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Transcriber's Note:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been retained as in
the original.
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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.'