So an escort was provided and sorrowfully Sven Hedin turned his back on the jealously guarded town he had striven so hard to reach.
The expedition, or rather mission, under Colonel Younghusband in 1904 brings to an end our history of the exploration of Tibet. He made his way to Lhasa from India; he stood in the sacred city, and "except for the Potala" he found it a "sorry affair." He succeeded in getting a trade Treaty signed, and he rode hastily back to India and travelled thence to England. The importance of the mission was accentuated by the fact that the flag, a Union Jack bearing the motto, "Heaven's Light our Guide," carried by the expedition and placed on the table when the Treaty was signed in Lhasa, hangs to-day in the Central Hall at Windsor over the statue of Queen Victoria.
The veil so long drawn over the capital of Tibet had been at last torn aside, and the naked city had been revealed in all its "weird barbarity." Plans of the "scattered and ill-regulated" city are now familiar, the Potala has been photographed, the Grand Lama has been drawn, and if, with the departure of Younghusband, the gates of Lhasa were once more closed, voices from beyond the snowy Himalayas must be heard again ere long.
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THE WORLD'S MOST MYSTERIOUS CITY UNVEILED: LHASA AND THE POTALA. From a photograph by a member of Younghusband's expedition to Tibet and Lhasa, 1909(?). |
CHAPTER LXXI
NANSEN REACHES FARTHEST NORTH
No names are better known in the history of Arctic exploration than those of Nansen and the Fram, and although others have done work just as fine, the name of Nansen cannot be omitted from our Book of Discovery.