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0028	India and Tibet : vol.1
インドとチベット : vol.1

0028

India and Tibet : vol.1

インドとチベット : vol.1

CHAPTER I

BOGLE'S MISSION, 1774

IT is an interesting reflection for those to make who

think that we must necessarily have been the aggressive

party, that the far-distant primary cause of all our attempts

at intercourse with the Tibetans was an act of aggression,

not on our part, not on the part of an ambitious Pro-

consul, or some headstrong frontier officer, but of the Bhu-

tanese, neighbours, and then vassals, of the Tibetans, who

nearly a century and a half ago committed the first act—

an act of aggression—which brought us into relationship

with the Tibetans. In the year 1772 they descended into

the plains of Bengal and overran Kuch Behar, carried off

the Raja as a prisoner, seized his country, and offered such

a menace to the British province of Bengal, now only

separated from them by a small stream, that when the

people of Kuch Behar asked the British Governor for help,

he granted their request, and resolved to drive the moun-

taineers back into their fastnesses. Success attended his

efforts, though, as usual, at much sacrifice. We learn

that our troops were decimated with disease, and that the

malaria proved fatal to Captain Jones, the commander,

and many other officers. One can hardly breathe," says

Bogle, who passed through the country two years later—

frogs, watery insects, and dank air." And those who

have been over that same country since, and seen, if only

from a railway train, those deadly swamps, who have

felt that suffocating, poisonous atmosphere arising from

them, and who have experienced that ghastly, depressing

enervation which saps all manhood and all life out of one,

can well imagine what those early pioneers must have

suffered.

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