With the signature of the Treaty a tense strain was released, and as I rode down from the Potala I felt at last at ease. That evening General Macdonald, Major Iggulden, his chief staff officer, and the rest of the military staff entertained the Mission at dinner, and among the memories of that eventful day will always be included the recollection of the warmly appreciative speech which General Macdonald made on that occasion.

On the day following two Councillors visited me, and I informed them that General Macdonald had agreed to my request to release all prisoners of war. These were paraded in front of the house, and General Macdonald sent a staff officer to order their release and to give each man Rs. 5 for work he had done.

The Sha-pÉs then produced two men who had been imprisoned owing to assistance they had given to Sarat Chandra Das, the Bengali traveller, and two men who had been imprisoned for helping the Japanese traveller, Kawaguchi. The two first men had been in chains for nineteen years, and showed signs of terrible suffering. All were in abject fear of the Tibetans, bowing double before them. Their cheeks were sunken, their eyes glazed and staring, their expression unchangeably fixed in horror, and their skin as white and dry as paper. Their release was entirely due to the exertions of Captain O’Connor. I thanked the Sha-pÉs for their action, which I looked upon as a sign that they really wished to live on friendly terms with us. I trusted that they would never again imprison men whose only offence was friendliness to British subjects.

I returned to the Sha-pÉs the sum of Rs. 5,000, which I had exacted from them, and released the hostages I had demanded on the occasion of the attack by a fanatical Lama on two British officers. But I demanded back the sum of Rs. 1,000 on account of the murder of one and the brutal torture of another servant of the Mission caught in the town of Gyantse on the night of the attack on the Mission. I said we did not mind fair and square fighting between men whose business it was to fight, but the murder and torture of harmless and defenceless servants was pure barbarity. The Sha-pÉs acknowledged that what I said was just, but said they were not present, and knew nothing of it. Rs. 1,000 were, therefore, retained to be paid in compensation to the servants’ families.

I then remarked that we had now had a general settling up of all accounts between us, and could start fair. The Sha-pÉs said they hoped now we should always be on friendly terms, and they certainly meant to observe the Treaty.

The Tongsa Penlop paid me a formal visit on the 10th to congratulate me on the successful issue of the negotiations. He said that there was no resentment at the settlement or at the manner in which it had been made, and the Nepalese representative was of the same opinion. The Tibetans were well satisfied with the issue of the negotiations. And I dare say in their heart of hearts, and despite all their protests, they had fully expected us to annex the whole country, as we had annexed Burma, or at any rate to annex up to Gyantse, and were probably quite surprised to have got off so lightly.

Congratulations from India and England soon came pouring in. Only six days after the Treaty was signed came a telegram from the Viceroy conveying the congratulations of the King himself. His Majesty, though away at Marienbad, had immediately telegraphed his congratulations, a particular compliment which is rarely given for work in India. To the troops this was especially gratifying. The telegram was read out to them on a full parade, which General Macdonald ordered for the purpose. The Secretary of State, the acting Viceroy, Lord Ampthill, Lord Curzon, from England, Lord Kitchener, and very many others, also sent their congratulations; and now, while the Chinese Government were making up their minds whether they would allow the Resident to sign his adhesion to the Treaty, I had leisure and inclination to go about Lhasa and see something of the monasteries and temples, and talk with the people in a less forced and formal manner than I had to while the strain of the negotiations was on us.

We had so far seen the Tibetans only on the contentious side. Now that the stress was over I wished to see them as they really were. What especially I wished to see was their monastic life. The priesthood ruled Tibet. Religion was the chief characteristic of the people. Their religion and the character of the Lamas, who both led the religious life of the people and guided their political destinies, were, therefore, the special objects of my interest.

From the first I had insisted that we should not be denied access to the monasteries, for to get rid of misunderstandings it was essential that we should close up with the Lamas and come directly into contact with them. But I had been careful to let only those officers enter the monasteries who could be trusted to comport themselves with propriety, and have all reasonable regard for the feelings and prejudices of the monks.

