The delegates said that they were not so intolerant to the Mohammedans: they merely forbade building mosques, and prevented any new Mohammedans coming into their country. I said that at any rate some were there, and apparently they had not spoilt the religion of the Tibetans. They replied that the ancestors of these had come many, many years ago, and the Tibetans had become accustomed to them; to which my rejoinder was that if Mohammedans had lived among them practising their religious rites for all these years—apparently for centuries—without spoiling the religion of Tibet, I could not believe that the fact of our going to Lhasa for a few weeks only could have any permanent ill-effect on the religion of Tibet.
They then remarked that if we now went to Lhasa all the other nations would want to go there, and see the sights, and establish agents there. I told them I had not the smallest wish to see the sights of Lhasa. I had already travelled in many different lands, and seen finer sights than they could show me at Lhasa; and as to stationing an agent there, we had no such intention. Could they tell me if any other nation wished to? They replied that the Russians would be wanting to send an agent to Lhasa. I told them they need not be in any fear on that score, for the Russian Government had assured our Government that they had no intention of sending an agent to Tibet. I added that, though we had no intention of establishing a political agent at Lhasa, we desired to open a trade-mart at Gyantse on the same conditions as the trade-mart at Yatung had been opened—that is, with the right to send a British officer there to superintend the trade.
The delegates would not, however, be led into a discussion of the terms. They said they could only discuss the terms at Gyantse, and the conversation drifted back into the old lines of withdrawing to Gyantse. Each of the four members of the delegation repeated in turn the same arguments for withdrawing to Gyantse, and I gave to each in turn my reasons for advancing to Lhasa. I said I feared they must think me extremely obstinate, and I felt sure that, if they had been deputed by their Government earlier in the day, I should have been able to agree to their wishes, and we could have soon come to an agreement. As matters stood at present, I could do nothing but obey the orders of the Viceroy. They asked if I could not stop here, represent to His Excellency what they had said, and await further instructions. I replied that the Viceroy only issued his orders after very careful deliberation, but once they were issued, he never revoked them.
I endeavoured throughout the interview to avoid being drawn into petty wrangling. Even more important than the securing of a paper convention, which might or might not, be of value, was, I stated to Government at the time, the placing of our personal relations with the officials of Tibet upon a good footing from the start. I had to be severe with them at Gyantse, because they would not pay proper respect to me; but at each interview since they had come well before the appointed time, they were thoroughly respectful throughout, and I was able to treat them with the politeness I preferred to show them when they made this possible. I trusted that, after I had suffered two interviews, one of three and a quarter hours and another of three and a half hours, they would feel that I was at any rate accessible, and that they would have no compunction in coming to see me whenever they felt inclined. Until, however, they received further orders from Lhasa, there was nothing more to be said on either side.
We had halted a day at Nagartse to collect supplies, of which we were short, and some question arose whether, as we had the negotiators here, it would not be better to stop and negotiate. By being too uncompromising we might be simply stiffening them up to renewed fighting, and in the desolate country in which we found ourselves, with practically no supplies and with a lofty pass behind us, we might find ourselves in a very awkward predicament. All this had certainly to be taken into consideration. Still, we should be sure to find supplies in the Lhasa Valley, unless the Tibetans resorted to the extreme course of destroying or carrying off all their foodstuffs; and as the Tibetans were now evidently on the run, I never had any real doubt that we should keep them on the run, and follow them clean through, right up to Lhasa.
On the 21st we found that the delegates had decamped in the night. Perhaps, after all, I had made a mistake, and allowed these very coy birds to escape just as they had come into my hand. On the whole I thought not. I believed others would soon come in. So I marched very contentedly along the shores of one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen—the Yamdok Tso. It was 14,350 feet above sea-level. In shape it was like a rough ring, surrounding what is practically an island; and in colour it varied to every shade of violet and turquoise blue and green. At times it would be the blue of heaven, reflecting the intense Tibetan sky. Then, as some cloud passed over it, or as, marching along, we beheld it at some different angle, it would flash back rays of the deep greeny-blue of a turquoise. Anon it would show out in various shades of richest violet. Often, when overhead all was black with heavy rain-clouds, we would see a streak of brilliant light and colour flashing from the far horizon of the lake; while beyond it and beyond the bordering mountains, each receding range of which was of one more beautiful shade of purple than the last, rose once more the mighty axial range of the Himalayas, at that great distance not harsh in their whity coldness, but softly tinted with a delicate blue, and shading away into the exquisite azure of the sky. What caused the marvellous colouring of this lake, which even the Tibetans call the Turquoise Lake, we could none of us say. Perhaps it was its depth, perhaps it was its saline character, or some chemical component of its water. But whatever the main cause, one cause at least must have been the intense blue of the Tibetan sky at these great altitudes, so deep and so translucent that even the sky of Greece and Italy would pale beside it.
This latter theory is what Lord Rayleigh would adopt. In a lecture which he delivered this year at the Royal Institution on the causes of the coloration of water, he gave his conclusion, from careful observations and tests, that the cause of the blueness of, say, the Mediterranean Sea was the Mediterranean sky, which was exactly the theory we had thought must apply to this Tibetan lake.
Marching along by this lake we had much rain, turning into snow at night. Pete Jong, a picturesque little fort close to the shore, was reached on the 22nd, where, as at Nagartse, a company of infantry and a few mounted infantry were left to keep up the line of communications. From here the mounted infantry, reconnoitring ahead, reported the remnants of the Kham force to be retreating in a disorganized condition, and looting the country en route.
Another of the Tibetan stone walls, running from the waters of the lake far up the mountain-side, was found deserted on the next day, and that same day we crossed the last pass on the way to Lhasa, the Kamba-la, 15,400 feet. The ascent was steep, but we all eagerly clambered up in the faint hope of getting some distant glimpse of Lhasa, or at any rate of the mighty Brahmaputra River, which still lay in between us and the sacred city. The enthusiastic Perceval Landon was quite certain that through some chink he saw the glitter of a gilded cupola, and refused to be convinced by the prosaic survey officers that whatever it might be it at any rate was not the roof of the Potala.
But if we were not yet to catch a sight of our goal we had many other exciting incidents on that day. We descended rapidly from the pass by a very steep path to a camp on the banks of the great Brahmaputra itself, called here the Sanpo, and presumed to be identical—though this is a great geographical problem yet to be solved—with the Brahmaputra of India. It was here 11,550 above sea-level, and spread out in many channels, but farther down, where it was narrowed into a single channel, it was 140 yards wide and flowing with a strong, swift current. The valley was wide and well cultivated with wheat and barley, and several cultivated valleys ran into it. In these valleys were plenty of trees, poplars and willows, but the hillsides were not wooded, as we had hoped.