Adventures in Tibet;

Preface

X July, 1899, being ordered north by the doctors, I spent a month in Sikkim, that “ wedge ” between the “ three closed lands,” Is i pal, Bhutan, and Tibet.

This gave me the opportunity of crossing the Jelep La into Tibet and visiting Miss Taylor at her shop in Yatung. The moment this trip was undertaken, I wanted to know a hundred things of which I was ignorant about the country and the missions besetting its borders. The subject grew with inquiry, and I felt keenly the need of a bright, readable book 1 which should give a picture of the land as a whole, and photograph the present position of the investing forces.

Material for such a work began to come in, and with it a great “ find,” the original diary of Miss Taylor’s astonishing journey in 1892-93. To publish this as part of the first scheme would have been to

1 It is only right to say that I had not then seen ‘ ‘ The Great Closed Land ” by Miss Marston. The present volume is cast in a different mould.

PREFACE spoil the S3^mmetry of the whole. Not to publish it would have been to omit something of the very essence of the story. For the journey stands apart as one of the great deeds of the time, and it has had a unique influence over the expansion of Christian effort on behalf of Tibet. Moreover, it is complete in itself, and can never grow stale. It seemed best, therefore, to print first the diary, along with a general account of the country and its people, and this is the volume now placed in the reader’s hands. It will be followed, I hope, by another on the border missions if a sufficiency of interesting details and illustrative drawings and photographs can be had to encourage the attempt.

William Carey.

Dacca , Bengal , India.

Contents

Authorities Consulted 9

Part I

Chap. Page.

I. Which Chalks in the Outline 13

II. The Enchanted Land 18

III. Climbing the Threshold 24

IV. The Chang and Its Broken Edge 27

V. Lhasa : the Holy City 40

VI. Two Sleepless Dogs 59

VII. The Dawn and Development of Lamaism .... 71

VIII. Tibetan Theology 87

IX. Monk and Monastery 94

X. In the Homes of the People 109

XI. A Deed to Win the Empire 127

XII. First Contact With the Tibetans 146

XIII. Transcribing the Diary 165

Part II

Diary of Miss Taylor’s Journey (From Tau-chau to Ta-chien-lu) Through Tibet.

I. The First Stages 173

II. Eighteen Days in a Mongol Encampment .... 184

III. With the Golok Tribe in the Loop of the Yellow

River 196

IV. Squabbles, Sickness, and Death 204

V. Noga’s Assault 214

VI. Twenty Days in a Cave at Tashiling 229

VII. From Tashiling to Nag-chu-ka 238

VIII. Under Arrest and Trial 249

IX. Back to Tashiling 263

X. Kegu, Kanze, and Ta-chien-lu 273

List of Illustrations

PAGE

Tibetan Curios Frontispiece

A Lama 22

Typical Landscape 22

“Standing in that Wild Theatre, with his Trumpet of Human

Thigh-bone” 22

A View in Western Tibet 24

“ Enormous Peaks Capped with Eternal Snow ” 30

A Yak 31

Iskardo : Western Tibet 34

A Gorge on the Way to Ts’in Chau 36

Rope Bridge Near Ta-chien-lu 37

Lhasa 40

Rai Sarat Chandra Das Bahadur 46

Plan of Lhasa 48

The Dalai Lama on bis Throne 53

Seal of the Dalai Lama put at the Head of his Letters .... 56 Seal of the Dalai Lama Stamped at the end of State Letters . 57