For this purpose Mr. White, Mr. Walsh, Captain O’Connor, and Colonel Waddell, the well-known writer on Lamaism, who was appointed Chief Medical Officer and ArchÆologist to the Mission’s escort, were invaluable. Each had his special qualification for the work, and each made use of it by “peaceful penetration” to break through the last barrier which separated us from the Tibetans. Mr. White was known in person or by reputation as none of the rest of us were, and had many friends who were also friends of these Lamas. Through them he obtained an invitation to the De-pun Monastery, and from this start made rapid progress. Mr. Walsh, as Deputy Commissioner of Darjiling, and through his long acquaintance with this frontier and intimate knowledge of the language and history of the country, was also able to exert a most useful influence after his arrival from Chumbi, while Colonel Waddell interested himself in the libraries and in historical research. As a consequence, when I visited these monasteries, after the signature of the Treaty, I was received as if the visit from a British official was the same ordinary occurrence as it is in India.

Each monastery is a little town in itself, a compact block of solidly-built masonry—houses, halls, and temples. The streets are narrow and not over-clean, but the halls and temples are spacious. They are mostly of much the same type, with pagoda-shaped roofs, painted wooden pillars, and grotesque demonesque-like figures. In the De-pun Monastery there were from 8,000 to 10,000 monks, divided into, I think, four sections, each with its Abbot and its separate temple hall and institutions.

In outward appearance the monks of some of these Lhasa monasteries are not prepossessing. They look coarse and besotted. Some are bright and cordial, but hardly any look really intellectual or spiritual, and the general impression I took away was one of dirt and degradation. Of the higher Lamas, also, my impression was not favourable as regards their intellectual capacity or spiritual attainments. The Regent (Ti Rimpoche), with whom I carried on the negotiations, had great charm. He was a benevolent, kindly old gentleman, who would not have hurt a fly if he could have avoided it. No one could help liking him, but no one could say that he had the intellectual capacity we would meet with in Brahmins in India, or the character and bearing one would expect in the leading man of a country. And his spiritual attainments, I gathered from a long conversation I had with him after the Treaty was signed, consisted mainly of a knowledge by rote of vast quantities of his holy books. The capacity of these Tibetan monks for learning their sacred books by rote is, indeed, something prodigious; though about the actual meaning they trouble themselves but little.

Some of the Abbots we met were cheery, genial souls, much as we picture to ourselves the jolly friars of olden days in England; but as spiritual leaders of a religious people, I did not find the higher Lamas impressed me any more favourably than the ordinary monks.

These impressions, which in themselves would not have much value, as my period for observation was so very limited, are borne out by the courageous Japanese traveller Kawaguchi, himself a Buddhist, and once Rector of a monastery in Japan, who lived in the Sera Monastery, and in his most valuable work, “Three Years in Tibet,” written since we were in Tibet, has given to the English public the results of his study.

For a few Lamas he had a sincere attachment. Like myself, he greatly revered the old Ti Rimpoche, who taught him Buddhism in its correct form, and “truly impressed him as a living Buddha.” He struck Kawaguchi as not only having a juster ideal of the real spirit of Buddhism than the other Lamas, but as also having greater ability, which may have been due to what I had not myself known—his father being a Chinaman. For an ex-Minister of Finance, a Lama, Kawaguchi also had great admiration, and certainly from him received unstinted kindness, even when he risked his life in showing Kawaguchi attention. The Head-Priest of Wartang he also thought very clever, and from him he received valuable information on Buddhism.

These, however, were exceptional men, and most of the Lamas were very disappointing to the Japanese. Even the good ex-Financial Minister had the defect of living with a nun. A Lama travelling companion was a “pedantic scholar” who knew nothing of the essential principles of Buddhism, and had only a vague notion of the doctrines. The Abbot of Sakya had a son, though Lamas are not allowed to marry, and Kawaguchi was “loth to remain with so dissipated a priest.” The tutor of the Tashi Lama was disappointing in his answers about “grammar.”

The doctors of the highest degrees, he said, were unquestionably theologians of great erudition, and at home in the complete cycle of Buddhist works. They had, indeed, he considered, a better knowledge of Buddhist theology than the Japanese divines. But such were few and far between, and he seems to have agreed with the observation of the Ti Rimpoche that it would “be better to have even two or three precious diamonds than a heap of stones.” The Tibetan priesthood, he thought, contained plenty of rubbish, with very few diamonds.

