TO THE GREAT RIVER
I reached Gyantse on July 12. The advance to Lhasa began on the 14th. As
might be expected from the tone of the delegates, peace negociations
fell through. The Lhasa Government seemed to be chaotic and conveniently
inaccessible. The Dalai Lama remained a great impersonality, and the
four Shapés or Councillors disclaimed all responsibility. The Tsong-du,
or National Assembly, who virtually governed the country, had sent us no
communication. The delegates' attitude of _non possumus_ was not
assumed. Though these men were the highest officials in Tibet, they
could not guarantee that any settlement they might make with us would be
faithfully observed. There seemed no hope of a solution to the deadlock
except by absolute militarism. If the Tibetans had fought so stubbornly
at Gyantse, what fanaticism might we not expect at Lhasa! Most of us
thought that we could only reach the capital through the most awful
carnage. We pictured the 40,000 monks of Lhasa hurling themselves
defiantly on our camp. We saw them mown down by Maxims, lanes of dead.
A hopeless struggle, and an ugly page in military history. Still, we
must go on; there was no help for it. The blood of these people was on
their own heads.
We left Gyantse on the 14th, and plunged into the unknown towards Lhasa,
which we had reason to believe lay in some hidden valley 150 miles to
the north, beyond the unexplored basin of the Tsangpo. Every position on
the road was held. The Karo la had been enormously strengthened, and was
occupied by 2,000 men. The enemy's cavalry, which we had never seen,
were at Nagartse Jong. Gubshi, a dilapidated fort, only nineteen miles
on the road, was held by several hundred. The Tibetans intended to
dispute the passage of the Brahmaputra, and there were other strong
positions where the path skirted the Kyi-chu for miles beneath
overhanging rocks, which were carefully prepared for booby-traps. We had
to launch ourselves into this intensely hostile region and compel some
people--we did not know whom--to attach their signatures and seals to a
certain parchment which was to bind them to good behaviour in the
future, and a recognition of obligations they had hitherto disavowed.
Our force consisted of eight companies of the 8th Gurkhas, five
companies of the 32nd Pioneers, four companies of the 40th Pathans, four
companies of the Royal Fusiliers, two companies of Mounted Infantry,
No. 30 British Mountain Battery, a section of No. 7 Native Mountain
Battery, 1st Madras Sappers and Miners, machine-gun section of the
Norfolks, and details.[14] The 23rd Pioneers, to their disgust, were
left to garrison Gyantse. The transport included mule, yak, donkey, and
coolie corps.
[14] Companies of Pathans and Gurkhas were left to garrison Ralung,
Nagartse, Pehte, Chaksam, and Toilung Bridge.
The first three marches to Ralung were a repetition of the country
between Kalatso and Gyantse--in the valley a strip of irrigated land,
green and gold, with alternate barley and mustard fields between
hillsides bare and verdureless save for tufts of larkspur, astragalus,
and scattered yellow poppies. To Gyantse one descends 2,000 feet from a
country entirely barren of trees to a valley of occasional willow and
poplar groves; while from Gyantse, as one ascends, the clusters of trees
become fewer, until one reaches the treeless zone again at Ralung
(15,000 feet). The last grove is at Gubchi.
I quote some notes of the march from my diary:
'_July 14._--The villages by the roadside are deserted save for old
women and barking dogs. The Tibetans came down from the Karo la and
impressed the villagers. Many have fled into the hills, and are hiding
among the rocks and caves. Our pickets fired on some to-night. Seeing
their heads bobbing up and down among the rocks, they thought they were
surrounded. Many of the fugitives were women. Luckily, none were hit.
They were brought into camp whimpering and salaaming, and became
embarrassingly grateful when it was made clear to them that they were
not to be tortured or killed, but set free. They were called back,
however, to give information about grain, and thought their last hour
had come.'
'_July 16._--All the houses between Gubchi and Ralung are decorated with
diagonal blue, red, and white stripes, characteristic of the Ning-ma
sect of Buddhists. They remind me of the walls of Damascus after the
visit of the German Emperor. Heavy rain falls every day. Last night we
camped in a wet mustard-field. It is impossible to keep our bedding
dry.'
From Ralung the valley widens out, and the country becomes more bleak.
We enter a plateau frequented by gazelle. Cultivation ceases. The ascent
to the Karo Pass is very gradual. The path takes a sudden turn to the
east through a narrow gorge.
