"Dusk faces with white muslin turbans wreathed"
look northward through the clear morning air on the same mighty Himalaya,[10] stretching beyond their ken its awful barrier of unchanging snow.
In mounting from the plains of India over the arduous passes, ranging from 12,000 to 20,000 feet above the sea, through which the pressure of human need, curiosity, and superstition, has forced a scanty and intermittent stream of intercourse, the traveller, after traversing the last ridge of the Himalaya, instead of having to descend again to the level of the southern regions, finds himself but little raised above a vast table-land, in some places extending in barren wastes of plain, or of bare monotonous hills, intersected by sudden deep valleys or great ravines, in which the rivers flow and the few villages are scattered; in others forming an endless alternation of lofty mountain ranges and low valleys, but the bottom of these last still many thousand feet above the plains of the Indian peninsula. To this elevated region, stretching from the Indus north-west of Kashmeer, to the extremest point of Assam, and somewhat farther east, a space of more than 1500 miles, the name of Tibet applies. The limits of its extent northward are somewhat more vague; but if they be considered to include a breadth of three or four degrees of latitude (33°-36°) towards the western extremity, and of nine or ten degrees (28°-38°) in the eastern and widest part, the estimate will not be far wrong. The identity throughout this "very large and long countrey," (to borrow the expression of an old traveller,) consists in the general use of the same language and customs, the prevalence, except in the extreme west, of the same faith, and the possession of the same religious books, written or printed in a character common to all. To these we might perhaps add the domestication of the shawl-goat and the yak throughout the whole territory.
The name of Tibet does not appear to be known, or at least applied, either in the country itself or by its Hindoo neighbours. Tubbet, or Tobot, is stated to have been the Mongolian appellation of a nation who anciently occupied the mountainous country on the north-west confines of China. Our old travellers doubtless learned the word from the Mongols; and from them also it has been adopted as the name of the high country north of India, in all the Mussulman languages of Western Asia. It was more particularly, perhaps, applied in these to Balti and Ladakh, the two most westerly districts, which, in the time of Bernier, were commonly distinguished as Little and Great Tibet. The natives apply to their country the name of Bód or Pót, and as Bhoteeas they are themselves known in Hindostan; though the appellation of Bhotan has in our geography-books come to be confined to a small dependency of Tibet bordering on the north of Assam, where the race comes most closely in contact with our knowledge and the British power, just as our forefathers gave the title of Dutch specially to that fraction of the Teutonic or Deutsch race which most nearly adjoined their shores.
The central and most elevated portion of this region is the province of Ngari—called by the people of the adjoining British territory Hyundes, or "Snowland." It embraces extensive desert tracts, intersected by several lofty ranges, the chief being that of Kylass, the sacred celestial mountain of Indian mythology. The table-land at the foot of Kylass, on which lie the twin lakes of Rákas Thal and Manasaráwur, at a height of 15,250 feet above the sea, is probably the most elevated in Asia, or in the world. On the shores of these sacred lakes occurred, some years ago, the catastrophe of a curious historical episode. Zorawur Singh, commanding the troops, of Goolab Singh of Jummoo, (now well known as the Lord of Kashmeer,) after overrunning Little Tibet and subjugating Ladakh, advanced up the Indus and beyond it, till he had occupied posts on the frontier of the Nepalese Himalayas, as if he meditated a foray on the Grand Lama's capital at last. But it proved a Moscow expedition on a small scale. His troops, unused to such a climate, and straitened for fuel, were beset in the depth of winter by a superior force from Lhassa, and, helpless from cold, were overpowered: their leader was slain, their officers captured, and the mass perished in heaps miserably. A few poor, frost-maimed wretches—the sole relics of Zorawur Singh's adventurous band—brought the tale to the British station at Almora, having fled across passes 16,000 feet high in mid-winter. The bleak aspect of the Tibetan plain, as seen from the pass of Niti, somewhat westward of the lakes—shrubless, treeless, houseless—is compared by a traveller to the dreary moors of Upper Clydesdale, with stone and scanty brown herbage in the place of heather. Some of the most celebrated rivers in the world have their not unworthy source in the