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0288 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / Page 288 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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Western countries. The substitution of the shorter
line of caravan travel via the Chumbi valley to Dar-
jeeling would diminish the national expenditure for
transportation by a considerable amount—probably
would cut it in half. But, short as that line is, its
profile is such as to make railway construction and
permanent railway operation fall beyond the bounds
of practicability. Invention must make some other
great conquest of nature's secrets ere the Himalayas
be scaled by other transport than the crawling
caravan.

Let us not fancy, then, that we shall be able to
bless the Tibetans with our civilisation, which is dis-
tinctly that of steam, marked in a hundred ways by
steam; set off by steam in a hundred ways from
the European civilisation which preceded it; and
which, indeed, being without steam, resembled the
Tibetan civilisation more than it resembles us. We
are its children, indeed, but children who have seen
another light.

In Tibet, where the country is particularly stub-
born against the engineer's attacks, we may find in
the years to come our only refuge in all the civilised
world from the clangour of our Frankenstein's bells.
Let us here and now offer up thanks to a foreseeing
Providence for that the Himalayas have been made
high and steep.