To Lhassa at Last Part 7

The escort left camp at 1.30 P.M. Over the a.s.sembling of the troops outside camp one of those typical--and to the onlooker highly entertaining--muddles arose, which are always either the fault of some one or no one or every one. Eventually we found ourselves, all except a body of mounted infantry who were still unaccountably missing. Their place was, however, adequately filled by a party of Kot-duffadars of mule corps, who, mounted on transport riding ponies, and armed with swords and staves or whatever obsolete weapon is nowadays issued to them, took a prominent place in the procession and made a brave show. We marched past that pleasant country seat known as 'Paradise,' where the political mission had their quarters, and proceeded along a path lined with troops, across a bog into the outskirts of the city, and up the road which leads up the Pota-La hill into the Pota-La. We had eventually to dismount, leave our ponies, and climb up a paved pathway, half staircase. This pathway was smeared with the holy grease of ages and was dangerously slippery. At the top we found some of the guard of the Nepalese resident, looking very warlike in red secondhand tunics that had once been the property of British soldiers, but were of a now obsolete pattern. Ushered through a dark pa.s.sage, we entered at last into the throne-room or audience-hall of the Pota-La, where the ceremony was to take place. When all that portion of the escort who were allowed within the hall had taken their places Colonel Younghusband and General Macdonald with their respective Staffs arrived. The room already held the various contingents of Eastern officials of different nationalities who were to a.s.sist at the function. After we had all stood up, there was a great deal of handshaking between the representatives of East and West. The Chinese Amban shakes hands in a manner that, when last I frequented London drawing-rooms, was, I believe, considered fashionable.

One of the lay council of Tibet certainly thought so, for he tried to imitate the particular method, but only partially succeeded. The party then sat down to tea. A great deal of tea was drunk--that milkless tea in handleless china cups with which we had most of us now become acquainted. All sorts of Chinese sweetmeats were provided with it, and these were followed by cigarettes (our old friend the 'Pedro'). These dainties did not extend into the outer circles; those of us who were behind contented ourselves by lighting up our own Pedros.

A glance round the room showed many bright colours and striking contrasts. There, near to the throne, were our political officers in the rich but not gaudy uniform of their service; next them the G.O.C. and his Staff in the sober khaki, while all round the room in less prominent places was more khaki. But next to Colonel Younghusband in robes of bright blue silk sat the Amban. Next to the Amban was the Regent, who, since the disappearance of the Dalai Lama, had been the officiating head of the Tibetan Government, an elderly man with a sad ascetic face, and dressed quite simply in the plain red robes of an ordinary lama. Next to him was a row of Chinese officials, of whose uniform, as in the case of the Amban, bright blue silk formed the chief part. Further away were the seats of the Nepalese contingent, at the head of whom sat the Nepali resident, a fierce-looking old man in a rather shabby and uncommonly short jacket of plum-coloured brocade lined with fur. Alongside, but at a different angle and facing the throne, sat the Tonsil Penlop and his suite. These represented Bhutan and were all clad in striped yellow silk robes, which one can only describe as barbaric. Their millinery was also marvellous, the Tonsil Penlop himself wearing a kind of bonnet, on the top of which was perched a whole stuffed bird, which in the distance appeared to be a parrot. Immediately opposite the throne were the Tibetan lay council of three. They affected plain yellow silk and yellow hats, but the yellow was of a bright shade, and the general effect of their appearance was as magnificent as that of any of the others. In face they struck me as the least attractive of the various Eastern officials present, being unhealthy-looking, rather fat, and wearing what seemed a sulky cowed expression. Behind them stood a whole array of monks.

The process of signing began almost at once. The number of doc.u.ments seemed never ending. Apparently there were several copies of the treaty in every language spoken by any of the parties directly or remotely concerned with it, and every one of these copies had to be signed, not only by the chief authorities above enumerated, but also by various lesser lights of Tibet, as, for instance, the heads of certain monasteries. At one period the limelight flashed upon us, and we all had our photographs taken from a corner of the room.

We saw many copies of the treaty being signed with great care, but gathered nothing of its contents except from the speech which, when at last the signing was over, Colonel Younghusband addressed to the Tibetans in general, and to the 'council of three' in particular. The latter sat bobbing their heads deferentially at each sentence, and looking thoroughly ashamed while Colonel Younghusband addressed them from his chair. The speech was translated sentence by sentence into Tibetan for Tibetan benefit, and afterwards pa.s.sed on in Chinese to the Amban.

The speech was emphatically a 'straight talk,' the key-note seeming to be that the Tibetans had been very foolish in opposing and flouting us in the past, but that they were now going to be good boys. They were going to be well treated when they came to visit us, and were not going to misbehave themselves in any way, should we again come near them.

