Appendix B 283
followed what I really believe to be one of the most remarkable military movements that ever was made in the world—seventy thousand Chinese are said to have crossed the passes from the east to get to Lhasa. From the borders of their own country to Lhasa is a good twelve hundred miles, and although a part of the country is very different from that which Mr. Crosby has described, i. e., the upper valley of the Brahmaputra and the immediate neighbourhood of Lhasa, which is comparatively low, and where there is a considerable. amount of cultivation, still the greater part of the journey must have been across most horribly difficult mountain passes, where they must have lost multitudes of men. Nevertheless, they not only reached Lhasa, but, having got there, they started for another four hundred miles en route to Nepaul. They beat the Ghurkas handsomely, first of all to the north of their own mountains, and then followed them over their passes. The Ghurkas made their last stand some twenty miles in front of Khatmandu, and there the Chinese finally defeated them, and left such a reputation behind them that to this day the Nepaulese send deputations to China once every five years to pay tribute. It only shows us the danger of depreciating a possible adversary. The best fighting men that we know in the East are Ghurkas and Sikhs, and yet they have been beaten all to nothing by Chinese in times gone past. And to this day Chinese authority over the whole of Tibet is practically as sound, I imagine, as ever it was. I would ask you, in conclusion, to differentiate carefully between Northern Tibet—the Tibet which Mr. Crosby has described to-night—and the true " Bodyul," which is the scene of Colonel Younghusband's mission at the present moment. It is only in South-eastern Tibet, in the upper valley of the Brahmaputra, that there really is a country which you
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