa chapatti that he drew
from his pocket. The pony, forgetful of wheat and green peas, took to
these. The syce in an instant had the reins of the bridle round the
pony's neck, and would have held him fast had not he been lifted off his
feet by the latter's rearing up. The pony was now free again and very
indignant. Rampaging about, he tried to find an exit through a batch of
mules in one direction and a batch of mounted infantry in the other, but
found himself baffled in both. He looked up the rocks and found them
impossible to climb, looked at the river beneath him and seemed to
contemplate taking a header, but thought better of it, and at last stood
sullenly at bay. My syce's next proffer of his own wayside ration
brought the pony to terms. A rope-twitch was round his lip in an
instant, and a moment later he stood bridled and in his right mind.

So on we hastened to Lhassa at last, glad to have secured the pony, but
now somewhat belated. At Trelung bridge, eight miles out of Lhassa, was
a small garrison, guarding the bridge. The officer in command fed us
with a sumptuous tea. Much refreshed, we sped on our way, getting within
sight of camp just as it was turning pitch dark, and having cause to
realise the efficacy of our own camp defences by the way we floundered
among ditches and abattis when barely twenty yards from the camp
perimeter.

There was a 'Tommies' gaff' that night, outside the camp, around a
roughly erected stage lit up with Chinese candles and decked out with
green brushwood that had previously been used to make the jumps at the
last gymkhana. We assembled to hear the familiar types of songs that
form the programme of a soldiers' sing-song--some witty, some rather
vulgar, some modified with topical variations by local poets, and all
full of good cheer.




CHAPTER XXII

THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY


A day or two after--that is to say, on the seventh day of September
1904--the treaty was signed. If our peaceful arrival at Lhassa had been
the anti-climax of the Expedition, this--the signing of the
treaty--though peaceful also, was its true climax. One certainly did
have a feeling that day that one was witness of an event of imperial
importance.

The escort left camp at 1.30 P.M. Over the assembling of the troops
outside camp one of those typical--and to the onlooker highly
entertaining--muddles arose, which are always either the fault of some
one or no one or every one. Eventually we found ourselves, all except a
body of mounted infantry who were still unaccountably missing. Their
place was, however, adequately filled by a party of Kot-duffadars of
mule corps, who, mounted on transport riding ponies, and armed with
swords and staves or whatever obsolete weapon is nowadays issued to
them, took a prominent place in the procession and made a brave show. We
marched past that pleasant country seat known as 'Paradise,' where the
political mission had their quarters, and proceeded along a path lined
with troops, across a bog into the outskirts of the city, and up the
road which leads up the Pota-La hill into the Pota-La. We had eventually
to dismount, leave our ponies, and climb up a paved pathway, half
staircase. This pathway was smeared with the holy grease of ages and was
dangerously slippery. At the top we found some of the guard of the
Nepalese resident, looking very warlike in red secondhand tunics that
had once been the property of British soldiers, but were of a now
obsolete pattern. Ushered through a dark passage, we entered at last
into the throne-room or audience-hall of the Pota-La, where the ceremony
was to take place. When all that portion of the escort who were allowed
within the hall had taken their places Colonel Younghusband and General
Macdonald with their respective Staffs arrived. The room already held
the various contingents of Eastern officials of different nationalities
who were to assist at the function. After we had all stood up, there was
a great deal of handshaking between the representatives of East and
West. The Chinese Amban shakes hands in a manner that, when last I
frequented London drawing-rooms, was, I believe, considered fashionable.
One of the lay council of Tibet certainly thought so, for he tried to
imitate the particular method, but only partially succeeded. The party
then sat down to tea. A great deal of tea was drunk--that milkless tea
in handleless china cups with which we had most of us now become
acquainted. All sorts of Chinese sweetmeats were provided with it, and
these were followed by cigarettes (our old friend the 'Pedro'). These
dainties did not extend into the outer circles; those of us who were
behind contented ourselves by lighting up our own Pedros.

