the India Office have ever had—the man who without any faltering hesitation annexed Burma, to the lasting benefit of the Burmese, of ourselves, and of humanity—there seemed now a real prospect of success. Lord Randolph Churchill and Colman Macaulay were something of kindred spirits, and Macaulay was sent to Peking with every support and encouragement to get the necessary permit for a mission to Lhasa. The Chinese assented. Permission was granted. Macaulay organized his mission, bought rich presents, collected his transport, and was on the eve of starting from Darjiling when " international considerations " came in and Government countermanded the whole affair.
Everything had gone so fairly," wrote Macaulay to Sir Clements Markham from Darjiling in October, 1886,
that it was difficult for us here to believe that we should be shipwrecked within sight of the promised land." Yet so it was, and he took his disappointment so deeply to heart that he completely broke down in health, and died a few years later.
Immediately following on the abandonment of the mission came the most unprovoked aggression on the ' part of the Tibetans. They crossed the Jelap-la, the pass I from Chumbi into Sikkim and the frontier between Tibet I, and our feudatory State, and they occupied Lengtu, eighteen miles on our side of the frontier, building a guard-house there, and turning out one of our road overseers, placed there to superintend the road which Sir Richard Temple had made when Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. And on hearing that the mission had been countermanded, they became so elated that they boasted that they would occupy Darjiling, only seventy-eight miles off, and something like a panic ensued in this almost unprotected summer resort. At the same time, on the opposite side of Tibet they were still more actively aggressive, expelling the Roman Catholic missionaries from their long-established homes at Batang, massacring many of their converts, and burning the mission-house.
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