A Tanka 65

The Dorje 74

The First Dalai Lama 83

An Aged Abbot 84

Minstrel Mendicants 84

Bell and Image Foundry 88

The Wheel of Life 92

A Lama’s Hat 95

Anybody’s Hat 95

Lamasery Near Reh-ho, Manchuria 97

The Stupa at Sarnath, Near Benares 98

The Lamas’ Blackboard 98

The Lion Pillar at Lauriya 98

A Chorten 98

The Curious “Scorpion Lake ” 102

Brick Tea 102

Lama’s Trumpet 107

Interior of Hut on the Border, Showing the K’ang 110

Rajah’s Palace at Tumlung 110

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Typical Tibetans 114

“ Om Mani Padme Hum ” 124

Turning a Prayer-Drum 126

Out for a Walk 130

Miss Taylor 130

Miss Taylor as She Rode Through Tibet 130

The “Tibetan Pioneer Mission ” 142

Woman in Gala Dress 153

Woman in Usual Dress 153

Typical Tibetans 158

A Page of the Diary 168

Map of Tibet 170

‘ ‘ My Diary in Tibet ” 173

Ka Gumpa 174

A Chinese City Gate 174

A Tibetan Valley 177

Tibetan Nomads on the Chang 182

Tibetan Guides 182

Offering the Khata 188

A Chinese Passport 190

Tibetan Women-Dancers 192

The Devil Dance 192

Lamas Masked for Their Religious Pantomime 192

Miss Taylor in Tibetan Dress 198

Lama Worship 220

Tibetan Sword, Scabbard, and Tinder-Pouch 222

Good Morning 234

Tibetan Chiefs in Sheepskins 234

Sending Paper Horses to Help Travellers 234

Interior of Lama Temple 234

Prayer-Cylinders 234

Pontso 242

Taking Tea in Tibetan Style 242

Churning Tea 242

Hat of Tibetan Chief 250

Miss Taylor’s Visiting-Card 254

A Military Mandarin 258

A Priest on the Prowl 266

Ta-chien-lu 282

Encampment at Ta-chien-lu 282

Authorities Consulted

Y thanks are due to the principal of Serampore College, the principal and librarian of the Dacca College ; Rai Sarat Chandra Das Bahadur, of Darjiling ; Lieut.-Col. H. Bower, of Wei Hai Wei ; Miss Stirling, of Scotland ; Peter Lindeman, Esq., of Darjiling ; and Miss Taylor, of Tatung, for the loan of valuable books, without which this volume could not have been prepared.

The chief authorities consulted are given below : — “Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa,” by Clements R. Markham, C. B., F. R. S. ; “ Travels in Tartary, Tibet, and China,” by M. Hue, translated from the French by W. Hazlitt ; “ Diary of a Journey Across Tibet,” by Capt. Hamilton Bower ; “ Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet,” by William Woodville Rockhill ; “The Buddhism of Tibet,” and “ Among the Himalayas,” by Maj. L. A. Waddell, M. B. ; “The Great Closed

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED

Land,” by Annie W. Marston ; “ The Gates of Tibet,” by J. A. H. Louis, F. R. G. S. ; “ Working and Waiting for Tibet,” from the German of H. G. Schneider; “ Among the Tibetans,” by Isabella L. Bishop, F. R. G. S. ; “ Where Three Empires Meet,” by E. F. Knight ; “ Pioneering in Tibet,” by Annie R. Taylor ; “ Tibet,” in the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica ” ; papers by various travellers in The Geographical Journal; Mr. Rockhill’s articles in The Century Magazine ; the Rev. F. B. Shawe’s papers in The Missionary Review of the World ; and the Rev. Graham Sandberg’s article in The Contemporary Review.

For many of the illustrations I am indebted to Miss Taylor herself, and for others to the courtesy Lieut.-Col. H. Bower; Maj. L. A. Waddell, LL. D., F. L. S. ; the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society; the secretaries of the Moravian Mission Board and the China Inland Mission ; Miss Stirling, Hon. Secretary of the Tibet Prayer Union ; Mrs. J. A. Graham, and the Rev. Evan Mackenzie, of Kalimpong, British Bhutan; Messrs. Johnston and Hoffman, of Calcutta, and Mr. Fritz Kapp, late of that city, photographers.

Part I

Chapter I Which Chalks In The Outline

:^^HIS is a book for anybody to read. It is IjqP travel and adventure ; who will not rise .Sell to that ? And it is travel and adventure in the hardest of all lands left to explore.

Moreover, there are no technical details. It is not the record of any learned expedition. It is simply the diary of a plucky and resourceful woman who pushed her way, practically alone, through the heart of Tibet, and put down all that happened to her as she went along.

The feat was remarkable and astonishing. Without a companion and without equipment this unsophisticated pilgrim crept into the secret places of the Great Closed Land. Iler audacity makes one hold one’s breath : what chance has a mouse in a cageful of cats ? Others had been before her, but not women. Women have been since, but not alone. There is nothing to equal it in the whole fascinating story of Tibetan travel. Yet how quaintly pathetic in its simplicity and how richly amusing in its unpreparedness !

