[Frontispiece: The Summit of Mount Everest. (_By permission of the
Mount Everest Committee._)]
THE LAST SECRETS
The Final Mysteries of Exploration
By JOHN BUCHAN
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
_First Impression, September 1923_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS
TO THE MEMORY OF
BRIG.-GEN. CECIL RAWLING, C.M.G., C.I.E.
WHO FELL AT THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES
AN INTREPID EXPLORER
A GALLANT SOLDIER
AND THE BEST OF FRIENDS
PREFACE
The first two decades of the twentieth century will rank as a most
distinguished era in the history of exploration, for during them many
of the great geographical riddles of the world have been solved.
This book contains a record of some of the main achievements. What
Nansen said of Polar exploration is true of all exploration; its
story is a "mighty manifestation of the power of the Unknown over the
mind of man." The Unknown, happily, will be always with us, for
there are infinite secrets in a blade of grass, and an eddy of wind,
and a grain of dust, and human knowledge will never attain that
finality when the sense of wonder shall cease. But to the ordinary
man there is an appeal in large, bold, and obvious conundrums, which
is lacking in the _minutiæ_ of research. Thousands of square miles
of the globe still await surveying and mapping, but most of the
exploration of the future will be the elucidation of details. The
main lines of the earth's architecture have been determined, and the
task is now one of amplifying our knowledge of the groyning and
buttresses and stone-work. There are no more unvisited forbidden
cities, or unapproached high mountains, or unrecorded great rivers.
"The world is disenchanted; oversoon
Must Europe send her spies through all the land."
It is in a high degree improbable that many geographical problems
remain, the solving of which will come upon the mind with the
overwhelming romance of the unveilings we have been privileged to
witness. The explorer's will still be a noble trade, but it will be
a filling up of gaps in a framework of knowledge which we already
possess. The morning freshness has gone out of the business, and we
are left with the plodding duties of the afternoon.
Some of the undertakings described in these pages have not been
completed. The foot of man has not yet stood on the last snows of
Everest, or on the summit of Carstensz. One notable discovery I have
not dealt with--the great Turfan Depression in the heart of Central
Asia, far below the sea level, the existence of which was first
established by the Russian, Roborowski, before the close of last
century, and the details of which have been described by Sir Aurel
Stein in his _Ruins of Desert Cathay_ and _Serindia_. But Sir
Aurel's interest was chiefly in the antiquities of the place, and the
more strictly geographical results have not yet been given to the
world. Today, if we survey the continents, we find nothing of which
the main features have not been already expounded. The Amazon basin
might be regarded as an exception, and only a little while ago men
dreamed of discovering among the wilds of the Bolivian frontier the
remains, perhaps even the survival, of an ancient civilization. It
would appear that these dreams are baseless. The late President
Roosevelt did, indeed, succeed in putting upon the map a new river,
the Rio Roosevelt, 1,500 kilometres long, of which the upper course
was entirely unknown, and the lower course explored only by a few
rubber collectors--a river which is the chief affluent of the
Madeira, which is itself the chief affluent of the Amazon. But now
all the tributaries have been traced, and though there is much
unexplored ground in the Amazon valley, it consists of forest tracts
lying between the rivers, all more or less alike in their general
character, and with nothing to repay the explorer except their flora
and fauna. Africa is now an open book, even though many parts have
been little travelled. The map of Asia alone holds one blank patch
which may well be the last of the great secrets--the Desert of
Southern Arabia, which lies between Yemen and Oman, 800 by 500 miles
of waterless sands. Long ago there were routes athwart it, and
hidden in its recesses some great news may await the traveller. But
its crossing will be a hazardous affair for whoever undertakes it,
since he will have to lean upon the frail reed of milk camels for
food and transport. For the rest, the problems are now of survey and
scientific enquiry rather than of exploration in the grand manner.
I have many acknowledgments to make. My thanks are due in the first
place to Mr. Charles Turley Smith, who has contributed the chapters
on Arctic and Antarctic Exploration, subjects on which he is
specially equipped to write; and, in order to put the conquest of the
two Poles in its proper light, has supplied a sketch of the long
story of Polar exploration. I am deeply indebted to Mr. Arthur R.
Hinks, the Secretary, and to Mr. Edward Heawood, the Librarian, of
the Royal Geographical Society for their help and advice. I have
also to express my thanks to Messrs. Constable and Company for
permission to reproduce illustrations and to quote from works
published by them; to Major G. H. Putnam and Messrs. Seeley, Service,
and Company for the same kindness; to Major F. M. Bailey, C.I.E., the
British Political Officer in Sikkim, for the story of the Brahmaputra
Gorges; and to my friends of the Mount Everest Committee for their
assent to my use of their beautiful photographs of that mountain.
