TO LHASSA AT LAST

TO LHASSA AT LAST

BY

POWELL MILLINGTON

AUTHOR OF 'IN CANTONMENTS' 'IN AND BEYOND CANTONMENTS' ETC.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1905

[All rights reserved]

TO
CAPTAIN S. H. SHEPPARD, D.S.O.
R.E.
A COMRADE IN TIBET AND ELSEWHERE
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY
THE AUTHOR

November 1904

PREFACE

When the Sikkim-Tibet Mission Force marched to Lhassa, it carried along with it, besides fighting men and diplomatists, a strong contingent that represented literature and the deeper sciences. We were full of brains in that Lhassa column. There were men in it who had made the subject of Tibet their own before they had set foot in the country, and were already qualified to discourse upon it, whether in its political, its topographical, its ethnological, or its archæological aspect. There was a man who came with us armed only with a bicycle wheel and a cyclometer, with which he has corrected all preconceived notions of Tibetan distances. There was a man with a hammer (the 'Martol Walah Sahib' the natives called him), who, if his pony stumbled over a stone, got off his pony and beat the stone with his hammer, not really vindictively but merely to find out what precious ore the stone might contain. Then there was a man with a butterfly-net, who pickled the flies that got into his eye, and chased those that did not with his butterfly-net and pickled them also. There was a man too with a trowel, who did a lot of useful weeding by the roadside. There was a committee too of licensed curio-hunters, who collected curios with much enterprise and scientific precision for the British Museum. Lastly, there was a select band of press correspondents, who threw periodical literary light on our proceedings from start to finish.

Who can doubt that all the above-named are not now, in this month of November 1904, writing for their lives, so as to produce at the earliest opportunity the results of their scientific or literary labours in the shape of books that will give valuable information to the serious student, or prove a substantial contribution to literature?

Apart from the above enterprises, a flood of Blue-books, compiled by the authorised political and military officials, will doubtless also shortly appear, even though that appearance may in some cases be but a swift transference from the printing-press to the pigeonhole.

Surely, then, for one who is not ordered by authority to compile a Blue-book, who has no gospel of Tibetan scientific discoveries to proclaim to the world, and who has no harvest—in the shape of letters previously sent to the press and capable of republication—ready at hand for reaping, to sit down and write a book on Tibet, merely because he happens to have been to Lhassa and back, is a work of supererogation which needs a word of apology.

My apology is that this book will be avowedly a book by a 'man in the street'—a man, that is, who occupied an inconspicuous single-fly tent in a back street of the brigade camp. As such it will throw no searching light upon the subject, but may afford a simple but distinctive view of it, and one uncaught by the searchlights of the official minute, the scientist's lore, and the war correspondent's art.

But, my prospective reader, as you finger this slight volume at the bookstall, I trust that this preface may at once catch your eye, so that, if what you want to read about Tibet is an elaborate appreciation or a collection of solid information, you may drop the book like the proverbial hot potato before that jealous-eyed man behind the stall makes you buy it as a punishment for fingering it, and may seize instead upon one of those weightier tomes that are now racing it through the press.

POWELL MILLINGTON.
November 1904.

CONTENTS

TO LHASSA AT LAST

CHAPTER I
THE WRITING ON THE WALL

It really was rather nice. It had been quite hot in the plains, and was pleasantly cool up here. My wife and family had preceded me and had been settled for some weeks in the house which we had taken in the hills for the hot weather, and now I had just arrived on two months' leave. We were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room after dinner, a cosy little room made homelike by a careful selection of draperies and ornaments from the larger drawing-room in the plains.

'Just ripping,' I repeated with sad lack of originality. The ride up the hill from the plains had been fatiguing. The fire was soporific. There was whiskey and soda at my elbow and a cheroot in my mouth (I'm a privileged husband and smoke in the drawing-room).

'Ripping,' I said for the third time, half dozing.

'Come, get up, lazy-bones, and go to bed. You are hopeless as you are.'

So I was led to bed. We put out the lamps, and on the hall table found our bedroom candles, which we lit preparatory to climbing the stairs. The staircase set me musing. Some hill houses have them, but they are rare in the plains. The smallness of the rooms, the existence of that narrow staircase, the domestic process of lighting the bedroom candles, the necessity of not waking the baby, the sense of security and of being cut adrift even temporarily from the ties of officialdom—all suggested the peaceful conditions of life enjoyed by the small but solid householder at home.

'We've got it at last,' I exclaimed.

'Got what?' asked my wife.

'Why, the life of the bank clerk at home,' I replied; 'that bank clerk whom we have always envied, who lives at Tooting in a little house just like this, with a creaking staircase just like this, who never gets harried from pillar to post, who is peaceful and domestic, and gets fat as soon as he can afford to. And here I am, for two months at any rate, and I'm living in a Tooting villa just like the bank clerk, and in the bosom of my family, and I'm going to get fat too.'

So up we went to bed, full of peace. There was a big black centipede crawling on the bedroom wall, a sinister-looking object, looking on the white surface like mysterious handwriting, bringing with it to the fanciful mind suggestions of 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.' My wife has a horror of centipedes. I was at once detailed to destroy it: a feat soon accomplished.

'That dispels the bank clerk idea altogether, does it not?' one of us remarked to the other. 'Bank clerks at Tooting don't have centipedes on their bedroom walls, do they?'

When I had gone to my dressing-room, I heard the sound below of a key turning in a lock. It was a servant opening the back door.

A moment later I heard the tread of the servant's bare feet on the stairs. This was unusual. My bearer does not voluntarily visit me at this hour.

Yes, it was the bearer. He came to the dressing-room door and presented me with a telegram. It was 'urgent,' as denoted by the yellow colour of the envelope. 'Urgent' telegrams when addressed to officers on leave are apt to involve some interference with their plans.

I read the telegram and signed the receipt. The servant asked if he was wanted any more. 'Yes, very much wanted,' I answered; 'but go downstairs now and I'll call you later.'

Then came the process of breaking the news to my wife. It is difficult not to be clumsy on these occasions. I went into the bedroom with the telegram concealed somewhere on my person. There she sat unconcerned, and I had to break it to her and did not know how to begin. I got to within a foot or two of her and then stopped, held out a beckoning hand to her, and said roughly:

'Come here.'

'What is it?' she said, sitting transfixed. There was something in my face which alarmed her.

I beckoned again, and again said, 'Come here.'

'Oh!' she cried, 'take it off, take it off! It must be a centipede on my shoulder that you are pointing at. I know it must be.'

'No, dear, it's not half so bad as that: it's only that I'm ordered to Tibet.'

CHAPTER II
PRELIMINARIES

The next day was Sunday—not a good day on which to start preparations. I had a great many things to do. The first was to visit the civil surgeon, and be examined for fitness for residing in high altitudes. He lived at the top of a steep hill himself, and as I arrived there on foot but alive, he passed me without difficulty. Then my pony who had come with me had to be despatched with the syce on two double marches to the railway terminus. Then I had to procure free railway passes from the station staff officer, whose office, the day being Sunday, was of course closed. There was also the putting of oneself, on the one hand, and one's wife and family on the other, on sound financial bases, preparatory to an indefinite period of separation. There was also a lot of sorting and packing to be done, and farewell visits to be made, where these were officially expected of one. (One's real friends, of course, one left without a thought.)

I got off on the Monday. People at home are often horror-struck at the speed with which the married officer has to leave his family when ordered on service. Fond parents have been known to forbid their daughters marrying soldiers on this very account. They are quite wrong. Given that you have to separate, it is much better to get the separation over as quickly as possible. In this case the speed with which those busy thirty-six hours passed between the receipt of the telegram and my departure was a real godsend. A long-drawn-out anticipation of separation would by comparison have been intolerable.

My wife came to the top of the road that leads to the plains to see me off. The quickest mode of conveyance was the 'rickshaw.' There ought to be some glamour of romance about a wife seeing her husband off to the wars, but how could there be when the husband started in a rickshaw? I stepped solemnly into the vehicle, and an officious 'jampani' tried to tuck me up with a rug as though I had been something very dainty and precious, while my wife, who still preserves a critical eye for Indian manners and customs, exclaims:—

'Oh dear, oh dear, this is a funny country, when one's husband starts for field service in a perambulator!'

The rickshaw carried me at break-neck pace to the plains, where, with my ears singing from the sudden drop of 6,000 feet, and the heat oppressing me, I took train to my former station, to which I had to make a detour before proceeding to the base.

It was a terrible two days that I had here. Dismantling a furnished house, packing and warehousing your household goods paying your outstanding bills, having parting drinks at your friends' expense, giving certificates of saintly character to every black man who has ever served you in any capacity during the past two years, and who drops from the clouds for his 'chitthi' as soon as your final departure from the station becomes known, sorting, repairing, and supplementing your camp kit, fitting out yourself, your servant, and your horse with warm clothing—these and countless other matters filled to the brim those forty-eight hours.

At last I was in the train for Calcutta. I met two major-generals of my acquaintance at different points during the journey. They both congratulated me warmly on the quest upon which I was going, each independently remarking, not upon the unexampled professional experience that I was likely to acquire, but on the fact that Tibet was an A1 place for curios! Nice and human of them, I thought, to put that first! One of them, I fear, was rather incommoded by the numerous articles of kit which I had with me in the carriage, and which overflowed somewhat into his portion of it. He was, I knew, a great authority on the scientific reduction of transport, and, when I apologised somewhat sheepishly for crowding him, made some grim remark about the liberal scale of baggage per officer that was doubtless being allowed to us; so I had to impress upon him that I stood an even chance of being kept at the base, and so had to be prepared for all emergencies, even a ten days' leave to Darjiling. Whereat he smiled more grimly than ever.

Don't travel from Northern India to Calcutta in May, if you can help it. It is not very hot when you start, but every mile you travel you find it growing hotter. You get baked as you traverse the dry plains of the United Provinces, you get fried as you reach a greasier climate further South, and in the humid atmosphere of Lower Bengal the sensation is that of being boiled. You get out of the train in Howrah station at Calcutta done all to shreds.