On the 17th we camped under the Karo la in the snow range of Noijin Kang
Sang, at an elevation of 1,000 feet above Mont Blanc. The pass was free
of snow, but a magnificent glacier descended within 500 feet of the
camp. We lay within four miles of the enemy's position. Most of us
expected heavy fighting the next morning, as we knew the Tibetans had
been strengthening their defences at the Karo la for some days. Volleys
were fired on our scouts on the 16th and 17th. The old wall had been
extended east and west until it ended in vertical cliffs just beneath
the snow-line. A second barrier had been built further on, and sangars
constructed on every prominent point to meet flank attacks. The wall
itself was massively strong, and it was approached by a steep cliff, up
which it was impossible to make a sustained charge, as the rarefied air
at this elevation (16,600 feet) leaves one breathless after the
slightest exertion. The Karo la was the strongest position on the road
to Lhasa. If the Tibetans intended to make another stand, here was their
chance.
In the messes there was much discussion as to the seriousness of the
opposition we were likely to meet with. The flanking parties had a long
and difficult climb before them that would take them some hours, and the
general feeling was that we should be lucky if we got the transport
through by noon. But when one of us suggested that the Tibetans might
fail to come up to the scratch, and abandon the position without firing
a shot, we laughed at him; but his conjecture was very near the mark.
At 7 a.m. the troops forming the line of advance moved into position.
The disposition of the enemy's sangars made a turning movement extremely
difficult, but a frontal attack on the wall, if stubbornly resisted,
could not be carried without severe loss. General Macdonald sent
flanking parties of the 8th Gurkhas on both sides of the valley to scale
the heights and turn the Tibetan position, and despatched the Royal
Fusiliers along the centre of the valley to attack the wall when the
opposition had been weakened.
Stretched on a grassy knoll on the left, enjoying the sunshine and the
smell of the warm turf, we civilians watched the whole affair with our
glasses. It might have been a picnic on the Surrey downs if it were not
for the tap-tap of the Maxim, like a distant woodpecker, in the valley,
and the occasional report of the 10-pounders by our side, which made the
valleys and cliffs reverberate like thunder.
The Tibetans' ruse was to open fire from the wall directly our troops
came into view, and then evacuate the position. They thus delayed the
pursuit while we were waiting for the scaling-party to ascend the
heights.
At nine o'clock the Gurkhas on the left signalled that no enemy were to
be seen. At the same time Colonel Cooper, of the Royal Fusiliers,
heliographed that the wall was unoccupied and the Tibetans in full
retreat. The mounted infantry were at once called up for the pursuit.
Meanwhile one or two jingals and some Tibetan marksmen kept up an
intermittent fire on the right flanking party from clefts in the
overhanging cliffs. A battery replied with shrapnel, covering our
advance. These pickets on the left stayed behind and engaged our right
flanking party until eleven o'clock. To turn the position the Gurkhas
climbed a parallel ridge, and were for a long time under fire of their
jingals. The last part of the ascent was along the edge of a glacier,
and then on to the shoulder of the ridge by steps which the Gurkhas cut
in the ice with their _kukris_, helping one another up with the butts of
their rifles. They carried rope scaling-ladders, but these were for the
descent. At 11.30 Major Murray and his two companies of Gurkhas appeared
on the heights, and possession was taken of the pass. The ridge that the
Tibetans had held was apparently deserted, but every now and then a man
was seen crouching in a cave or behind a rock, and was shot down. One
Kham man shot a Gurkha who was looking into the cave where he was
hiding. He then ran out and held up his thumbs, expecting quarter. He
was rightly cut down with _kukris_. The dying Gurkha's comrades rushed
the cave, and drove six more over the precipice without using steel or
powder. They fell sheer 300 feet. Another Gurkha cut off a Tibetan's
head with his own sword. On several occasions they hesitated to soil
their _kukris_ when they could despatch their victims in any other way.
[Illustration: KARO LA]
On a further ridge, a heart-breaking ascent of shale and boulders, we
saw two or three hundred Tibetans ascending into the clouds. We had
marked them at the beginning of the action, before we knew that the wall
was unoccupied. Even then it was clear that the men were fugitives, and
had no thought of holding the place. We could see them hours afterwards,
with our glasses, crouching under the cliffs. We turned shrapnel and
Maxims on them; the hillsides began to move. Then a company of Pathans
was sent up, and despatched over forty. It was at this point I saw an
act of heroism which quite changed my estimate of these men. A group of
four were running up a cliff, under fire from the Pathans at a distance
of about 500 yards. One was hit, and his comrade stayed behind to carry
him. The two unimpeded Tibetans made their escape, but the rescuer could
only shamble along with difficulty. He and his wounded comrade were both
shot down.