J. B.
CONTENTS
I. Lhasa
II. The Gorges of the Brahmaputra
III. The North Pole
IV. The Mountains of the Moon
V. The South Pole
VI. Mount McKinley
VII. The Holy Cities of Islam
VIII. The Exploration of New Guinea
IX. Mount Everest
LIST OF PLATES
The Summit of Mount Everest ... _Frontispiece_
View of the Potala Monastery at Lhasa, with the Chortan in the
foreground
Ruwenzori from the Hill near Kaibo
The Valley to the West of Mount Baker
Mount McKinley: View of the Southern Approach
The Summit of Mount McKinley
View of Medina
View of Mecca
New Guinea Canoes
New Guinea Pygmies contrasted with ordinary Natives
The _massif_ of Mount Everest
The Chang La from the Lhakpa La, with Mount Everest on the left
LIST OF MAPS
The Expedition to Lhasa
The Gorges of the Brahmaputra
North Polar Regions
The Peaks and Valleys of Ruwenzori
The Route to Ruwenzori
South Polar Regions
Mount McKinley
Wavell's Journey to Mecca
The Exploration of New Guinea
The Route of the Mount Everest Expedition
I
LHASA
LHASA
(_Map_, p. 24.)
Till the summer of 1904 if one had been asked what was the most
mysterious spot on the earth's surface the reply would have been
Lhasa. It was a place on which no Englishman had cast an eye for a
hundred years and no white man for more than half a century. In our
prosaic modern world there remained one city among the clouds about
which no tale was too strange for belief. The greatest of mountain
barriers shut it off from the south, and on the north it was guarded
by leagues of waterless desert. Explorer after explorer had set out
on the quest, but all had stopped short before the golden roofs of
the sacred city could be seen from any hill-top. Even in early days
the place had never been explored, for the visitors had been
jealously watched and hurried quickly away. In the Potala might be
treasures of a culture long hidden to the world, lost treatises of
Aristotle, unknown Greek poems, relics, perhaps, of the mystic
kingdom of Kubla Khan, riches of gold and jewels drawn from the four
corners of Asia.....
And then suddenly in 1904 we went there, not as apologetic travellers
taken by side paths, but as an armed force marching along the highway
to the very heart of the mystery, and letting loose at once upon the
world a flood of accurate knowledge. For a moment we were carried
centuries away from high politics and every modern invention, and
were back in the great ages of discovery: with the Portuguese in
their quest for Ophir or Prester John, or with Raleigh looking for
Manoa the Golden. It was impossible for the least sentimental to
avoid a certain regret for the drawing back of that curtain which had
meant so much to the imagination of mankind. The shrinkage of the
world goes on so fast, our horizon grows so painfully clear, that the
old untiring wonder which cast its glamour over the ways of our
predecessors is vanishing from the lives of their descendants. With
the unveiling of Lhasa fell the last stronghold of the older romance.
I
Tibet had always been a forbidden land, and, as a rule, adventurers
only penetrated its fringes. Somewhere about the year 1328 a certain
Friar Odoric of Pordenone, travelling from Cathay, is said to have
entered Lhasa; and in the middle of the sixteenth century, Fernao
Mendes Pinto may have reached it. In 1661 the Jesuits, Grueber and
D'Orville, made a journey from Peking to Lhasa, and thence by way of
Nepal into India. In the early part of the eighteenth century there
was a temporary unveiling, and a Capuchin Mission was established in
the Holy City. Various Jesuits also reached the place, notably one
Desideri; and in 1730 came Samuel Van der Putte, a Doctor of Laws of
Leiden, who stayed long enough to learn the language. In 1745 the
Capuchin Mission came to an end, and the curtain descended. In 1774
George Bogle of the East India Company was in Tibet on a mission from
Warren Hastings, but the first Englishman did not reach Lhasa till
1811, when Thomas Manning, of Caius College, Cambridge, a friend of
Charles Lamb, arrived and stayed for five months on his unsuccessful
journey from Calcutta to Peking. Till 1904 Manning was the solitary
Englishman who was known for certain to have entered the sacred city,
though there was a tale of one William Moorcroft reaching the place
in 1826, and living there for twelve years in disguise. In 1844 the
French missionaries, Huc and Gabet, reached Lhasa from China, and
recorded their experiences in one of the most delightful of all books
of travel. They were the last Europeans to have the privilege up to
the entry of the British army. But throughout the last half of the
nineteenth century Indian natives in the Government service were
employed in the survey of Tibet, men of the type of the Babu whom Mr.
Kipling has described in _Kim_. The whole business was kept strictly
secret. The agents were known only by the letters of the alphabet,
and when they crossed the Tibetan borders they were aware that they
had passed beyond the protection of the British Raj. More than one
reached Lhasa by fantastic routes, with the result that the Indian
Government had accurate information about the city filed in its
archives, while the world at large knew the place only from the story
of Huc and Gabet, and from the drawing of the Potala made by Grueber
in the seventeenth century.
Of the later European travellers none reached the capital. Mr.
Littledale in 1895 was not stopped by the Tibetan authorities till he
was within fifty miles of the city, and Sven Hedin in 1901 got within
fourteen days of Lhasa from the north. But meantime events were
happening which were to impel the Government of India to interfere
more actively in Tibetan policy than by merely sending native agents
to collect news. The traditional policy was to preserve Tibet as a
sanctuary, but a sanctuary is only a sanctuary if all the neighbours
combine to hold it inviolate.
In 1903 the position of Britain and Tibet was like that of a big boy
at school who is tormented by an impertinent youngster. He bears it
for some time, but at last is compelled to administer chastisement.
The Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations of 1893 were
outraged by the Tibetans in many of their provisions; our letters of
protest were returned unopened; and, since news travels fast upon the
frontier, our protected peoples began to wonder what made the British
Raj so tolerant of ill-treatment. This was bad enough for our
prestige in the East, but the danger became acute when we discovered
that the Dalai Lama was in treaty with Russia, and that an avowed
Russian agent, one Dorjieff, was in residence at his court. The two
powers in Lhasa were the Dalai Lama, who speedily fell under Russian
influence, and the Tsong-du, or Council, composed of representatives
of the great priestly caste, who suspected all innovations, and were
in favour of maintaining the traditional policy of exclusion against
Russia and Britain alike. China, though the nominal suzerain, was
impotent, her Viceroy, the Amban, being partially insulted by both
parties.
In these circumstances Britain could only make her arrangements by
going direct to headquarters. Dorjieff had played his cards with
great skill, and seemed to be winning everywhere. The Dalai Lama was
wholly with him, and had received from the Tsar a complete set of
vestments of a Bishop of the Greek Church. The Russian monarch was
recognized as a Bodisat incarnation, representing no less a person
than Tsong-kapa, the Luther of Lamaism; and Russia was popularly
believed to be a Buddhist Power, or, at any rate, the sworn protector
of the Buddhist faith. It is difficult to overestimate the
significance of these doings; but at the same time Russian influence
was rather potential than actual. The Cossacks who accompanied Sven
Hedin were headed off from the Holy City as vigorously as any English
explorer, and the tales of arming with Russian rifles which filtered
through to India were rather intelligent anticipations than records
of facts.
There were thus two parties in Tibet pulling against each other, but
both in different ways hostile to our interests. The Dalai Lama and
Dorjieff favoured a departure from the traditional Tibetan policy in
favour of Russia. The Tsong-du and the Lamaist hierarchy in general
were all for exclusion, but in their wilfulness declined to observe
treaties or behave with neighbourly honesty. This internal strife,
which alone made possible the success of our expedition, also made
its dispatch inevitable, for neither party was prepared to listen to
any argument but force. Few enterprises have ever been undertaken by
Britain more unwillingly, and her decision was only arrived at under
the compulsion of stark necessity. There were many who reprobated
what they assumed to be a violation of the sacred places of an
ancient, pure, and pacific religion. But there was no need for
compunction on that score, since Lamaism was the grossest perversion
of Buddhism in all Asia. Spiritually it had more kinship with the
aboriginal devil-worship of Tibet than the gentle creed of Gautama.
Practically it was a political tyranny of monks, who battened upon a
mild and industrious population and ruled them with coarse
theological terrors. Our reception by the monasteries was
sufficiently gruff; but to the common people we came rather in the
guise of friends.
In July, 1903, Colonel Younghusband, as he then was, Mr. White, and
Captain O'Connor went to Khamba Jong, a place in Southern Tibet, just
north of Sikkim. There they met the Abbot of Tashilhunpo and certain
emissaries from Lhasa, but nothing could be done; and, with the
concurrence of the Indian Office, it was arranged that a Mission
should go to Gyangtse, the chief town of Southern Tibet, accompanied
by a small escorting force. While troops were being collected, the
Commissioner, Colonel Younghusband, went to Tuna, on the bleak plain
above the Tang La, where he waited through three weary winter months.
Meanwhile General Macdonald, a soldier who had had a distinguished
record in Central Africa, took up his quarters at Chumbi, while Major
Bretherton, the chief transport and supply officer, accumulated
stores in that valley and prepared the line of communications. Those
were anxious months of waiting for the Mission, for the Tibetans were
in force in the neighbourhood, and daily threatened to attack the
small post; but nothing happened till the escort joined them in the
end of March, 1904, and all things were ready for the advance.
[Illustration: The Expedition to Lhasa.]
It is worth while looking back upon the road to Tuna from the plains
of Bengal, surely one of the most wonderful of the Great North Roads
of the world. At Siliguri the little toy railway to Darjeeling runs
up the hill-side; but the path for the troops lay along the gorge of
the Teesta River, through forests of sal and gurjun, which give place
in turn to teak and bamboo, till the altitude increases and the
tree-fern and rhododendron take their places, and at last the pines
are reached and the fringe of the snows is near. From the glorious
sub-tropical vegetation of Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, the road
runs through difficult ravines till it passes the tree-line at Lagyap
and climbs over the frozen summit of the Natu La. From this point
Tibet is visible, with the majestic snows of Chumulhari hanging like
a cloud in the north. Then you descend to the Chumbi valley, the
Debatable Land of Tibet, where stands Ta-Karpo, the great White Rock
which recalls a famous passage in the Odyssey. Right under
Chumulhari and just south of the Tang La, lies Phari Jong, the first
of the minor Tibetan fortalices, which looks as if it were a bad copy
of some European model. A little farther and you are over the pass
and on the great plateau of Tuna, where icy winds blow from the hills
and drive the gritty soil in blizzards about the traveller. There
are few places in the world where in so short a time so complete a
climatic and scenic change can be experienced.
II
On the 31st March the expedition left Tuna; and after an unfortunate
encounter with the Tibetans, which cost the latter many lives, and in
which Mr. Edmund Candler, the distinguished war correspondent, was
wounded, the enemy made a further stand at Red Idol Gorge. Nothing
of importance, however, occurred till the town of Gyangtse was
reached and occupied without a shot. Very soon it became apparent
that no more could be done here than at Khamba Jong, and the
Government of India were obliged to sanction a farther advance to
Lhasa. For this preparations must be made; so the Commissioner, with
a small escort, took up his quarters at Gyangtse, while General
Macdonald returned to Chumbi for reinforcements. The jong was found
to be deserted, but, unfortunately, was neither held nor destroyed,
the Mission residing in the plain below.
At first the waiting among those iris-clad meadows was pleasant and
idyllic enough; the country people brought abundant supplies, and
members of the staff rode through the neighbourhood and had tea with
various dignitaries of the Church; but early in May things took a
turn for the worse. It was reported that the Tibetans were
fortifying the Karo La, the next pass on the Lhasa road; and, since
it is the first principle of frontier warfare to strike quickly,
Colonel Brander was dispatched with the larger part of the garrison
to disperse them. He performed the task with conspicuous success,
and the incident is remarkable for one of the strangest pieces of
fighting in our military history. It was necessary to enfilade a
sangar in which the enemy was ensconced, and a native officer,
Wassawa Singh, with twelve Gurkhas, was detached for the work. They
climbed by means of cracks and chimneys up a 1,500 feet cliff--an
exploit which would have done credit to any Alpine club, even if the
climbers had not been cumbered with weapons, exposed to fire, and
labouring at a height of nearly 19,000 feet.
During the engagement disquieting news arrived from Gyangtse that the
jong had been reoccupied by the enemy and that the Mission was
undergoing a continuous bombardment. Colonel Brander hurried back,
to find that the world had moved fast in his absence, and that there
was a new type of Tibetan army to be faced--a type possessed of both
dash and persistence, with some notion of strategy, and with guns
which, at short range, could do real execution. So began the
blockade of the Mission house; an imperfect blockade, for the
telegraph wires remained intact, the mail was delivered with fair
regularity, and the besieged endured no special privations. "The
honours," says Mr. Perceval Landon,* "were pretty evenly divided.
Neither the Tibetans nor we were able to storm the other's defences;
a mutual fusillade compelled each side to protect its occupants by an
elaborate system of traverses; and straying beyond the narrow tracts
of the fortifications was, on either side, severely discouraged by
the other."
* _Lhasa_, by Perceval Landon.
An attempt to cut our communications failed, and by the capture of
Pala the garrison greatly strengthened its position. Our troops had
an experience of the type of fighting which has scarcely been known
since the great sackings of the Thirty Years' War. In an upland
country we expect attacks on fortified hilltops, and long-range
encounters, such as we saw in South Africa. But in an episode like
the capture of Naini, it was mediæval street fighting that we had to
face. The Castle of Otranto provided no more endless labyrinths than
those Tibetan monasteries. "Bands of desperate swordsmen were found
in knots under trap-doors and behind sharp turnings. They would not
surrender, and had to be killed by rifle shots fired at a distance of
a few feet."
On the 26th June General Macdonald arrived with a relieving force,
and soon after came the Tongsa Penlop, the temporal ruler of Bhutan,
a genial potentate in rich vari-coloured robes and a Homburg hat.
The Tibetan offensive had weakened, but the jong had to be taken
before the Mission could advance. Down the middle of the precipitous
south-eastern face of the great rock ran a deep fissure, across which
walls had been built. It was decided to breach these walls by our
gun fire and then to attack by way of the cleft. The actual assault
was a brilliant and intrepid exploit, for which Lieutenant Grant of
the 8th Gurkhas most deservedly received the Victoria Cross. With
our guns battering the walls above, he and his men scrambled up the
ravine, while masses of rubble poured down on them, and every now and
then carried off a man. Then the Gurkhas' bugles warned the guns to
cease, and the last climb began up a face so steep that there was no
possible shelter from the enemy's fire. By such desperate
mountaineering the invaders at last reached the wreckage of the
Tibetan wall. Grant and one of the Gurkhas were the first two men
over, and to the observers below their death seemed a certainty.
They were two against the whole enemy force in the Jong, and had the
Tibetans reserved their fire and waited at the bastions, they could
have picked off every man of the assault as his head appeared above
the breach. But the bold course proved the wise one, and presently
the garrison surrendered. Rarely has the Victoria Cross been better
earned, and it is satisfactory to know that Lieutenant Grant reaped
the reward of perfect fearlessness and received only a slight wound.
III
On the 14th July the expedition moved out from Gyangtse along the
road to Lhasa. Grass and a glory of flowers covered the glens which
led up to the Karo La. The serious fighting was over, and the second
crossing of that pass was remarkable only for the fact that some rock
platforms and caves had to be cleared by our panting troops at an
altitude of over 19,000 feet. In the rest of the story the soldier
finds little place, and the interest attaches itself to the durbars
of the Commissioner and the treasure-house of natural and artistic
wonders which the Mission was approaching. For after Gyangtse the
resistance of the Tibetans was at an end. Half-sullenly and
half-curiously they permitted our advance, delaying us a little with
fruitless negotiations, while in Lhasa the game of high politics
which the Dalai Lama had played was turning against him, and, like
another deity, he was meditating a pilgrimage.