There was more said, about trade relations with India, in recognition of the Chinese suzerainty, and in encouragement of the Tibetan traditional methods of treating outsiders, when those outsiders did not happen to be ourselves.

The council of three seemed to take it all 'lying down.'

More tea was drunk: the press correspondents busied themselves with the telegrams that they were sending down by post to Gyantse, bringing the wires there and then to the press censor, whose blue pencil I saw freely wielded: more handshaking, and then the party broke up.

As we left the now close atmosphere of the audience hall, we felt that we had just witnessed a matinee performance in a theatre. The spectacular effects throughout had been impressive. The first act had been brisk, the second had dragged, but the last had been thrilling. It had indeed been a fine play that we had seen enacted--the simple sane perseverance of British diplomacy fighting on its own ground a unique section of the mysterious and gorgeous East, not bluffed by its indignant protests, not deceived by its spurious promises, not wearied by its endless delays, not impatient of its cra.s.s ignorance, but gaining its objects slowly and surely, and coming out victorious.

CHAPTER XXIII

BACK TO INDIA

Thereafter, like the man in the sycamore tree, we made haste to come down. Sixteen days later the column left Lha.s.sa. A few functions intervened, such as the formal release of our prisoners and the bestowal of money in charity on the poor of Lha.s.sa. I missed these functions, having been sent on ahead to the Tsangpo, where preparations for the return crossing were now afoot. The column at length arrived at the river. We crossed this time at Parte, where a certain single channel of moderate breadth, but very deep and therefore not very swift, served our purposes far better than the double channel at Chaksam. The Sappers and Miners and coolis had made all things ready, towing the two heavy ferry boats up many miles of swift current, and rigging up the mysterious engineering paraphernalia which were needed to swing us across, our crossing hanging truly and literally by a thread--a thread of thin wire.

Wire, at once the lightest and strongest commodity of its kind, had since our last crossing been sent up to us, in great quant.i.ties, and was largely used to replace the now rotten rope that had previously been chiefly employed. A great ferry boat, bearing twenty mules, to which was attached a string of skin boats laden with stores, to which again were attached a brace or so of mules swimming in the water, would be swung across that still swift current, suspended from but one or two thin wires.

The speed of the crossing exceeded all hopes. It was accomplished in about forty-eight hours. From South Parte we marched, over a pa.s.s that was new to us, straight into Pete-jong. At the top of that pa.s.s facing southwards we found a wall, which had obviously been built by the Tibetans in the belief that on our march upwards we would cross the ridge by this route. It was a well-conceived fortification, and might have given us considerable trouble.

From Parte Ferry to Gyantse we marched in two columns. Thinking the crossing of the ferry might occupy several days, and in order to be prepared for all emergencies such as any possible ebullitions of hostility that might delay our march, we had laid in at the ferry and the posts on the way to Gyantse a stock of supplies which now proved larger than our needs, while our spare transport was only sufficient to carry on a portion of the surplus.

I accompanied the second column and had the pleasant duty of making away with this surplus. To one whose purse has always been slender, and whose nature is correspondingly extravagant, there can be nothing more agreeable than to dispose in a free-handed way of large amounts of Government property. One enjoys all the delights of extravagance with none of its bitter aftertaste. Of course, even from the strictly economical view, it was far the best policy to make away with these surpluses where they stood. The total value of the stores so made away with, though amounting to a large sum, was far less than, for instance, would have been the cost of retaining the force in the country until they had consumed them.

The British troops were all with this column, but there were several native units as well. One arrived at a post and found it full of many good things that could not be carried on. Restrained only by fear of filling the troops to a tension beyond what the medical officers thought desirable, one accosted commanding officers, and asked with one's best shop-walker's manner what they would like to-day. A few hundredweight of jam and pickles would be doled out for the asking, or, in the case of native troops, similar quant.i.ties of tea and ghi and goor. The coolis were my best customers. The amount of tea and goor they took away and consumed with benefit to themselves was surprising. They worked all the better for it and marched into Gyantse carrying record loads.

The stores still left over at each place were solemnly presented to the local peasants who came up, and, regarding the affair as a huge joke, went away laden with bundles selected at random from, as it were, a huge bran-pie. Rum was withheld from them, but I should have liked to see the effect of their consumption of some of the things they got, as, for instance, of an unsuspecting draught of neat lime-juice, or a mouthful of chillies.

So on we marched over that stiff pa.s.s into Pete-jong, along Lake Palti shining in this clear-set wintry weather with its true turquoise colours, past Nagartse and up through the barren gorge that leads to the summit of the Karo-La, down the Karo-La regretfully, doubting whether we should ever reach such heights again, into the Ralung plain, and down the long glen to Gyantse.

