the man, which was doubtless fanned into flame by the prospect and experience of this arduous and extensive piece of travel; and although we do not know when or in what way he first came into contact with the Russian Government, there came a point in his wanderings from town to town at which he ceased to be merely a pious monk collecting money, and began to move, a minute but important cogwheel, in the slow and intricate machinery of international politics. We need not blame the Russian Government for making use of such a man; we should rather, as Mr. Landon points out, blame ourselves that we either had not or failed to use a similar opportunity. As he very truly says, 'these quick-witted adventurers are often the most 'effective screen which can be interposed between two 'advancing nationalities, so long, of course, as they are officially recognised by neither.' What actually happened to Dorjieff in Russia, as we have said, is not known, but when at length he returned to Tibet he brought with him a number of valuable presents which he distributed judiciously amongst influential members of the Lhasan hierarchy, upon whom he forthwith proceeded to urge the desirability of securing the informal protection of the Czar of Russia. With a good deal of cunning he represented to them that China was a useless protector and was far too willing to be friendly with the British, to whom she would not fail to betray Tibet if it suited her. Against this great nation of heretics and conquerors such a suzerain, he represented, was no protection; but Russia, a vast number of whose subjects were of the true faith, and whose territories bordered on those of Tibet, would be a powerful friend and ally. He even hinted that there was a possibility that the Czar might ultimately be brought to embrace the Buddhist faith. Foolish as this view was, it was not foolishly designed for the ears to which it was addressed; its effect upon the Dalai Lama was to inflame his ambition.

And here we may pause to endeavour to form some picture of this mystical reincarnation, the Gyal-wa Rinpoche, Precious Majesty and Defender, the Divine Avalokita, the Lord of Mercy and of Judgement. He is the thirteenth incarnation of the Bodhisat, and of the reformer Tsongkapa, and is at this moment a young man of about thirtyone years of age. Of his predecessors, the first four were merely spiritual rulers without temporal power; the fifth secured the temporal power by inciting the Mongols to the invasion of Tibet, and then, by judicious tampering with the

Buddhist scriptures, he secured to himself the reincarnation of the divine godhead. On the death of a Grand Lama his successor is chosen by means of ritual and horoscopes, and some harmless baby is then discovered to contain in his small body a reincarnation of the Most Holy Lord. The sixth incarnation was executed by the Chinese because of his dissolute life; the seventh was deposed for the murder of his regent or protector. The eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth were all assassinated in childhood in order that the ruling power might be kept in the hands of the regent. The thirteenth and present reincarnation, Ngak-wang lo-sang tub-den gya-tso, is alive by no merit or grace of his own, but because it was part of the policy of the Tibetans in gradually throwing off the yoke of the Chinese to postpone the assassination of the Grand Lama and so to avoid the necessity of acknowledging the authority of China in appointing his successor. He turned the tables on his regent soon after he had attained his majority, accusing that official of witchcraft and casting him into prison, where he conveniently died at the end of a year. The young Dalai Lama, a person of considerable strength of character but of violent temper and passions, has since that date and until our appearance on the scene wielded an authority unprecedented in the history of his line. Mysterious as he is, and hedged about with divine exclusiveness and circumstance, we are able to form some kind of picture of him, and we can do no better than quote Mr. Candler's descrip tion, an admirable passage in which an intelligent imagination has combined with such information as could be obtained to produce a very reasonable portrait :

'From various sources, which differ surprisingly little, I have a fairly clear picture of the man's face and figure. He is thick-set, about five feet nine inches in height, with a heavy square jaw, nose remarkably long and straight for a Tibetan, eyebrows pronounced and turning upwards in a phenomenal manner-probably trained so to make his appearance more forbidding-face pock-marked, general expression resolute and sinister. . . . His face is the index of his character. He is a man of strong personality, impetuous, despotic, and intolerant of advice in State affairs. He is constantly deposing his ministers, and has estranged from himself a large section of the upper classes, both ecclesiastical and official, owing to his wayward and headstrong disposition. . . . The only glimpse I have had into the man himself was reflected in a conversation with the Nepalese Resident, a podgy little man, very ugly and good-natured, with the manners of a French comedian and a face generally expanded in a broad grin. He shook with laughter when I asked him if he knew

the Dalai Lama, and the idea was really intensely funny, this mercurial, irreverent little man hobnobbing with the divine. "I have seen him," he said, and exploded again. "But what does he do all day?" I asked. The Resident puckered up his brow, aping abstraction, and began to wave his hand in the air solemnly with a slow circular movement, mumbling " Om mani padme hum" to the revolutions of an imaginary prayer-wheel . . . I was glad to meet a man in this city of evasiveness whose views were positive, and who was eager to communicate them. Through him I tracked the shadow, as it were, of this impersonality, and found that to many strangers in Lhasa, and perhaps to a few Lhasans themselves, the divinity was all clay, a palpable fraud, a pompous and puritanical dullard masquerading as a god.'

...