To account for this, he says that the main purpose of Tibetans in entering the priesthood is “only to procure the largest amount of fortune, as well as the highest possible fame.” To seek religious truth and to work for the deliverance of men was not at all what, according to this Japanese, they wished to do. They simply desired, he says, to escape from the painful struggle of life, and “enjoy lazy and comfortable days on earth as well as in heaven.” There is nothing deep that he could see in their religious life and study; service went in their eyes for nothing.

Medicine, logic, engineering, and religious philosophy were introduced into Tibet centuries ago from India; but nowadays, says Kawaguchi, there are almost no Tibetans who are proficient in even one of these subjects.

Of the morality of the Lamas Kawaguchi gives no very pleasant account. Most of these celibate priest-nobles kept women somewhere, and the lower warrior-priests really seem, he says, to be the descendants of Sodom and Gomorrah. Some of the festivals were simply bestial orgies.

These “warrior-priests” of the Sera Monastery, which is one of those I visited, are a peculiar institution. Their daily task is varied. It is to play flutes, lyres, harps, flageolets, and to beat drums; to prepare offerings for the deities; to carry yak-dung for fuel; to practise throwing stones at a target; and to act as a bodyguard. Kawaguchi made friends with them by doctoring, and found them very true to their duties, and though they might look very rough, they were more truthful than the noble and other priests, who, though trustworthy at first sight, were in reality deceitful in seeking their own benefit and happiness, and under their warm woollen garments hid a mean and crafty behaviour.

The ordinary student in these monasteries had certainly to work hard. Kawaguchi worked till he got "a swelling on his shoulder"; and, to get a degree, some work for twenty years, with examinations every year. Besides Tibetans, there were numbers of Mongols, and also some 200 Buriats from Siberia. The Mongols were hard-working and progressive, but “very quick-tempered, proud, and uppish,” and every Mongol had it in him to be a great leader, like Jenghiz Khan, whose career was, however, according to Kawaguchi, but a meteoric burst. Compared with these the Tibetan students, though, generally speaking, very quiet, courteous, and intelligent, were lazy and sluggish “beyond the powers of Westerners to imagine,” and on account of their laziness very dirty.

Catechism seems to have been their chief study. “The object of the questions and answers is to free the mind from all worldliness, and to get into the very bottom of truth, giving no powers to the devils of hell in the mind.” It is by this means, continues Kawaguchi, that the naturally dull and lazy Tibetans are guided to understand Buddhism, and through it they are, for a half-civilized nation, very rich in logical ideas. The catechisms, which I should judge were really more in the nature of philosophical debates which all Orientals love, were carried on in a most excited manner. Many texts and reference books had to be read before anyone could take part in them, and the catechists were always taught that “the foot must come down so strongly that the door of hell may be broken open; and that the hands must make so great a noise that the voice of knowledge may frighten the devils all the world over.”

Besides studying and being engaged in ceremonial observances, the monks, however, also carry on business. Most of them are engaged in trade; many are employed in agriculture, others in cattle-breeding, and sheep-rearing; and others, again, in the manufacture of Buddhist articles, the painting of Buddhist pictures; while tailors, carpenters, masons, and shoemakers are also found among the priests. Those of the higher class live very comfortably, building their own villas and temples. Some employ as many as 70 or 80 servants.

The lower-class priests, on the other hand, live in a pitiful way. No words, says Kawaguchi, can describe their poor condition. The scholar-priests have to earn their living as well as their expenses as students. Yet they are too busy to go out and make money, and what they receive as offerings from believers and as salaries from temples does not amount to enough to support them. They get a drink of tea gratis, but no flour; and such is their pitiable condition that they will often pass a couple of days without eating.

A noteworthy fact is, that though by their religion the Lamas are not supposed to take life, yet they are said not to be able to pass a day without eating meat, and more than 50,000 sheep, goats, and yaks are killed at Lhasa during the last three months of each year. Their punishments, too, are so cruel—gouging out eyes, cutting off hands, beating, etc.—as to excite the Japanese just as much as ourselves.

It is altogether a sorry picture which Kawaguchi draws, but it precisely bears out the casual impressions we got during our limited stay in Lhasa, and from what intercourse we had with the Lamas. Whether Lamaism has on the whole been a success I doubt. It has had a pacifying effect, it is true. If the Tibetans had been Mohammedans, we should not have reached Lhasa as easily as we did. And the Mongols also have lost their old warlike tendencies. The numerous figures of the placid Buddha sitting in calm repose have had their influence. Cut in rocks, erected in imposing statues, or modelled in bronze and brass, and set up in their temples and household altars, they have hypnotized the people to a sense of peace and rest. The Tibetans, who once carried their arms to Peking itself, are now one of the most peaceful of people. And the Mongols, who had set up a dynasty in China, conquered all Central Asia, and laid waste Western Europe, are now an almost negligible quantity in war.

Lamaism has certainly, then, nourished peace in Tibet and Mongolia. But the peace that has been nurtured has been the quiescence of sloth and decadence. The Buddhist idea of repose and kindness all can appreciate. There are few men who have no kindly feelings, and would not wish, if they could, to be at peace with all the world. Yet the idea may have its danger and be as likely to lead downward as upward. It may lull to rest and render useless passions and energies which ought to be given play to. And the evil of Lamaism is that it has fostered lazy repose and self-suppression at the expense of useful activity and self-realization.

The Mongols in their deserts, the Tibetans in their mountains, have had the amplest opportunity for carrying into effect the Buddhist idea. I have seen the one in the deepest depths of their deserts, and the other in the innermost sanctuary of their mountains, and to me it seems that they have both been pursuing a false ideal. They have sought by withdrawing from the world into the desert and into the mountain to secure present peace for the individual, instead of, by manfully taking their part in the work of the world, aiming at the eventual unison of the whole. Peace, instead of harmony, has been their ideal—peace for the emasculated individual instead of harmony for the united and full-blooded whole.

The Tibetan’s main idea, in fact, has been to save his own soul. He does not trouble about others so long as he can save himself. Indeed, he thinks it will require all his energies to do even that much, for at heart he is still full of his original religion of demonology. He looks upon the spiritual world as filled with demons, ready to prey upon him if he makes the slightest slip. Every temple, almost every house, is full of fantastic pictures of the most terrible and blood-curdling devils, with glaring eyes, open fang-studded mouth, extended neck and outstretched arm, ready to pounce upon some miserable victim. The belief in heaven is vague. The belief in hell is the one great fact in their lives, and how real it is may be imagined when we hear of these poor wretches, who, in order to escape its terrors, voluntarily allow themselves to be walled into solitary cells, from which for years they never emerge, but take in their food once a day through a narrow opening. Thus only do those poor deluded creatures think they can escape from demons in the world to come. But that they most sincerely believe in a life hereafter no more positive evidence could be afforded. An interesting detail is that their hell is not hot, but cold. If it were hot, the inhabitants of frozen Tibet would all flock there.

As might be naturally expected, such a people are ready believers in the supposed supernatural powers of certain men. We could hear nothing of the wonderful Mahatmas, and the Ti Rimpoche told Colonel Waddell he was entirely ignorant of their existence. But, according to Kawaguchi, oracles are held in high esteem. The Ngpak-pas, or miracle-workers, the descendants of Lamas who worked miracles, are supposed to possess hereditary secrets, and are held in great awe as being magicians of power. The people showed such practical faith in the efficacy of the charms which the Lamas gave that they rushed right up to our rifles, believing that our bullets could not hit them.

Practically, then, the religion of the Tibetans is but of a degraded form. Yet one does see gleams of real good radiating through. The Tashi Lama whom Bogle met was a man of real worth. His successor of the present day produced a most favourable impression in India, and excited the enthusiasm of Sven Hedin. Deep down under the dirty crust there must be some hidden source of strength in these Lamas, or they would not exert the influence they do. Millions of men over hundreds of years are not influenced entirely by chicanery and fraud. And I think I caught a glimpse of that inner power during a visit I paid to the Jo Khang Temple.

This temple, or cathedral, as it has sometimes been styled, has been fully described by Sarat Chandra Das, Perceval Landon, and others. The latter especially has given a remarkably vivid description of his impression. It is, as Colonel Waddell has aptly styled it, the St. Peter’s of Lamadom, and is chiefly noteworthy as containing the image of Buddha, made in India, but brought to Lhasa from China by the Chinese Princess who married a Tibetan King and introduced Buddhism into the country.

