new arms, like the schoolboy who exercises his muscle to avenge himself
after a beating.

'Do you get much of this sort of thing?' I asked.

'Not now,' he said; 'they have given up trying to get it through this
way.'

A few years ago eight Mohammedans, experts in rifle manufacture, had
been decoyed from a Calcutta factory to Lhasa. Two had died there, and
one I traced at Yatung. His wife had not been allowed to pass the
barrier, but he was given a Tibetan helpmate. The wife lived some months
at Yatung, and used to receive large instalments from her husband; once,
I was told, as much as Rs. 1,400. But he never came back. The Tibetans
have learned to make rifles for themselves now. Phuntshog had a story
about another suspicious character, a mysterious Lama who arrived in
Darjeeling in 1901 from Calcutta with 5,000 alms bowls for Tibet, which
he said he had purchased in Germany. The man was detained in Darjeeling
five months under police espionage, and finally sent back to Calcutta.

Our Intelligence Department on this frontier is more alert than it used
to be. Dorjieff, Phuntshog told me, had been to Darjeeling twice, and
stayed in a trader's house at Kalimpong several days. He wore the dress
of a Lama. The ostensible object of his journey was to visit the sacred
Chorten at Khatmandu and the shrines of Benares. He visited these, and
was known to spend some time in Calcutta. On the occasion of the mission
to St. Petersburg Dorjieff and his colleagues entered India through
Nepal, took train to Bombay, and shipped thence to Odessa. The discovery
of the Lamas' visit to India was almost simultaneous with their
departure from Bombay.

Phuntshog is not an admirer of our Tibetan policy. We ought to have laid
ourselves out, he said, to influence the Lamas by secret agents, as
Russia did. There was no chance of a compromise now; they would fight to
the death. Phuntshog said much more which I suspected was inspired by
the daily newspapers, so I questioned him as to the feelings of the
natives of the district.

'The feeling of patriotism is extinct,' he said; and he looked at his
stomach, showing that he spoke the truth. 'We Tibetan British subjects
are fed well and paid well by your Government. We want nothing more. My
family are here. Now I have no trade to examine.' His eyes slowly
surveyed the room, glanced over his office table, with its pen and ink
and blank paper, lit on the 150 maunds of cast-steel, and finally rested