After a few hours in Calcutta I took the Darjiling mail train which was due the following morning at Siliguri, the latter being the base of the Tibet Expedition. In the train I was accompanied by a throng of Calcutta folk going up to Darjiling for their 'week-end.' Calcutta, apart from other attributes, is a great emporium of drapery and millinery goods, and it was quite natural to find myself sharing a carriage with a gentleman who in the course of conversation revealed himself as the head of a large firm of haberdashers. He was a delightful travelling companion, and regaled me with tales illustrative of the humorous side of his business. He was at his best when describing his most successful corset fitter, a damsel blessed apparently both with a slim waist and a strong arm. With the former she advertised the latest thing in corsets, and with the latter she fitted the said corset on to figures less graceful than her own. All went well till one day she surpassed herself by transforming a certain stately matron into a veritable sylph. This lady went home pleased and proud, but in an hour's time an indignant letter accompanied by the fragments of a corset reached the manager, the letter demanding the return of the money expended on the corset, on the ground that the latter, on the wearer having cleared her throat with a gentle cough, had burst in several places with a loud report.

But just then the train steamed into Siliguri station, and I had to leave my friend and his pleasant tales of frills and furbelows and plunge into war, bloody war.

CHAPTER III
THE BASE

I have been too long describing the preliminaries that were necessary before joining the Expedition, but there is some excuse for doing so. For after all those preliminaries, with their suddenness and their hurry and rush, were distinctly typical of the Indian Frontier Expedition. When soldiers serving the Imperial Government are ordered on a campaign, they generally have some warning. Foreign politics have generally been simmering in the pot for some time before the pot overboils. But on the Indian Frontier some irresponsible ruffians perpetrate some sudden outrage, which, without any word of warning, involves the instant despatch of troops to the scene of action. The result is a scramble, an individual example of which I have tried above to describe.

In all books on wars a constant comparison will be found drawn between the school-boy and the soldier on service. I dare say I shall find myself working that comparison to death. It occurred to me first as I reached Siliguri, and, jostling with other fellows, rushed to the Staff Office there, to discover what was my next destination. We felt like schoolboys, who, at the beginning of term, rush to inquire whether they have given us our remove, or who anxiously await the publication of the notice which will tell them whether they are to represent their house at football. There was the same excitement before we learnt our fate. There was that boyish jubilation on the part of those who were off to the front, and vulgar schoolboy language from those who were to be detained at the base or in Sikkim.

My orders were to go to Gnatong as a temporary measure. This was dubious, and might mean being stuck there or in a similar place indefinitely, or might mean being eventually sent forward. Those who knew it told me that Gnatong was a horrible place, that it snowed there daily from October 1 till May 31, and rained from June 1 to September 30, that it was always in the clouds, and that it was approached by a stony road, as steep as the side of a house, which would knock one's pony's feet to bits. The height of the place was twelve thousand odd feet, and it was situated in Sikkim some ten miles on the near side of the Tibetan frontier.

I had to wait some days at Siliguri till my pony and some of my kit, which the railway authorities had not let travel as fast as I had, should catch me up.

There were several detached officers also waiting here, and the units forming the reinforcements were coming in daily. We turned half the refreshment room into a sort of station mess, having our meals at one long table. I suppose a contemplative person would have noted those accidental details which differentiated us from the ordinary travellers by the Darjiling-Calcutta mails, who had their meals at the other long table. There we were, the brutal and licentious soldiery feasting and drinking and gambling with shameless abandon, while those worthy men of affairs from Calcutta and their excellent ladies took their meals hastily and in sober earnest alongside of us. Some of us must have presented a queer spectacle. I remember in particular one youthful officer, whom I afterwards lost sight of, but who was the most ardent young Napoleon I have met for a long time. He had apparently started growing his beard the day he left his cantonment. He was of the Esau type, and the growth was brisk. The colour was ginger, not the chastened sort that is sprinkled over with sugar, but the crude dark ginger you get in jars. He affected short khaki shorts, as suitable for the soldier in hill warfare. He also affected a khaki cardigan jacket. He had left his helmet behind him, and wore only a khaki pugree with a khaki 'kula' in the centre of it. I used to see ladies, who came in for a quiet cup of tea, glancing sidelong at him. Some were doubtless impressed, and went away enthusiastic about that young warrior. But in the eyes of others I fancy I saw a twinkle.

At last my pony with his syce and the missing kit arrived, and I was enabled to start for Gnatong the next day.

CHAPTER IV
TO GNATONG

About two or three days' marching takes you out of India into Sikkim, but you are in the heart of the jungle almost as soon as you leave Siliguri. For about seven days you hardly rise at all, merely following the course upstream of the Teesta river, and later on of one of its tributaries.

That belt of 'terai' jungle which fringes the skirt of the whole Himalayan range has its own special charms. It is a fine sporting country for those who are on pleasure bent and are mounted on elephants, on which alone is it possible to penetrate the thick breast-high undergrowth. Even for troops marching along a road running through its midst, it has a certain fascination. The incessant call of the jungle-fowl on either side of you, the constant shade, so unusual in India, the bright orchids in the tree-tops, the heavy luxuriance of vegetation that loads the air with scents that are generally sweet, the gorgeous butterflies, the steamy hothouse atmosphere—all combine to form a kind of sedative, suggestive of the lotus-flower, of pleasant physical enervation, and perpetual afternoon. One could enjoy this feeling as one sat idly on one's pony, till it was dispelled by the rain. It rained very heavily all those days. Even when it did not rain the air was so laden with moisture that the very clothes you wore were always wet on the outside. The rain too was of the sort that did not cool or stir the air; the thermometer stood perpetually at a high figure, and existence on the inside of a mackintosh during one of those showers was a protracted torture of prickly heat.

