As a friend to the children, commend me the Yak—
You will find it exactly the thing;
It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back
Or lead it about with a string.
The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Tibet,
A desolate region of snow,
Has for centuries made it a nursery pet,
And surely the Tartar should know.
Then tell your papa where the Yak can be got,
And if he is awfully rich,
He will buy you the creature—or else he will not;
I cannot be positive which.
The traveller in Tibet can easily live on such supplies as can be drawn from the country. The Tibetan is always hospitable and will provide sheep, milk, cheese and butter almost everywhere. Vegetables, however, of any kind are very scarce, though in the summer a species of spinach can be got in some places. Living, as the Tibetans do, far away from all outside influences, their customs and manners have not changed, and are the same as they were several hundred years ago. I can fully sympathise with their present desire for seclusion and their eagerness not to be exploited by foreigners. They sent a few years ago some young Tibetan boys to Rugby to be educated in different professions. These boys have now returned again to Lhasa, and with their aid, and with the aid of others who are being sent out into the world to learn, they hope to be able to develop the resources of their own country at leisure, in their own way, and by themselves, without being exploited commercially by foreigners.
The staple food of the Tibetans is tsampa (parched barley). This is ground up and either milk or tea is added, forming it into a kind of dough. This is put in a little bag, which they carry about with them when travelling, and is often their only food for several days. Tsampa can be obtained everywhere in Tibet, though it is easier to get it in the villages than from the tents of the nomads. Tea can, of course, be obtained everywhere, and, as I have described before, is mixed with salt and butter, churned up with great violence, and then poured into teapots. At every camp, and at every house, will be met fierce dogs. These dogs guard the flocks, or the nomad camps, and rather resemble large collies; as a rule, they are black and very fierce. The Tibetans were, however, always very good in tying them up before we approached their camps. In many of the houses we found tied up just outside the door another kind of dog, a huge brute of the mastiff type, always extremely savage and ready, if he had not been tied up, to tear the intruder to pieces. The peasants are still treated as serfs, though only in a mild form. For all Government officials, when on tour, they have to supply free transport and supplies of all kinds, so that official visits are not popular. At first the villagers were afraid that we might follow the example of the Tibetan officials and were much relieved to find that we did not do so.
I cannot leave the subject of Tibet without a few words about the monasteries. These are divided into two great schools, the Red Cap School and the Yellow Cap School. The former was founded by the Buddhist Saint, Padma Sambhava or Guru Rimpoche, in A.D. 749. They are the older of the two monastic sects, but their morals are much looser than those of the Yellow Sect, and the Lamas or monks of this sect are often married. In one monastery belonging to the Red Sect near Kharta, the Lamas and their wives were all living together. The Yellow Cap, or Gelukpa Sect, was founded in the fifteenth century by Tsong Kapa, who instituted a very much stricter moral code, and this sect looks down very much upon the Red Caps. The State religion of the country is Buddhism. By the middle of the seventeenth century, after a series of reincarnations, Nawang Lobsang had made himself master of Tibet and transferred his capital to Lhasa. He accepted the title of Dalai Lama (Ocean of Learning) from the Chinese, hence the Dalai Lama at Lhasa, by this doctrine of political reincarnation, has absorbed all the political power in the country into his own hands, although the Tashi Lama at Tashilumpo is in theory his senior and superior in spiritual matters. The old simple creed of the Buddhists can scarcely be recognised nowadays and is overlaid with devil worship in all its forms, supernatural agencies abounding everywhere. The top of a pass, a mountain, a river, a bridge, a storm; each will have its own particular god who is to be worshipped and propitiated. In many of the larger monasteries, too, they have oracles who are consulted far and wide and supposed to be able to foretell the future. These often acquire considerable power and influence by methods not unlike those resorted to in ancient Greece. It has been estimated that a fifth of the whole population of Tibet has entered monastic life. The conditions probably much resemble those which prevailed in mediæval Europe. The monasteries contain nearly all the riches of the country. They own large estates; they are the source of all learning, and all the arts and crafts seem to take their inspiration from articles for use in the monasteries. The ordinary Tibetan, surrounded as he is by the various spirits which occupy every valley and mountain top, is very superstitious. He therefore has inside his house his prayer wheel and his little shrine, before which he offers up incense daily. His Mani walls or mendongs, covered with inscribed stones or carved figures of Buddha, are alongside the paths he daily uses; on the top of the mountains or passes, in addition to these prayer-covered stones, flutter rags printed over with prayers. All these are intended to propitiate the evil spirits. In places where there are particularly malignant devils, it may be necessary to build several Chortens in order to keep them in subjection, and these Chortens are filled with several thousands of prayers and sacred figures stamped in the clay.
