The Unveiling of Lhasa Part 4

I give the extract at length, not only as an illuminating portrait of Manning, but as an incidental proof that he visited the Jong, and that it was very much the same building then as it is to-day. But had it not been for the flapping of the bird which occasioned the quarrel with his Chinese servant, Manning would have left Phari without a reference to the wonderful old fortress which is the most romantic feature on the road from India to Gyantse. Appended to the journal is this footnote to the word _building_, which I have italicized in the extract: 'The building is immensely large, six or more stories high, a sort of fortress. At a distance it appears to be all Phari Jong. Indeed, most of it consists of miserable galleries and holes.'

Members of the mission force who have visited Phari will no doubt attribute Manning's evident ill-humour and depression during his stay there to the environments of the place, which have not changed much in the last ninety years. But his spirits improved as he continued his journey to Gyantse and Lhasa, and he reveals himself the kindly, eccentric, and affectionate soul who was the friend and intimate of Charles Lamb.

Bogle arrived at Phari on October 23, 1774. He and Turner and Manning all entered Tibet through Bhutan. 'As we advanced,' he wrote in his journal, 'we came in sight of the castle of Phari Jong, which cuts a good figure from without. It rises into several towers with the balconies, and, having few windows, has the look of strength; it is surrounded by the town.' The only other reference he makes to the Jong shows us that the fortress was in bad repair so long ago as 1774. 'The two Lhasa officers who have the government of Phari Jong sent me some b.u.t.ter, tea, etc., the day after my arrival; and letting me know that they expected a visit from me, I went. The inside of the castle did not answer the notion I had formed of it. The stairs are ladders worn to the bone, and the rooms are little better than garrets.'

The origin of the fort is unknown. Some of the inhabitants of Phari say that it was built more than a hundred years ago, when the Nepalese were overrunning Sikkim. But this is obviously incorrect, as the Tibetan-Nepalese War, in which the Chinese drove the Gurkhas out of Tibet, and defeated their army within a day's march of Khatmandu, took place in 1788-1792, whereas Bogle's description of the Jong was written fourteen years earlier. A more general impression is that centuries ago orders came from Lhasa to collect stones on the hillsides, and the building was constructed by forced labour in a few months. That is a tale of endurance and suffering that might very likely be pa.s.sed from father to son for generations.

Bogle's description of the town might have been written by an officer of the garrison to-day, only he wrote from the inmate's point of view. He noticed the houses 'so huddled together that one may chance to overlook them,' and the flat roofs covered with bundles of straw. He knocked his head against the low ceilings, and ran against the pillars that supported the beams. 'In the middle of the roof,' he wrote, 'is a hole to let out smoke, which, however, departs not without making the whole room as black as a chimney. The opening serves also to let in the light; the doors are full of holes and crevices, through which the women and children keep peeping.' Needless to say nothing has changed in the last hundred and thirty years, unless it is that the women are bolder. I looked down from the roof this morning on Phari town, lying like a rabbit-warren beneath the fort. All one can see from the battlement are the flat roofs of low black houses, from which smoke issues in dense fumes. The roofs are stacked with straw, and connected by a web of coloured praying-flags running from house to house, and sometimes over the narrow alleys that serve as streets. Enormous fat ravens perch on the wall, and innumerable flocks of twittering sparrows. For warmth's sake most of the rooms are underground, and in these subterranean dens Tibetans, black as coal-heavers, huddle together with yaks and mules.

Tibetan women, equally dirty, go about, their faces smeared and blotched with caoutchouc, wearing a red, hoop-like head-dress, ornamented with alternate turquoises and ruby-coloured stones.

In the fort the first thing one meets of a morning is a troop of these grimy sirens, climbing the stairs, burdened with buckets of chopped ice and sacks of yak-dung, the two necessaries of life. The Tibetan coolie women are merry folk; they laugh and chatter over their work all day long, and do not in the least resist the familiarities of the Gurkha soldiers. Sometimes as they pa.s.s one they giggle coyly, and put out the tongue, which is their way of showing respect to those in high places; but when one hears their laughter echoing down the stairs it is difficult to believe that it is not intended for saucy impudence. Their merriment sounds unnatural in all this filth and cold and discomfort.