lofty table which forms the base of the Hindoo Olympus. The Ganges rises in the mountains immediately adjoining Ngari on the south-west, the Gogra, which, were size alone to decide the rights of river nomenclature, might perhaps claim the Ganges as a tributary, has its source in Ngari; so have the Indus, the Sutlej, and the Sanpoo. The Sanpoo, after flowing eastward behind the Himalayan range for some eight hundred miles, is lost to geography in the untraversed regions south-east of Lhassa. In the last century, D'Anville identified the Sanpoo with the Irawaddy, flowing through the whole extent of the Burman Empire to the sea at Rangoon; but the sagacity of Rennel suggested that the Burrampooter, emerging from unexplored mountains into the valley of Assam, and bearing to the sea a flood of waters greatly exceeding the Ganges, is the true Sanpoo. Turner, who, in his mission, reached the banks of the Sanpoo, indicates its course from the information of the Lamas in entire coincidence with Rennel's view.[11] In later years, however, Klaproth has revived the theory of D'Anville, apparently without good grounds. The Dihong, which is the principal contributor to the Burrampooter in Assam, though its course above the plains remains unexplored, bursts on our knowledge with a stream of such capacity as quite justifies the length attributed to it by the supposition that it is identical with the Sanpoo. And there seems little reason to doubt that the two great rivers, Ganges and Sanpoo, rising from the same lofty region, within 150 miles of one another, after diverging to an interval of some 17° of longitude, combine their waters in the plains of Bengal. In Rennel's time, the Burrampooter, after issuing westward from the Assam valley, swept south and south-eastward, and, forming with the Ganges a fluvial peninsula, entered the sea abreast of that river below Dacca. And so almost all English maps persist in representing it, though this eastern channel is now, unless in the rainy season, shallow and insignificant; the vast body of the Burrampooter cutting across the neck of the peninsula under the name of Jenai, and uniting with the Ganges near Pubna (about 150 miles north-east of Calcutta), from which point the two rivers, under the local name of Pudda, flow on in mighty union to the sea.
The upper part of the Indus valley, with the adjoining pastures, bears the name of Chanthan, or the Northern Plains, and produces the finest shawl wool. The export of this was long almost monopolised by the Ladakh market for the supply of Kashmeer, but much of it now finds its way direct to British India by the Sutlej valley and more eastern passes. The population is most scanty, and partially nomadic—the names which dot it on the map being mostly mere shepherd shelters, or clusters of nomad tents round a few houses of sunburnt brick. Tashigong, the only place of any extent, is the site of an important monastery. North of the Indus, and separated from it by a range of mountains, is the extensive salt lake of Pangkung. On the Singhkhabab, or Indus, farther westward, are strung, as it were, the principalities of Ladakh and Balti. These consist of a mass of mountain ranges rising from a base elevated 11,000 feet and more above the sea. This rugged country occupies the whole breadth of the Indus drainage from the Kashmeer Himalyas to the Karakoram mountains. The levels along the borders of the streams, and the slopes at the bases of the mountains, are diligently cultivated and irrigated, being first formed into terraced steps by a great accumulation of patient labour—a practice that prevails through the whole extent of the Himalaya Mountains. The uncultivated part of the country has the usual Tibetan aspect of bleakness and sterility.
Balti, or Little Tibet, is still independent under various chieftains, of whom the most powerful resides at Skardo, a considerable village, doing duty for a city where cities are so scarce. Ladakh was conquered by the Sikh feudatory, Goolab Singh, in 1835; and after the Sutlej victories of 1846, possession was confirmed to him by Lord Hardinge, at the same time that Kashmeer was made over to his tender mercies. Le, the capital, and probably the only aggregation of dwellings worthy of the name of town, situated in the valley of the Indus, and containing from 700 to 1000 houses, had before that period been visited by only two or three Europeans, of whom the persistent and unfortunate Moorcroft was the first in this century. Captain H. Strachey, of the Bengal army, belonging to the commission appointed to define the boundary between Ladakh and the Chinese or Tibetan dependencies, spent several years, between 1846 and 1849, in those regions; and far more accurate and full information than has ever yet been obtained may be expected from his researches. The whole population of Balti, and a half in Ladakh, are Sheea Mahommedans.