The 18th was a disappointing day to our soldiers. But the action was of
great interest, owing to the altitude in which our flanking parties had
to operate. There is a saying on the Indian frontier: 'There is a hill;
send up a Gurkha.' These sturdy little men are splendid mountaineers,
and will climb up the face of a rock while the enemy are rolling down
stones on them as coolly as they will rush a wall under heavy fire on
the flat. Their arduous climb took three and a half hours, and was a
real mountaineering feat. The cave fighting, in which they had three
casualties, took place at 19,000 feet, and this is probably the highest
elevation at which an action has been fought in history.
A few of the Tibetans fled by the highroad, along which the mounted
infantry pursued, killing twenty and taking ten prisoners. I asked a
native officer how he decided whom to spare or kill, and he said he
killed the men who ran, and spared those who came towards him. The
destiny that preserved the lives of our ten Kham prisoners when nearly
the whole of the levy perished reminded me in its capriciousness of
Caliban's whim in Setebos:
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'
These Kham men were in our mounted infantry camp until the release of
the prisoners in Lhasa, and made themselves useful in many ways--loading
mules, carrying us over streams, fetching wood and water, and fodder for
our horses. They were fed and cared for, and probably never fared better
in their lives. When they had nothing to do, they would sit down in a
circle and discuss things resignedly--the English, no doubt, and their
ways, and their own distant country. Sometimes they would ask to go
home; their mothers and wives did not know if they were alive or dead.
But we had no guarantee that they would not fight us again. Now they
knew the disparity of their arms they might shrink from further
resistance, yet there was every chance that the Lamas would compel them
to fight. They became quite popular in the camp, these wild, long-haired
men, they were so good-humoured, gentle in manner, and ready to help.
I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle was so hopeless. They
were brave and simple, and none of us bore the slightest vindictiveness
against them. Here was all the brutality of war, and none of the glory
and incentive. These men were of the same race as the people I had been
living amongst at Darjeeling--cheerful, jolly fellows--and I had seen
their crops ruined, their houses burnt and shelled, the dead lying about
the thresholds of what were their homes, and all for no fault of their
own--only because their leaders were politically impossible, which, of
course, the poor fellows did not know, and there was no one to tell
them. They thought our advance an act of unprovoked aggression, and they
were fighting for their homes.
Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning to put the fear of
God into them. We never saw a Tibetan within five miles who did not
carry a huge white flag. The second action at the Karo la was the end of
the Tibetan resistance. The fall of Gyantse Jong, which they thought
unassailable, seems to have broken their spirit altogether. At the Karo
la they had evidently no serious intention of holding the position, but
fought like men driven to the front against their will, with no
confidence or heart in the business at all. The friendly Bhutanese told
us that the Tibetans would not stand where they had once been defeated,
and that levies who had once faced us were not easily brought into the
field again. These were casual generalizations, no doubt, but they
contained a great deal of truth. The Kham men who opposed us at the
first Karo la action, the Shigatze men who attacked the mission in May,
and the force from Lhasa who hurled themselves on Kangma, were all new
levies. Many of our prisoners protested very strongly against being
released, fearing to be exposed again to our bullets and their own
Lamas.
On the 18th we reached Nagartse Jong, and found the Shapés awaiting us.
They met us in the same impracticable spirit. We were not to occupy the
jong, and they were not empowered to treat with us unless we returned to
Gyantse. It was a repetition of Khamba Jong and Tuna. In the afternoon a
durbar was held in Colonel Younghusband's tent, when the Tibetans showed
themselves appallingly futile and childish. They did not seem to realize
that we were in a position to dictate terms, and Colonel Younghusband
had to repeat that it was now too late for any compromise, and the
settlement must be completed at Lhasa.
From Nagartse we held interviews with these tedious delegates at almost
every camp. They exhausted everyone's patience except the
Commissioner's. For days they did not yield a point, and refused even
to discuss terms unless we returned to Gyantse. But their protests
became more urgent as we went on, their tone less minatory. It was not
until we were within fifty miles of Lhasa that the Tibetan Government
deigned to enter into communication with the mission. At Tamalung
Colonel Younghusband received the first communication from the National
Assembly; at Chaksam arrived the first missive the British Government
had ever received from the Dalai Lama. During the delay at the ferry the
councillors practically threw themselves on Colonel Younghusband's
mercy. They said that their lives would be forfeited if we proceeded,
and dwelt on the severe punishment they might incur if they failed to
conclude negociations satisfactorily. But Colonel Younghusband was equal
to every emergency. It would be impossible to find another man in the
British Empire with a personality so calculated to impress the Tibetans.
