THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT
To write of any completed phase of the expedition at this stage, when I
have carried my readers only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity
that requires an apology. My excuse is that to all transport officers,
and everyone who was in touch with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will
be remembered as the very backbone of resistance, the most implacable
barriers to our advance.
The expedition was essentially a transport 'show.' It is true that the
Tibetans proved themselves brave enemies, but their acquired military
resources are insignificant when compared with the obstacles Nature has
planted in the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the passes, the
severity of the climate, the sterility of the mountains and tablelands,
make the interior of the country almost inaccessible to an invading
army. That we went through these obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was
a matter of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to many members of
the expeditionary force.
To appreciate the difficulties the mission force had to contend with,
one must first realize the extraordinary changes of climate that are
experienced in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna. Choose the coldest day
in the year at Kew Gardens, expose yourself freely to the wind, and then
spend five minutes in the tropical house, and you may gather some idea
of the sensation of sleeping in the Rungpo Valley the night after
crossing the Jelapla.
When I first made the journey in early January, even the Rungpo Valley
was chilly, and the vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the
change very keenly in March, when I made a hurried rush into Darjeeling
for equipment and supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the
pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was warm and sunny in the
daytime, in places where there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were
beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw, migratory duck were coming
up the valley in twos and threes from the plains of India--even a few
vultures had arrived to fatten on the carcasses of the dead transport
animals. The morning after leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at
13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale and rock. When I
crossed the Jelapla half a hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet
of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take advantage of every
protuberance in the rock to prevent myself from being blown over the
_khud_. The road was impassable for mules and ponies. The cold was
numbing. The next evening, in a valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was
suffering from the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and vegetation
is equally striking--from glaciers and moraines to tropical forests
brilliant with the scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet I
had not seen an insect of any kind for two months, but in the Sikkim
valleys the most gorgeous butterflies were abundant, and the rest-house
at Rungpo was invested by a plague of flies. In the hot weather the
climate of the Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most stations
in the plains of India. The valleys are close and shut in, and the heat
is intensified by the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders. In
the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious. The Supply and
Transport Corps, who were left behind at stages like Rungpo through the
hot weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time on the whole than the
half-frozen troops at the front, and they were left out of all the fun.
Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the severity of climate,
and the scarcity of fodder and fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend
with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest,
foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over
precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst
fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments
with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred
buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven
camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died
by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal
was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally
purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they
reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected;
the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no
precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and
at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were massed on
the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after
much patient care, the disease was stamped out.
Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted
struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of
the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superstitious
natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.
As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were
attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left
the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in
climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the
Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds
from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female
yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases,
the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The
epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd,
fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried
off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven
through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous
mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were
formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.
Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high
altitudes, where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless corps. The
few survivors were exterminated by pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January
23, the 3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437; two months
afterwards all but 70 had died. On March 21, 80 exhausted beasts
straggled into Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and 2nd Yak
Corps, which originally numbered 2,300 heads. The officers, who, bearded
and weather-beaten, deserted by many of their followers, after months of
wandering, reached our camp with the remnants of the corps, told a story
of hardship and endurance that would provide a theme for an epic.
The epic of the yaks does not comprise the whole tale of disaster.
Rinderpest carried off 77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps
was segregated for two months with foot and mouth disease. Amongst other
casualties there were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony corps, and
the Tibet pony corps raised locally. The animals were hastily mobilized
and incompletely equipped, overworked and underfed. Cheap and inferior
saddlery was issued, which gave the animals sore backs within a week.
The transport officer was in a constant dilemma. He had to overwork his
animals or delay the provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently
needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no rest, but worked till they
dropped. Of the original draft of mules that were employed on the line
to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per cent. died. It is no good trying to blink
the fact that the expedition was unpopular, and that at the start many
economical shifts were attempted which proved much more expensive in the
end. Our party system is to blame. The Opposition must be appeased,
expenses kept down, and the business is entered into half-heartedly. In
the usual case a few companies are grudgingly sent to the front, and
then, when something like a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps
at the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade follows, and
Government wakes to the necessity of grappling with the situation
seriously.
But to return to the spot where the evil effects of the system were
felt, and not merely girded at. To replace and supplement the local
drafts of animals that were dying, trained Government mule corps were
sent up from the plains, properly equipped and under experienced
officers. These did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in Lhasa on
August 3 in as good condition as one could wish. Of all transport
animals, the mule is the hardiest and most enduring. He does not
complain when he is overloaded, but will go on all day, and when he
drops there is no doubt that he has had enough. Nine times out of ten
when he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent to extremes of
heat and cold. On the road from Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules
fell over a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally submerged.
