A Book of Discovery Part 42

The next man to reach the forbidden city was a Jesuit missionary, the Abbe Huc, who reached Lhasa in 1846 from China. He had adopted the dress of the Tibetan Lama--the yellow cap and gown--and he piloted his little caravan across the wide steppes on horseback, while his fellow-missionary, Gabet, rode a camel and their one Tartar retainer rode a black mule. It took them a year and a half to reach the sacred city of Lhasa, for many and great were the difficulties of the way.

Their first difficulty lay in crossing the Yellow River, which was in flood.

"It is quite impossible to cross the Yellow River," they were told.

"Eight days ago the river overflowed its banks and the plains are completely flooded."

"The Tartars only told us the truth," remarked Huc sadly. "The Yellow River had become a vast sea, the limits of which were scarcely visible: houses and villages looked as though they were floating upon the waves.

What were we to do? To turn back was out of the question. We had vowed that, G.o.d willing, we would go to Lhasa whatever obstacles impeded."

And so they did. The camels were soon up to their knees in a thick slimy compost of mud and water, over which the poor animals slid on their painful way. Their courage was rewarded, native ferry-boats came to their rescue, and they reached the other side in safety. They were now on the main caravan route to the Tibetan frontier and the Koko-Nor.

Immense caravans were met, with strings of camels extending for miles in length. Three times between the Yellow River and the Koko-Nor Lake did they pa.s.s the Great Wall built in 214 A.D. After over four months of travel Huc arrived at the monastery of Kunk.u.m on the borderland of Tibet. This was the home of four thousand Lamas all clothed in red dresses and yellow mitres, and thither resorted the worshippers of Buddha from all parts of Tartary and Tibet.

"The site is one of enchanting beauty," says Huc. "Imagine in a mountain-side a deep, broad ravine adorned with fine trees and alive with the cawing of rooks and yellow-beaked crows and the amusing chatter of magpies. On the two sides of the ravine and on the slopes of the mountain rise the white dwellings of the Lamas. Amid the dazzling whiteness of these modest habitations rise numerous Buddhist temples with gilt roofs, sparkling with a thousand brilliant colours. Here the travellers stayed for three months, after which they made their way on to the Koko-Nor Lake.

"As we advanced," says Huc, "the country became more fertile, until we reached the vast and magnificent pasturage of Koko-Nor. Here vegetation is so vigorous that the gra.s.s rose up to the stomachs of our camels. Soon we discovered far before us what seemed a broad silver riband. Our leader informed us that this was the Blue Sea. We urged on our animals, and the sun had not set when we planted our tent within a hundred paces of the waters of the great Blue Lake. This immense reservoir of water seems to merit the t.i.tle of sea rather than merely that of lake. To say nothing of its vast extent, its waters are bitter and salt, like those of the ocean."

After a month spent on the sh.o.r.es of the Blue Lake, an opportunity offered for the advance. Towards the end of October they found that an emba.s.sy from Lhasa to Pekin was returning in great force. This would afford Huc and his companion safe travelling from the hordes of brigands that infested the route through Tibet. The caravan was immense. There were fifteen hundred oxen, twelve hundred horses, and as many camels, and about two thousand men. The amba.s.sador was carried in a litter. Such was the mult.i.tude which now started for the thousand miles across Tibet to Lhasa.

After crossing the great Burkhan Buddha range, the caravan came to the Shuga Pa.s.s, about seventeen thousand feet high, and here their troubles began.

"When the huge caravan first set itself in motion," says Huc, "the sky was clear, and a brilliant moon lit up the great carpet of snow with which the whole country was covered. We were able to attain the summit by sunrise. Then the sky became thickly overcast with clouds and the wind began to blow with a violence which became more and more intense."

Snow fell heavily and several animals perished. They marched in the teeth of an icy wind which almost choked them, whirlwinds of snow blinded them, and when they reached the foot of the mountain at last, M. Gabet found that his nose and ears were frostbitten. As they proceeded, the cold became more intense. "The demons of snow, wind, and cold were set loose on the caravan with a fury which seemed to increase from day to day."

"One cannot imagine a more terrible country," says poor Huc.

Not only were the animals dying from cold and exposure, but men were beginning to drop out and die. Forty of the party died before the plateau of Tangla had been crossed, a proceeding which lasted twelve days. The track, some sixteen thousand feet above the sea, was bordered by the skeletons of mules and camels, and monstrous eagles followed the caravan. The scenery was magnificent, line upon line of snow-white pinnacles stretched southward and westward under a bright sun. The descent was "long, brusque, and rapid, like the descent of a gigantic ladder." At the lower alt.i.tude snow and ice disappeared. It was the end of January 1846, when at last our two travellers found themselves approaching the longed-for city of Lhasa.