After the Karo La came the Yam-dok--or, as some call it, the Yu-tso
or Turquoise Lake--the most wonderful natural feature of the plateau.
Its curious shape, its pale blue waters, its shores of white sand
fringed with dog-roses and forget-me-nots, the cloud of fable which
has always brooded over it, and its august environment, make it
unique among the lakes of the world. I quote a fragment of Mr.
Landon's description:--
"Below lie both the outer and the inner lakes, this following with
counter-indentations the in-and-out windings of the other's
shore-line. The mass and colour of the purple distance is Scotland
at her best--Scotland, too, in the slow drift of a slant-roofed
raincloud in among the hills. At one's feet the water is like that
of the Lake of Geneva. But the tattered outline of the beach, with
its projecting lines of needle-rocks, its wide, white curving
sandspits, its jagged islets, its precipitous spurs, and, above all,
the mysterious tarns strung one beyond another into the heart of the
hills, all these are the Yam-dok's own, and not another's. If you
are lucky, you may see the snowy slopes of To-nang gartered by the
waters, and always on the horizon are the everlasting ice-fields of
the Himalayas, bitterly ringing with argent the sun and colour of the
still blue lake. You will not ask for the added glories of a Tibetan
sunset; the grey spin and scatter of a rain-threaded afterglow, or
the tangled sweep of a thundercloud's edge against the blue, will
give you all you wish, and you will have seen the finest view in all
this strange land."
On the shore lies the convent of Samding, the home of the Dorje
Phagmo, or pig goddess, which was jealously respected by the troops,
since its abbess had nursed Chundra Dass, one of the adventurous
agents of the Indian Government, when he fell sick during his
travels. The present incarnation, a little girl of six, declined to
reveal herself. Nothing was more satisfactory in the whole tale of
the expedition than the way in which any service done at any time to
a British subject, white or black, met with full recognition. Such
conduct cannot have failed to have raised the prestige of the Power
which showed itself so mindful of its servants. Prestige and
reputation of a kind, indeed, we already possessed. Tibetan
monasteries had a trick of sending their most valuable belongings to
the nearest convent, for, they argued, the English do not enter
nunneries or war with women.
[Illustration: View of the Potala Monastery at Lhasa, with the
Chortan in the foreground.]
On July 24th the expedition crossed the Khamba La and descended to
the broad green valley of the Tsangpo. The crossing of that river, a
work of real difficulty, was made tragic by the death of Major
Bretherton, the brilliant transport officer, to whom, perhaps, more
than to any other soldier, the military success in the enterprise was
due. Not the least of the mysteries of Tibet was this secret stream,
which the traveller, after miles of bleak upland, finds flowing among
English woods and meadows. In Assam and Bengal it was the
Brahmaputra; but when it entered the hills it was as unknown to
civilized man as Alph or the Four Rivers of Eden. What its middle
course was like and how it broke through the mountain barrier were
questions which no one had answered,* nor at the time was there any
accurate knowledge of its upper valleys.
* See Chapter II.
Once on the north bank Lhasa was but a short way off, and in growing
excitement the expedition covered the last stages. It was one of the
great moments of life, and we can all understand and envy the final
hurried miles, till through the haze the eye caught the gleam of
golden roofs and white terraces. The first prospect brought no
disappointment. If the streets were squalid, they were set in a
green plain seamed with waters; trees and gardens were everywhere;
while, above, the huge Assisi-like citadel of the Potala typified the
massive secrecy of generations, and the ring of dark hills reminded
the onlooker that this garden ground was planted on the roof of the
world.
Meanwhile the expedition set itself down outside the gates to abide
the pleasure of the sullen and perturbed masters. The deity of the
place had gone on a journey, no one quite knew whither. He had kept
his moonlight flitting a secret, and had gone off on the northern
road with Dorjieff and a small escort to claim the hospitality of his
spiritual brother of Urga. He had played his impossible game with
spirit and subtlety, and he had a pretty taste for romance in its
ending. "When one looks for mystery in Lhasa," wrote Mr. Candler,
"one's thoughts dwell solely on the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I
cannot help dwelling on the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It
plunges us into mediævalism. To my mind there is no picture so
engrossing in modern history as that exodus when the spiritual head
of the Buddhist Church, the temporal ruler of six millions, stole out
of his palace by night, and was borne away in his palanquin."