Our appearance in those days was not spick and span. We were very much out at elbows, the breeches of both soldiers and followers were frequently patched with odd bits of Tibetan woollen cloth, or even in some cases with bits of the gunny of gunny bags. I have known the red cloth of the typical lama's robe adapted to these purposes. With wear it turns into a cherry colour. My own orderly, who was fitted out with a complete pair of continuations of this cloth, looked in the distance like a trooper of the 11th Hussars (the overalls of that regiment being famous for that colour).

More curious still were the additions to the wardrobe in the shape of blankets and sentries' cloaks, which we brought from Lha.s.sa, the woollen goods of that town being warm and serviceable, but rather outlandish.

The sentries' cloaks were merely oblong pieces of cloth with a hole in the centre, through which the sentry put his head, and of all sorts of colours--quite enough in themselves to frighten the nocturnal miscreant.

But most curious sight of all, if one could have looked on from the outside, would have been the collection of dogs which we brought with us. The dog that Tommy had left at home was of course the familiar type of square-jowled st.u.r.dy monster, who, by a process of natural selection and survival of the fittest, has been evolved out of many types, and now rules supreme in cantonment barracks. His master at Lha.s.sa had consoled himself with another sort, and it was a touching sight to see great bearded men sometimes leading, but as often as not carrying, on the march dainty little lap-dogs, of kinds that resembled the Pomeranian, the Skye terrier, or the King Charles' spaniel. One or two Tibetan mastiffs--more like huge Welsh collies than mastiffs--also accompanied us.

At Gyantse we were halted for a few days, upon one of which the G.O.C.

held his farewell parade, making us a sympathetic speech which will be remembered by all of us. Then we marched past. My lot was to command a squad of veterans whose duties for years had been confined to the supply of the army. We got along somehow, more by innate intelligence than knowledge of drill, going through various giddy evolutions in no particular formation and by the shortest cut, and arriving at the saluting base aided only by the b.u.mp of locality. There of course we braced ourselves and marched past, and turned our eyes sharply to the right as though we had never left the barrack square.

From Gyantse onwards I was in the first column, and thus missed certain hardships. It was nice bracing weather. We had cool fine days, at night twenty degrees of frost and often biting cold winds that took the skin off the nose and chapped the lips and the lobes of the ear, but were on the whole salubrious. The same weather was with us all the way, up through Kangma and the Red Idol gorge to Kalatso, past Dochen and into the Tuna plain, over the Tang-La, into Phari and down through the Gautsa glens, where the pine-forests smelt of Indian hill stations, and into Chumbi. As we reached Chumbi the clouds were gathering.

That night, with the outer fly of my tent taken out of store and erected over me, I went to bed secure in its extra protection, thinking casually that it might perhaps rain in the night. In the early morning I was woken with a crash, and felt a great weight squeezing my whole body, but leaving my head clear. Striking a light I found the upright tent pole near my feet broken in two. Looking through a corner of the tent I saw the ground all covered with snow, and realised that the weight on my body was the snow that had acc.u.mulated on the tent, broken the tent pole, and fallen upon me. It was six o'clock. My orderly and syce came to my rescue. They lifted the snow off me and took away my tent pole to a carpenter to get it mended, while in what s.p.a.ce was still left within the tent I found I could still breathe, and so slept peacefully till in an hour my tent pole was brought back mended and the tent reconstructed, and I could get up in comfort.

I had had a very mild experience. Grief of a worse kind had been widespread through the night, many officers and men losing their only shelter irretrievably at two or three in the morning. The second column came in that afternoon rather worn and battered, and the third column--for from Gyantse we had become three--was snowed up for two nights at Phari after a terrible march over the Tang-La from Tuna. Their eventual march into Chumbi was also a severe ordeal. At Chumbi it remained to await one's day of release. The snow delayed the pa.s.sage of the troops hardly at all. Leaving Chumbi in small detachments and using both the Jalap-La and Natu-La routes, they gradually disappeared. At length my own turn came. Leaving Chumbi one fine morning, and finding myself again a pa.s.senger, I hastened by double marches to India across the Natu-La down to Gangtok, through Sikkim, and into Siliguri. Strange it was to think, as, after that last hot double march from Riang, one sat under the punkah in Siliguri refreshment room, drinking tumbler after tumbler of iced ginger-beer, that three days before one had pulled icicles from one's beard on the top of the Natu-La.

Pleasant to get into the Darjiling mail that night and speed to Calcutta; pleasant to feel oneself wrapped in the civilisation of the Indian metropolis; pleasanter still to take train at Howrah, and be carried up country to the crisp cool autumn of the Panjab and to one's own fireside.

So the show was over--all over but for its memories, which for my own part were mainly agreeable. As he lays those memories aside, the selfish soldier's wish can hardly be other than that on some convenient date in spring time not too many years distant, ere the person is too stout and the legs too stiff to relish those high pa.s.ses, some truculent grand lama may necessitate and a kind Government organise another summer trip to Lha.s.sa.

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