We reached Rangpo—the town that lies on the border of independent as opposed to British Sikkim—after four days' marching. I call it a town, for it certainly possessed one street and a bazaar, and swarmed with natives other than those belonging to the force. The ordinary native of Sikkim seems to be a half-breed, looking partly Aryan, partly Mongolian, and less Aryan and more Mongolian as one penetrates further into the country. Their women are rather picturesque. They do not give you quite the same cheery unblushing greeting as you generally get from the regular hill woman of Mongolian type, but they do not hide their faces jealously from you, like the women on the plains of India. In dress they largely affect black velveteen. It would be interesting to know from where that velveteen comes, though I think it could, like the iridescent shawls and the stocking suspenders that are so largely worn by the brave men of Bengal, be traced to Manchester or Birmingham. It must have been an enterprising bagman who first went round Sikkim and persuaded the Sikkimese ladies that black velveteen was the match par excellence for their complexions.

At length we began to climb a little, ever so little, and after two more days reached Lingtam in pouring rain. This was the last of our level going; from here to Gnatong we were to climb continuously, and at as steep a gradient as laden mule with straining breast-piece could hope to tackle. The Lingtam camp was even smaller, more uneven, and damper than the others had been. I found a convenient difficulty arising as to where my tent could be fitted in, and simultaneously heard of the existence of a bungalow at Sedonchan, three miles beyond. I was tied by no duty to the column, so determined to reach Sedonchan that afternoon, and push on to Gnatong the next day.

Those three miles to Sedonchan involved a climb of four thousand feet, up a rough dripping bridle-path paved with cobbles, not nice smooth-rounded cobbles, but roughly cut spiky stones. I have said the path was paved with cobbles, but should have added that it had a supplementary pavement of horse-shoes.

At first in my ignorance I thought of picking one up for luck, but a yard ahead I saw another one, and then met others at close intervals all the way, so decided that all that good fortune could not be meant for me, and had better be left well alone. It was a good farrier who could so shoe a horse that he would lose no shoe between Lingtam and Gnatong.

I don't know in the least what sort of place Sedonchan may be. It rained all the time, some fourteen hours, that I stayed there, and was shrouded in mist. So that if I ever went there again the place would still possess the charm of novelty.

The next morning I found that my pony had shared the lot of most animals along that road and cast a shoe. Farriers don't grow on the wayside in Sikkim, so there was no alternative but to walk up to Gnatong. This involved a climb of about six thousand feet, and then a drop into Gnatong of about one thousand. I overtook the Royal Fusiliers during my walk; they had camped for the night in a puddle called Jaluk which lies half-way between Sedonchan and Gnatong. It was during this march of theirs that I believe the following dialogue was overheard:—

'What-ho, Bill!' said Atkins No. 1. 'What do they mean by calling this something country a something tableland? 'Tain't no something tableland, this 'ere ain't.'

'Garrn,' answered Atkins No. 2, 'it's a something tableland right enough, and this 'ere as we are climbing is the something legs of the something table.'

Fill in the adjectives to taste, or à la Mr. Kipling, and you get the real flavour of the dialogue.

CHAPTER V
MOUNTAIN SICKNESS: GNATONG: WAYSIDE WITTICISMS

Mountain sickness, on the other hand, may be of either kind, though not of both at once. I have often had bad mountain sickness of the one kind in the plains of India. Any one who has spent his boyhood scampering over Scotch hills or in similar pastimes is peculiarly prone to this form of the disease towards the end of a hot June. Ten days' leave, or more if possible, is then the only remedy. I had never experienced the other form till I reached Gnatong. I don't exactly know how doctors describe it in diagnosis. I believe, though, that they attribute it in some way to your blood not running up the hill as fast as you do yourself, which results in blood collecting in your toes, which ought to be running about your brain and lungs. Hence giddiness, nausea, headache, loss of appetite, insomnia, difficulty in breathing, and, saddest of all in some cases, an utter inability to enjoy either your drink or your tobacco.

I got it badly with all the symptoms, including the last two. I was supposed to be very busy helping to see each column onwards. They were got through without difficulty—no one would stay at Gnatong an hour longer than he could help. So I suppose I performed my share of the work all right, though it was done from bed. There was no one there to supervise my work, and I therefore did not have to go upon the sick list; but even so the feeling of being incapacitated by some accidental ailment at the beginning of an expedition, and of its possibly preventing you from reaching the front, is one of the most trying of ordeals.

The number of victims of mountain sickness at Gnatong was considerable. There was an enterprising Parsi merchant who had opened a store there. His wealth of tinned provisions and whiskey lay in the shop comparatively disregarded, but he did a roaring trade in phenacetin and Stearne's headache cure among the mountain sick.