Certainly if Bogle returned to Phari he would find the women very much bolder, though, I am afraid, not any cleaner. Could he see the Englishmen in Phari to-day, he might not recognise his compatriots.

Often in civilized places I shall think of the group at Phari in the mess-room after dinner--a group of ruffianly-looking bandits in a blackened, s.m.u.t-begrimed room, clad in wool and fur from head to foot, bearded like wild men of the woods, and sitting round a yak-dung fire, drinking rum. After a week at Phari the best-groomed man might qualify for a caricature of Bill Sikes. Perhaps one day in Piccadilly one may encounter a half-remembered face, and something familiar in walk or gait may reveal an old friend of the Jong. Then in 'Jimmy's,' memories of argol-smoke and frozen moustaches will give a zest to a bottle of beaune or chablis, which one had almost forgotten was once dreamed of among the unattainable luxuries of life.

_March 26-28._

Orders have come to advance from Phari Jong. It seems impossible, unnatural, that we are going on. After a week or two the place becomes part of one's existence; one feels incarcerated there. It is difficult to imagine life anywhere else. One feels as if one could never again be cold or dirty, or miserably uncomfortable, without thinking of that gray fortress with its strange unknown history, standing alone in the desolate plain. For my own part, speaking figuratively--and unfigurative language is impotent on an occasion like this--the place will leave an indelible black streak--very black indeed--on a kaleidoscopic past.

There can be no faint impressions in one's memories of Phari Jong. The dirt and smoke and dust are elemental, and the cold is the cold of the Lamas' frigid h.e.l.l.

All the while I was in Phari I forgot the mystery of Tibet. I have felt it elsewhere, but in the Jong I only wondered that the inscrutable folk who had lived in the rooms where we slept, and fled in the night, were content with their s.m.u.t-begrimed walls, blackened ceilings, and chimneyless roofs, and still more how amidst these murky environments any spiritual instincts could survive to inspire the religious frescoings on the wall. Yet every figure in this intricate blending of designs is significant and symbolical. One's first impression is that these allegories and metaphysical abstractions must have been meaningless to the inmates of the Jong; for we in Europe cannot dissociate the artistic expression of religious feeling from cleanliness and refinement, or at least pious care. One feels that they must be the relics of a decayed spirituality, preserved not insincerely, but in ignorant superst.i.tion, like other fetishes all over the world. Yet this feeling of scepticism is not so strong after a month or two in Tibet. At first one is apt to think of these dirty people as merely animal and sensual, and to attribute their religious observances to the fear of demons who will punish the most trivial omission in ritual.

Next one begins to wonder if they really believe in the efficacy of mechanical prayer, if they take the trouble to square their conscience with their inclinations, and if they have any sincere desire to be absorbed in the universal spirit. Then there may come a suspicion that the better cla.s.ses, though not given to inquiry, have a settled dogma and definite convictions about things spiritual and natural that are not easily upset. Perhaps before we turn our backs on the mystery of Tibet we will realize that the Lamas despise us as gross materialists and philistines--we who are always groping and grasping after the particular, while they are absorbed in the sublime and universal.

After all, devious and unscrupulous as their policy may have been, the Tibetans have had one definite aim in view for centuries--the preservation of their Church and State by the exclusion of all foreign and heretical influences. When we know that the Mongol cannot conceive of the separation of the spiritual and temporal Government, it is only natural to infer that the first mission, spiritual or otherwise, to a foreign Court should introduce the first elements of dissolution in a system of Government that has held the country intact for centuries. And let it be remarked that Great Britain is not responsible for this deviation in a hitherto inveterate policy.

But to return to Phari. My last impression of the place as I pa.s.sed out of its narrow alleys was a very dirty old man, seated on a heap of yak-dung over the gutter. He was turning his prayer-wheel, and muttering the sacred formula that was to release him from all rebirth in this suffering world. The wish seemed natural enough.

