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0347 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / Page 347 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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has added a barrier of sentiment to one of stone
and ice, rising between her wastes and the wide
fields which England governs. The case is alto-
gether different from that presented along the
Afghan frontier, which has seen at least two great
waves of conquest, moral and physical, rolling
southward, and leaving, as permanent deposit, the
richest strata of Indian life. Tibet, on the other
hand, is like a distant shore that occasionally felt
the last movement of a wave of thought or action,
already spent as it reaches the Himalayan crest.
To think of such a country as the lair of some great
coiled danger ready to spring, is indeed to "see
snakes.'' And to set in motion this second incredi-
ble series of events we have now to substitute for
the supposed directive force of Russian intelligence
and arms, the mere promises, cajoleries, and decep-
tions of Buriat spies, talking of their temporal to
their spiritual master, and promising what?
The only thing which can be conceived as appeal-
ing to the Tibetan mind, would be *protection against
the aggression of the English.* Yes, already enough
had been done to fill the lamas with just fears, be-
fore the presents were unhappily sent to the Czar,
before the convincing blow came upon them in the
summer of 1904.