on two volumes by his elbow.

'Do you read much?' I asked.

'Sometimes,' he said. 'I have learnt a good deal from these books.'

They were the Holy Bible and Miss Braddon's 'Dead Men's Shoes.'

'Phuntshog,' I said, 'you are a psychological enigma. Your mind is like
that cast-iron huddled in the corner there, bought in an enlightened
Western city and destined for your benighted Lhasa, but stuck halfway.
Only it was going the other way. You don't understand? Neither do I.'

And here at Ari, as I look across the valley of the Russett Chu to
Pedong, and hear the vesper bell, I cannot help thinking of that strange
conflict of minds--the devotee who, seeing further than most men, has
cared nothing for the things of this incarnation, and Phuntshog, the
strange hybrid product of restless Western energies, stirring and
muddying the shallows of the Eastern mind. Or are they depths?

Who knows? I know nothing, only that these men are inscrutable, and one
cannot see into their hearts.

CHAPTER XII

TO THE GREAT RIVER

I reached Gyantse on July 12. The advance to Lhasa began on the 14th. As
might be expected from the tone of the delegates, peace negociations
fell through. The Lhasa Government seemed to be chaotic and conveniently
inaccessible. The Dalai Lama remained a great impersonality, and the
four Shapes or Councillors disclaimed all responsibility. The Tsong-du,
or National Assembly, who virtually governed the country, had sent us no
communication. The delegates' attitude of _non possumus_ was not
assumed. Though these men were the highest officials in Tibet, they
could not guarantee that any settlement they might make with us would be
faithfully observed. There seemed no hope of a solution to the deadlock
except by absolute militarism. If the Tibetans had fought so stubbornly
at Gyantse, what fanaticism might we not expect at Lhasa! Most of us
thought that we could only reach the capital through the most awful
carnage. We pictured the 40,000 monks of Lhasa hurling themselves
defiantly on our camp. We saw them mown down by Maxims, lanes of dead.
A hopeless struggle, and an ugly page in military history. Still, we
must go on; there was no help for it. The blood of these people was on
their own heads.

We left Gyantse on the 14th, and plunged into the unknown towards Lhasa,
which we had reason to believe lay in some hidden valley 150 miles to
the north, beyond the unexplored basin of the Tsangpo. Every posit