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In 1900 he sent to Lhassa an ambassador in the person of Colonel Younghusband, a distinguished Asiatic traveler, who speaks the language of Thibet, to talk things over and persuade the Dailai Lama, as the chief ruler of Thibet is called, to carry out his promise about the treaties.
When travelling on duty they had a right to obtain relays of animals at post-stations and villages, and they were also entitled to claim supplies of food, saddles, or anything else they required, to carry them as far as the next encampment. Gunpowder and bullets were supplied by the authorities. The weapons were manufactured mostly in Lhassa and Sigatz.
The next day, at an early hour, I repaired to the great Himis convent, which, a little distance from Leh, is elevated upon the top of a great rock, on a picturesque site, commanding the valley of the Indies. It is one of the principal monasteries of the country, and is maintained by the gifts of the people and the subsidies it receives from Lhassa.
In the forenoon he paid us a long visit, and brought some flutes, of which he gave me two very common ones of apricot wood from Lhassa, producing at the same time a beautiful one, which I believe he intended for Campbell, but his avarice got the better, and he commuted his gift into the offer of a tune, and pitching it in a high key, he went through a Tibetan air that almost deafened us by its screech.
The dyke to protect the city from inundations I never heard of; but there is a current story in Sikkim that Lhassa is built in a lake-bed, which was dried up by a miracle of the Lamas, and that in heavy rain the earth trembles, and the waters bubble through the soil: a Dorjiling rain-fall, I have been assured, would wash away the whole city.
The highway to Lhassa was getting so thickly populated that I thought it advisable in the future to travel through less inhabited regions. I intended proceeding, dressed as a European, until within a few miles of Lhassa. Then I would leave my two men concealed in some secluded spot, and assuming a disguise, I would penetrate alone during the night into the city.
A few words must suffice to end the story of the Eleuths. The death of Galdan did not bring them to submission, and years afterwards we find them hostile to Chinese rule, and even so daring as to invade Thibet, which Kanghi had added to his empire, they taking its central city of Lhassa, and carrying to the steppes a vast wealth in spoil.
Of what secret, unconscious, psychological working was it the expression? Look at its result. It is that wherever this doctrine is developed the status matrimonialis is held to be less pure, less truly religious, than the status virginitatis. Such is the teaching to-day in Lhassa, in Rome; so it was in Yucatan, where, too, there were nunneries filled with spouses of God.
A dispensation having previously been procured from Lhassa, this marriage had been effected by the Lamas, in order to counteract the efforts of the Dewan, who sought to exercise an undue influence over the Rajah and his family.
Lhassa he described as a city in the bottom of a flat-floored valley, surrounded by lofty snowy mountains: neither grapes, tea, silk, or cotton are produced near it, but in the Tartchi province of Tibet, one month's journey east of Lhassa, rice, and a coarse kind of tea are both grown.
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