Starting from the north of China, near the Great Wall, Miss Taylor entered Tibet, penetrated almost to Lhasa, and returned by another route. She was seven months and ten days in the forbidden land. Her only arms were a pistol, and her only instruments a telescope and a watch. The pistol had been packed in the baggage and never saw the light. The telescope was stolen, and it does not appear that she ever had occasion to use it. It was probably intended as a spy-glass for robbers; but those gentry swarmed about her so close and so often that looking for them at long range would have been a mere ridiculous superfluity. The watch she tried unceasingly to barter for something more useful, such as a tent or a tat. Without aneroid, thermometer, or theodolite, she toiled over unmapped mountains and jogged through unvisited valleys, provokingly oblivious of the claims of science, and constrained only when something went wrong with the cooking to notice the boiling-point.

The absence of scientific research does not, however, detract from the human interest of Miss Taylor’s story. She kept a diary for the whole period

WHICH CHALKS IN THE OUTLINE of her adventurous journey, from the day when, at dawn, she stole out of Tau-Chau and across the border, to that other day when she emerged at Ta-chien-lu, having cast her line in a long loop over the rugged interior. This diary is now published for the first time, eight years after the event.

The original lies on my desk. It is a small black notebook, stained and smudged, but closely pencilled on every page. Night after night, at the end of each comfortless march, and as well as numbed fingers would let her, she jotted down the main features of the day. Only those who have faced the cold and fatigue of such travel, without intending to write a book or record the results of scientific observation, can really appreciate the significance of this persistence.

Not till the diary had been written would the tired traveller burrow into her sleeping-bag under tent or cave. When, at last, the tent had been taken, and no cave could be found, she settled herself to sleep on the snow. What a comical little bundle it must have been for the merry stars to wink at !

The steady cheerfulness she exhibited under all circumstances was simply heroic. These blurred pages, what a tale the}7 tell ! There is some mention of privations and perils, but how much more that is not mentioned can yet plainly be read in the quivering of the lines and the frequent sunny expressions of hope and trust !

So few travellers have penetrated Tibet, or come back to tell the tale, that their most commonplace experiences are invested with a peculiar interest. The report of Miss Taylor’s journey has already gone round the world and excited the admiration of such as know how to estimate intrepid dai’ing and patient, unconquerable courage. To the Christian heart it has spoken in another tone and with thrilling persuasiveness. For there was more in it than mere pluck and perseverance. There was a lofty motive. Mere daring and love of adventure would never have induced this frail woman to hazard her life in such an enterprise, or have carried her so successfully through. It was all that plus an unworldly ideal, a light shining along the path, a fire burning in the bones. It was heroism, but it was also the heroism of faith. The light was “ the light of the dark land of Galilee,” and the fire a flame from the passionate heart of Paul.

Summaries of the journey already published have made this deep impression. But summaries are far from satisfying. They create a thirst which the meagre information supplied does very little to quench. The mind craves the full story, the detailed happenings of every day, the fresh, original

WHICH CHALKS IN THE OUTLINE impressions pencilled down on the spot. However crude and imperfect the form in which these are preserved, they are always immensely more interesting than mere general descriptions, the brevity of which deprives them of practical value, while their free coloring is a seductive snare. It is a pity that Miss Taylor’s diary was not published at the first, in place of the altogether disappointing and unimpressive accounts which are all that have appeared down to the present time. The narrative, as we find it there, in its wholeness and in its simplicity, is best fitted to form the permanent memorial of a deed which is illustrious in the history of missions and epoch-making for Tibet.

Chapter II

THE ENCHANTED LAND k00k takes nothing for granted except the general ignorance on so remote a subject. “ Where is Tibet ? ” Miss Taylor was constantly asked as she went among the churches of England and Scotland after her return. Occasionally the wildest guesses were made, some placing it north of the British Isles, some in the heart of Africa, and some amongst the isles of the Pacific.