Their drivers could not pull them out, and, to solve the dilemma, went
on and reported them dead. The next day an officer found them and
extricated them alive. They had been exposed to 46° of frost. They still
survive.
Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in good condition, unless it
is the Balti and Ladaki coolie. Several hundred of these hardy
mountaineers were imported from the North-West frontier to work on the
most dangerous and difficult sections of the road. They can bear cold
and fatigue and exposure better than any transport animal on the line,
and they are surer-footed. Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but
were afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are excellent workers
at high altitudes, and sing cheerily as they toil up the mountains with
their loads. I have seen them throw down their packs when they reached
the summit of a pass, make a rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer
lustily like school-boys. But the coolies were not all equally
satisfactory. Those indented from the Nepal durbar were practically an
impressed gang. Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm clothing did
not seem to reconcile them to hard work, and after a month or two they
became discontented and refractory. Their officers, however, were men of
tact and decision, and they were able to prevent what might have been a
serious mutiny. The discontented ones were gradually replaced by Baltis,
Ladakis, and Garwhalis, and the coolies became the most reliable
transport corps on the line.
Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression current at the time,
was got into working order, and a system was gradually developed by
which the right animal, man, or conveyance was working in the right
place, and supplies were sent through at a pace that was very creditable
considering the country traversed.
From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a distance of sixty miles,
the ascent in the road is scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a
few contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this section of the
line was worked by bullock-carts. Government carts are built to carry 11
maunds (880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs with 15 or 16
maunds. As the carrying power of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is
only 2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport in a mountainous
country, where there can be no road for vehicles, is nearly five times
as difficult and complicated as in the plains. And this is without
making any allowance for the inevitable mortality among transport
animals at high elevations, or taking into account the inevitable
congestion on mountain-paths, often blocked by snow, carried away by the
rains, and always too narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.
In the beginning of March, when the line was in its best working order,
from 1,500 to 2,000 maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of these, only
400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the rest was stored at Gantok or
consumed on the road. Later, when the line was extended to Gyantse, not
more than 100 maunds a day reached the front.
In the first advance on Gyantse, our column was practically launched
into the unknown. As far as we knew, no local food or forage could be
obtained. It was too early in the season for the spring pasturage. We
could not live on the country. The ever-lengthening line of
communication behind us was an artery, the severing of which would be
fatal to our advance.
One can best realize the difficulties grappled with by imagining the
extreme case of an army entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it
must be remembered, can only carry its own food for ten days. That is
to say, in a country where there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can
make at the most nine marches. On the ninth day beasts and drivers will
have consumed all the supplies taken with them. Supposing on the tenth
day no supply-base has been reached, the convoy is stranded, and can
neither advance nor retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary
convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed nothing to the
advance of the army. Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding,
guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still await transport at the
base.
Fortunately, the country between our frontier and Lhasa is not all
desert. Yet it is barren enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with
such short preparation, we were able to push through troops to Gyantse
in April, when there was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in Lhasa
in August with a force of more than 4,000 fighting men and followers.
Before the second advance to Gyantse the spring crops had begun to
appear. Without them we could not have advanced. All other local produce
on the road was exhausted. That is to say, for 160 miles, with the
important exception of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our own
supplies. The mules carried their own grain, and no more. Gyantse once
reached, the Tibetan Government granaries and stores from the
monasteries produced enough to carry us on. But besides the transport
mules, there were 100 Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200
mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers' mounts, to be fed,
and these carried nothing--contributed nothing to the stomach of the
army.
How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an
army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal
was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two
possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and
impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not
require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and
fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that
providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.
The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from
the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow passes to Kamparab on
the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400
pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth
to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved
the situation.
The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu
Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.
The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the
transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes
nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of grass, tamarisk, and
tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and
wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy
disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation.
The red and white tassels and favours of cowrie-shells the Tibetans hang
about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and
frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.
If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced
to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in
their passage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did
better. Yet I have often passed the Lieutenant in command of the corps
lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning.
Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of
spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in
adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think
it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.
The final advance from Gyantse to Lhasa was a comparatively easy matter.