The romance which Mr. Candler saw in the Potala, Mr. Landon found
most conspicuously in the church of the Jo-kang. The palace was
magnificent from the outside, but within it was only a warren of
small rooms and broken stairways. The great cathedral, on the other
hand, was hidden away among trees and streets, so that its golden
roof could only be seen from a distance, but inside it was a shrine
of all that was mysterious and splendid. The contrast was
allegorical of the difference between the temporal ruler of
Lamaism--gaudy, tyrannical, and hollow--and the sway of the Buddhist
Church, which by hidden ways and unseen agencies dominated the
imagination of Asia. The Chinese Amban, having a natural desire to
pay back the people who had so grossly neglected him, invited certain
members of the Mission to enter this Holy of Holies. The visitors
were the first white men to approach the inner sanctuary of the
Buddhist faith. They were stoned on leaving the building, but the
sight was one worth risking much to see. In the central shrine sat
the great golden Buddha, roped with jewels, crowned with turquoise
and pearl, surrounded by dim rough-hewn shapes which loomed out
fitfully in the glare of the butter-lamps, while the maroon-clad
monks droned their eternal chant before the silver altar. And the
statue was as strange as its environment.
"For this is no ordinary presentation of the Master. The features
are smooth and almost childish; beautiful they are not, but there is
no need of beauty here. There is no trace of that inscrutable smile
which, from Mukden to Ceylon, is inseparable from our conception of
the features of the Great Teacher. Here there is nothing of the
saddened smile of the Melancholia, who has known too much and has
renounced it all as vanity. Here, instead, is the quiet happiness
and the quick capacity for pleasure of the boy who had never yet
known either pain, or disease, or death. It is Gautama as a pure and
eager prince, without any thought for the morrow or care for to-day."
Mr. Landon has other pictures of almost equal charm. He takes us to
the famous Ling-kor, the sacred road which encircled the town, worn
with the feet of generations of men seeking salvation. We see the
unclean abode of the Ragyabas, that strange unholy caste of beggar
scavengers; we walk in the gardens of the Lu-kang, by the
willow-fringed lake and the glades of velvet turf; and, not least, we
visit the temple of the Chief Wizard, where every form of human
torment is delicately portrayed in fresco and carving. But if we
wish to realize the savagery at the heart of this proud theocracy, we
must go with Mr. Candler to the neighbouring Depung monastery on the
quest for supplies, and see the tribe of inquisitors buzzing out like
angry wasps, and submitting only when the guns were trained on them.
For these weeks of waiting in Lhasa were an anxious time for all
concerned. Our own position was precarious in the extreme, and, had
the Lhasans once realized it, impossible. Winter was approaching,
the Government was urging the Mission to get its Treaty and come
home, and yet day after day had to pass without result, and the
Commissioner could only wait, and oppose to the obstinacy of the
monks a stronger and quieter determination. Sir Francis Younghusband
was indeed almost the only man in the Empire fitted for the task.
"He sat through every durbar," says Mr. Candler, "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?"
At last on 1st September, when after a month's diplomacy the Tibetans
had only admitted two of our demands, the time came to deliver our
ultimatum. The delegates were told that if all our terms were not
accepted within a week, General Macdonald would consider the question
of using stronger arguments. Our forbearance was justified by its
results, for the opposition suddenly subsided, and we gained what we
asked without any coercion. It was a diplomatic triumph of a high
order, obtained in the face of difficulties which seemed to put
diplomacy out of the question. The final scene came on 7th
September, when in the audience chamber of the Potala the Treaty was
signed by the Commissioner, and by the acting Regent, who affixed the
seal of the Dalai Lama, the four Shapes, a representative of the
Tsong-du, and the heads of the great monasteries. Thereafter came a
limelight photograph of the gathering, and with this very modern
climax the great Asian mystery became a thing of the past. The Dalai
Lama had already been formally deposed, his spiritual powers were
transferred to our friend the Tashe Lama, and, with the Treaty in our
baggage and a real prestige in our wake, we began the homeward march.
IV
What were the results of the expedition? Geographically they
appeared a little barren, for we stuck too close to the highroad to
solve many of the greater mysteries. One fact of cardinal importance
was established: our conception of Tibet was revolutionized, and
instead of an arid plateau we learned that about one-third of it was
nearly as fertile and well-watered as Kashmir. For the rest, the two
most interesting expeditions were forbidden--down the Brahmaputra to
Assam, and to the mountains, nine days north of Lhasa, which had
formed the southern limit of Sven Hedin's exploration. One valuable
expedition was, however, undertaken. Western Tibet had hitherto been
the best known part of the tableland, and now our knowledge of it was
linked on to the Lhasan district. On 10th October Captains Ryder,
Rawling, and Wood, and Lieutenant Bailey,* with six Gurkhas, left
Gyangtse, and made their way by Shigatse up the Tsangpo. They
explored the river to its source, and, passing the great Manasarowar
lakes, arrived at Gartok, on the Upper Indus. Thence they entered
the Sutlej valley, and, crossing the Shipki Pass of over 18,000 feet,
reached Simla in the first week of January 1905. Much was added also
to our knowledge of the Himalaya. The fact was established that the
old report of northern rivals to Everest was unfounded; and,
moreover, the highest mountain in the world was seen from the
northern side, where the slopes are easier, and the possibility of an
attempt on it occurred to various minds--a hope which seventeen years
later was realized.**
* See Chapter II.
** See Chapter IX.
On the political side the true achievement was not the formal Treaty,
but the going to Lhasa. We taught the Tibetans that their mysterious
capital could not be shut against our troops, and that Russian
promises were less real than British performances. We showed
ourselves strong, and, above all things, humane, and we earned
respect, and, it would also appear, a kind of affection. When the
venerable Regent solemnly blessed the Commissioner and General
Macdonald for their clemency, and presented each with a golden image
of Buddha--an honour rarely granted to the faithful, and never before
to an unbeliever--he gave expression to the general feeling of the
people.