It was a bright, clear morning when we turned our backs on the old fort and started once more on the road to Lhasa. Five miles from Phari we pa.s.sed the miserable little village of Chuggya, which is apparently inhabited by ravens and sparrows, and a diminutive mountain-finch that looks like a half-starved robin. A mile to the right before entering the village is the monastery of the Red Lamas, which was the lodging-place of the Bhutanese Envoy during his stay at Phari. The building, which is a landmark for miles, is stone-built, and coated over with red earth, which gives it the appearance of brick. Its overhanging gables, mullioned windows without gla.s.s, that look like dominoes in the distance, the pendent bells, and the gay decorations of Chinese paper, look quaint and mystical, and are in keeping with the sacred character of the place. Bogle stopped here on October 27, 1774, and drank tea with the Abbot. It is very improbable that any other white man has set foot in the monastery since, until the other day, when some of the garrison paid it a visit and took photographs of the interior. The Lamas were a little deprecatory, but evidently amused. I did not expect them to be so tolerant of intrusion, and their clamour for backsheesh on our departure dispelled one more illusion.

At Chuggya we were at the very foot of Chumulari (23,930 feet), which seems to rise sheer from the plain. The western flank is an abrupt wall of rock, but, as far as one can see, the eastern side is a gradual ascent of snow, which would present no difficulties to the trained mountaineer. One could ride up to 17,000 feet, and start the climb from a base 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Chumulari is the most sacred mountain in Tibet, and it is usual for devout Buddhists to stop and offer a sacrifice as they pa.s.s. Bogle gives a detailed account of the service, the rites of which are very similar to some I witnessed at Galingka on the Tibetan New Year, February 16.

'Here we halted,' he wrote in his journal, 'and the servants gathering together a parcel of dried cow-dung, one of them struck fire with his tinder-box and lighted it. When the fire was well kindled, Parma took out a book of prayers, one brought a copper cup, another filled it with a kind of fermented liquor out of a new-killed sheep's paunch, mixing in some rice and flour; and after throwing some dried herbs and flour into the flame, they began their rites. Parma acted as chaplain. He chanted the prayers in a loud voice, the others accompanying him, and every now and then the little cup was emptied towards the rock, about eight or ten of these libations being poured forth. The ceremony was finished by placing upon the heap of stones the little ensign which my fond imagination had before offered up to my own vanity.'

Most of the flags and banners one sees to-day on the chortens and roofs of houses, and cairns on the mountain-tops, must be planted with some such inaugural ceremony.

Facing Chumulari on the west, and apparently only a few miles distant, are the two Sikkim peaks of Powhunri (23,210 feet) and Shudu-Tsenpa (22,960 feet). From Chuggya the Tangla is reached by a succession of gradual rises and depressions. The pa.s.s is not impressive, like the Jelap, as a pa.s.sage won through a great natural barrier. One might cross it without noticing the summit, were it not for the customary cairns and praying-flags which the Lamas raise in all high places.

From a slight rise on the east of the pa.s.s one can look down across the plateau on Tuna, an irregular black line like a caterpillar, dotted with white spots, which gla.s.ses reveal to be tents. The Bamtso lake lies shimmering to the east beneath brown and yellow hills. At noon objects dance elusively in the mirage. Distances are deceptive. Yaks grazing are like black Bedouin tents. Here, then, is the forbidden land. The approach is as it should be. One's eyes explore the road to Lhasa dimly through a haze. One would not have it laid out with the precision of a diagram.

CHAPTER V

THE ROAD AND TRANSPORT

To write of any completed phase of the expedition at this stage, when I have carried my readers only as far as Tuna, is a lapse in continuity that requires an apology. My excuse is that to all transport officers, and everyone who was in touch with them, the Tuna and Phari plains will be remembered as the very backbone of resistance, the most implacable barriers to our advance.

The expedition was essentially a transport 'show.' It is true that the Tibetans proved themselves brave enemies, but their acquired military resources are insignificant when compared with the obstacles Nature has planted in the path of their enemies. The difficulty of the pa.s.ses, the severity of the climate, the sterility of the mountains and tablelands, make the interior of the country almost inaccessible to an invading army. That we went through these obstacles and reached Lhasa itself was a matter of surprise not only to the Tibetans, but to many members of the expeditionary force.

To appreciate the difficulties the mission force had to contend with, one must first realize the extraordinary changes of climate that are experienced in the journey from Siliguri to Tuna. Choose the coldest day in the year at Kew Gardens, expose yourself freely to the wind, and then spend five minutes in the tropical house, and you may gather some idea of the sensation of sleeping in the Rungpo Valley the night after crossing the Jelapla.