I visited this temple with full ceremony after the Treaty was signed, and was received with every mark of cordiality by the Chief Priest. I was even shown round what might be called the high-altar, in spite of my protestations that I might be intruding where I should not go. The actual building is not imposing. The original temple, built about A.D. 650, according to Waddell, has been added to, and the result is a confused pile without symmetry, and devoid of any single complete architectural idea. One sees a forest of wooden pillars grotesquely painted, but no beautiful design or plain simple effect. Moreover, dirt is excessively prevalent, there is an offensive smell of the putrid butter used in the services, and the candlesticks, vases, and ceremonial utensils, some of solid gold and of beautiful design, are not orderly arranged.

Still, this temple, from its antiquity, from its worn pavements marking the passage of innumerable pilgrims, from the thought that for a thousand years those wanderers from distant lands had faced the terrors of the desert and the mountains to prostrate themselves before the benign and peaceful Buddha, possessed a halo and an interest which the beauty of the Taj itself could never give it.

Here it was that I found the true inner spirit of the people. The Mongols from their distant deserts, the Tibetans from their mountain homes, seemed here to draw on some hidden source of power. And when from the far recesses of the temple came the profound booming of great drums, the chanting of monks in deep reverential rhythm, the blare of trumpets, the clash of cymbals, and the long rolling of lighter drums, I seemed to catch a glimpse of the source from which they drew. Music is a proverbially fitter means than speech for expressing the eternal realities; and in the deep rhythmic droning of the chants, the muffled rumbling of the drums, the loud clang and blaring of cymbals and trumpets, I realized this sombre people touching their inherent spirit, and, in the way most fitted to them, giving vent to its mighty surgings panting for expression.

Besides these visits to monasteries and temples, we also saw something of the Tibetans socially during our stay in Lhasa, and Captain Walton, through his skill in medicine, attracted many hundreds to his hospital, and was able to get on terms of intimacy with unofficial Tibetans of the highest position. Many would come and dine with us, for the Tibetans, though they have the ordinary class distinctions which are found in every people, have not those rigid caste barriers which are such a hindrance to social intercourse in India. Even the ladies were very nearly induced by the persuasive Captain O’Connor to come to tea, and the wives of the Councillors had actually accepted an invitation, when at the last moment shyness overtook them. Women are much to the fore in Tibet, and have great influence with their husbands, so we especially regretted not having seen them.

The Tibetans, though they have their reputation for seclusiveness, are not by nature unsociable. We found them quite the reverse, and Kawaguchi says that they were “originally a people highly hospitable to strangers.” This more natural sentiment was, he says, superseded by one of fear and even of antipathy, as the result of an insidious piece of advice which, probably prompted by some policy of its own, the Government of China gave to Tibet, and which was to the effect that if the Tibetans allowed the free entrance of foreigners Buddhism would be destroyed and replaced by Christianity. The people had, too, the idea that we sought their gold-mines.

Whatever seclusive feeling they may have had, they abandoned it when the Treaty was concluded. They came to our gymkhanas, and wondered why only the first should be given the prize when all the rest had covered exactly the same distance. They watched with wonder Vernon Magniac and other inveterate sportsmen pulling fish out of the river by pieces of string attached to long sticks. They watched theatrical performances, and marvelled at our display of fireworks; and they did a magnificent business with us in the sale, not only of supplies for the troops, but also of innumerable curios, brass and bronze figures, turquoise ornaments, embroideries, silks, etc.

The Tibetans are, indeed, born traders. Kawaguchi calls them a “nation of shop-keepers.” Men and women—and the women more than the men—priests and laity, all trade. And this is another irony of the situation, that a people who are naturally sociable, and who are thus, too, born traders, should have been put for so long in their seclusive position. But of late years the departure of Lhasa merchants to India had been becoming more frequent, and Kawaguchi says that circumstances were impressing the Tibetans With the necessity of extending their sphere of trade, and they realized that if their wool trade was stopped the people would be hard hit, for sheep-rearers constituted the greater part of the whole population.