He sat through every durbar a monument of patience and inflexibility,
impassive as one of their own Buddhas. Priests and councillors found
that appeals to his mercy were hopeless. He, too, had orders from his
King to go to Lhasa; if he faltered, _his_ life also was at stake;
decapitation would await _him_ on his return. That was the impression he
purposely gave them. It curtailed palaver. How in the name of all their
Buddhas were they to stop such a man?
The whole progress of negociations put me in mind of the coercion of
very naughty children. The Lamas tried every guile to reduce his
demands. They would be cajoling him now if he had not given them an
ultimatum, and if they had not learnt by six weeks' contact and
intercourse with the man that shuffling was hopeless, that he never made
a promise that was not fulfilled, or a threat that was not executed. The
Tibetan treaty was the victory of a personality, the triumph of an
impression on the least impressionable people in the world. But I
anticipate.
While the Shapés were holding Colonel Younghusband in conference at
Nagartse, their cavalry were escorting a large convoy on the road to
Lhasa. Our mounted infantry came upon them six miles beyond Nagartse,
and as they were rounding them up the Tibetans foolishly fired on them.
We captured eighty riding and baggage ponies and mules and fourteen
prisoners, and killed several. They made no stand, though they were well
armed with a medley of modern rifles and well mounted. This was actually
the last shot fired on our side. The delegates had been full of
assurances that the country was clear of the enemy, hoping that the
convoy would get well away while they delayed us with fruitless protests
and reiterated demands to go back. While they were palavering in the
tent, they looked out and saw the Pathans go past with their rich yellow
silks and personal baggage looted in the brush with the cavalry. Their
consternation was amusing, and the situation had its element of humour.
A servant rushed to the door of the tent and delivered the whole tale of
woe. A mounted infantry officer arrived and explained that our scouts
had been fired on. After this, of course, there was no talk of anything
except the restitution of the loot. The Shapés deserved to lose their
kit. I do not remember what was arranged, but if any readers of this
record see a gorgeous yellow cloak of silk and brocade at a fancy-dress
ball in London, I advise them to ask its history.
This last encounter with the Tibetans is especially interesting, as they
were the best-armed body of men we had met. The weapons we captured
included a Winchester rifle, several Lhasa-made Martinis, a bolt rifle
of an old Austrian pattern, an English-made muzzle-loading rifle, a
12-bore breech-loading shot-gun, some Eley's ammunition, and an English
gun-case. The reports of Russian arms found in Tibet have been very much
exaggerated. During the whole campaign we did not come across more than
thirty Russian Government rifles, and these were weapons that must have
drifted into Tibet from Mongolia, just as rifles of British pattern
found their way over the Indian frontier into Lhasa. Also it must be
remembered that the weapons locally made in Lhasa were of British
pattern, and manufactured by experts decoyed from a British factory.
Had these men been Russian subjects, we should have regarded their
presence in Lhasa as an unquestionable proof of Muscovite assistance.
Jealousy and suspicion make nations wilfully blind. Russia fully
believes that we are giving underhand assistance to the Japanese, and
many Englishmen, who are unbiassed in other questions, are ready to
believe, without the slightest proof, that Russia has been supplying
Tibet with arms and generals. We had been informed that large quantities
of Russian rifles had been introduced into the country, and it was
rumoured that the Tibetans were reserving these for the defence of Lhasa
itself. But it is hardly credible that they should have sent levies
against us armed with their obsolete matchlocks when they were well
supplied with weapons of a modern pattern. Russian intrigue was active
in Lhasa, but it had not gone so far as open armament.
At Nagartse we came across the great Yamdok or Palti Lake, along the
shores of which winds the road to Lhasa. Nagartse Jong is a striking old
keep, built on a bluff promontory of hill stretching out towards the
blue waters of the lake. In the distance we saw the crag-perched
monastery of Samding, where lives the mysterious Dorje Phagmo, the
incarnation of the goddess Tara.
The wild mountain scenery of the Yamdok Tso, the most romantic in Tibet,
has naturally inspired many legends. When Samding was threatened by the
Dzungarian invaders early in the eighteenth century, Dorje Phagmo
miraculously converted herself and all her attendant monks and nuns into
pigs. Serung Dandub, the Dzungarian chief, finding the monastery
deserted, said that he would not loot a place guarded only by swine,
whereupon Dorje Phagmo again metamorphosed herself and her satellites.
