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.