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.