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.