270 GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS OF THE TIBET MISSION. 



of the heavy clothes ojie has to wear in cold weather is a sufficient 

 strain in itself. Any additional effort exhausts one immediately. 

 And if it tries ns EuroiDeans, who are more or less inured to cold, 

 Iiow much more distressing must it be to the natives of India, and 

 that they were able to march 15 miles across the pass that day and 

 spend the rest of the winter, as they had to, immediately on the other 

 side, at a height of but little under 15,000 feet, is, I think, a striking 

 testimony to their powders of endurance and the high spirit which 

 prevails among them. Colonel Hogge and the Twenty-third Pio- 

 neers most willingly faced this ordeal, and by this act of endurance 

 proved once and for all to the Tibetans that their country was no 

 longer inaccessible to us, even in the depth of winter. 



Plere at Tuna more fruitless parley with the Tibetans ensued. 

 They paid one or two visits to me, and once 1 rode over with Captains 

 O'Connor and Sawyer to see them amid their own surroundings, to 

 gauge their capacity, and to estimate the strength and direction of 

 the various influences at work among them. It became sufficiently 

 evident to us that the real control of affairs was in the hands of the 

 Lassa lamas, three of wdiom — one from each of the three great mon- 

 asteries at Lassa — were present on the occasion. The four generals 

 whom we then met were amiable and polite enough. They repeated 

 by rote the formula, " Go back to the frontier.'' But the impetus to 

 obstruct came from the three lamas, who, with scowls on their faces, 

 remained seated on the ground, showing not the slightest signs of 

 civility or ordinary politeness, and instigating the generals to detain 

 us in the Tibetan camp till we would name a definite date for with- 

 draw^al. When I think of their rabid fanatical obstruction on that 

 occasion and compare it with the almost cordial reception we subse- 

 quently had in all the great monasteries and in the most sacred shrines 

 before we left Lassa, I can not help feeling that we w^ent a long way 

 toward breaking down that barrier of exclusion which, set up by the 

 lamas for their ow^n selfish ends, has kept away from us a people 

 who, when left to themselves, showed every inclination to be on 

 friendly terms wdtli us and indulge their natural instinct for trading. 



But parleying with the Tibetans occupied only an insignificant part 

 of my time at Tuna, and I had ample leisure to enjoy the magnificent 

 natural scenery around us.. Immediately before us was an almost 

 level and perfectly smooth gravel plain, which gave a sense of space 

 and freedom, and on the far side of the plain, 10 or 12 miles distant, 

 rose the superb range of mountains which forms the main axis of the 

 Himalayas and the boundary betw^een Tibet and Bhutan, They were 

 an unceasing joy to me, and the sight of them alone w^as ample reward 

 for all the hardships we had to endure. The sun would strike our 

 tents at about 7 in the morning. The sky would generally then 

 be cloudless save for a long soft wdsp of gauze-like haze, and perhaps 