Nor is this ignorance to be wondered at. In the days when most of us were at school practically the only book on the subject was Hue’s “ Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China.” And it was a book very variously esteemed. Few, perhaps, ventured to take it seriously. M. Hue might be a charming romancist, but he could scarcely be credited as a sober narrator of facts. His book was not taught in the schools; and Tibet remained simply a blank, or a blind eye, on the maps of the world. Almost all the real exploration of the country has been done in the last twenty years, and the books

THE ENCHANTED LAND which have made it popular have been published within a single decade.

Miss Taylor’s vivacious jottings open to us the land as it is, with its color and movement as well as its whiteness and weariness, the land as you and I should see it if we went there to-day. And it is not a land easy to get at or easy to see. Not one in a thousand of us is likely ever to see it. We might as well hope to visit the arctic regions and notch our names on the pole !

It is necessary, however, to a proper appreciation of the narrative that some attempt should be made to realize the setting of the story, to understand what was involved in the hard task she set herself to perform. We must know the configuration of the land and its climate, the difficulties presented by its peculiar position and natural characteristics, with the still greater difficulties arising from the spirit of bondage and exclusiveness which broods in the hearts of its people. We must “see a background and feel an atmosphere.” We must try to get a “ brief vision of the land as a whole.”

It can hardly be an exaggeration to say that Tibet is the most forbidding country to be found on the globe. It towers above the clouds the largest and loftiest mass of rock in the world. Hidden behind ramparts of snow and ice, sparsely populated, swept by bitter winds, so cold that the comi monest dress of its inhabitants is a huge sheepskin with the wool worn on the inner side : what wonder that its bleak aspect should repel the invader, and make it, in the very heart of Asia and the latitude of the Mediterranean, the least known, the most mysterious area on the surface of the earth ?

Round three of its sides, like seas breaking on a rocky coast, rich empires have risen up, rolled on, and disappeared ; their thunder booming through the hollow caves, but scarcely heard above the cliff, their foam faintly flecking the black forehead of Tibet. Its people have watched from their high station, with listless eyes, all the procession of the past.

West and south gleamed the painted panorama of the Indian plains, the gilded march of elephants and emperors, the struggle for supremacy of Rajput, Mogul, and Englishman ; and it affected little, if at all, the rough race dwelling on the roof of the world. Eastwards seethed the teeming topsj^-turvydom of China with a like result. Through all the centuries Bodland 1 stood still, impassive, looking down like some grim image on a grassy green while all this many-colored life bloomed and danced about its feet.

In one matter only has Tibet borrowed from its neighbors. Its wild inhabitants originally

1 The name by which the country is known to its own people.

THE ENCHANTED LAND worshipped the forces of nature, conceived as destructive demons, and sometimes propitiated with cannibal rites. But now for more than a thousand years there has mingled with this coarse cult the milder faith of Buddha, adulterated by a strong infusion of Hindooism. It came about in a natural and romantic way, the fruit of a marriage between the Tibetan king and two pretty princesses from China and Nipal, who brought their religion with them.

Yet the old demons live and are more powerful than ever. The land is enchanted still and as barbarous as of old, — a land of precious metals without mines ; 1 of unlimited resources for trade, but overridden and exploited by brigands; of simple and good-hearted people, but cursed by a mortal terror of malignant spirits, and crushed under the heel of rapacious priests. The newer deities have simply been added to the old. They have not displaced them. The ancient devil-dancer has been superseded by a far more dangerous and powerful oppressor, the magician-priest.

It is the land of the lamas. What that means it

1 There are certainly mines of a sort in Tibet, but little is known of them. The precious metals are thought to be the treasures of the demons, and are strongly guarded by troops, the diggings being worked only occasionally. “ The miners offer sacrifices to the spirits, and then rush to the lodes, and after a few hours rush back again, laden with the spoils of the pick.” — “Among the Himalayas.”

is not very easy for us, in our Protestant environment, to understand. The lamas are monks. A hundred, or a thousand, or even five thousand, of them may be herded together, if not exactly under one roof, yet in one great building, whose ramifications root themselves like a fortress in the rocks, and whose walls and windows frown upon the surrounding fields. The rest of the timid Tibetans huddle in huts at the monasa lama, terv gates, or till the soil and tend their flocks that the lamas may live at ease. Deeper than the roots of the lamaseries sink into the rocks has the power of the lamas lodged in the hearts of the people. Every family has at least one representative in the cloisters. Often there are two, and not seldom three. It has been reckoned that every sixth person of the entire population is either a lama or a lama novitiate. The only education is monkish ; the only architecture that of the temples and monasteries, which seem to grow out of the craggy heights on which they are perched ; the one universal and unceasing religious rite the twirling of a “ prayer-wheel” and the mumbling of a meaningless sentence. The lama holds the people in the hollow of his hand, and many forces meet in that magnetic and masterful grip.