Mountain sickness is like measles. If you get a really good go of it, you are not likely to be soon attacked again by it, even though you have to ascend to an altitude far higher than that at which you originally succumbed. Many a man lay gasping for several days at Gnatong, which was only twelve thousand odd feet up, and later on climbed the Karo-Là (16,800 feet) on his own flat feet, smiling.

'The last long streak of snow' was just fading as I reached Gnatong at the end of May. It was not very cold, but bitterly raw and damp. I occupied a hut, which contained a fireplace, and would have made myself cosy and warm if the fire had not always smoked. This involved that distressing dilemma between having a fire and also a roomful of smoke, which had to be periodically emptied by opening the door and window, and so letting in cold and rain and mist, or sitting in a chilly damp atmosphere without a fire, but, on the other hand, without either smoke or violent draughts. This is a petty detail, but I mention it, since to the many people who spent their time mainly in posts on the line of communication, and lived in huts, this must have been an ever-recurring dilemma and a primary feature of their existence.

Gnatong had been an important place during the last Sikkim Expedition. For the purposes of the present Expedition it has been renovated. The men so employed had been merry fellows, with eyes for that nice, innocent, feeble, but well-meant joke, which you appreciate on service, even though in peace time you might elect to be bored by it. These hut builders and road makers had been lavish of sign-posts. The Gnatong post was placarded everywhere on the inside with the names of its tiny streets. It appeared that we were occupying what was on the whole a straggling but quite a fashionable part of London. I myself lived at 'Hyde Park Corner.' The post commandant, if I remember right, occupied a mansion in 'Carlton Gardens.' We went for constitutionals up and down 'Rotten Row,' and found 'Buckingham Palace' used as a supply depot.

This art of writing mildly amusing notice-boards was not confined to Gnatong. On a bit of the military road near Chumbi, where the roadmakers had to revet it carefully to prevent it falling into the river, there was a neat little sign-board describing this strip of roadway as 'The Embankment.' Outside the dâk bungalow at Rangpo was a large placard on which was printed 'Mount Nelson Hotel. No Ragging allowed.' On the top of the Natu-Là—one of the passes dividing Sikkim from Tibet—there is the following:

Poor jokes all of them, aren't they? but just as poor fare can be eaten with a relish after a hard day's marching; so poor jokes tickle the mental palate of the simple soldier and the stupid officer on service, just as effectively as do good ones.

CHAPTER VI
OVER THE JALAP-LÀ: CHUMBI: BEARDS

My way lay through Kapap over the Jalap-Là, and down through Langram and Rinchingong, and thence to Chumbi. The pièce de résistance was the part between Kapap and Langram. There is an easy uninteresting pass between Gnatong and Kapap. Kapap itself looked a bleak dismal spot, lying all in the clouds at the end of a long dark lake. From here you rise to the top of the Jalap-Là, which is about 14,900 feet high. The suffix 'Là' denotes a 'pass.' There was snow on the pass which covered the road in some places. I got into a small drift once, my pony flopping down suddenly till his girths were in the snow. He knew nothing about snow in those days, and must have been very much astonished. One's first acquaintance with so high an altitude impresses one greatly. There is something so strange about the atmosphere that one feels as though one were in another planet. The effect of the atmosphere on distances is most curious. You see the details of a hill in the distance so clearly that it seems far nearer than it is. Distance-judging by eye for military purposes in high altitudes is an art governed by rules entirely different from those that govern it at an ordinary elevation.

I was a bit weak after my attack of mountain sickness, and stuck to my pony's back the whole way. I felt a natural anxiety with regard to the native followers who accompanied me—an orderly, a syce, and a bearer. They were all three plainsmen. Hills of any size whatever were quite strange to them. Whether they would live at the height of Mont Blanc was a question of some moment. I expected at any time to see one or other of them lying down gasping like a freshly caught fish. I think they all died in imagination many times before they reached the top of the pass. They turned wild eyes of anguish and reproach towards me whenever I waited to see how they were getting on. Eventually I found it best to leave them to themselves, and only know that they arrived down the far side alive, but expressing a poor opinion of Tibet as a country (for we now were in Tibet).

The walk down to Langram was trying to the toes, but brought us off the bare mountain tops and into a region of pine-woods, the very smell of which is always comforting. Here I stopped the night, descending next morning to Rinchingong, which is in the Chumbi valley, and stands barely over 9,000 feet. Two miles above Rinchingong we had passed Yatun, the frontier Tibetan village built against that Chinese wall which stretched as a barrier right across the valley, but has since been demolished by British dynamite. Here, besides the dwellings of some Tibetan inhabitants, were the houses of the British official who controls the Chinese customs in this direction, and of Miss Annie Taylor, the lady missionary who has worked for long, and all alone, among the Tibetans of the border, nursing them in sickness, and telling them of Christianity. 'Ani' is Tibetan for nun, and the name 'Ani memsahib' has therefore a double signification to those who use it.

