which these high altitudes make in the burning of a
fuse* nullified their work to some small extent. I do
not suppose that any white man in the force was anything
but sincerely glad when one more dark-coated little
figure disappeared in safety behind the distant corner.
But the behaviour of the native troops was beyond all
praise. They had kept their temper and their discipline
till it was almost beyond human endurance. And when
the word was given they naturally had no mercy upon
an enemy whose attempt to equalise matters by the
hand-to-hand use of vastly superior numbers had been
tried and failed. It was a short but a terrible lesson.
An attempt was made to defend Guru itself, two
miles on, but this was easily defeated ; and after leaving
a small garrison in the place, the column returned to
Tuna against a bitter wind and a darkening sky.
The lesson which Guru should have taught was
hardly learned by the Tibetans. It should have been
patent to them from that moment, that until they had
adopted modern weapons and, perhaps, also had
adopted some of the methods of the tribes on the northwest
frontier, it would be vain for them to attempt
to resist by force the progress of our troops. But
every one of the men whose report might have carried
weight in Lhasa was dead, and all we could ever afterwards
learn suggested rather that this complete and
utter rout of the pick of the Tibetan army was looked
upon in Lhasa rather as a disgrace to the officers concerned
than as a final proof of the foolishness of opposing
us in the open field. We afterwards found that about
fifteen hundred men in all had been detailed for the
* A t the Karo la a distance requiring a 19 half-second fuse was only properly shelled
by reducing the fuse to 9 .1 |
defence of the Tibetan position on this side. Another
force of about one thousand men was ready to defend
the road to Lhasa across the lake, where twenty-four
well-made sangars had been built across the road. An
other body of men, estimated variously at from two
hundred to one thousand, remained in Guru when their
The disaster at Guru : our native soldiers firing from behind the T ibetan walls.
companions advanced to their position* The troops
returned to Tuna for the night, and before we advanced
again, it had been found necessary to amputate Mr.
Candler’s left hand. He stayed at Tuna some time, and
when he was well enough to be moved, returned to
Darjeeling till the final advance began.
* Here, as elsewhere, it seems to me that the numbers of the enemy have been
overrated in the official estimates