Tibet was enveloped once more in its old seclusion--a deeper
seclusion, indeed, since we guaranteed it. A final result was that
we vindicated our claim to protect our subjects and those who served
us. We took our Gurkhas into the forbidden land, which their native
traditions had invested with a miraculous power, and showed them the
truth. As for Bhutan, up to 1904 it was as obscure as Tibet and its
people were strangers. They were now, in the Commissioner's phrase,
"our enthusiastic allies." Their ruler in his Homburg hat joined us
in the march, and acted as master of ceremonies in introducing us to
the Lhasa notables.
Nearly twenty years have passed, and much water has since run under
the bridges. In 1906 China adhered to the Treaty, and in 1907 came
the Anglo-Russian Convention which provided for the secluding of the
country by both Powers, and recognized China's suzerain rights. In
1909 the Dalai Lama, who had been restored, was ejected by Chinese
troops, and in 1910 he was at Darjeeling, a refugee claiming our
hospitality. Once again he was reinstated, and he has ever since
been a faithful ally of Britain. At the outbreak of the Great War he
offered 1,000 Tibetan troops, and informed the King that lamas
through the length and breadth of Tibet were praying for the success
of the British arms and for the happiness of the souls of the fallen.
Since 1904 both China and Russia have crumbled into anarchy. There
is no peril to India through the eastern Himalayan passes, and the
strategic importance of Tibet has dwindled. It is still a forbidden
country, but it is no longer a secret one. Posts run regularly to
Lhasa, and a telegraph line has been laid to that mysterious capital.
But it is mysterious only by a literary convention. The true mystery
is gone; the secret, such as it was, has been revealed, and the human
mind can no longer play with the unknown. Childe Roland had reached
the dark tower and found it not so marvellous after all. It is hard
not to sympathize with Mr. Candler's plaint: "There are no more
forbidden cities which men have not mapped and photographed. Our
children will laugh at modern travellers' tales. They will have to
turn again to Gulliver and Haroun al Raschid. And they will soon
tire of these. For now that there are no real mysteries, no unknown
land of dreams, where there may still be genii and mahatmas and
bottle-imps, that kind of literature will be tolerated no longer.
Children will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned, and
there will be no sale for fairy stories any more. But we ourselves
are children. Why could we not have left at least one city out of
bounds?"
These reflections do not detract from the romance of the expedition
itself and the privilege of the fortunate men who shared in it. For
them it was assuredly a great adventure--one which could never be
repeated. It may be summed up, as Mr. Landon has summed it up, in
certain famous lines from the _Odyssey_ which have not only a curious
local application, but embody the true spirit of the adventure:--
"Over the tides of Ocean on they pressed,
On past the great White Rock beside the stream,
On, till, through God's high bastions east and west,
They reached the plains with pale-starred iris dressed,
And found at last the folk of whom men dream."
II
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA
(_Map_, p. 48.)
Fifty years ago one of the questions most debated among geographers
was the origin of the Brahmaputra. The great river, navigable for
800 miles from its mouth, was familiar enough in its course through
the plains of India; but it flowed from the wild Abor country, and no
part of the Indian borders was less known than those north-eastern
foothills. Meantime in Tibet, north of the main chain of the
Himalayas, there was a large river, the Tsangpo, flowing from west to
east. Did the Tsangpo ultimately become the Brahmaputra, or did it
flow into the Irrawadi, or even into the Yang-tse Kiang? All three
views were held, but there was no evidence to decide between them.
In 1874 a native explorer, the pundit Nain Singh, started on his
famous journey from Leh to Lhasa, and was instructed, if possible, to
follow the Tsangpo and see where it went. He reached Lhasa, and on
his return struck the Tsangpo at Tsetang, well to the east of the
point where the British expedition crossed in 1904. He followed its
course for thirty miles farther down, but was prevented from
continuing his journey and compelled to return by the direct route to
India. In 1878 another native explorer, G.M.N., seems to have
followed the Tsangpo down as far as Gyala, which is not far from the
point where the river turns sharply to the south, but his reports
were not considered reliable. In 1884 another native, Kinthup,
succeeded in following the Tsangpo to a point called Pemakochung.
There he found an enormous gorge, and was compelled to make a detour
out to the north and east, rejoining the stream where it entered the
Abor country. Kinthup's report was of the highest interest. He had
stood at the beginning of an apparently impassable gorge, and he
reported a fall at Pemakochung of 150 feet. He was, however, quite
illiterate and was only able to make his report from memory, and it
presently appeared that the height might be only 50 feet, and that
the higher fall was not in the main stream but in a small tributary.
One fact, however, of the utmost importance had been established by
his expedition. The Tsangpo was beyond reasonable doubt the
Brahmaputra in its upper course.
[Illustration: The Gorges of the Brahmaputra.]
The Lhasa expedition in 1904 would fain have traced the river to the
plains had not the Government interposed a veto. In the years that
followed, the source of the Tsangpo was discovered by Captain
Rawling. In 1911 the Abor expedition increased our knowledge of the
course of the Brahmaputra right up to the skirts of the main range.