The first glimpse of a building on the north side of the Jalap-Là proclaims the fact that you are no longer in India or under the influence of Indian ideals of domestic or other architecture. The houses in the Chumbi valley are not, however, as typically Tibetan as those further north, being far more Chinese in appearance. It is, in fact, curious that Chinese influence seems more prevalent in the Chumbi valley than in any other part of Eastern Tibet, except Lhassa itself. The number of Chinamen actually resident in the Chumbi valley is itself large, and there seems to have been a great deal of inter-marriage here at one time or another between the local Tibetans and Chinamen proper, the women of such unions having of course been Tibetan, since the Chinaman, when he goes roaming, invariably, I believe, leaves his women folk at home.

The following day brought me into Chumbi. It was pleasant to be in a big camp again, to join a large mess, and get the latest news from headquarters.

The valley itself was a delightful spot to have reached. After the unpleasantnesses of those heights that one had traversed, this valley seemed a sheer Garden of Eden. It was a place to dally in, in which to wander about accompanied by your best girl, picking wild flowers for her, and listening with her to the humming of the bees, and the bubbling of laughing brooks, rather than a place in which to concentrate an army for an advance into the enemy's country.

Chumbi would make a glorious summer sanitarium for British troops in the hot weather, provided that that projected route, which is to avoid the passes and run through Bhutan to the Bengal Duars, ever becomes an accomplished fact. Two thousand feet higher than most hill stations, and yet below the really giddy heights, in a climate no hotter at any time than an English summer, never parched with drought and never visited by protracted spells of rain, not perched on an inconvenient hilltop away from its water supply, but lying in a fertile valley, through which runs a river of pure water that knows not the germ of enteric, with enough flat spaces to hold commodious barracks and to provide good recreation grounds, it seems that it would prove an altogether desirable haven for the invalid soldiers from Calcutta and the Presidency district.

A week spent here was pleasant enough, enabling one, so to speak, to recover one's breath after descending from those heights we had left behind and before tackling those in front. I soon learnt, with the same school-boy jubilation to which I have previously alluded, that I was to accompany the advance.

Here, of course, at this rendezvous of troops many old friends ran across one another. It was sometimes difficult for two friends to recognise each other on account of the obstacles to recognition formed by their respective beards. The soldier's service beard, in its various forms and aspects, forms an interesting study. There is, of course, the ordinary dull beard grown by an adequately but not outrageously hirsute person and trimmed to a conventional shape, which makes the wearer resemble any such normal being as a naval officer, a parson, or respectable middle-aged civilian of everyday life. The only striking feature of this beard is that it is productive of unexpected likenesses. You have, for instance, known a brother officer for many years, and never found him possessed of any of the glamour of royalty; you meet him on service wearing his beard, and find he is the veritable double of the Prince of Wales.

But there are other beards. There is, for instance, what may be called the 'Infant prodigy' beard, a monstrosity adorning the chin of a quite youthful officer. The latter may be put to serve under you. And it takes time and much hardening of yourself against external influences before you have the effrontery to order the young gentleman about, or tell him off when he is in error. I remember an instance of a fairly senior captain calling on a regimental mess and being entertained during his visit by the only officer of that regiment then present. The latter possessed an 'Infant prodigy' beard, which was also flecked with a few abnormal grey hairs. I was in that mess too at the moment—in the capacity of honorary member only—and followed the interview with relish. The senior captain was becomingly deferential, and the youngster's grey beard wagged with what appeared becoming dignity. At last a light was brought in by a servant, for it was growing dark, which flashed for a moment on Mr. Greybeard's shoulder strap, and revealed two simple subaltern's stars. The gradual, almost imperceptible, change in the senior captain's manner, and the corresponding falling from his high estate of Mr. Greybeard were interesting to watch. The former soon got up to go.

'Damn that fellow! I mistook him for the colonel,' is what I am sure he said to himself when he got outside.

Then there is what may be called the 'British workman' beard—that is, the beard which is allowed to grow in its own sweet way, and may adopt any of the sizes or shapes that one sees on the faces of such British workmen as never visit a barber. This type also is productive of strange likenesses, not to public personages or one's own compeers, but to the men of the British working class whom one has known in old days. There were many officers so adorned who made excellent gamekeepers or gillies, and in particular I remember a certain stalwart major whose beard grew in two inverted horns that splayed outwards on his chest, and who was the very image of my father's old gardener. I once very nearly addressed him as 'Horton' by mistake, for that happened to have been the gardener's name.

CHAPTER VII
TO PHARI

This march to Phari was, until we actually reached the Phari plain, quite the wettest I have known. It rained incessantly. The first day we climbed a few miles up to Lingmatam. (How like one another the names of places in this part of the world are! It took me months to distinguish between Lingtam, Langram, and Lingmatam.) From Lingmatam (a sopping, spongy, flat little plain nestling in the hills, that had obviously only just missed its proper vocation of being a lake instead of a plain) we marched up a rough bridle-path through pine-woods to Dhota. We had a very long train of pack-mule transport in our column, and the checks up that steep narrow winding path were interminable, while rain fell the whole time. Whenever anything went wrong with a mule's load, which of course happened frequently owing to the steepness and roughness of the track, it was impossible to take the mule aside to adjust the load, for there was no room at the side, and the mule had to be halted where he was till the adjustment was completed. This involved the halting of say five hundred mules, who happened to be behind the mule who had first been halted. And when the latter at last moved off, it of course took an appreciable interval of time before the next mule followed suit. Multiply that appreciable interval by the number of mules in the rear, say five hundred, and you find that it takes perhaps a full half-hour before the five-hundredth is at last on the move again. Thus that initial adjustment of a refractory load has cost the rear of the column half an hour's delay, and by the end of the half-hour you may be sure that the load of another mule has got loose, and the whole process has to be repeated. This is just an instance of the trials of a transport officer, and of his faithful servants, the transport driver and the pack-mule.