But the chief of all is the weird majesty of the

TYPICAL LANDSCAPE.

A sandy plateau surrounded by high mountains, in Western Tibet.

Standing in that wild theatre, with his trumpet of human thigh-bone.”

THE ENCHANTED LAND land itself. It is a land glittering with gilded temples and fat with green pastures ; yet leagues on leagues of it lie with bared bosom to the whistling heavens, white and cold. You may saunter through sunny valle}rs yellow with ripe corn, and anon paddle in streams whose sands are gold ; but there is one background that never alters and that never entirely recedes from view, — that unspeakably solemn horizon of snowy peaks, over which a dazed eagle may flutter in convulsive flight, or the thin black line of trade slowly crawl, dropping its frozen dead. In any other environment the lama would be merely a dirty and revolting pretender. But, standing in that wild theatre, with his trumpet of human thigh-bone at his lips, and a skull in his hands, he is the very embodiment of the spirit that haunts the mountains, and broods over the wide, inhospitable deserts, and makes a sport of man. It is the spirit of awe and mystery that smites the heart with panic and congeals the blood.

And this is the enchantment with which the land is enchanted.

Chapter III Climbing The Threshold

O climb only to the threshold of this forbidding land means to scale the Himalayas. The Himalayas bulge southwards with a bold sweep, buttressing the Tibetan plateau, and rising from the Indian plains to a height of seventeen thousand feet in a hundred miles. It is the grandest stairway in the world.

The steps of these stairs are separate tiers of mountains, divided from one another by deep chasms which have to be trodden to the bottom

before you ascend again.

The climb takes a week, and is very toilsome and depressing. You labor for long, hot hours up the steep face of a shelterless ridge, only to scramble down on the other side, lose all you have gained, and begin over again. The terrible gorges between these almost pera view in western tibet. pendicular walls are death-

CLIMBING THE THRESHOLD traps of fever, being choked with steamy vegetation and excessively hot. Through some of them glacier-fed streams babble over the stony bottom, or race with swift current, creating a cold back draught which chills the blood like the touch of a snake. The heated traveller, gasping for breath, flings himself into a lounge chair on the veranda of some pretty bungalow overhanging the stream, and the next few minutes of blissful coolness may cost him his life.

But the toils of the ascent are rewarded when you reach the summit of the last precipitous cliff, and stand at a dent in the sky-line, and look back over the split escarpment to the far level where the plains shimmer in colored mist. Face north. You are standing on the edge of the outer Himalayan wall, on the crest of the bulge. It is cut into countless peaks like the teeth of a saw, and between the peaks are fearsome glaciers and crevasses unexplored by man. Deeper hollows mark the few passes, the only gates into the country so jealously closed. The pass that we have climbed is one of the easiest and lowest ; yet it is nearly as high as Mont Blanc. Before us — all that vast silence of mountains muffled in snow — that is Tibet. Look at it well. Many feet have come as far as this, but no further. Many eyes have scanned with a wistful gaze that strange, solitary prospect. One step more, ancl }Tou have crossed the threshold ; you have passed through the mysterious portals ; you have entered the Forbidden Land.

The track wriggles down the steep slope, which here looks as smooth as the blade of a hatchet, till it touches that frozen tarn. All around are rough towers of black, jagged rock. Follow it with your eye till it dips and disappears among the hills. Through the snow on those lower spurs dark pines protrude and stretch their ragged limbs. Far down, seven miles from the pass and four thousand feet below it, deep in a wedge-shaped gorge, that is }7et ten thousand feet above the sea, lies the “trade mart,” Tatung, where Miss Taylor keeps her famous shop and is still the only missionary allowed to live in Tibet.

Chapter IV

E core of Tibet is the Cimng. Realize the Chang, and you have the key to everything that is interesting in the history and geography of the land. The Chang is the great plateau, and all the rest of Tibet is its broken edge.