The country is divided up into districts, each under its own Jongpen, who is responsible direct to Lhasa or Shigatse and has yearly to send the revenue collected to headquarters. A certain percentage of the crops is collected every year, and in a year of good harvest the Jongpen is able to make a certain amount of money for himself in addition to what he has to send to Lhasa. Our visit to the Kharta Valley was an unexpected windfall for the Kharta Jongpen, as I fancy that much of the money that we paid out to the different villages for supplies or coolie hire eventually found its way into his pocket and was not likely to find its way to Lhasa. This may possibly have accounted for his pleasure in entertaining us and his desire to keep us there as long as possible. The Tibetans, however, everywhere have good manners and are invariably most polite—a pleasant characteristic. Although they are all Buddhists, and accordingly object to the taking of life, they do not in the least mind killing their sheep or their yaks for food, but they objected to our shooting wild sheep or gazelles or wild birds for food. I could have understood this objection better had they been vegetarians and not killed their sheep for eating purposes, but a real vegetarian, except in the strictest monasteries, is very rare in Tibet.
There was a great fascination in roaming through the country as we did. It was the fascination of the unknown, this travelling in regions where Europeans had never travelled before, and where they had never even been seen. The people had exaggerated notions of our ferocity, and were full of fears as to what we might be like and as to what we might do. In these out-of-the-way parts they had heard vaguely of the fighting in 1904, and they imagined that our visit might be on the same lines. They imagined, too, that all Europeans were cruel and seized what they wanted without payment. They were therefore much surprised when they found that we treated them fairly and paid for everything that we wanted at very good rates. The Expedition may, I venture to think, take credit to itself for having certainly done a great deal of good in promoting more friendly relations between the Tibetans and ourselves, and in giving them a better understanding of what an Englishman is. Their ignorance of the outside world was at times astounding. Tibetan officials and traders were an exception, but it was seldom that the ordinary Tibetan ever left the valley in which he was born and bred, with the result that except for the wildest rumours, they knew nothing of the outside world. For long-distance journeys, the Tibetans used ambling mules or ponies, which were capable of going long distances and keeping up a speed of about 5 miles an hour. To our idea, the Tibetan saddle with its high wooden framework is very uncomfortable, but on the top of their saddles they would put their bedding, spreading over it a brilliant and often beautifully coloured carpet as a saddle cloth. On the top of this the rider would sit perched, and, with a good ambling pony, could get along very comfortably.
I always enjoyed travelling and moving about in Tibet. It hardly has the climate of Tennyson's Island Valley of Avilion—“Where falls not hail or rain or snow, nor ever wind blows loudly”—for we used to get samples of nearly all of these almost every day. But no matter how barren nor how bare the immediate surroundings were there was a sense of exhilaration and freedom in the air. There was never a sense of being confined in a narrow space. There was always some distant view where the colours would be continually changing. In the summer-time the climate was not unpleasant, and there was always the pleasure of finding some new and beautiful flower, oftentimes springing up out of the driest sand. Wherever there was water, there was sure to be vegetation and many bright-coloured flowers with every kind of wild-bird life. The shrill whistle of the marmot would often alone break the silence of the scene. Animal life in some form was almost always visible, whether it was the wild kiang roaming on the plains, or the gazelle, or the wild sheep, there was always something of interest to watch. The little mouse hares which lived in great colonies would constantly dodge in and out of their holes and the song of the larks could always be heard.
By the end of October the climate was beginning to get very cold, the thermometer descending at times to Zero Fahrenheit, so that we were quite ready to leave the country, being anxious to get warm again, if only for a short time. There was sorrow in our hearts, however, at parting with the friendly and hospitable folk whom we had encountered, and at leaving behind us the familiar landscapes with the transparent pale blue atmosphere that is so hard to describe, and the distant views of range upon range of snowy mountains often reflected in the calm waters of some blue coloured lake. The attractions of Tibet may yet be strong enough to draw us back again once more. Many years ago the same attraction impelled me to cross the Himalayan mountains and to visit another part of Tibet, but my excursion was, I am afraid, not favourably regarded by the Indian Government and my leave was stopped for six months. The same attraction, however, still exists for this land of many colours with its lonely sunsets full of beauty, with its nights where the eager stars gleam bright as diamonds, and where the full moon shines upon the nameless mountains covered with snow and still as death.