Crops were plentiful, and large supplies of grain were obtained from the
monasteries and jongs on the road. We found, contrary to anticipation,
that the produce in this part of Tibet was much greater than the
consumption. In many places we found stores that would last a village
three or four years. Our transport animals lived on the country. We
arrived at Lhasa with 2,600 mules and 400 coolies. The yak and donkey
corps were left at the river for convoy work. It would have been
impossible to have pushed through in the winter.
All the produce we consumed on the road was paid for. In this way the
expense of the army's keep fell on the Lhasa Government, who had to pay
the indemnity, and our presence in the country was not directly, at any
rate, a burden on the agricultural population of the villages through
which we passed.
Looking back on the splendid work accomplished by the transport, it is
difficult to select any special phase more memorable than another. The
complete success of the organization and the endurance and grit
displayed by officers and men are equally admirable. I could cite the
coolness of a single officer in a mob of armed and mutinous coolies,
when the compelling will of one man and a few blows straight from the
shoulder kept the discontented harnessed to their work and quelled a
revolt; or the case of another who drove his diseased yaks over the snow
passes into Chumbi, and after two days' rest started with a fresh corps
on ten months of the most tedious labour the mind of man can imagine,
rising every day before daybreak in an almost Arctic cold, traversing
the same featureless tablelands, and camping out at night cheerfully in
the open plain with his escort of thirty rifles. There was always the
chance of a night attack, but no other excitement to break the eternal
monotony. But it was all in the day's work, and the subaltern took it
like a picnic. Another supreme test of endurance in man and beast were
the convoys between Chumbi and Tuna in the early part of the year, which
for hardships endured remind me of Skobeleff's dash through the Balkans
on Adrianople. Only our labours were protracted, Skobeleff's the
struggle of a few days. Even in mid-March a convoy of the 12th Mule
Corps, escorted by two companies of the 23rd Pioneers, were overtaken by
a blizzard on their march between Phari and Tuna, and camped in two feet
of snow with the thermometer 18° below zero. A driving hurricane made it
impossible to light a fire or cook food. The officers were reduced to
frozen bully beef and neat spirits, while the sepoys went without food
for thirty-six hours. The fodder for the mules was buried deep in snow.
The frozen flakes blowing through the tents cut like a knife. While the
detachment was crossing a stream, the mules fell through the ice, and
were only extricated with great difficulty. The drivers arrived at Tuna
frozen to the waist. Twenty men of the 12th Mule Corps were frostbitten,
and thirty men of the 23rd Pioneers were so incapacitated that they had
to be carried in on mules. On the same day there were seventy cases of
snow-blindness among the 8th Gurkhas.
Until late in April all the plain was intersected by frozen streams.
Blankets were stripped from the mules to make a pathway for them over
the ice. Often they went without water at night, and at mid-day, when
the surface of the ice was melted, their thirst was so great that many
died from overdrinking.
Had the Tibetans attacked us in January, they would have taken us at a
great disadvantage. The bolts of our rifles jammed with frozen oil. Oil
froze in the Maxims, and threw them out of gear. More often than not the
mounted infantry found the butts of their rifles frozen in the buckets,
and had to dismount and use both hands to extricate them.
I think these men who took the convoys through to Tuna; the 23rd, who
wintered there and supplied most of the escort; and the 8th Gurkhas, who
cut a road in the frost-bound plain, may be said to have broken the back
of the resistance to our advance. They were the pioneers, and the troops
who followed in spring and summer little realized what they owed to
them.
The great difficulties we experienced in pushing through supplies to
Tuna, which is less than 150 miles from our base railway-station at
Siliguri, show the absurdity of the idea of a Russian advance on Lhasa.
The nearest Russian outpost is over 1,000 miles distant, and the country
to be traversed is even more barren and inhospitable than on our
frontier.
Up to the present the route to Chumbi has been viâ Siliguri and the
Jelap and Nathu Passes, but the natural outlet of the valley is by the
Ammo Chu, which flows through Bhutan into the Dooars, where it becomes
the Torsa. The Bengal-Dooars Railway now extends to Madhari Hat, fifteen
miles from the point where the Torsa crosses the frontier, whence it is
only forty-eight miles as the crow flies to Rinchengong in the Chumbi
Valley. When the projected Ammo Chu cart-road is completed, all the
difficulty of carrying stores into Chumbi will be obviated. Engineers
are already engaged on the first trace, and the road will be in working
order within a few months. It avoids all snow passes, and nowhere
reaches an elevation of more than 9,000 feet. The direct route will
shorten the journey to Chumbi by several days, bring Lhasa within a
month's journey of Calcutta, and considerably improve trade facilities
between Tibet and India.