How it was, from a Tibetan point of view, that of recent years we became estranged is worth hearing. It was, according to Kawaguchi, the explorations of the Bengali gentleman, Sarat Chandra Das, coupled with the frontier troubles which followed, that changed the attitude of the Tibetans towards us. The two events had not the slightest connection with one another, but the Tibetans seemed to have been alarmed that the harmless journeying of Sarat Chandra Das in 1881 was a deliberate design on our part to subvert their religion. As to the frontier troubles—presumably those of 1886—Kawaguchi himself says that it was the Tibetan Government who “most indiscreetly adopted measures at the instance of a fanatic Nechung (oracle), and proceeded to build a fort at a frontier place which strictly belonged to Sikkim.”

But the Tibetans were apparently thoroughly nervous about the British, and prejudiced against us on account of our subjugation of India. They were much impressed by the moderation of our rule, by the freedom we gave, and by the hospitals and schools. Tibetans in Darjiling who had these advantages, and who were given small Government posts, were much attached to our rule. And Queen Victoria was believed to be an incarnation of the goddess of the Jo-khang Temple. All this, says Kawaguchi, they quite acknowledged, but when they considered that these same Englishmen annexed other people’s lands to their own dominions, their favourable opinion received a shock, and they explained this to themselves by supposing that "there must be two different kinds of Englishmen in India—one benevolent and godly, and the other infernal and quite wicked."

The Dalai Lama, who, though very anxious to clear away all corruption from the Buddhism of Tibet, was “richer in thoughts political than religious,” feared the British, and was always thinking how to keep us out of Tibet. The reason why he, “who was at first as timid as a hare towards England, should become suddenly as bold as a lion,” was that he had a secret treaty with Russia, which he believed to be the only country in the world strong enough to thwart England. Kawaguchi then proceeds to relate how Dorjieff virtually monopolized the confidence of the young Lama, how he brought gold and curios from Russia and liberal donations to all the monasteries, and even a Bishop’s robe from the Czar for the Dalai Lama. He tells how Dorjieff wrote a pamphlet showing that the Czar was an incarnation of one of the founders of Lamaism, and how the Tibetans came to believe that the Czar would sooner or later subdue the whole world and found a gigantic Buddhist Empire. He mentions, too, how one day after Dorjieff’s return he saw a caravan of 200 camels, and that he was told they conveyed rifles and bullets, and that 300 camel-loads had already arrived, and the Tibetans were then elated, and said that “now for the first time Tibet was sufficiently armed to resist any attack which England might make, and could defiantly reject any improper request.”

These rifles were of American manufacture, and, I believe through neglect, got so completely out of order that the Tibetans were only able to use very few against us. We have the assurance of the Russian Government, too, that no agreement was made with Tibet. But these observations of the Japanese form a remarkable corroboration of the reports we had heard as to the mischief done by Dorjieff’s proceedings.

Summarizing the characteristics of the Tibetans, we may say, then, that while they are affable outwardly and crafty within, as most dependent people have to be; while they are dirty and lazy; and while their religion is degraded, and they show no signs of either intellectual or spiritual progress, yet at heart they are not an unkindly or unsociable people, and they have undoubtedly strong religious feelings. Immorality is not entirely unchecked. The Lama who married a nun had his official career blighted. Ministers have been known to refuse their salaries as they had enough to live on without. There is often much affection and staunch friendship among the Tibetans. And there are in them latent potentialities for good, which only await the right touch to bring them into being.

Of the attitude of the Chinese to the Tibetans I took particular note, for I was myself a Resident in an Indian Native State, and I was interested in observing the attitude of a Chinese Resident in a Native State of the Chinese Empire. One point which immediately struck me about it was its tone of high-handedness. A century ago Manning had remarked how “the haughty Mandarins were somewhat deficient in respect,” and I noted the same thing. Every British Resident gives a chair to an Indian gentleman who comes to visit him, but I found that the Chinese Resident did not give a chair to even the Regent. He, Councillors, Members of the National Assembly, Abbots of the great monasteries—all had to sit on cushions on the ground, while the Resident and his Chinese staff sat on chairs. In his reception and dismissal of them he preserved an equally high tone of superiority. He did not rise from his chair to receive them, as any British Resident would rise to welcome Indian gentlemen or high officials; he merely acknowledged their salutation on entrance with a barely noticeable inclination of his head. And, in dismissing them, he simply said over his shoulder to his interpreter, “Tell them to go.” Our countrymen are often accused, and sometimes with justice, of being too high-handed with Asiatics, but we are not so high-handed with Asiatics as Asiatics are with one another.