"The sun was nearly setting," says Huc, "when we found ourselves in a vast plain and saw on our right Lhasa, the famous metropolis of the Buddhist world. After eighteen months' struggle with sufferings and obstacles of infinite number and variety, we were at length arrived at the termination of our journey, though not at the close of our miseries."

Huc's account of the city agrees well with that of Manning: "The palace of the Dalai Lama," he says, "merits the celebrity which it enjoys throughout the world. Upon a rugged mountain, the mountain of Buddha, the adorers of the Lama have raised the magnificent palace wherein their Living Divinity resides in the flesh. This place is made up of various temples; that which occupies the centre is four storeys high; it terminates in a dome entirely covered with plates of gold. It is here the Dalai Lama has set up his abode. From the summit of his lofty sanctuary he can contemplate his innumerable adorers prostrate at the foot of the divine mountain. But in the town all was different--all are engaged in the grand business of buying and selling, all is noise, pushing, excitement, confusion."

Here Huc and his companion resided for two and a half months, opening an oratory in their house and even making a few Christian converts.

But soon they were ordered to leave, and reluctantly they travelled back to China, though by a somewhat different route.

After this the Tibetans guarded their capital more zealously than before. Przhevalsky, "that grand explorer of Russian nationality,"

spent years in exploring Tibet, but when within a hundred and sixty miles of Lhasa he was stopped, and never reached the forbidden city.

Others followed. Prince Henri of Orleans got to within one hundred miles of Lhasa, Littledale and his wife to within fifty miles. Sven Hedin, the "Prince of Swedish explorers," who had made so many famous journeys around and about Tibet, was making a dash for the capital disguised as a Mongolian pilgrim when he, too, was stopped.

"A long black line of Tibetan hors.e.m.e.n rode towards us at full gallop,"

he relates. "It was not raining just at that moment, so there was nothing to prevent us from witnessing what was in truth a very magnificent spectacle. It was as though a living avalanche were sweeping down upon us. A moment more and we should be annihilated!

We held our weapons ready. On came the Tibetans in one long line stretching across the plain. We counted close upon seventy in all.

In the middle rode the chief on a big handsome mule, his staff of officers all dressed in their finest holiday attire. The wings consisted of soldiers armed to the teeth with gun, sword, and lance.

The great man, Kamba Bombo, pulled up in front of our tent." After removing a red Spanish cloak and hood he "stood forth arrayed in a suit of yellow silk with wide arms and a little blue Chinese skull-cap.

His feet were encased in Mongolian boots of green velvet. He was magnificent."

"You will not go another step towards Lhasa," he said. "If you do you will lose your heads. It doesn't the least matter who you are or where you come from. You must go back to your headquarters."

So an escort was provided and sorrowfully Sven Hedin turned his back on the jealously guarded town he had striven so hard to reach.

The expedition, or rather mission, under Colonel Younghusband in 1904 brings to an end our history of the exploration of Tibet. He made his way to Lhasa from India; he stood in the sacred city, and "except for the Potala" he found it a "sorry affair." He succeeded in getting a trade Treaty signed, and he rode hastily back to India and travelled thence to England. The importance of the mission was accentuated by the fact that the flag, a Union Jack bearing the motto, "Heaven's Light our Guide," carried by the expedition and placed on the table when the Treaty was signed in Lhasa, hangs to-day in the Central Hall at Windsor over the statue of Queen Victoria.

The veil so long drawn over the capital of Tibet had been at last torn aside, and the naked city had been revealed in all its "weird barbarity." Plans of the "scattered and ill-regulated" city are now familiar, the Potala has been photographed, the Grand Lama has been drawn, and if, with the departure of Younghusband, the gates of Lhasa were once more closed, voices from beyond the snowy Himalayas must be heard again ere long.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WORLD'S MOST MYSTERIOUS CITY UNVEILED: LHASA AND THE POTALA. From a photograph by a member of Younghusband's expedition to Tibet and Lhasa, 1909(?).]

CHAPTER LXXI

NANSEN REACHES FARTHEST NORTH

No names are better known in the history of Arctic exploration than those of Nansen and the _Fram_, and although others have done work just as fine, the name of Nansen cannot be omitted from our _Book of Discovery_.

Sven Hedin had not long returned from his great travels through eastern Turkestan and Tibet when Nansen was preparing for his great journey northwards.

He had already crossed Greenland from east to west, a brilliant achievement only excelled by Peary, who a few years later, crossed it at a higher lat.i.tude and proved it to be an island.

Now the movement of ice drift in the Arctic seas was occupying the attention of explorers at this time. A ship, the _Jeannette_, had been wrecked in 1881 off the coast of Siberia, and three years later the debris from the wreck had been washed up on the south-west coast of Greenland. So it occurred to Nansen that a current must flow across the North Pole from Behring Sea on one side to the Atlantic Ocean on the other. His idea was therefore to build a ship as strong as possible to enable it to withstand the pressure of the ice, to allow it to become frozen in, and then to drift as the articles from the _Jeannette_ had drifted. He reckoned that it would take three years for the drift of ice to carry him to the North Pole.