The terrified invaders prostrated themselves in awe before the goddess,
and presented the monastery with the most priceless gifts. Similarly,
the Abbot of Pehte saved the fortress and town from another band of
invaders by giving the lake the appearance of green pasturelands, into
which the Dzungarians galloped and were engulfed. I quote these tales,
which have been mentioned in nearly every book on Tibet, as typical of
the country. Doubtless similar legends will be current in a few years
about the British to account for the sparing of Samding, Nagartse, and
Pehte Jong.
Special courtesy was shown the monks and nuns of Samding, in recognition
of the hospitality afforded Sarat Chandra Dass by the last incarnation
of Dorje Phagmo, who entertained the Bengali traveller, and saw that he
was attended to and cared for through a serious illness. A letter was
sent Dorje Phagmo, asking if she would receive three British officers,
including the antiquary of the expedition. But the present incarnation,
a girl of six or seven years, was invisible, and the convent was
reported to be bare of ornament and singularly disappointing. There
were no pigs.
If only one were without the incubus of an army, a month in the Noijin
Kang Sang country and the Yamdok Plain would be a delightful experience.
But when one is accompanying a column one loses more than half the
pleasure of travel. One has to get up at a fixed hour--generally
uncomfortably early--breakfast, and pack and load one's mules and see
them started in their allotted place in the line, ride in a crowd all
day, often at a snail's pace, and halt at a fixed place. Shooting is
forbidden on the line of march. When alone one can wander about with a
gun, pitch camp where one likes, make short or long marches as one
likes, shoot or fish or loiter for days in the same place. The spirit
which impels one to travel in wild places is an impulse, conscious or
unconscious, to be free of laws and restraints, to escape conventions
and social obligations, to temporarily throw one's self back into an
obsolete phase of existence, amidst surroundings which bear little mark
of the arbitrary meddling of man. It is not a high ideal, but men often
deceive themselves when they think they make expeditions in order to add
to science, and forsake the comforts of life, and endure hunger, cold,
fatigue and loneliness, to discover in exactly what parallel of unknown
country a river rises or bends to some particular point of the compass.
How many travellers are there who would spend the same time in an
office poring over maps or statistics for the sake of geography or any
other science? We like to have a convenient excuse, and make a virtue
out of a hobby or an instinct. But why not own up that one travels for
the glamour of the thing? In previous wanderings my experience had
always been to leave a base with several different objectives in view,
and to take the route that proved most alluring when met by a choice of
roads--some old deserted city or ruined shrine, some lake or marshland
haunted by wild-fowl that have never heard the crack of a gun, or a
strip of desert where one must calculate how to get across with just
sufficient supplies and no margin. I like to drift to the magnet of
great watersheds, lofty mountain passes, frontiers where one emerges
among people entirely different in habit and belief from folk the other
side, but equally convinced that they are the only enlightened people on
earth. Often in India I had dreamed of the great inland waters of Tibet
and Mongolia, the haunts of myriads of duck and geese--Yamdok Tso,
Tengri Nor, Issik Kul, names of romance to the wild-fowler, to be
breathed with reverence and awe. I envied the great flights of mallard
and pochard winging northward in March and April to the unknown; and
here at last I was camping by the Yamdok Tso itself--with an army.
Yet I have digressed to grumble at the only means by which a sight of
these hidden waters was possible. When we passed in July, there were no
wild-fowl on the lake except the bar-headed geese and Brahminy duck. The
ruddy sheldrake, or Brahminy, is found all over Tibet, and will be
associated with the memory of nearly every march and camping-ground. It
is distinctly a Buddhist bird. From it is derived the title of the
established Church of the Lamas, the Abbots of which wear robes of ruddy
sheldrake colour, Gelug-pa.[15] In Burmah the Brahminy is sacred to
Buddhism as a symbol of devotion and fidelity, and it was figured on
Asoka's pillars in the same emblematical character.[16] The Brahminy is
generally found in pairs, and when one is shot the other will often
hover round till it falls a victim to conjugal love. In India the bird
is considered inedible, but we were glad of it in Tibet, and discovered
no trace of fishy flavour.
[15] Waddell, 'Lamaism in Tibet,' p. 200.
[16] _Ibid._, p. 409.
Early in April, when we passed the Bam Tso and Kala Tso we found the
lakes frequented by nearly all the common migratory Indian duck; and
again, on our return large flights came in. But during the summer months
nothing remained except the geese and sheldrake and the goosander, which
is resident in Tibet and the Himalayas. I take it that no respectable
duck spends the summer south of the Tengri Nor. At Lhasa, mallard, teal,
gadwall, and white-eyed pochard were coming in from the north as we
were leaving in the latter half of September, and followed us down to
the plains. They make shorter flights than I imagined, and longer stays
at their fashionable Central Asian watering-places.
