ade a frontal attack on a
strong position which was held until they were within eighty yards, and
not a man was hit. No wonder we had a contempt for the Tibetan arms.
Their matchlocks, weapons of the rudest description, must have been as
dangerous to their own marksmen as to the enemy; their artillery fire,
to judge by our one experience of it at Dzama Tang, was harmless and
erratic; and their modern Lhasa-made rifles had not left a mark on our
men. The Tibetans' only chance seemed to be a rush at close quarters,
but they had not proved themselves competent swordsmen. My own
individual case was sufficient to show that they were bunglers. Besides
the twelve wounds I received at the Hot Springs, I found seven
sword-cuts on my poshteen, none of which were driven home. During the
whole campaign we had only one death from sword-wounds.

Arrived at Gyantse, we settled down with some sense of security. A
bazaar was held outside the camp. The people seemed friendly, and
brought in large quantities of supplies. Colonel Younghusband, in a
despatch to the Foreign Office, reported that with the surrender of
Gyantse Fort on April 12 resistance in that part of Tibet was ended. A
letter was received from the Amban stating that he would certainly reach
Gyantse within the next three weeks, and that competent and trustworthy
Tibetan representatives would accompany him. The Lhasa officials, it
was said, were in a state of panic, and had begged the Amban to visit
the British camp and effect a settlement.

On April 20 General Macdonald's staff, with the 10-pounder guns, three
companies of the 23rd Pioneers, and one and a half companies of the 8th
Gurkhas, returned to Chumbi to relieve the strain on the transport and
strengthen the line of communications. Gyantse Jong was evacuated, and
we occupied a position in a group of houses, as we thought, well out of
range of fire from the fort.

Everything was quiet until the end of April, when we heard that the
Tibetans were occupying a wall in some strength near the Karo la,
forty-two miles from Gyantse, on the road to Lhasa. Colonel Brander, of
the 32nd Pioneers, who was left in command at Gyantse, sent a small
party of mounted infantry and pioneers to reconnoitre the position. They
discovered 2,000 of the enemy behind a strong loopholed wall stretching
across the valley, a distance of nearly 600 yards. As the party explored
the ravine they had a narrow escape from a booby-trap, a formidable
de