CHAPTER IX
SIMLA TO KHAMBA JONG
The previous chapters have been necessarily, though perhaps somewhat tediously, filled up with a narrative of the many intricate considerations which went towards the final determination to send a mission to Tibet. But of all that had been going on—of the voluminous correspondence in the great offices, of the meetings and attempts at meetings on the frontier—I was wholly ignorant. Anglo-Indian papers seldom contain information on such happenings. And for some years past, in accordance with the well-intentioned, but, as it has since turned out, thoroughly unsound, advice of a previous Viceroy, that it would be to my advantage in the Political Department not to remain for ever on the frontier, but to acquire experience of internal affairs as well, I had been serving in the interior in political agencies in Rajputana and Central India, and had heard nothing of any intention to send a mission to Tibet. Nor had I ever had any connection with Tibet, though as long ago as 1888 the then Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal had, I discovered many years after, asked the Government of India for my services, as I had then just returned from a journey around Manchuria and across Central Asia, from Peking to Kashmir, and it was thought that, knowing Chinese customs, I might be of use, in addition to the Chinese interpreter. This request was twice made, it appears; but I was then a young subaltern, still in military employ, and in the throes of examination, and the Government of India replied that I was not available, as I was about to go up for examination, and, if sent away then, would fail to qualify for promotion. So I went up for one of those examinations of which such a fetish is made, and never till now had been near the Tibet frontier. I made, indeed, an abortive effort in 1889 to go to Lhasa, disguised as a Turki from Central Asia; but this, too, was nipped in the bud by the refusal of my Colonel to give me leave from the regiment. What spirit of adventure I possessed never received much encouragement from Government, and, as I have said, I had left the frontier for some years, and was superintending the affairs of a native State in the very heart of India, when, on a sweltering day in May, I suddenly received a summons to proceed at once to Simla to receive instructions regarding a mission I was to lead to Tibet.
Here, indeed, I felt was the chance of my life. I was once more alive. The thrill of adventure again ran through my veins. And I wasted little time in rounding up my business, packing my things, and starting off for Simla.
There I was handed over all the papers in the Foreign Office to digest while the final instructions of the Secretary of State were still awaited. And one afternoon I was asked to lunch with Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener, at a gymkhana down at Annandale, where, after lunch, sitting under the shade of the glorious pine-trees, Lord Curzon explained to me all his intentions, ideas, and difficulties. Men and ladies performed every feat of equestrian skill and equestrian nonsense, and the place was crowded with all the beauty and gaiety of Simla in the height of the season. But the Viceroy and I sat apart, and talked over the various difficulties I should meet with in Tibet, and the best means by which they could be overcome.
One thing he made perfectly clear to me from the start—that he meant to see the thing through; that he intended the mission to be a success, and would provide me with every means within his power to make it so. Fortunately, we knew each other well—ever since his first appointment as Under-Secretary of State for India. We had travelled together nine years previously round Chitral and Gilgit; we had corresponded for years; and when he came to India he, with a kindness of heart for which he is ordinarily given very little credit, had asked me to regard him, not as Viceroy, but as an old friend and fellow-traveller. No better initiator and supporter of such an enterprise as a mission to Tibet could be imagined. He had his whole heart and soul in the undertaking, and I do not think it took long for me to put my whole heart into it, too.
I had in previous years been despatched from Simla on two political missions—in 1889 to explore the unknown passes on the northern frontier of Kashmir, and to put down the raids from Hunza, and in 1890 to the Pamirs and Chinese Turkestan—so I had some general idea of what to expect on the present occasion; and as I had also spent three months in the Legation at Peking, besides travelling from one end to the other of the Chinese Empire, I knew enough about the Chinese to know that I should never be able to deal successfully with them without the assistance of someone who had had a life-training in the work. I therefore, in the first place, asked for an officer of the China Consular Service to act as adviser and interpreter. Next, as regards dealing with the Tibetans, it was most necessary to have an officer who could speak the Tibetan language, and it was fortunate for the success of the mission that Government were able to send with it, first as Intelligence Officer and afterwards as Secretary, Captain O’Connor, an artillery officer, who, when stationed with his mountain battery at Darjiling, had learned the Tibetan language and studied the history and customs of the Tibetans, and who, I afterwards found, was never so happy as when he was surrounded by begrimed Tibetans, with whom he would spend hour after hour in apparently futile conversation.
The services of some of the Gurkhas and of the Pathan, Shahzad Mir, who had been with me on my mission in 1889, I also tried to secure; but the Gurkhas had all left their regiment, and Shahzad Mir, who had been employed on many a mission and reconnaissance since, was then absent in Abyssinia.
Mr. White reached Simla a day or two after my arrival, and we at once set to work to discuss arrangements. He had had experience on that frontier for fourteen years, and was naturally well up in all the local aspects of the question, and knew—what I did not—what dealing with Tibetans really meant. His accounts of their obstinacy and obstructiveness appeared to me exaggerated, and, with the optimism of inexperience, I thought that we should, together with Captain O’Connor’s assistance, be able to soon break through it. But Mr. White turned out in the end to be right, and I think from the first he knew that we should not be able to do anything elsewhere than in Lhasa.
Mr. White’s long local experience on that frontier made his recommendation in regard to arrangements specially valuable. We were to have an escort of 200 men from the 32nd Pioneers, who had been for some months in Sikkim improving the road towards the frontier, and we wished arrangements made for them to precede us to the vicinity of the frontier, so that we, travelling lightly, might reach Khamba Jong as quickly as possible, for we were now getting well on into the summer, and had not much time to spare for negotiation before the winter came on.