We marched three days along the banks of the Yamdok Tso, and halted a
day at Nagartse. Duck were not plentiful on the lake. Black-headed gulls
and redshanks were common. The fields of blue borage by the villages
were an exquisite sight. On the 22nd we reached Pehte. The jong, a
medieval fortress, stands out on the lake like Chillon, only it is more
crumbling and dilapidated. The courtyards are neglected and overgrown
with nettles. Soldiers, villagers, both men and women, had run away to
the hills with their flocks and valuables. Only an old man and two boys
were left in charge of the chapel and the fort. The hide fishing-boats
were sunk, or carried over to the other side. On July 24 we left the
lake near the village of Tamalung, and ascended the ridge on our left to
the Khamba Pass, 1,200 feet above the lake level. A sudden turn in the
path brought us to the saddle, and we looked down on the great river
that has been guarded from European eyes for nearly a century. In the
heart of Tibet we had found Arcadia--not a detached oasis, but a
continuous strip of verdure, where the Tsangpo cleaves the bleak hills
and desert tablelands from west to east.
All the valley was covered with green and yellow cornfields, with
scattered homesteads surrounded by clusters of trees, not dwarfish and
stunted in the struggle for existence, but stately and spreading--trees
that would grace the valley of the Thames or Severn.
We had come through the desert to Arcady. When we left Phari, months and
months before, and crossed the Tang la, we entered the desert.
Tuna is built on bare gravel, and in winter-time does not boast a blade
of grass. Within a mile there are stunted bushes, dry, withered, and
sapless, which lend a sustenance to the gazelle and wild asses, beasts
that from the beginning have chosen isolation, and, like the Tibetans,
who people the same waste, are content with spare diet so long as they
are left alone.
Every Tibetan of the tableland is a hermit by choice, or some strange
hereditary instinct has impelled him to accept Nature's most niggard
gifts as his birthright, so that he toils a lifetime to win by his own
labour and in scanty measure the necessaries which Nature deals lavishly
elsewhere, herding his yaks on the waste lands, tilling the unproductive
soil for his meagre crop of barley, and searching the hillsides for
yak-dung for fuel to warm his stone hut and cook his meal of flour.
Yet north and south of him, barely a week's journey, are warm, fertile
valleys, luxuriant crops, unstinted woodlands, where Mongols like
himself accept Nature's largess philosophically as the most natural
thing in the world.
It seems as if some special and economical law of Providence, such a law
as makes at least one man see beauty in every type of woman, even the
most unlovely, had ordained it, so that no corner of the earth, not even
the Sahara, Tadmor, Tuna, or Guru, should lack men who devote themselves
blindly and without question to live there, and care for what one might
think God Himself had forgotten and overlooked.
These men--Bedouin, Tibetans, and the like--enjoy one thing, for which
they forego most things that men crave for, and that is freedom. They do
not possess the gifts that cause strife, and divisions, and law-making,
and political parties, and changes of Government. They have too little
to share. Their country is invaded only at intervals of centuries. On
these occasions they fight bravely, as their one inheritance is at
stake. But they are bigoted and benighted; they have not kept time with
evolution, and so they are defeated. The conservatism, the
exclusiveness, that has kept them free so long has shut the door to
'progress,' which, if they were enlightened and introspective, they
would recognise as a pestilence that has infected one half of the world
at the expense of the other, making both unhappy and discontented.
The Tuna Plain is like the Palmyra Desert at the point where one comes
within view of the snows of Lebanon. It is not monotonous; there is too
much play of light and shade for that. Everywhere the sun shines, the
mirage dances; the white calcined plain becomes a flock of frightened
sheep hurrying down the wind; the stunted sedge by the lakeside leaps up
like a squadron in ambush and sweeps rapidly along without ever
approaching nearer. Sometimes a herd of wild asses is mingled in the
dance, grotesquely magnified; stones and nettles become walls and men.
All the country is elusive and unreal.
A few miles beyond Guru the road skirts the Bamtso Lake, which must once
have filled the whole valley. Now the waters have receded, as the
process of desiccation is going on which has entirely changed the
geographical features of Central Asia, and caused the disappearance of
great expanses of water like the Koko Nor, and the dwindling of lakes
and river from Khotan to Gobi. The Roof of the World is becoming less
and less inhabitable.