A glance round the room showed many bright colours and striking
contrasts. There, near to the throne, were our political officers in the
rich but not gaudy uniform of their service; next them the G.O.C. and
his Staff in the sober khaki, while all round the room in less prominent
places was more khaki. But next to Colonel Younghusband in robes of
bright blue silk sat the Amban. Next to the Amban was the Regent, who,
since the disappearance of the Dalai Lama, had been the officiating head
of the Tibetan Government, an elderly man with a sad ascetic face, and
dressed quite simply in the plain red robes of an ordinary lama. Next to
him was a row of Chinese officials, of whose uniform, as in the case of
the Amban, bright blue silk formed the chief part. Further away were
the seats of the Nepalese contingent, at the head of whom sat the Nepali
resident, a fierce-looking old man in a rather shabby and uncommonly
short jacket of plum- brocade lined with fur. Alongside, but at
a different angle and facing the throne, sat the Tonsil Penlop and his
suite. These represented Bhutan and were all clad in striped yellow silk
robes, which one can only describe as barbaric. Their millinery was also
marvellous, the Tonsil Penlop himself wearing a kind of bonnet, on the
top of which was perched a whole stuffed bird, which in the distance
appeared to be a parrot. Immediately opposite the throne were the
Tibetan lay council of three. They affected plain yellow silk and yellow
hats, but the yellow was of a bright shade, and the general effect of
their appearance was as magnificent as that of any of the others. In
face they struck me as the least attractive of the various Eastern
officials present, being unhealthy-looking, rather fat, and wearing
what seemed a sulky cowed expression. Behind them stood a whole array of
monks.

The process of signing began almost at once. The number of documents
seemed never ending. Apparently there were several copies of the treaty
in every language spoken by any of the parties directly or remotely
concerned with it, and every one of these copies had to be signed, not
only by the chief authorities above enumerated, but also by various
lesser lights of Tibet, as, for instance, the heads of certain
monasteries. At one period the limelight flashed upon us, and we all had
our photographs taken from a corner of the room.

We saw many copies of the treaty being signed with great care, but
gathered nothing of its contents except from the speech which, when at
last the signing was over, Colonel Younghusband addressed to the
Tibetans in general, and to the 'council of three' in particular. The
latter sat bobbing their heads deferentially at each sentence, and
looking thoroughly ashamed while Colonel Younghusband addressed them
from his chair. The speech was translated sentence by sentence into
Tibetan for Tibetan benefit, and afterwards passed on in Chinese to the
Amban.

The speech was emphatically a 'straight talk,' the key-note seeming to
be that the Tibetans had been very foolish in opposing and flouting us
in the past, but that they were now going to be good boys. They were
going to be well treated when they came to visit us, and were not going
to misbehave themselves in any way, should we again come near them.
There was more said, about trade relations with India, in recognition of
the Chinese suzerainty, and in encouragement of the Tibetan traditional
methods of treating outsiders, when those outsiders did not happen to be
ourselves.

The council of three seemed to take it all 'lying down.'

More tea was drunk: the press correspondents busied themselves with the
telegrams that they were sending down by post to Gyantse, bringing the
wires there and then to the press censor, whose blue pencil I saw freely
wielded: more handshaking, and then the party broke up.

As we left the now close atmosphere of the audience hall, we felt that
we had just witnessed a matinee performance in a theatre. The
spectacular effects throughout had been impressive. The first act had
been brisk, the second had dragged, but the last had been thrilling. It
had indeed been a fine play that we had seen enacted--the simple sane
perseverance of British diplomacy fighting on its own ground a unique
section of the mysterious and gorgeous East, not bluffed by its
indignant protests, not deceived by its spurious promises, not wearied
by its endless delays, not impatient of its crass ignorance, but gaining
its objects slowly and surely, and coming out victorious.




CHAPTER XXIII

BACK TO INDIA


Thereafter, like the man in the sycamore tree, we made haste to come
down. Sixteen days later the column left Lhassa. A few functions
intervened, such as the formal release of our prisoners and the bestowal
of money in charity on the poor of Lhassa. I missed these functions,
having been sent on ahead to the Tsangpo, where preparations for the
return crossing were now afoot. The column at length arrived at the
river. We crossed this time at Parte, where a certain single channel of
moderate breadth, but very deep and therefore not very swift, served our
purposes far better than the double channel at Chaksam. The Sappers and
Miners and coolis had made all things ready, towing the two heavy ferry
boats up many miles of swift current, and rigging up the mysterious
engineering paraphernalia which were needed to swing us across, our
crossing hanging truly and literally by a thread--a thread of thin wire.
Wire, at once the lightest and strongest commodity of its kind, had
since our last crossing been sent up to us, in great quantities, and was
largely used to replace the now rotten rope that had previously been
chiefly employed. A great ferry boat, bearing twenty mules, to which was
attached a string of skin boats laden with stores, to which again were
attached a brace or so of mules swimming in the water, would be swung
across that still swift current, suspended from but one or two thin
wires.