In another respect the Chinese are very different from us in their dealings with a feudatory State. Hardly one of the Chinese officials we met in Tibet could speak a word of Tibetan. Except that they married Tibetan wives for the time that they were actually serving in Tibet, they troubled themselves little about the people. They remained quite aloof, took small interest in them, and certainly never worried themselves, as a British Resident would, to improve their lot in some way. The Chinese, both here and in Chinese Turkestan, where I had also observed them, preserved great dignity, were very punctilious in ceremonial, were always, so to speak, in full-dress uniform, and they were ever highly respectful to one another. But the Tibetans were “barbarians” in their eyes, were treated with disdainful contempt, and the Chinese officials thought of little else but how soon they could get back to their own civilized country.

The Tibetans naturally resented this, and hated the Chinese, but they were also greatly awed and brow-beaten by them; and I think, too, that the mere fact of seeing more civilized men than themselves in their midst, and of being attached to a great Empire, with an all-powerful Court in the background, has in itself had much to do with lifting the Tibetans out of barbarism. The aboriginal Tibetans were a savage and warlike race, who constantly invaded China. They have received both their civilization and their religion from China, for Buddhism, as I have said, reached them, not directly from India, but through a Tibetan King’s Chinese wife, the daughter of a Chinese Emperor. Books and relics came from India, but it was the personal influence of the Chinese wife which seems to have had the greatest practical effect in establishing Buddhism.

The Chinese have, too, on occasions done great service to the Tibetans in repelling invaders, and the march of the Chinese general, over many lofty passes, to expel the Gurkha invasion in 1792 was a military feat of which any nation in the world might be proud. Chinese prestige in Tibet had, according to Kawaguchi, who lived in Lhasa for three years, dwindled since the Chino-Japanese War; and we had practical proofs even before then that their influence was not as effective as a suzerain’s should be. But the memory of the prodigious efforts which China does every now and then make always inspires a certain awe in the Tibetans, and they never feel quite sure when another may not be made.

The Chinese, then, undoubtedly impress the Tibetans, but I am bigoted enough to think that their methods are not practically so successful as our own. Tibet is a protected Chinese State; Kashmir is a protected Indian State. In Tibet the Chinese Resident has, to support him, several hundreds of Chinese soldiers, and in the present year 2,000. In Kashmir the British Resident has not even a personal guard of British soldiers or even of British-Indian soldiers. In Tibet the Chinese are replacing the Tibetan by Chinese police; in Kashmir all the police are of the Kashmir State. Kashmir is 80,500 square miles in extent, and contains nearly as many inhabitants as Tibet, and it borders on Tibet, Turkestan, and through its feudatories on Afghan territory, while Russian territory is only twelve miles distant. But the whole of this is controlled and the bordering tribes are kept in order entirely through Kashmir State troops. British officers are employed, but not a single British or British-Indian soldier or policeman. Yet it is unthinkable that Kashmir troops should, against the wishes and orders of the British Government, invade the territory of a neighbouring State, as Tibetan troops, against the wishes and orders of the Chinese Government, invaded Sikkim in 1886. And it is inconceivable that the Kashmir State should repudiate and refuse to fulfil a Treaty concluded on their behalf by the British Government, as the Tibetans repudiated and refused to fulfil the Treaty made on their behalf by the Chinese in 1890. By all the logic of the case the Chinese, as fellow-Asiatics and as co-religionists of the Tibetans, should have much greater influence in Tibet than we as aliens, with a different religion, have in Kashmir. Yet the contrary is most emphatically the case.

The relations between ourselves and the Chinese at Lhasa I always tried to preserve as cordial as possible. Chinese suzerainty was definitely recognized in the Treaty, and all the way through the negotiations I had tried to carry the Resident with me. It was no part of our policy to supplant the Chinese. We had no idea of annexing Tibet or establishing a protectorate over it. We merely wanted to insure that no one else had a predominant influence in the country, that order was preserved, and that ordinary trade facilities should be accorded us. There was nothing in this to arouse the antagonism or jealousy of the Chinese, and as I always tried to treat the Resident with respect, I expected, and did, in fact, receive, his hearty co-operation. We each of us could and did help the other, to the advantage of both.