Powell Millington

“ Surely, then, for one who is not ordered by authority to compile a Blue-book, who has no gospel of Tibetan scientific discoveries to proclaim to the world, and who has no harvest—in the shape of letters previously sent to the press and capable of republication—ready at hand for reaping, to sit down and write a book on Tibet, merely because he happens to have been to Lhassa and back, is a work of supererogation which needs a word of apology. ”

“ We laid a grand snare, in the shape of two mule loading ropes joined together, and stretched across a tempting patch of the green-pea field, where not a trace of the rope could be seen, while the men at each end of the rope lounged peacefully and innocently with reassuring looks upon their faces which we thought would not prevent the pony being quietly urged into the space between them. ”

“ Those high passes in front of us, the shores of the great Palti lake and the upper Brahmaputra, that we knew not how we should cross, all seemed also to point to a varied adventure, and there was a spice of excitement in the thought of marching through a country, on the resources of which we should have largely to maintain ourselves, while as yet we knew hardly anything of their kind and extent. ”

“ Both yaks and donkeys were very cheap forms of transport. It is true that yaks had a way of dying and donkeys of deserting, but even so their initial cost was very small, they needed very few drivers in proportion to their numbers, and possessed the art of living on the country. An animal that along a line of communications of some four hundred miles' length, and lying in an inhospitable country, neither asks you to bring him up fodder or even grain from the base, nor yet expects you to go foraging for him, is indeed a treasure. ”

“ In one lofty room alone we one day found eight thousand maunds of barley flour, all neatly bagged and sealed with a Tibetan official seal, doubtless a mobilisation reserve of the Tibetan army, and, alongside of it, another similar room filled with loose grain to a height which we could never really explore, since the weight of the grain made it impossible to open the door more than an inch or so, from which small aperture our requirements trickled out by the mule load. ”

“ For as we turned that corner, suddenly, as with a sudden flash, and all lit up with the sunlight that had just dispelled the clouds, Chumalari stood before us, his white top only a few miles away, but many thousand feet above us, and so reaching to a height in the sky that to the stranger's eye was almost appalling.
To us men the romance of scenery is very elusive. I have known nice old ladies to whom a fine sunset was a real substantial joy, giving them the same nocturnal exhilaration that baser clay can only acquire by absorbing a bottle of champagne. ”

“ From Menza onwards our rice-bag had a choice of mounts. It might go on a pack mule, or meander slowly along on the back of a pack yak, or, with the other bag alongside it, entirely eclipse from human view the most miniature of donkeys, who, nevertheless, if allowed ample time to look about him, and to pick up weird grazing by the roadside, would eventually arrive in camp none the worse, and with his load intact after a uniform progress of about one mile an hour. ”

“ The main tenets of Buddhist doctrine, as one may acquire them in a handbook or an occasional magazine article, afford very little clue to Tibetan religious art. Buddha himself one can understand, and one becomes quite to know and admire the gently supercilious, ever-smiling expression that is faithfully caught in every statue and picture of him which one sees. ”

“ If, however, by any chance there are two officers together in one post, they should enjoy themselves. For though ordinary regimental life is, as I said above, the most social in the world, it yet also suffers from the disabilities of its own sociability. In a regimental mess you know twenty men well, and may go on knowing them so for twenty years, but perhaps you will never know any one of them really intimately. To share a post on the line of communications with one other officer for a few months should result in an intimacy. ”

“ Shopping in the camp bazaar was the ladylike way in which we often spent our mornings. We had only been in camp at Lhassa for twenty-four hours, when a bazaar [Pg 159] was formed just outside camp by Tibetan, Chinese, and Nepali traders. It needed a little supervision to prevent disputes and disorder, but the provost-marshal quickly had it in hand. An attempt to fix rates for various more necessary articles was not wholly successful, human nature on the buyer's part crying out for the article at all cost, and human nature on the seller's seizing an easy chance of profit. ”