I remember, during one such check, being seated on my pony at a point of the road where it was impossible to dismount for lack of space, with one mule's head buried in my pony's tail and another mule's tail flicking my pony's nose, the rain trickling off my helmet and down my neck, and, worst of all, a strong aroma rising from the khud beneath where lay the remains of a mule who had met his death at that spot at a date that was palpably neither very recent nor yet innocuously remote. To be bound almost literally hand and foot in the vicinity of a bad smell is a form of torture which in its way gives points to any inquisition.

Dhota lies at a considerable height above Lingmatam, and, before we reached camp, many of the mule drivers were somewhat exhausted with their climb. There was a certain amount of almost inevitable straggling on the part of some of them—a most unfortunate occurrence, for it resulted in a few leaving their mules to their own devices just when the control of the latter was most necessary. For after emerging from the pine forest a few miles below Dhota we came on to a hillside on which grew ever so little of the deadly aconite plant. A check would occur somewhere to the column. Those mules who were left standing without their drivers would—as is the nature of the beast—try to improve the shining hour by picking up a little grazing from the roadside. Here and there a mule would swallow some aconite, and the chances were that before he reached camp he would foam at the mouth and quickly expire. A few, though poisoned, reached camp alive, and of these a small proportion were saved by drastic remedies. But the deaths that day from aconite poisoning almost reached double figures—a regrettable occurrence, for the mule is an animal for whom, when one knows him, one entertains affection, and, besides this, each mule carries two maunds of useful provisions on his back, and we were not too well off for transport. After another wet night on another wet camping ground, we marched into Phari. We had left the green valley of the Chumbi; we had mounted upwards through the pine forests beyond; we had emerged into a region of rugged scenery where great rocky precipices hung over us. We wondered what still wilder regions we were now approaching as we still climbed higher. But all of a sudden, as it seemed, we had reached the end of our climb and found ourselves on a level green plain with rolling green downs around us, the sort of homely gentle scene that meets you when, for instance, you cross the border between England and Scotland, or pass on the railway the lower fells of Cumberland—a scene suggestive of sheep grazing on rich close turf, and of comfortable homesteads hidden away in the folds of the hills. This abrupt transition brought to the mind the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. It seemed that we had climbed to the top of the world that had hitherto been ours, and were starting afresh on a new level.

This sensation was chiefly illusory; for that level green plain and those rolling green downs deceived one with their greenness, and proved on closer inspection to be but indifferent pastures, while after a mile or two the plain bent round a corner, and we came in view of such mighty irregularities of the earth's surface as left no doubt as to our being still in the very heart of the mountains. For as we turned that corner, suddenly, as with a sudden flash, and all lit up with the sunlight that had just dispelled the clouds, Chumalari stood before us, his white top only a few miles away, but many thousand feet above us, and so reaching to a height in the sky that to the stranger's eye was almost appalling.

To us men the romance of scenery is very elusive. I have known nice old ladies to whom a fine sunset was a real substantial joy, giving them the same nocturnal exhilaration that baser clay can only acquire by absorbing a bottle of champagne. Given a male mind properly swept and garnished for the time being by some potent influence—preferably of course a sweet influence of the feminine gender—even the most businesslike and prosaic of us can, if only for short intervals at a time, empty ourselves of the things of this ugly world and assimilate a little of nature's beauty. But in ordinary humdrum life, when that sweet feminine influence is no longer at his side (or, if still at his side, has lost much of its old magic by having been so foolish as to be now his mere wife), the ordinary brutal humdrum man regards the finest waterfall in the world as merely a good place at which to dilute his whiskey, finds blue sunlit waters rather trying to the eyes, and execrates the glorious sweep of the mountain in front of him as conducive to perspiration and shortness of breath as he climbs it. We can't help it, we men; we are built that way; it is the nature of the beast. But even so when by some strange accident we are taken unawares, and some rare and magnificent glory of nature suddenly confronts us, and, without our consenting or even against our will, pierces that crust of sordid matter-of-factness that usually encases us so securely, as did that great white mountain Chumalari that day when we met him on the Phari plain, then we too abandon ourselves and for once in a way find ourselves drinking in the beauty as greedily as ever that old lady drinks in her sunset.

A few miles along the plain brought us to Phari.

CHAPTER VIII
TO KANGMA

All our little columns concentrated at Phari. Our camp was just outside the 'jong' or fort. Phari-jong was quite typical of the genus 'jong,' looking from the outside like the sort of mediæval castle that sometimes adorns the foreground of a drop-scene in a theatre. On the inside it was rather extra-typical, being even more rambling, darker, and dirtier than most jongs. A grim humorist had selected the topmost garret as the post-office. This selection gave the local postmaster, who was also possessed of grim humour, the vastest entertainment. For the little columns came pouring in day after day, bringing all sorts of folk who were pining for their letters. Every one, as soon as he was off duty, went head-down to the post-office. We were now at a level of 15,000 feet, and the climb, at that altitude, of several hundred feet of rough Tibetan passages and staircases was a great strain on the lungs to any one unused to it.