From the desert to Arcady is not a long journey, but armies travel
slowly. After months of waiting and delay we reached the promised land.
It was all suddenly unfolded to our view when we stood on the Khamba la.
Below us was a purely pastoral landscape. Beyond lay hills even more
barren and verdureless than those we had crossed. But every mile or so
green fan-shaped valleys, irrigated by clear streams, interrupted the
barrenness, opening out into the main valley east and west with perfect
symmetry. To the north-east flowed the Kyi Chu, the valley in which
Lhasa lay screened, only fifty-six miles distant.
To the south of the pass lay the great Yamdok Lake, wild and beautiful,
its channels twining into the dark interstices of the hills--valleys of
mystery and gloom, where no white man has ever trod. Lights and shadows
fell caressingly on the lake and hills. At one moment a peak was ebony
black, at another--as the heavy clouds passed from over it, and the
sun's rays illumined it through a thin mist--golden as a field of
buttercups. Often at sunset the grassy cones of the hills glow like
gilded pagodas, and the Tibetans, I am told, call these sunlit plots the
'golden ground.'
In bright sunlight the lake is a deep turquoise blue, but at evening
time transient lights and shades fleet over it with the moving clouds,
light forget-me-not, deep purple, the azure of a butterfly's wing--then
all is swept away, immersed in gloom, before the dark, menacing
storm-clouds.
On the 25th I crossed the river with the 1st Mounted Infantry and 40th
Pathans. My tent is pitched on the roof of a rambling two-storied house,
under the shade of a great walnut-tree. Crops, waist-deep, grow up to
the walls--barley, wheat, beans, and peas. On the roof are garden
flowers in pots, hollyhocks, and marigolds. The cornfields are bright
with English wild-flowers--dandelions, buttercups, astragalus, and a
purple Michaelmas daisy.
There is no village, but farmhouses are dotted about the valley, and
groves of trees--walnut and peach, and poplar and willow--enclosed
within stone walls. Wild birds that are almost tame are nesting in the
trees--black and white magpies, crested hoopoes, and turtle-doves. The
groves are irrigated like the fields, and carpeted with flowers.
Homelike butterflies frequent them, and honey-bees.
Everything is homelike. There is no mystery in the valley, except its
access, or, rather, its inaccessibility. We have come to it through snow
passes, over barren, rocky wildernesses; we have won it with toil and
suffering, through frost and rain and snow and blistering sun.
And now that we had found Arcady, I would have stayed there. Lhasa was
only four marches distant, but to me, in that mood of almost immoral
indolence, it seemed that this strip of verdure, with its happy pastoral
scenes, was the most impassable barrier that Nature had planted in our
path. Like the Tibetans, she menaced and threatened us at first, then
she turned to us with smiles and cajoleries, entreating us to stay, and
her seduction was harder to resist.
* * * * *
To trace the course of the Tsangpo River from Tibet to its outlet into
Assam has been the goal of travellers for over a century. Here is one
of the few unknown tracts of the world, where no white man has ever
penetrated. Until quite recently there was a hot controversy among
geographers as to whether the Tsangpo was the main feeder of the
Brahmaputra or reappeared in Burmah as the Irawaddy. All attempts to
explore the river from India have proved fruitless, owing to the intense
hostility of the Abor and Passi Minyang tribes, who oppose all intrusion
with their poisoned arrows and stakes, sharp and formidable as spears,
cunningly set in the ground to entrap invaders; while the vigilance of
the Lamas has made it impossible for any European to get within 150
miles of the Tsangpo Valley from Tibet. It was not until 1882 that all
doubt as to the identity of the Tsangpo and Brahmaputra was set aside by
the survey of the native explorer A. K. And the course of the
Brahmaputra, or Dihong, as it is called in Northern Assam, was never
thoroughly investigated until the explorations of Mr. Needham, the
Political Officer at Sadiya, and his trained Gurkhas, who penetrated
northwards as far as Gina, a village half a day's journey beyond Passi
Ghat, and only about seventy miles south of the point reached by A. K.
from Tibet.
The return of the British expedition from Tibet was evidently the
opportunity of a century for the investigation of this unexplored
country. We had gained the hitherto inaccessible base, and were
provided with supplies and transport on the spot; we had no opposition
to expect from the Tibetans, who were naturally eager to help us out of
the country by whatever road we chose, and had promised to send
officials with us to their frontier at Gyala Sendong, who would forage
for us and try to impress the villagers into our service. The hostile
tribes beyond the frontier were not so likely to resist an expedition
moving south to their homes after a successful campaign as a force
entering their country from our Indian frontier. In the latter case they
would naturally be more suspicious of designs on their independence. The
distance from Lhasa to Assam was variously estimated from 500 to 700
miles. I think the calculations were influenced, perhaps unconsciously,
by sympathy with, or aversion from, the enterprise.