The problem now was not the linking up of the Tsangpo and the
Brahmaputra, but what happened to the river in the hairpin bend
between Pemakochung and its debouchment in the Abor valleys. The
elevation of the stream at the point where the main road to Lhasa
crossed it was in the neighbourhood of 12,000 feet. From there as
far as Pemakochung we knew that there was no very great loss in
altitude, but when the Brahmaputra appeared in the Abor foothills it
was only between 1,000 and 2,000 feet above the sea. The stretch of
unknown course was perhaps 200 miles, and in that section the river
broke through the main range of the Himalaya. It was possible--nay,
it was probable--that somewhere in those gorges, which Kinthup had
thought impassable, lay hidden the most tremendous waterfall in the
world.
The secret of the Brahmaputra gorges was one of the topics that most
fascinated geographers between the years 1904 and 1913. In that
latter year the mystery was solved, and the _ignotum_ proved not to
be the _magnificum_. This is the story of the solution.
The course of the Brahmaputra through Assam is roughly from
north-east to south-west, but at a place called Sadiya the main
stream, there known as the Dihang, turns sharply to the north. At
that point, too, it receives an important tributary on its left bank
called the Dibang. During the winter of 1912-13 Captain F. M.
Bailey, an officer of the Indian Political Service, was employed by
the Government to survey the Dibang basin, while another party had
gone through the Abor country to survey the Dihang. Early in 1913
Captain Bailey and Captain Morshead of the Royal Engineers collected
what stores they could and started off from the village of Mipi on
the upper waters of the Dibang. Their aim was to cross into the
Dihang valley, and to follow the river upstream to the Tibetan
plateau. Captain Bailey had been with the Lhasa expedition, and had
had a long record of exploration in different parts of Tibet, so he
had all the qualifications needed by the pioneer. But his party was
imperfectly equipped, since it started more or less on the spur of
the moment, and had no time to obtain proper stores from India. He
trusted to the prestige won by the Abor expedition, and his
experience of the ways of the Tibetans, to furnish him with coolies
and local supplies.
The reader's attention is now prayed for the map. The first business
was to cross the high passes separating the Dibang from the Dihang.
The weather proved abominable, and for part of the route only half
rations could be issued. As they descended into the valley of the
Dihang they found once more cultivation and villages, and they were
able to supplement their stores by shooting game, especially
pheasants, which teemed by the roadside. It was necessary to
establish touch with the Abor Survey party lower down the river, and
accordingly they had to halt for some days. At a place called Kapu
they managed to take the altitude in the river bed, and found the
height above sea level to be 2,610 feet--an important result, for
they were able to take no other observation at water level below the
main gorges.
These foothills of the Himalaya were inhabited chiefly by savage
tribes akin to the Abors, who were known generically as Lopas. But
as the expedition advanced up the river they came to the country of
the Pobas, who were under Tibetan influence. At Lagung, which is
about the centre of the hairpin bend, the course of the river turned
west. It might have been possible for them to have followed it some
thirty miles farther, but they were pressed by a Poba official, with
whom they made friends, to go north-east into the absolutely unknown
country of Po-me, which would enable them to make a circuit and reach
Gyala at the head of the gorges. Captain Bailey considered that it
would be easier to explore the gorges by going downstream.
On 21st June they crossed a pass of over 13,000 feet into the valley
of the river known as the Po-Tsangpo, an affluent of the Brahmaputra.
It was a stream 80 yards wide, and of such rapidity that its current
was one whirl of foam. The natives were in great fear of the
Chinese, and it was necessary to go boldly to Showa, the capital,
where a letter could be received from the Abor Survey party vouching
for their respectability. The Chinese had burned the place, killed
the chief, and decapitated the council, and the inhabitants looked
askance at the travellers because of the Chinese writing on a tablet
of Indian ink which they carried. After three days, however, a
letter arrived from the Abor party, which persuaded them that Captain
Bailey and Captain Morshead were at any rate servants of the English
King.
The explorers now moved north-eastwards down the Po-Tsangpo, finding
great difficulty in crossing the tributaries, where the bridges had
mostly been destroyed. It was a beautiful land, bright with primula,
iris, and blue poppy, and the roads were lined with raspberries.
They were now leaving the Po-me country and travelling among a more
civilized type of Tibetan, who wore hats like clergymen, made out of
yak's hair. After crossing a pass of over 15,000 feet they returned
to the main stream of the Tsangpo. This country was under the charge
of Tzongpen of Tsela, who came to meet the travellers--an urbane
gentleman whose son was at Rugby and a promising cricketer.
They were now on the Tsangpo above the mysterious gorges. They had
left behind them the hot valleys of the lower stream and found a dry
Tibetan dale, where the chief crops were barley and buckwheat. The
river was broad and slow, at one point stretching into a lake 600
yards wide, and its altitude was 9,680 feet. The problem was now to
follow it down from that point to the point of their last
observation, where the altitude was only 2,610 feet. Somewhere in
the intervening tract of gorge it must make the enormous descent of
over 7,000 feet.