upon the road are the only new faces that the Tibetan
sees from year to year. High Lama officials may
hurry through, and now and then the Chinese garrison
of the nearest post may be relieved, but in both these
cases there is a robe or uniform readily distinguishable
by the villager, and he would be a daring man indeed
who would attempt to thrust himself in disguise into the
company of either the actual or the nominal ruling
class in Tibet. Excepting these two classes every
passer-by along the high road is subject to an unceasing
scrutiny, which, it can readily be understood, has
hitherto effectually prevented all attempts to visit the
Forbidden City by stealth.
We have not space to include even the briefest summary
of these plucky but doomed enterprises, but each
of the tracks that contribute to the tangled skein which
envelops Lhasa has its own peculiar interest. One
remembers, one after another, the light-hearted and
purposeless raid of Bonvalot and Prince Henri
d’Orleans in 1890, the steady and scientifically invaluable
progress of Bower and Thorold in 1891, the
triple attempts of Rockhill— a determined American,
whom everyone in the column would gladly have seen
accompanying us into the city he had striven to reach
for so many years at such a cost of time and labour—
and the debt which geography owes to Henry and
Richard Strachey must not be forgotten. All of these
enterprises have, unfortunately, not ended in failure
alone, and the murder of Dutreuil de Rhins, in 1894,
and the disappearance of Mr. Rijnhart, in 1898, remain
as significant proof of the very real danger which has
been in the past, and, so far as one can forecast the
future, will still remain an inevitable characteristic
of travel in Tibet. Of all these journeys, that of the
Littledales, in 1894, was perhaps the most interesting,
and those who knew either Mr. Littledale, or his nephew,
Mr. Fletcher, will realise that further progress was
absolutely and irrevocably prevented when even these
two determined men acquiesced in the inevitable and
gave up the attempt when within 70 miles of their long-
desired goal.
The work of Russians in Tibet has been watched
with some interest from India, and the names of
Przhevalsky, Roborovsky, Kozlov and Pevtsov honourably
recall a series of exploration extended over many
years of which the pursuit and ultimate object were
none the less admirable in themselves because they did
not happen to commend themselves to the policy of the
British Government.
These men were, of course, all Europeans. Of
the secret surveys undertaken by the Indian Government
I shall speak later.
Of Sven Hedin, it is not necessary to remind the
reader. His own gallant attempt to reachJLhasa, which
occupied over two years, is sufficiently recent to need
no further description at this moment. His own record
-^-unostentatious, and bearing the stamp of accurate
observation in every line—is still wet from the press,
and, though his adverse opinion as to the justice of our
expedition had been freely expressed, the regret felt
by every member of the Mission that Sven Hedin was
not with us in Lhasa was genuine and deep.