* * * * *
The Shapés, it is true, though they promised to help us if we were
determined on it, advised us emphatically not to go by the Tsangpo
route. They said that the natives of their own outlying provinces were
bandits and cut-throats, practically independent of the Lhasa
Government, while the savages beyond the frontier were dangerous people
who obeyed no laws. The Shapés' notions as to the course of the river
were most vague. When questioned, they said there was a legend that it
disappeared into a hole in the earth. The country near its mouth was
inhabited by savages, who went about unclothed, and fed on monkeys and
reptiles. It was rumoured that they were horned like animals, and that
mothers did not know their own children. But this they could not vouch
for.
It was believed that tracks of a kind existed from village to village
all along the route, but these, of course, after a time would become
impracticable for pack transport. The mules would have to be abandoned,
and sent back to Gyantse by our guides, or presented to the Tibetan
officials who accompanied us. Then we were to proceed by forced marches
through the jungle, with coolie transport if obtainable; if not, each
man was to carry rice for a few days. The distance from the Tibet
frontier to Sadiya is not great, and the unexplored country is reckoned
not to be more than seven stages. The force would bivouac, and, if their
advance were resisted, would confine themselves solely to defensive
tactics. In case of opposition, the greatest difficulty would be the
care of the wounded, as each invalid would need four carriers. Thus, a
few casualties would reduce enormously the fighting strength of the
escort.
But opposition was unlikely. Mr. Needham, who has made the tribes of the
Dihong Valley the study of a lifetime, and succeeded to some extent in
gaining their confidence, considered the chances of resistance small. He
would, he said, send messages to the tribes that the force coming
through their country from the north were his friends, that they had
been engaged in a punitive expedition against the Lamas (whom the Abors
detested), that they were returning home by the shortest route to Assam,
and had no designs on the territory they traversed. It was proposed that
Mr. Needham should go up the river as far as possible and furnish the
party with supplies.
All arrangements had been made for the exploring-party, which was to
leave the main force at Chaksam Ferry, and was expected to arrive in
Sadiya almost simultaneously with the winding up of the expedition at
Siliguri. Captain Ryder, R.E., was to command the party, and his escort
was to be made up of the 8th Gurkhas, who had long experience of the
Assam frontier tribes, and were the best men who could be chosen for the
work. Officers were selected, supply and transport details arranged,
everything was in readiness, when at the last moment, only a day or two
before the party was to start, a message was received from Simla
refusing to sanction the expedition. Colonel Younghusband was entirely
in favour of it, but the military authorities had a clean slate; they
had come through so far without a single disaster, and it seemed that no
scientific or geographical considerations could have any weight with
them in their determination to take no risks. Of course there were
risks, and always must be in enterprises of the kind; but I think the
circumstances of the moment reduced them to a minimum, and that the
results to be obtained from the projected expedition should have
entirely outweighed them.
In European scientific circles much was expected of the Tibetan
expedition. But it has added very little to science. The surveys that
were made have done little more than modify the previous investigations
of native surveyors.[17]
[17] The only expedition sanctioned is that which is now exploring
the little-known trade route between Gyantse and Gartok, where a
mart has been opened to us by the recent Tibetan treaty. The
party consists of Captain Ryder, R.E., in command, Captain Wood,
R.E., Lieutenant Bailey, of the 32nd Pioneers, and six picked men
of the 8th Gurkhas. They follow the main feeder of the Tsangpo
nearly 500 miles, then strike into the high lacustrine tableland
of Western Tibet, passing the great Mansarowar Lake to Gartok;
thence over the Indus watershed, and down the Sutlej Valley to
Simla, where they are expected about the end of January. The
party will be able to collect useful information about the trade
resources of the country; but the route has already been mapped
by Nain Singh, the Indian surveyor, and the geographical results
of the expedition will be small compared with what would have
been derived from the projected Tengri Nor and Brahmaputra trips.
An expedition to the mountains bordering the Tengri Nor, only nine days
north of Lhasa, would have linked all the unknown country north of the
Tsang po with the tracts explored by Sven Hedin, and left the map
without a hiatus in four degrees of longitude from Cape Comorin to the
Arctic Ocean. But military considerations were paramount.
For myself, the abandonment of the expedition was a great
disappointment. I had counted on it as early as February, and had made
all preparations to join it.