Chang-lo into a proper state of defence, but for the
members of the Mission, excepting Captain Ryder, R.E.,
and Captain Walton, I.M.S., there was little to do.
Negotiation of any kind was obviously not intended by
the Tibetans, and some of us spent our time in making
expeditions to every point of interest in Gyantse and in
the plain around.
CHAPTER VII.
ARRIVAL AT GYANTSE.
T h e first view of Gyantse is imposing. Across the wide,
level plain, cultivated in little irregular patches as closely
as an English county, the high-walled peak from which,
the town gets its name* rises 500 feet into the air.
From the first the jong fills the eye, and it is not until
one is close that the low, white two-storeyed houses of
the town are seen at its foot, nestling under the protection
of the battlements and bastions of the great
fort.
So huge is the mass of masonry and sun-dried brick
with which the steep and isolated hill is crowned, that
it is a matter of some surprise that it has received scanty
or no attention from the few travellers who have passed
beneath it. Manning, indeed, in 1811, refers to it as
‘ a sort of castle on the top of a hill,” a somewhat
inadequate description of a pile of buildings hardly
less in size than those of Mont St. Michel. Ruinous it
was even in April, but that was hardly perceptible at a
distance, and the apparent strength of the huge towers
and curtains which overhang the almost precipitous
*T h e name is written rgya l -rtse and means “ Royal Peak.” The “ n ” is merely
an example of a common tendency to nasalise the close of a first syllable. “ Palden
Lhamo” is almost invariably pronounced “ Panden Lhamo.” The great monastery at
Gyantse is often called the “ Palkhor choide.”
VOL. I. ^