The postmaster sat in his office, cool and comfortable, while all day long officers, British rank and file, sepoys and followers, poured in for their letters, every one arriving panting, with his tongue lolling out, and quite unable to state his requirements for at least two minutes. The postmaster made a point of asking every one most politely what he wanted at the very moment of his arrival, so as not to keep him waiting, and grinned diabolically at the desperate efforts of the latter to splutter out his name and address. When, as one of the victims in question, I went for my letters, and had duly provided him with my share of the entertainment, I asked him whether he was not enjoying himself, and he assured me it was the best fun he had ever had in his life.

From Phari to Kangma we marched in two columns, of which I accompanied the second.

The 'Tang-Là' was our first halting-place—a bleak spot very much swept by the wind. From there we marched to Tuna, and thence to Dochen, with Chumalari on our right, showing us a new view of himself as we rounded each spur that jutted out into the plain. We passed many herds of the Kiang or wild ass, some of us galloping after them in an attempt to get a close view; but they are fleet and wary, and evaded us altogether. The simple peasant of that part of Tibet has been known to allude to the Kiang as the 'children of Chumalari,' and thus to explain their sanctity, for Chumalari himself is a sacred mountain. Whether belief in this origin of the Kiang is orthodox, or merely a local superstition, I do not know.

Hereabouts we passed the 'hot springs,' where still lay what was left of the corpses of many Tibetans who had fallen in the fight that had occurred there some months before. We had, I am told, once actually buried these corpses when we found that the enemy were making no effort in that direction; but the Tibetans, holding curious theories on the subject, had again unearthed them. The principle that apparently governs Tibetan obsequies is the desirability of making a corpse fulfil its natural function as food for animals. Hence exposure of corpses as food for wolves or vultures causes them no pang. They even, it is said, so far elaborate the above principle as to regard a corpse as specially honoured when given as food to the domestic pig, the origin of this development of the principle being of course really utilitarian; for the high-placed Tibetan, since in his life he 'feeds high and lives soft,' must of necessity in his death be specially nutritious. Lama-fed pork is—so they say—regarded as the greatest of delicacies.

Leaving Dochen and the lake, on the bank of which it lies, we turned up a valley to our left, and emerged at Kalatso, the name given to the post which adjoins the lake of the same name. From here we marched along the Kalatso plain to Menza. The next day was to bring us into Kangma.

My commanding officer was with the first column, and had given me orders to ride on early on alternate days to meet him at the camp ahead of me before he left the latter. His hour for leaving each such camp would be 9 A.M., by which hour I had to arrive there. I had to bring a sergeant with me on each occasion. It was fifteen miles from Menza to Kangma. The road was rather rough, so they said, but one could cover the distance in two hours and a half, so I decided to start with the sergeant at half-past six. At a quarter-past six I found that my pony had bruised a fetlock against a stone in the night and was distinctly lame. I could not get another mount, and had to share the sergeant's, and we had little more than our two hours and a half for the journey. It so happened that I had just been reading a story of primitive life in Western America, called 'The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come,' in which a very sound method by which two men can travel on one horse is alluded to. A. starts on horseback at, say, eight miles an hour, and B. on foot at, say, four miles. When A. has gone a given distance he dismounts, ties the horse to the nearest tree or stone, and proceeds on foot. Up in due course comes B., mounts the horse, and, riding on, should overtake A. just when A. has finished his fair share of walking; after which the process is repeated to the end of the journey.

I was A. and the sergeant was B. The road was quite deserted, and the part through which we were going was at that time reported quite peaceful, so there was practically no risk in leaving the pony alone for short spells at a time. It was a most comfortable arrangement altogether. We travelled at the average rate of six miles an hour. Each of us had a pleasant ride alternating with a pleasant walk. Even the pony, though, when on the move, kept going pretty hard, yet had pleasant breathers between whiles. We arrived punctually at 8.55 A.M., of course to find that the first column had decided to halt a day at Kangma, and that therefore there need not have been any hurry. But then, of course, that is always the way in such cases.

We had one great adventure just before we reached Kangma. I had been walking, and the sergeant had just caught me up, on the pony, when two shots rang out. I located them as coming from a village a short way off. The sergeant affirmed that they were both volleys. I was in a beastly funk, and perhaps the sergeant was not altogether unmoved. Just then two mounted infantrymen, fully armed, rode up from the Kangma direction. I have great respect for mounted infantrymen, but I have known them spin yarns. We asked whether there were any of the enemy about, to which they replied that their name was legion, or words to that effect, and that they were all around us. This being so, it did not seem to matter in which direction we went; so we pushed on, indulging in the pleasure of each other's company for the time being (instead of one riding ahead while the other walked). Shortly we rounded a corner, and another shot rang out, followed by the appearance of two more mounted infantrymen. We asked the latter what the firing was about, and they told us that the commandant of the donkey corps, who was just round the next corner with his donkeys, was making a fine bag of pigeons.