The speed of the crossing exceeded all hopes. It was accomplished in
about forty-eight hours. From South Parte we marched, over a pass that
was new to us, straight into Pete-jong. At the top of that pass facing
southwards we found a wall, which had obviously been built by the
Tibetans in the belief that on our march upwards we would cross the
ridge by this route. It was a well-conceived fortification, and might
have given us considerable trouble.

From Parte Ferry to Gyantse we marched in two columns. Thinking the
crossing of the ferry might occupy several days, and in order to be
prepared for all emergencies such as any possible ebullitions of
hostility that might delay our march, we had laid in at the ferry and
the posts on the way to Gyantse a stock of supplies which now proved
larger than our needs, while our spare transport was only sufficient to
carry on a portion of the surplus.

I accompanied the second column and had the pleasant duty of making away
with this surplus. To one whose purse has always been slender, and whose
nature is correspondingly extravagant, there can be nothing more
agreeable than to dispose in a free-handed way of large amounts of
Government property. One enjoys all the delights of extravagance with
none of its bitter aftertaste. Of course, even from the strictly
economical view, it was far the best policy to make away with these
surpluses where they stood. The total value of the stores so made away
with, though amounting to a large sum, was far less than, for instance,
would have been the cost of retaining the force in the country until
they had consumed them.

The British troops were all with this column, but there were several
native units as well. One arrived at a post and found it full of many
good things that could not be carried on. Restrained only by fear of
filling the troops to a tension beyond what the medical officers thought
desirable, one accosted commanding officers, and asked with one's best
shop-walker's manner what they would like to-day. A few hundredweight of
jam and pickles would be doled out for the asking, or, in the case of
native troops, similar quantities of tea and ghi and goor. The coolis
were my best customers. The amount of tea and goor they took away and
consumed with benefit to themselves was surprising. They worked all the
better for it and marched into Gyantse carrying record loads.

The stores still left over at each place were solemnly presented to the
local peasants who came up, and, regarding the affair as a huge joke,
went away laden with bundles selected at random from, as it were, a huge
bran-pie. Rum was withheld from them, but I should have liked to see the
effect of their consumption of some of the things they got, as, for
instance, of an unsuspecting draught of neat lime-juice, or a mouthful
of chillies.

So on we marched over that stiff pass into Pete-jong, along Lake Palti
shining in this clear-set wintry weather with its true turquoise
colours, past Nagartse and up through the barren gorge that leads to the
summit of the Karo-La, down the Karo-La regretfully, doubting whether
we should ever reach such heights again, into the Ralung plain, and down
the long glen to Gyantse.

Our appearance in those days was not spick and span. We were very much
out at elbows, the breeches of both soldiers and followers were
frequently patched with odd bits of Tibetan woollen cloth, or even in
some cases with bits of the gunny of gunny bags. I have known the red
cloth of the typical lama's robe adapted to these purposes. With wear it
turns into a cherry colour. My own orderly, who was fitted out with a
complete pair of continuations of this cloth, looked in the distance
like a trooper of the 11th Hussars (the overalls of that regiment being
famous for that colour).

More curious still were the additions to the wardrobe in the shape of
blankets and sentries' cloaks, which we brought from Lhassa, the woollen
goods of that town being warm and serviceable, but rather outlandish.
The sentries' cloaks were merely oblong pieces of cloth with a hole in
the centre, through which the sentry put his head, and of all sorts of
colours--quite enough in themselves to frighten the nocturnal miscreant.

But most curious sight of all, if one could have looked on from the
outside, would have been the collection of dogs which we brought with
us. The dog that Tommy had left at home was of course the familiar type
of square-jowled sturdy monster, who, by a process of natural selection
and survival of the fittest, has been evolved out of many types, and now
rules supreme in cantonment barracks. His master at Lhassa had consoled
himself with another sort, and it was a touching sight to see great
bearded men sometimes leading, but as often as not carrying, on the
march dainty little lap-dogs, of kinds that resembled the Pomeranian,
the Skye terrier, or the King Charles' spaniel. One or two Tibetan
mastiffs--more like huge Welsh collies than mastiffs--also accompanied
us.