To such a man, then, came Dorjieff with his gifts and promises. He at once made preparations for embracing the new policy and even for visiting St. Petersburg himself; but the National Assembly refused to sanction his actions and replied to Dorjieff that they were not in need of the Russian Emperor's protection. Upon this Dorjieff again returned to St. Petersburg, where he had an interview with the Czar himself, whence he returned bearing a letter inviting the Dalai Lama to send a representative to Russia to discuss the matter, and bringing also as a present a complete set of vestments of a bishop of the Russian Church. The Dalai Lama immediately despatched an abbot as a representative, and with this man Dorjieff was soon once more travelling the road to Russia; and on arrival at St. Petersburg he was again received by the Czar. On their return they laid before the Dalai Lama a proposal that a Russian Grand Duke should take up his residence in Lhasa, and they also brought a draft treaty, or proposal for a treaty, between Russia and Tibet. The treaty represented the friendly feelings of Russia towards Tibet and towards the Buddhist religion, and it also asked for concessions to construct railways, bridges, and roads. This, however, was too large a matter even for the Dalai Lama to settle on his own initiative. The Chinese Viceroy denounced the whole transaction, and in this he was supported by the Tsong-du, or National Assembly.

Here we leave the ascertained facts; the rest is chiefly conjecture based on evidence of the value of which we have for the moment no means of judging. Mr. Landon, who has been in Lhasa and who has had the advantage of discussing the matter with both Chinese and Tibetan officials, believes that from this moment the Dalai Lama's policy was to pick a quarrel with the English. Mr. Landon definitely states

that Russian rifles came into the country in camel-loads'; and it is a fact that the primitive arsenal at Lhasa was put into repair; while Dorjieff made the bald statement that the Russians would have a detachment of Cossacks in Lhasa by the spring of 1903. With this statement his work, so far as we know, was finished. After his brief and vivacious appearance upon the stage of politics he disappears again into the same pathetic obscurity that has enveloped the Dalai Lama, with whom, perhaps, in some Mongolian border town, he now wanders and plots and schemes beneath the shadow of the mountain chain of Burkhan Buddha.

III.

With the progress of Colonel Younghusband's Mission the daily newspapers have made us familiar, and the events connected with the advance to Lhasa are too recent and fresh in our minds to need recapitulation here. What is historically interesting about that expedition from a military point of view is that it represents one of the most difficult feats of transport that have been attempted or accomplished in modern times. To project a small force four hundred miles into a hostile country is always a difficult and somewhat anxious matter, for the protection of communications involves a continual weakening of the original body until, perhaps at the moment when it is in the greatest danger, it is at its very lowest point of strength. But the expedition into Tibet was complicated by much graver dangers and difficulties than these. Of all the four hundred miles that had to be traversed only the first thirty could be covered by wheeled transport. For the rest there was no road in our sense of the word, and often only a trail which was barely possible for the passage of men and animals in single file. The enormous altitudes attained in this mountain-tossed track involved severe strain and fatigue as well as physical disabilities consequent on the rarefaction of the atmosphere; the country into which the force was proceeding was, in addition to being hostile, entirely unknown; and it was suspected that practically no supplies were to be had on the way and that the expedition must be self-supporting. That means that every ounce of food had to be carried by short and painful stages across that long and arduous track, sometimes by coolies, sometimes by mules, sometimes by yaks-in fact there was hardly any known and available means of animal transport

VOL. CCI. NO. CCCCXII.

A A

April which was not tried on this expedition. When we add that this little party was steering, as if by compass, across a wild, inhospitable, and unknown country towards an unknown spot called Lhasa, which no one had ever seen, which was merely a came and a dream, and where every kind of barbarons bostility might be expected, it will be realised that the adventure was one not unworthy, in dangers, and risks, and hardships, of its destiny as almost the last great voyage of discovery left for man to attempt.

These things, we say, are sufficiently recognised; nor do we intend here to concern ourselves minutely with the somewhat painful subject of the opposition offered by the Tibetans at different points along the route and its inevitable result the killing of between two and three thousand of these brave and simple people. It is enough to say in this connection that such fighting as took place was honourable to both sides who were actually engaged. Our force, highly trained and efficiently armed as it was, had always to fight against extremely heavy odds in point of numbers; the Tibetans, although they had the advantage of numbers, had no training, no generalship, no efficient weapons, and yet showed themselves courageous to the death. One minor result of the expedition, indeed, has been entirely to revise our notions of the character of the Tibetans in this respect: they had hitherto been esteemed a cowardly aad treacherous people, whereas we now know them to be possessed of that kind of berserker bravery in which judgment and prudence are entirely swallowed up in impulse, and where no consideration of the hopelessness of the struggle will prevent its prolongation to the bitter end. Whenever the Tibetans were met in hand-to-hand fighting, as was often necessarily the case, they seem nearly always to have been intrepid and formidable and to have earned the respect of their opponents. Nor need we here concern ourselves with the somewhat undignified questions as to the division of responsibility, the differences between General Macdonald and Colonel Younghusband (which seem to have been something of a feature in the expedition), or the differences between Colonel Younghusband and the Home Government, or between the Home Government and Lord Curzon. What is obvious to every one who reads the accounts of this expedition is that if it reflects credit on any one man more than another (and so far as the executive is concerned it was thoroughly creditable to many) it is creditable in the highest degree to Colonel Younghusband. It was upon his