Foolhardy and impossible as the scheme seemed to some, King Oscar came forward with 1000 pounds toward expenses. The _Fram_ was then designed.

The whole success of the expedition lay in her strength to withstand the pressure of the ice. At last she was ready, even fitted with electric light. A library, scientifically prepared food, and instruments of the most modern type were on board. The members of the expedition numbered thirteen, and on Midsummer Day, 1893, "in calm summer weather, while the setting sun shed his beams over the land, the _Fram_ stood out towards the blue sea to get its first roll in the long, heaving swell." Along the coast of Norway, past Bergen, past Trondhjem, past Tromso, they steamed, until in a north-westerly gale and driving snow they lost sight of land. It was 25th July when they sighted Nova Zembla plunged in a world of fog. They landed at Khabarova and visited the little old church seen fifteen years before by Nordenskiold, anxiously inquiring about the state of the ice in the Kara Sea. Here, amid the greatest noise and confusion, some thirty-four dogs were brought on board for the sledges. On 5th August the explorer successfully pa.s.sed through the Yugor Strait into the Kara Sea, which was fairly free from ice, and five weeks later sailed past Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of the Old World.

"The land was low and desolate," says Nansen. "The sun had long since gone down behind the sea; only one star was to be seen. It stood straight above Cape Chelyuskin, shining clearly and sadly in the pale sky.

Exactly at four o'clock our flags were hoisted and our last three cartridges sent out a thundering salute over the sea."

The _Fram_ was then turned north to the west of the New Siberian Islands.

"It was a strange thing to be sailing away north," says Nansen, "to unknown lands, over an open rolling sea where no ship had been before.

On to the north, steadily north with a good wind, as fast as steam and sail can take us through unknown regions."

They had almost reached 78 degrees north when they saw ice shining through the fog, and a few days later the _Fram_ was frozen in. "Autumn was well advanced, the long night of winter was approaching, there was nothing to be done except prepare ourselves for it, and we converted our ship as well as we could into comfortable winter quarters."

By October the ice was pressing round the _Fram_ with a noise like thunder. "It is piling itself up into long walls and heaps high enough to reach a good way up the _Fram's_ rigging: in fact, it is trying its very utmost to grind the _Fram_ into powder."

Christmas came and went. The New Year of 1894 dawned with the thermometer 36 degrees below zero. By February the _Fram_ had drifted to the 80th degree of lat.i.tude. "High festival in honour of the 80th degree," writes Nansen. "Hurrah! Well sailed! The wind is whistling among the hummocks, the snow flies rustling through the air, ice and sky are melted into one, but we are going north at full speed, and are in the wildest of gay spirits. If we go on at this rate we shall be at the Pole in fifty months."

On 17th May the 81st degree of lat.i.tude was reached. Five months pa.s.sed away. By 31st October they had drifted to the 82nd. "A grand banquet to-day," says Nansen, "to celebrate the 82nd degree of lat.i.tude. We are progressing merrily towards our goal; we are already half-way between the New Siberian Islands and Franz Josef Land, and there is not a soul on board who doubts that we shall accomplish what we came out to do; so long live merriment."

Now Nansen planned the great sledge journey, which has been called "the most daring ever undertaken." The winter was pa.s.sed in peaceful preparation for a start in the spring. When the New Year of 1895 dawned the _Fram_ had been firmly frozen in for fifteen months. A few days later, the ship was nearly crushed by a fresh ice pressure and all prepared to abandon her if necessary, but after an anxious day of ice roaring and crackling--"an ice pressure with a vengeance, as if Doomsday had come," remarked Nansen--it quieted down. They had now beaten all records, for they had reached 83 degrees lat.i.tude.

And now preparations for the great sledge journey were complete. They had built kayaks or light boats to sail in open water, and these were placed on the sledges and drawn by dogs. Nansen decided only to take one companion, Johansen, and to leave the others with the _Fram_.

"At last the great day has arrived. The chief aim of the expedition is to push through the unknown Polar sea from the region around the New Siberian Islands, north of Franz Josef Land and onward to the Atlantic Ocean near Spitzbergen or Greenland." Farewells were said, and then the two men bravely started off over the unknown desert sea with their sledges and twenty-eight dogs. For the first week they travelled well and soon reached 85 degrees lat.i.tude. "The only disagreeable thing to face now is the cold," says Nansen. "Our clothes are transformed more and more into complete suits of ice armour. The sleeve of my coat actually rubbed deep sores in my wrists, one of which got frostbitten; the wound grew deeper and deeper and nearly reached the bone. At night we packed ourselves into our sleeping-bags and lay with our teeth chattering for an hour before we became aware of a little warmth in our bodies."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. NANSEN. After a photograph.]