On December 17, 1811, he went to the Potala to salute the Grand Lama. He took with him as an offering some broadcloth, two pair of china ewers, and a pair of good brass candlesticks, which he had “clean and furbished up,” and into which he put “two wax candles to make a show.” He also took “thirty new bright dollars, and as many pieces of zinc,” and, besides this, “some genuine Smith’s lavender-water ... and a good store of Nankin tea, which is a rarity and delicacy at Lhasa, and not to be bought there.”
Arrived in the great hall he made due obeisance, touching the ground three times with his head to the Grand Lama, and once to the Ti-mi-fu. While he was bowing, "the awkward servants contrived to let fall and break the bottle of lavender-water." Having delivered his present to the Grand Lama, he took off his hat, and “humbly gave his clean-shaved head to lay his hands upon.”
This ceremony over, he sat on a cushion, not far from the Lama’s throne, and had suché brought them. But “the Lama’s beautiful and interesting face and manner engrossed almost all his attention.” His face was, he thought, poetically and affectingly beautiful. He was at that time about seven years old, and had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated, princely child. Sometimes, particularly when he looked at Manning, his smile almost approached to a gentle laugh. “No doubt,” naïvely remarks Manning, “my grim beard and spectacles somewhat excited his risibility.”
The little Grand Lama addressed a few remarks to Manning, speaking in Tibetan to the Chinese interpreter, the interpreter in Chinese to Manning’s Chinese Munshi, and the Munshi in Latin to Manning. “I was extremely affected by this interview with the Lama,” says Manning. “I could have wept through strangeness of sensation.”
Here in Lhasa, as at Gyantse, Manning had many applications made to him for medicine, and he treated both Chinese and Tibetans. But spies also came, and “certainly,” says Manning, “my bile used to rise when the hounds looked into my room.” The Tartar General detested Europeans. They were the cause, he said, of all his misfortunes. Sometimes he said Manning was a missionary, and at other times a spy. “These Europeans are very formidable; now one man has come to spy the country he will inform others. Numbers will come, and at last they will be for taking the country from us.” So argued the Mandarins, and, indeed, there were rumours that the Chinese meant to execute Manning. He had always fully expected this possibility, and writes: “I never could, even in idea, make up my mind to submit to an execution with firmness and manliness.”
Yet, on the whole, he was not badly treated. He remained on at Lhasa for several months, paying many visits to the Grand Lama, and eventually orders came from Peking for him to return the way he came. He left Lhasa on April 19, and reached Kuch Behar on June 10, 1812.
Manning’s own object was “A moral view of China, its manners, the degree of happiness the people enjoy, their sentiments and opinions so far as they influence life, their literature, their history, the causes of their stability and vast population, their minor arts and contrivances; what there might be in China to serve as a model for imitation, and what to serve as a beacon to avoid.” Having been foiled in this his main object, he does not appear to have regarded the subsidiary circumstance that he had reached Lhasa as of particular interest. And he seems to have been so disgusted with the Government’s refusal to support him, that when he returned to Calcutta he would give no one any particulars of his journey. The account which Markham published sixty years later was only discovered long after his death.
It is a meagre record of so important a journey, yet it exemplifies one or two points which are worthy of note. It showed that an individual Englishman, with delicacy of touch and with a real sympathetic feeling towards those among whom he was travelling, could find his way even into the very presence of the Dalai Lama in the Potala itself. It showed, too, that he could get on perfectly well with the Chinese personally. But it showed likewise that at the back of the minds of both the Tibetans and Chinese was a strong dread of the British power, which made them fear to allow a single Englishman to remain in Tibet or even pass through the country.