358 A TIBETAN EPISODE. 



mission that in the event of an advance and the 

 defeat of the Tibetans they vi^ould fall back on another 

 Power, and that things would then be bad for Great 

 Britain.^ 



With the opening months of the present year (1904) 

 it became clear that the Lama hierarchy, headed by 

 the Dalai -Lama, had decided to act independently of 

 Chinese interference, and were determined to oppose 

 vi et armis the farther advance of the mission, the first 

 material expression of this determination being the 

 armed opposition to the advance at Guru on March 31, 

 a short time after a body of lamas of high rank from 

 Lhassa had solemnly cursed the mission camp for a 

 period of five consecutive days ! 



Early in April the mission proceeded to Gyangtse, 

 which was occupied after a sharp encounter, in the 

 course of which the Tibetans sustained further heavy 

 losses, and here a halt was made until July 6, when 

 the great jong, which frowns down upon the low, white, 

 two-storeyed houses of the town from its 600 feet of 

 massive isolated rock — " a Corfe Castle of ten times 

 the size, on a hill ten times as high" — was gallantly 

 stormed by General Macdonald's mixed force of Fusiliers, 

 Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Pathans. 



The three months' halt at Gyangtse might, no doubt, 

 appear to the impartial observer to be a wholly super- 

 fluous waste of time, but in coming to such a conclusion 



^ According to the special correspondent of ' The Times,' Dorjieff, on his 

 return to Tibet after his first mission to Russia in 1898, was the bearer of a 

 large number of valuable presents to the Dalai-Lama, whose influence he 

 was determined to secure in the interests of Russia. "Not the least 

 remarkable argument," writes the correspondent, "he brought forward to 

 effect a rapprochement between his two masters was the insidious plea that 

 if the Dalai-Lama would but consent to visit St Petersburg, he would not 

 only secure for Tibet the valuable alliance and protection of Russia, but 

 might even convert to Buddhism the Tsar's wavering faith in Christianity ! " 

 — ' Times,' May 24, 1904. 



