India and Tibet : vol.1 / Page 304 (Color Image)

0304	India and Tibet : vol.1

250 THE ADVANCE TO LHASA

city of Lhasa unless in attendance on an officer. The

Tsarong Sha-pé asked me to give them a written agree-

ment to this effect. I said I would, provided they would

give me a written agreement that traders from the city

would not be prevented from coming to sell things to the

soldiers in camp, as the Gyantse traders had done. The

Tsarong Sha-pé said that this would be impossible without

the consent of the National Assembly. I told him that I

could not in that case give them the written agreement,

and I rose at once and closed the Durbar.

The final effort to stop us had failed, and on August 3

we set out on our last march. The eventful day, to

which we had so long looked forward, had at length

arrived. We marched up a well-cultivated valley two

or three miles broad, bounded by steep snow-capped

mountains, and with a rapid river as wide as the

Thames at Windsor running through it. We passed

numbers of little hamlets and groves of poplars and

willows. And then we saw, rising steeply on a rocky

prominence in the midst of the valley, a fort-like domi-

nating structure, with gilded roofs, which we knew could

be none other than the Potala, the palace of the Dalai

Lama of Lhasa.

The goal of so many travellers' ambitions was actually

in sight ! The goal, to attain which we had endured and

risked so much, and for which the best efforts of so many

had been concentrated, had now been won. Every obstacle

which Nature and man combined could heap in our way

had been finally overcome, and the sacred city, hidden so

far and deep behind the Himalayan ramparts, and so

jealously guarded from strangers, was full before our

eyes.

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