At Gyantse we were halted for a few days, upon one of which the G.O.C.
held his farewell parade, making us a sympathetic speech which will be
remembered by all of us. Then we marched past. My lot was to command a
squad of veterans whose duties for years had been confined to the supply
of the army. We got along somehow, more by innate intelligence than
knowledge of drill, going through various giddy evolutions in no
particular formation and by the shortest cut, and arriving at the
saluting base aided only by the bump of locality. There of course we
braced ourselves and marched past, and turned our eyes sharply to the
right as though we had never left the barrack square.

From Gyantse onwards I was in the first column, and thus missed certain
hardships. It was nice bracing weather. We had cool fine days, at night
twenty degrees of frost and often biting cold winds that took the skin
off the nose and chapped the lips and the lobes of the ear, but were on
the whole salubrious. The same weather was with us all the way, up
through Kangma and the Red Idol gorge to Kalatso, past Dochen and into
the Tuna plain, over the Tang-La, into Phari and down through the Gautsa
glens, where the pine-forests smelt of Indian hill stations, and into
Chumbi. As we reached Chumbi the clouds were gathering.

That night, with the outer fly of my tent taken out of store and erected
over me, I went to bed secure in its extra protection, thinking casually
that it might perhaps rain in the night. In the early morning I was
woken with a crash, and felt a great weight squeezing my whole body, but
leaving my head clear. Striking a light I found the upright tent pole
near my feet broken in two. Looking through a corner of the tent I saw
the ground all covered with snow, and realised that the weight on my
body was the snow that had accumulated on the tent, broken the tent
pole, and fallen upon me. It was six o'clock. My orderly and syce came
to my rescue. They lifted the snow off me and took away my tent pole to
a carpenter to get it mended, while in what space was still left within
the tent I found I could still breathe, and so slept peacefully till in
an hour my tent pole was brought back mended and the tent reconstructed,
and I could get up in comfort.

I had had a very mild experience. Grief of a worse kind had been
widespread through the night, many officers and men losing their only
shelter irretrievably at two or three in the morning. The second column
came in that afternoon rather worn and battered, and the third
column--for from Gyantse we had become three--was snowed up for two
nights at Phari after a terrible march over the Tang-La from Tuna. Their
eventual march into Chumbi was also a severe ordeal. At Chumbi it
remained to await one's day of release. The snow delayed the passage of
the troops hardly at all. Leaving Chumbi in small detachments and using
both the Jalap-La and Natu-La routes, they gradually disappeared. At
length my own turn came. Leaving Chumbi one fine morning, and finding
myself again a passenger, I hastened by double marches to India across
the Natu-La down to Gangtok, through Sikkim, and into Siliguri. Strange
it was to think, as, after that last hot double march from Riang, one
sat under the punkah in Siliguri refreshment room, drinking tumbler
after tumbler of iced ginger-beer, that three days before one had pulled
icicles from one's beard on the top of the Natu-La.

Pleasant to get into the Darjiling mail that night and speed to
Calcutta; pleasant to feel oneself wrapped in the civilisation of the
Indian metropolis; pleasanter still to take train at Howrah, and be
carried up country to the crisp cool autumn of the Panjab and to one's
own fireside.

So the show was over--all over but for its memories, which for my own
part were mainly agreeable. As he lays those memories aside, the
selfish soldier's wish can hardly be other than that on some convenient
date in spring time not too many years distant, ere the person is too
stout and the legs too stiff to relish those high passes, some truculent
grand lama may necessitate and a kind Government organise another summer
trip to Lhassa.


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London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.




Transcriber's Note:

The following modifications have been made to the text.


Page 9: gods replaced with goods.

    Dismantling a furnished house, packing and warehousing your
    household gods, paying your outstanding bills,

Page 24: Missing period inserted after No.

    'What-ho, Bill!' said Atkins No 1.

Page 67: Period after FORAGING replaced with colon.

    AT GYANTSE: FIGHTING: FORAGING. TIBETAN RELIGIOUS ART

Page 106: Missin period inserted after common.

    soon grew quite common At every point

Page 112: PETI-JONG replaced with PETE-JONG.

    LAKE PALTI: DRAWING BLANK: PETI-JONG

Page 152: Missing period inserted after troops.

    when baking bread for British troops The result, though not
    unwholesome,

Last Advertisements Page: Period after ELDER replaced with comma.

    London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of To Lhassa at Last, by Powell Millington

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