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0201 India and Tibet : vol.1
インドとチベット : vol.1
India and Tibet : vol.1 / 201 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000295
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VISIT 'l'O TIBETAN CAMP   163

I was heartily tired of this fencing about at a dis-

tance ; I wanted to get in under their reserve. And I

thought that if we could meet and could tell them in an

uncontentious and unceremonious manner what all the

pother was about, we might at any rate get a start—get

what the Americans call a move on." It was worth

while, it seemed to me, to make a supreme effort to get

this intrinsically small matter settled by peaceful means,

even if a very considerable risk was incurred in the

process ; and I wished particularly to see them, and to

judge of them, in their own natural surroundings. I was

constantly being called upon by Government to give my

opinion upon the probable action of the Tibetans, but so

far I had only seen them in our own camps, arid they had

steadily refused to admit me into theirs. I therefore

determined on the following morning, without any for-

mality, without any previous announcement, and without

any escort, to ride over to their camp, about ten miles

distant, at Guru, and talk over the general situation—

not as British Commissioner, with a list of grievances for

which he had to demand redress, but as one who wished

to understand them, and by friendly means to effect

a settlement. I was only too well aware that such an

attempt was likely to be taken by the Tibetans as a sign

of weakness ; still, when I saw these people so steeped in

ignorance of what opposing the might of the British

Empire really meant, I felt it my duty to reason with

them up to the latest moment, to save them from the

results of their ignorance.

Captain O'Connor and Captain Sawyer, of the 23rd

Pioneers, who was learning Tibetan, accompanied me, but

we did not take with us even a single sepoy as escort.

On our way we were met by messengers, who had come

to say that the Tibetan chiefs would not come to see me

at Tuna, and I was all the more pleased that I had left

Tuna before the message arrived.

On reaching Guru, a small village under a hill, we

found numbers of Tibetan soldiers out collecting yak-

dung in the surrounding plain ; but there was no military

precaution whatever .taken, and we rode straight intà the