less kept from the knowledge of those far Lhasan
authorities with whom their correspondence was neither
confessed nor unknown to us. For their reception of
the English into the fort— an occupation which every
succeeding week more fully justified— the two Jong-
pens were ceremonially degraded at Peking. This,
The two Jong-pens of Phari.
however, is the East. At the request of the very
Power whose reception had caused their disgrace,
they were at once, with equal formality, reinstated in
their dignities of the crystal button and the backward-
slanting peacock feather— avowedly for services rendered
to the English. What wonder if these two worthy
men were a little bewildered as to their duty. Nor
was it clear to them on which side their bread would
ultimately prove to be buttered. With gratitude they
accepted the offer of a monthly salary of 50 rupees
apiece during our occupation of Phari; with foresight
they declined to accept any money from us until after
the expedition was over. Asked whether they believed
that we should be unsuccessful, they smiling put the
question by. But, they said, there were many and
powerful forts lying between us and Gyantse, and
though the Pilings— they ought not to have used the
word to us— were beyond question a mighty race,
who could foresee the future ? They accepted the
invidious position with a good grace, and, on the whole,
after a preliminary attempt to smuggle cattle over the
near Bhutanese frontier, they acted with apparent
integrity.
Such was the road along which the toilsome preparations
for the advance crept slowly to the storehouses of
Chumbi and Phan from the plains of India. Through
all the tedious months necessitated by this provision for
the future, Brigadier-General Macdonald, with the exception
of one or two expeditions up and down along
the line of communication, remained at Chumbi. Meanwhile,
Colonel Younghusband, with the members of the
Mission, remained pent up in the wretched little houses
which cower beneath the hills of Tuna from the eternal
blast which drives the heavy grit under foot along the
open frozen wastes of this Himalayan plateau, hundreds
of feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc.