to Gyantse was possible. Life at Tuna was uninteresting
and bitterly cold. The Tibetans had gathered
in considerable strength at Guru, a place about nine
miles away on the road to Gyantse. Here for the first
time the Commissioner was able to deliver his message
to thoroughly representative men. But its reception
was unsatisfactory. After a fruitless attempt to make
the delegates pay him an official visit, Colonel Young-
husband determined to ride over in person to their
camp informally ; it was a characteristically audacious
action, and if it had failed—if, that is to say, Colonel
Younghusband and the two or three officers with him
had been killed or kidnapped, as was not unlikely—
the responsibility for the outbreak of war which would
have inevitably followed must Jrave rested upon the
Commissioner. But Younghusband is a shrewd judge
of Orientals, and, besides, he is not one of those men
with whom an Oriental takes a libe rty; and though,
as will be seen, the visit was not entirely successful,
it seemed at the time to be almost the last chance
of coming to terms with our opponents upon a perfectly
friendly basis. The Tibetan general was the senior
Depen of Lhasa, one of the Lheding family, and
he received Colonel Younghusband with great politeness.
But upon the Commissioner’s introduction to the
room in which the representatives of the three monasteries
were seated, the atmosphere became electric at
once. They neither rose nor returned his salutation,
but after an informal discussion had been initiated they
took command of the conversation, maintaining throughout
an unfriendly attitude, and insisting that no
European could be allowed in Tibet on any account,
and that if any settlement was to be carried through we
must return to Ya-tung.* As Younghusband was taking
his leave and expressing a hope that the Tibetans would
visit him at Tuna their tempers changed ; in a threatening
way they clamoured for the instant retirement of
the British; they demanded insolently to know the
exact date on which the British would evacuate Tibetan
territory, trumpets were blown outside and the attendants
' closed round the small party. Younghusband
betrayed not the slightest uneasiness, and O’Connor
helped to save the situation by the almost superhuman
suavity which he can assume when he wishes. A
messenger accompanied Colonel Younghusband back to
Tuna to receive his answer, which was, of course, to the
effect that he was obliged to carry out the orders of his
Government.
The Lheding Depen subsequently called at T u n a ;
he was a pleasant man, but, in the words of the Commissioner,
he was not clever ; he had little strength of
character, and he was entirely in the hands of his three
monk colleagues. Nothing, therefore, had been done,
and Colonel Younghusband was obliged to wait in the
cold everlasting wind of the Tuna plateau for the
first advance of the troops. Meanwhile the Tibetans
gathered strength in his immediate neighbourhood, and
from time to time there were disquieting rumours of
their intention to make a night attack. Colonel Hogge,
with four companies of the 23rd Pioneers and the Norfolk
Maxim detachment, was, however, thoroughly
able to hold Tuna against any conceivable concentration
of Tibetan forces. The telegraph wire was not
* This place was sometimes confounded by the Tibetans themselves with Gna-thong.
It is spelled “ Sna-mdong,” and the “ s ” and the “ m ” are of course not sounded. I
do not know how the English pronunciation originated.
VOL. I 4*