“ Here on a lone hilltop stands a tiny monastery stagnant, like some small pool left by the flood, the monks few in number, their persons sordid, their minds vacant, and what remains of their religion stale or even polluted; while elsewhere in larger monasteries religion is clearer and more vital, and life less stagnant. This is a pure generalisation, and doubtless [Pg 141] men, holy after their lights, often live in remote hovels, and in the chiefer centres religion may often be dreamy or callous, and sordid vices be not unknown. ”

“ But to fall in action is a special contingency which all soldiers have to face, and to die by disease is the usual lot of mankind. At the loss of comrades in these ways we grieve, but do not grieve with any amazement. Far different from this normal grief was our feeling when we heard that some sepoys, and with them Major Bretherton, our chief Supply and Transport officer, had, while crossing the river, been caught by one of several eddies formed [Pg 130] by the sharp jutting out of a certain rocky headland into midstream, been capsized, sucked down by the eddies, and drowned. ”

“ The native soldier soon makes himself very much at home in his post. He has deeply regretted not going to the front, but with a useful belief in 'kismet' makes the best of things. The relief from marching and the ample leisure to cook food are redeeming features. The post-commandant, if the only British officer on the spot, feels his circumstances more acutely. Not only does he grieve at being left behind, but since in ordinary times no life is more social than that of a British officer, he at first feels his loneliness [Pg 168] greatly. ”

“ He has to foresee the wants of many hungry mouths months ahead, and fit them in to a scanty allowance of transport. But his function is of a special kind. The ordinary member of a mess simply eats what is put before him, notes whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, and thinks no more about it. On the other hand, if, with the aid of a purely experimental cook, you run your own messing, quite a new vista of energy is at once opened out to you. ”

“ LIFE IN A POST: TRUE HOSPITALITY: A BHUTYA PONY
Since I reached India, I have been told that every moment I spent in the romantic environs of Lhassa must have been intensely interesting, and that to have been to Lhassa is the envy of the world. I suppose, like the brute one is, one got blasé and indifferent to one's good fortune, but it is certain that those 'crowded hours of glorious life' began to pall. ”

“ Tibetan men and women, as they thresh their corn with the flail, chant pretty ditties in unison, and Tibetan boatmen on the Sangpo will sometimes sing to their work. And here was this band of women singing cheerily as they climbed that mountain side, and never pausing in their song. They were well up with the advance guard too, and the chorus could be heard all down the column—a novel sort of band with which to cheer a British army onwards on a toilsome march! ”

“ A Chinese market was a great boon to us, for the Chinaman, especially if at all influenced by other civilisations, has ideas on dietetics more nearly approximating to both those of the British and of the native of India than do the Tibetan's ideas. To the ordinary Tibetan the sucking of mouthfuls of tsampa at irregular intervals from a dirty leather bag which he hangs from his neck represents an adequate idea of diet. The monks and richer laymen of course do themselves better ”

“ On the first day out of Chaksam I had rather an amusing experience of the value set by a Tibetan on a 'chit' written by a British officer. In this respect the Tibetan out-herods Herod. India is the land of the 'chit.' The word is an abbreviation of 'chitthi,' a letter, and in its shortened form is specially applied to a certificate of good character given to a servant or to any pass in guarantee of respectability on any simple [Pg 137] recognition of services rendered. A native barber in India who has cut your hair three times will ask for a 'chit' as a guarantee that he has done so. ”

“ It is, in fact, curious that Chinese influence seems more prevalent in the Chumbi valley than in any other part of Eastern Tibet, except Lhassa itself. The number of Chinamen actually resident in the Chumbi valley is itself large, and there seems to have been a great deal of inter-marriage here at one time or another between the local Tibetans and Chinamen proper, the women of such unions having of course been Tibetan, since the Chinaman, when he goes roaming, invariably, I believe, leaves his women folk at home. ”