A good idea of the Chang can be gained from the shaded map. It is far from being an accurate delineation, though for the purpose of a rough general view it will serve our turn. The plateau is projected from the north, and pushes evenly westward, filling a knot in the Himalayas with its consistent mass. It originally spread to the great bulo-e on the south and the Chinese border on the

o

east. But its surface on these two sides has been bitten and fissured and crumbled down from the centre for hundreds of miles bv the action of large rivers, the grinding of glaciers, and the scouring of the rains.

The Chang has an astonishing altitude and is comparatively level. Ti’avellers have crossed it in

several directions during recent years. Capt. M. S.

Well by of the Eighteenth Hussars and Mr. Malcolm of the Ninety-Third Highlanders travelled through the country from west to east in the summer of 1S96. “For four months,” says Captain Wellby, “we saw no vegetation higher than an onion, and for nearly four months our camp was at an average height of sixteen thousand feet. For more than fourteen weeks we travelled without seeing any sign of mankind.” 1

From Leh, on the Indian side, to Tankar, in China, the distance is two thousand miles, and they did it in five months and a half. “ Ruby,” a little fox-terrier, accompanied them all the way. Generally speaking, the route lay along broad, open valleys, some sixteen thousand feet high, and after every four or five days they would cross an easy pass into another. There was a difficulty about water. The Chang abounds in lakes, some being of great size, but they are nearly all salt. The explorers had to dig several feet for water almost every day. The Tibetan rock salt, which forms a large trade with Nipal and Sikkim, is got directly from these, the purer sort being picked up in large crystals on the wet margin of the beach.2

The climate of the Chang is terribly trying. The thermometer will rise to 110° Fahrenheit in the

1 The Geographical Journal, September, 1898.

2 See Major Waddell’s description in “ Among the Himalayas.”

sun, and sink at night to 25° of frost. This is due to the great rarefaction of the air and the wonderful clearness of the sky. All travellers have noticed the marvellous depth and blueness of the Tibetan heavens. But the biting wind — nothing can keep it out. Blankets and rugs are absolutely useless. Skins alone are adequate as protection, and these must be stout and woolly. Captain Wellby lost nine mules in a single night from the gnawing cold. Mr. St. George R. Littledale, who came over the Chang from the north in 1895, started with a caravan of one hundred and sixty animals, but of all these only two ponies and six mules lived to get back.1 The extreme dryness of the air produces some painful effects. The mouth, throat, and nostrils get parched, and the skin chaps and cracks. But there are compensations. Meat, for instance, will keep for any length of time. It may powder, but it never putrefies. Miss Taylor sent me the other day some dried ribs of mutton, the flesh of which had shrunk almost to the bone, but had no suggestion of taint, even after crossing the steamy plains of Bengal. She assured me that if first soaked in water, and then cooked, the meat would be found abundant, sweet, and good. I wish now that I had put this to the test instead of sending it as a curiosity to England.

1 The Geographical Journal, May, 1896.

THE PLATEAU PRACTICALLY UNINHABITED

Southward, the Chang extends to the Tengri- Nor, and there encounters the inner wall of the Himalayas, a mighty range which lifts up enormous peaks capped with eternal snow. The whole of this vast region is practically uninhabited. For a brief summer it is one boundless prairie, covered with a thick carpet of grass and flowers, and the happy abode of innumerable herds of wild horses, asses, yak, goat, and antelope. While the summer lasts, a few nomad tribes gather on the edge of the Chang, their flocks nibbling at the fringe of this green felt, till the approach of winter warns them off, and the winds dry up the grass, making it as brittle as bone and as hard as wire. All the rest of the year it is a raw, inhospitable waste, untrodden by the foot of man, yet still mysteriously supporting the hosts of wild animals which survive the arctic cold. Captain Bower, who crossed Tibet in 1891, thinks this can be accounted for only by the amount of fat they lay up when the grass grows at its best.

The typical animal of Tibet is the yak, and its home is on the Chang. In appearance it resembles the ox, but its sides are draped with long, shaggy hair, and its bushy tail is a familiar article of commerce. Set in the horn of an antelope, tipped with silver, it dangles from the sashed waist of many a