IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CROSSING THE FIRST PASS 153
of Colonel Hogge and his officers, with whom I was to
be so closely associated in future, and in whom I always
found such firm supporters. And by December 10
General Macdonald and his staff, the bulk of the troops
for the advance, Mr. White, Mr. Walsh, Captain O'Connor,
and myself had all rendezvoused at Gnatong, ready to move
into 'Tibet.
The force then assembled consisted of two guns, No. 7
Mountain Battery, Royal Artillery ; a Maxim gun de-
tachment of the Norfolk Regiment ; two guns, 7-pounders,
8th Gurkhas ; half-company 2nd Sappers ; eight companies
23rd Sikh Pioneers ; six companies 8th Gurkhas ; with
field hospitals, engineer field park, ammunition column,
telegraph, postal, and survey department detachments.
In spite of foot-and-mouth disease among the pack-
bullocks, of sickness and desertion amongst the Nepalese
Coolie Corps, and of rinderpest, Major Bretherton had
succeeded in accumulating a month's supply for the troops
and ten days' fodder for the animals, and General Mac-
donald was able to make a short march on the 11th to
the foot of the Jelap-la (pass) with the first column,
consisting of 1,150 fighting men, four guns, and four
Maxims.
On December 12 we crossed the pass itself. It is
14,390 feet in height, and leads, not across the main
watershed of the Himalayas, but across the range dividing
Sikkim from Chumbi, a sharp, bare, rocky ridge. The
ascent to it was very steep, and, as the ridge formed the
boundary between Sikkim and Tibet, it was possible we
might be opposed at the summit.
But on the question of opposition I had had some
communication with the Tibetans. News of the assembly
of troops and of the preparations we were making had
naturally reached the Tibetans, and on November 28
Captain Parr, who was in Chinese employ, associated with
the Chinese delegate, informed me that the Tibetans were
expecting that, before any advance was made into their
country, the British Government would make a formal
declaration of their intention ; that if they intended to
make war they would make a formal declaration of war.
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