character, drawn, I believe, immediately from the record
of Krishna’s work.
To return to the question of protecting the northern
frontier of India. It seems a fair estimate that,
so far as supplies are concerned, a force of a hundred
thousand men could without difficulty rely upon the
produce of the luxuriant valleys of the Tsang-po and
the Nyang chu. It was no friend of England’s who
remarked that the natural frontiers of India were less
the Himalayas than the impenetrable deserts which
he a hundred miles north of Lhasa, and it is a serious
consideration for us that if Russia’s influence should
ever predominate in Lhasa, the actual ground to be
fought for, diplomatically or otherwise, is that which
lies across the barrier formed by the Himalayas. The
advanced base, whether of the defending or of the
encroaching force, must lie in these valleys. If the
fertile fields of southern Tibet cannot enter into the
calculations of an invading nation, that nation will
have to rely upon the trans-Siberian railway as its base,
and I need hardly say that this is tantamount to ridiculing
the whole danger of invasion through Tibet. Such,
baldly stated, is the situation.
To secure immediate access to this glacis of granaries
is the obvious policy for the British Government
to pursue, and it cannot be said too insistently that
the recognition of this necessity in no way whatever
involves interference with the internal affairs of Tibet.
As to a protectorate, the very idea of undertaking
responsibility for an additional eighteen hundred miles
of frontier is ridiculous. This, however, is a different
matter. To secure this advantage there is little constructive
work needed. An alternative route to the
-prohibitive hardships of the Natu la is now being
surveyed along the valleys of . the Di chu and the
Ammo chu. It is proposed to push rail-head from
some point on the line in the neighbourhood of Dam
dim as far up the lower slopes of the Himalayas as is
feasible without a rack, and then to construct a cart
road, with an easy gradient, along the valley to the
head waters of the Di chu, crossing into Bhutanese
territory near Jong-sa, and at a height of 9,000 ft., overpassing
at its lowest point the great mountain wall which
here hems in the right bank of the Ammo chu. From
this height there is almost a level run into Rinchen-
gong. Once in the Chumbi Valley the difficulties of a
second expedition will have been largely overcome, for
even as these volumes are published the road from
Rinchen-gong to Kamparab is receiving the last touches
from the engineers who have worked on it so long. From
Kamparab there is a level natural road which has been
steadily used throughout the present expedition for
wheeled traffic as far as Kang-ma. The road is practicable
for carts for a few miles further still, and the construction
of the road I have mentioned over the Jong-
sa la would enable stores, unloaded at rail-head, to be
carried, without bulk broken, on wheeled carts to within
thirty miles of Gyantse itself. It is hardly necessary
to comment upon this. We have/'I repeat, no wish in
the; world to interfere with Tibet so long as Tibet does
not imperil our tranquillity in Bengal. While we ourselves
seek no exclusive rights in the country, we have
at the same time no intention of allowing any other
power to secure them. So long as the Tibetans cordially
co-operate with ourselves -in 'excluding foreign
political influence, so long will we assist them to the