When I first made the journey in early January, even the Rungpo Valley was chilly, and the vicissitudes were not so marked; but I felt the change very keenly in March, when I made a hurried rush into Darjeeling for equipment and supplies. Our camp at Lingmathang was in the pine-forest at an elevation of 10,500 feet. It was warm and sunny in the daytime, in places where there was shelter from the wind. Leaf-buds were beginning to open, frozen waterfalls to thaw, migratory duck were coming up the valley in twos and threes from the plains of India--even a few vultures had arrived to fatten on the carca.s.ses of the dead transport animals. The morning after leaving Lingmathang I left the pine-forest at 13,000 feet, and entered a treeless waste of shale and rock. When I crossed the Jelapla half a hurricane was blowing. The path was a sheet of ice, and I had to use hands and knees, and take advantage of every protuberance in the rock to prevent myself from being blown over the _khud_. The road was impa.s.sable for mules and ponies. The cold was numbing. The next evening, in a valley 13,000 feet beneath, I was suffering from the extreme of heat. The change in scenery and vegetation is equally striking--from glaciers and moraines to tropical forests brilliant with the scarlet cotton-flower and purple Baleria. In Tibet I had not seen an insect of any kind for two months, but in the Sikkim valleys the most gorgeous b.u.t.terflies were abundant, and the rest-house at Rungpo was invested by a plague of flies. In the hot weather the climate of the Sikkim valleys is more trying than that of most stations in the plains of India. The valleys are close and shut in, and the heat is intensified by the radiation from the rocks, cliffs, and boulders. In the rains the climate is relaxing and malarious. The Supply and Transport Corps, who were left behind at stages like Rungpo through the hot weather, had, to my mind, a much harder time on the whole than the half-frozen troops at the front, and they were left out of all the fun.

Besides the natural difficulties of the road, the severity of climate, and the scarcity of fodder and fuel, the Transport Corps had to contend with every description of disease and misfortune--anthrax, rinderpest, foot and mouth disease, aconite and rhododendron poisoning, falling over precipices, exhaustion from overwork and underfeeding. The worst fatalities occurred on the Khamba Jong side in 1903. The experiments with the transport were singularly unsuccessful. Out of two hundred buffaloes employed at low elevations, only three survived, and the seven camels that were tried on the road between Siliguri and Gantok all died by way of protest. Later on in the year the yak corps raised in Nepal was practically exterminated. From four to five thousand were originally purchased, of which more than a thousand died from anthrax before they reached the frontier. All the drinking-water on the route was infected; the Nepalese did not believe the disease was contagious, and took no precautions. The disease spread almost universally among the cattle, and at the worst time twenty or thirty died a day. The beasts were ma.s.sed on the Nepal frontier. Segregation camps were formed, and ultimately, after much patient care, the disease was stamped out.

Then began the historic march through Sikkim, which, as a protracted struggle against natural calamities, might be compared to the retreat of the Ten Thousand, or the flight of the Kalmuck Tartars. Superst.i.tious natives might well think that a curse had fallen on us and our cattle.

As soon as they were immune from anthrax, the reduced corps were attacked by rinderpest, which carried off seventy. When the herds left the Singli-la range and descended into the valley, the sudden change in climate overwhelmed hundreds. No real yak survived the heat of the Sikkim valleys. All that were now left were the zooms, or halfbreeds from the bull-yaks and the cow, and the cross from the bull and female yaks. In Sikkim, which is always a hotbed of contagious cattle diseases, the wretched survivors were infected with foot and mouth disease. The epidemic is not often fatal, but visiting an exhausted herd, fever-stricken, and weakened by every vicissitude of climate, it carried off scores. Then, to avoid spreading contagion, the yaks were driven through trackless, unfrequented country, up and down precipitous mountain-sides, and through dense forests. Again segregation camps were formed, and the dead cattle were burnt, twenty and thirty at a time.

Every day there was a holocaust. Then followed the ascent into high alt.i.tudes, where a more insidious evil awaited the luckless corps. The few survivors were exterminated by pleuro-pneumonia. When, on January 23, the 3rd Yak Corps reached Chumbi, it numbered 437; two months afterwards all but 70 had died. On March 21, 80 exhausted beasts straggled into Chumbi; they were the remainder of the 1st and 2nd Yak Corps, which originally numbered 2,300 heads. The officers, who, bearded and weather-beaten, deserted by many of their followers, after months of wandering, reached our camp with the remnants of the corps, told a story of hardship and endurance that would provide a theme for an epic.

The epic of the yaks does not comprise the whole tale of disaster.

Rinderpest carried off 77 pack-bullocks out of 500, and a whole corps was segregated for two months with foot and mouth disease. Amongst other casualties there were heavy losses among the Cashmere pony corps, and the Tibet pony corps raised locally. The animals were hastily mobilized and incompletely equipped, overworked and underfed. Cheap and inferior saddlery was issued, which gave the animals sore backs within a week.

The transport officer was in a constant dilemma. He had to overwork his animals or delay the provisions, fodder, and warm clothing so urgently needed at the front. Ponies and mules had no rest, but worked till they dropped. Of the original draft of mules that were employed on the line to Khamba Jong, fully 50 per cent. died. It is no good trying to blink the fact that the expedition was unpopular, and that at the start many economical shifts were attempted which proved much more expensive in the end. Our party system is to blame. The Opposition must be appeased, expenses kept down, and the business is entered into half-heartedly. In the usual case a few companies are grudgingly sent to the front, and then, when something like a disaster falls or threatens, John Bull jumps at the sting, scenting a national insult. A brigade follows, and Government wakes to the necessity of grappling with the situation seriously.

But to return to the spot where the evil effects of the system were felt, and not merely girded at. To replace and supplement the local drafts of animals that were dying, trained Government mule corps were sent up from the plains, properly equipped and under experienced officers. These did excellent work, and 2,600 mules arrived in Lhasa on August 3 in as good condition as one could wish. Of all transport animals, the mule is the hardiest and most enduring. He does not complain when he is overloaded, but will go on all day, and when he drops there is no doubt that he has had enough. Nine times out of ten when he gives up he dies. No beast is more indifferent to extremes of heat and cold. On the road from Kamparab to Phari one day, three mules fell over a cliff into a snowdrift, and were almost totally submerged.

Their drivers could not pull them out, and, to solve the dilemma, went on and reported them dead. The next day an officer found them and extricated them alive. They had been exposed to 46 of frost. They still survive.

Nothing can beat the Sircar mule when he is in good condition, unless it is the Balti and Ladaki coolie. Several hundred of these hardy mountaineers were imported from the North-West frontier to work on the most dangerous and difficult sections of the road. They can bear cold and fatigue and exposure better than any transport animal on the line, and they are surer-footed. Mules were first employed over the Jelap, but were afterwards abandoned for coolies. The Baltis are excellent workers at high alt.i.tudes, and sing cheerily as they toil up the mountains with their loads. I have seen them throw down their packs when they reached the summit of a pa.s.s, make a rush for the shelter of a rock, and cheer l.u.s.tily like school-boys. But the coolies were not all equally satisfactory. Those indented from the Nepal durbar were practically an impressed gang. Twelve rupees a month with rations and warm clothing did not seem to reconcile them to hard work, and after a month or two they became discontented and refractory. Their officers, however, were men of tact and decision, and they were able to prevent what might have been a serious mutiny. The discontented ones were gradually replaced by Baltis, Ladakis, and Garwhalis, and the coolies became the most reliable transport corps on the line.

Thus, the whole menagerie, to use the expression current at the time, was got into working order, and a system was gradually developed by which the right animal, man, or conveyance was working in the right place, and supplies were sent through at a pace that was very creditable considering the country traversed.

From the railway base at Siliguri to Gantok, a distance of sixty miles, the ascent in the road is scarcely perceptible. With the exception of a few contractors' ponies, the entire carrying along this section of the line was worked by bullock-carts. Government carts are built to carry 11 maunds (880 pounds), but contractors often load theirs with 15 or 16 maunds. As the carrying power of mules, ponies, and pack-bullocks is only 2 maunds, it will be seen at once that transport in a mountainous country, where there can be no road for vehicles, is nearly five times as difficult and complicated as in the plains. And this is without making any allowance for the inevitable mortality among transport animals at high elevations, or taking into account the inevitable congestion on mountain-paths, often blocked by snow, carried away by the rains, and always too narrow to admit of any large volume of traffic.

In the beginning of March, when the line was in its best working order, from 1,500 to 2,000 maunds were poured into Rungpo daily. Of these, only 400 or 500 maunds reached Phari; the rest was stored at Gantok or consumed on the road. Later, when the line was extended to Gyantse, not more than 100 maunds a day reached the front.

In the first advance on Gyantse, our column was practically launched into the unknown. As far as we knew, no local food or forage could be obtained. It was too early in the season for the spring pasturage. We could not live on the country. The ever-lengthening line of communication behind us was an artery, the severing of which would be fatal to our advance.

One can best realize the difficulties grappled with by imagining the extreme case of an army entering an entirely desert country. A mule, it must be remembered, can only carry its own food for ten days. That is to say, in a country where there is no grain or fodder, a convoy can make at the most nine marches. On the ninth day beasts and drivers will have consumed all the supplies taken with them. Supposing on the tenth day no supply-base has been reached, the convoy is stranded, and can neither advance nor retire. Nor must we forget that our imaginary convoy, which has perished in the desert, has contributed nothing to the advance of the army. Food and clothing for the troops, tents, bedding, guns, ammunition, field-hospital, treasury, still await transport at the base.

Fortunately, the country between our frontier and Lhasa is not all desert. Yet it is barren enough to make it a matter of wonder that, with such short preparation, we were able to push through troops to Gyantse in April, when there was no grazing on the road, and to arrive in Lhasa in August with a force of more than 4,000 fighting men and followers.

Before the second advance to Gyantse the spring crops had begun to appear. Without them we could not have advanced. All other local produce on the road was exhausted. That is to say, for 160 miles, with the important exception of wayside fodder, we subsisted entirely on our own supplies. The mules carried their own grain, and no more. Gyantse once reached, the Tibetan Government granaries and stores from the monasteries produced enough to carry us on. But besides the transport mules, there were 100 Maxim and battery mules, as well as some 200 mounted infantry ponies, and at least 100 officers' mounts, to be fed, and these carried nothing--contributed nothing to the stomach of the army.

How were these beasts to be fed, and how was the whole apparatus of an army to be carried along, when every additional transport animal was a tax on the resources of the transport? There were two possible solutions, each at first sight equally absurd and impracticable:--wheeled transport in Tibet, or animals that did not require feeding. The Supply and Transport men were resourceful and fortunate enough to provide both. It was due to the light ekka and that providentially ascetic beast, the yak, that we were able to reach Lhasa.

The ekkas were constructed in the plains, and carried by coolies from the cart-road at Rungpo eighty miles over the snow pa.s.ses to Kamparab on the Phari Plain. The carrying capacity of these light carts is 400 pounds, two and a half times that of a mule, and there is only one mouth to feed. They were the first vehicles ever seen in Tibet, and they saved the situation.

The ekkas worked over the Phari and Tuna plains, and down the Nyang Chu Valley as far as Kangma. They were supplemented by the yaks.

The yak is the most extraordinary animal Nature has provided the transport officer in his need. He carries 160 pounds, and consumes nothing. He subsists solely on stray blades of gra.s.s, tamarisk, and tufts of lichen, that he picks up on the road. He moves slowly, and wears a look of ineffable resignation. He is the most melancholy disillusioned beast I have seen, and dies on the slightest provocation.

The red and white ta.s.sels and favours of cowrie-sh.e.l.ls the Tibetans hang about his neck are as incongruous on the poor beast as gauds and frippery on the heroine of a tragedy.

If only he were dependable, our transport difficulties would be reduced to a minimum. But he is not. We have seen how the four thousand died in their pa.s.sage across Sikkim without doing a day's work. Local drafts did better. Yet I have often pa.s.sed the Lieutenant in command of the corps lamenting their lack of grit. 'Two more of my cows died this morning.

Look, there goes another! D--n the beasts! I believe they do it out of spite!' And the chief Supply and Transport officer, always a humorist in adversity, when asked why they were dying off every day, said: 'I think it must be due to overfeeding.' But we owe much to the yak.