Returning to the centre of the table-land, we have, on the north-east of Ngari, extensive and almost unknown deserts, containing numerous salt-lakes, and haunted by a scanty nomad population, called by the Tibetans Sok, and supposed to represent the ancient Sacians. South-east lie the provinces of U and Tsang, or, conjointly, U-Tsang, to which the natives specially apply the name of Bód, and which may be considered as Tibet Proper. It is that part of the region to which we turn with most curiosity and interest, as containing the centre of spiritual and chief political supremacy—Lhassa, so long the unreachable Timbuctoo of the East. Lhassa is situated in the province of U, on a northern tributary of the Sanpoo, by which it is separated from Tsang. The latter territory is immediately governed by the Teshoo Lama, the potentate with whom we made an accidental acquaintance in Warren Hastings' time—our first and last brief but cordial intercourse with Tibet Proper. The provinces of U-Tsang are intersected by lofty alpine ranges, which, as they trend east and south-east, converge, but without uniting, insomuch that, in the inexpressibly rugged country where the frontiers of Tibet, Burma, and China approach one another, we find four parallel valleys traversed by four of the greatest rivers of Asia, embraced within the narrow space of one hundred miles. The Tibetan portion of this wild region, known as Kham, is inhabited by a rough race, of warlike and independent character, retaining many primitive superstitions beneath the engrafted Lamanism, and treating with little respect the Chinese pretensions to sovereignty. Through this region the missionaries Huc and Gabet were escorted back to China—the first Europeans, there can be little doubt, who ever trod those wilds. The plundering excursions of the Kham-pa extend all across the breadth of Tibet, and the fear of them haunts even the pilgrims to Kylass and the Manusaráwur Lake.
The Bhotan territory remains, which, from language, religion, manners, and political connection, may justly be considered as Tibetan, though occupying not the table-land north of the Himalaya, but the whole breadth of the range itself, from the Tsang country to Assam. Bhotan is a mass of mountains clothed in perpetual verdure, its slopes covered with forests of large and lofty trees; populous villages, girt with orchards, are scattered along the sides and summits of the spurs; every declivity of favourable aspect is carved into terraces, cultivated to the utmost, and carefully irrigated from the abundant streams. Nothing could be physically in greater contrast with the bleak and arid plains or rocky hills of Tibet. The people of Bhotan are a remarkably fine race. Scarcely anywhere else in the world shall we find an equal proportion of men so straight, so well made, and so athletic, many of them more than six feet high. Deformity is almost unknown, except that arising from goitre, which is very prevalent among them, as it is, indeed, over the whole extent of the Himalaya, and of the Turaee, or forest tract, at the base of the mountains; whilst Tibet Proper is entirely free from it. Tibetan geographers, according to Csoma de Körös, compare Ngari, with its fountains, to a tank, U-Tsang to the irrigating channels, and Kham to the field irrigated. We do not appreciate the aptness of the similitude. More intelligibly, European geographers have likened Tibet in form to a vast cornucopia pouring from its wide eastern mouth vast rivers forth, to fertilise the happier plains of China, Siam, Burma, and Assam.
All these countries, with the exception of Little Tibet, or Balti, and of Ladakh since its seizure by the Sikhs, acknowledge more or less directly the supremacy of the Dalai Lama at Lhassa, and, beyond him, that of China. Since the accession of the existing Manchoo dynasty to the throne of Pekin, they have always maintained two envoys at the court of Lhassa. Mr Prinsep aptly compares the position of these ministers to that of a British resident at the court of Luknow or Hyderabad. They do not, however, appear to meddle much with the ordinary internal administration, nor is their military force maintained in the country large. Besides a few hundred men at Lhassa, and guards established at intervals on the post-road from China, they take upon them the superintendence of the passes of the Himalaya, and see to the exclusion of Europeans by those inlets with unrelaxing rigour. In other parts of Tibet there are no Chinese.