“ To be auctioneer of the effects of a comrade is not an enviable post. I had to auction Major Bretherton's things, and found that the adoption of the correct, breezy, businesslike auctioneer's manner was up-hill work. A man so stamps his individuality on his belongings that often some well-worn familiar garment, as for instance the 'coat-warm British' with fur-lined collar that the officer had been used to wear on cold mornings, brings, as you hold it up to sale, many sad associations. ”

“ The principle that apparently governs Tibetan obsequies is the desirability of making a corpse fulfil its natural function as food for animals. Hence exposure of corpses as food for wolves or vultures causes them no pang. They even, it is said, so far elaborate the above principle as to regard a corpse as specially honoured when given as food to the domestic pig, the origin of this development of the principle being of course really utilitarian; for the high-placed Tibetan, since in his life he 'feeds high and lives soft,' must of necessity in his death be specially nutritious. ”

“ As each wall falls it throws up a cloud of dust, and the filth of ages in small particles enters your eyes, your ears, your hair, and your mouth, and covers your clothes: no small matter when the clothes in which you stand may be the only suit you possess, and the function of having a bath cannot be undertaken lightly, but needs due warning, ample preparation, and assured leisure. ”

“ Football at thirteen thousand feet is like playing the game at an ordinary level—with an eighty-pound load on your back. Less strain on the lungs was a rifle meeting. To escort our military or political betters to the city on a state visit was another mild form of entertainment. The Chinese Amban often received such visits. The ordinary officer who formed part of the escort did not take part in the actual visit. He stayed outside on the doorsteps. Sometimes he was known to go into the Amban's kitchen, where an elderly matron gave him a cup of tea. ”

“ The effect of the atmosphere on distances is most curious. You see the details of a hill in the distance so clearly that it seems far nearer than it is. Distance-judging by eye for military purposes in high altitudes is an art governed by rules entirely different from those that govern it at an ordinary elevation.
I was a bit weak after my attack of mountain sickness, and stuck to my pony's back the whole way. I felt a natural anxiety with regard to the native followers [Pg 34] who accompanied me—an orderly, a syce, and a bearer. ”

“ For such a hot bath is the only form of complete ablution. Your tent, if you do not exceed your scale of transport, will be small and will have no bath-room attached; then for preparing the bath, you have to remove all the ordinary contents of the tent outside into the open. Then will follow the setting in position of whatever form of camp bath you may possess, or may be able to borrow. Meanwhile an extra allowance of firewood has to be procured and the water made hot. By the time all is ready and you are beginning to take off your clothes a considerable time will have passed. ”

“ The mule, for instance, cannot live on grain alone: he must have fodder, and one mule in a very few days will consume as much fodder as is equivalent in weight to his own authorised load. Hence, if you provide a mule with a reserve of fodder to last him that number of days and make him carry it, you might just as well leave him behind, since he will then be able to carry nothing else except his own fodder. ”

“ That strange similarity on less essential points that exists between religions which are far removed from each other, both in history and in doctrine, makes one long to read some really comprehensive history of human religion that will, by dipping down into the furthest depths of the past, reveal to us the answer to such problems as, for instance, the strong and apparently family likeness between the joss-sticks and tallow altar-lamp of the Buddhist, and the incense and wax-candle of ornate Christian ritual. ”

“ I remember an officer who on the march had latterly possessed himself of a Tibetan flint and steel and learnt to light a cigarette with them.
There are just about half a dozen prime necessities of no great bulk which always seem to run out sooner than expected on field service. A reserve in a supply column of the following would always come in useful: of matches, three mule loads; of wax candles, seven mule loads; of soap, ten mule loads; of some strong forbidding kind of tobacco that in times of privation would go a very long way, ten mule loads ”

“ We had marched four hundred miles, fought a few fights, and provided ourselves throughout our journey with the necessaries of life, much against the will of the enemy, and here we were at Lhassa, where an exciting climax to our march, such as a good fight in the Lhassa plain, would have been highly artistic. Here stood the Debun monastery, and there further on the Sara monastery, full of monks who at that time hated us. A few good shells in those monasteries would have set the monks buzzing in consternation [Pg 150] like swarming bees disturbed. ”