D ESTINY or Providence would seem to be driving Europe into
contact with the Mongols, the most numerous and most separate of all the races of Asia. Little more than a century ago, though their ancient feats of war under Genghis and Timour had made their history vaguely known, the West paid them scarcely more attention than it would have done if they had inhabited another planet. The names of their rulers, the nature of their institutions, the character of their multitudes, were accurately known only to a few geographers who had studied the reports brought home, sometimes at intervals of centuries, by adventurous explorers, whose tales were received with at least as much distrust as admiration, and to a few traders who did not, we fancy, greatly desire to diffuse their information. Of the Northern Mongols who had conquered and almost exterminated the aborigines up to the edge of the Arctic Seas no one in this country knew anything except that they lived on horseback, drank mare's milk, and had neither cities nor profitable trade. Japan, with its millions and its civilisation, was a name on the maps, though we were somehow aware that the Japanese were skilful in enamels, and therefore described our roughest attempts in that line by the word " japanning." Tibet was a secluded land which no civilised man had traversed for ages, but in which there was said to be one wonderful city ruled by a Sovereign who somehow was very like the Pope. Even of China the mass of Englishmen knew little except that its people were infinitely numerous, that they had slanting eyes, and that they exported silk, tea, and little oranges. Now the Mongols are one of the preoccupations of the world, the great newspapers filling their columns with accounts of their adventures, their forces, and their future. Even the Northern tribes, who had been forgotten, have become interesting, for are they not assisting as " brigands " in the great Asiatic rebellion against Russia ? Japan has risen to be a Great Power, with a civilisation so organised as almost to be dangerous, and methods in art, war, and destructive chemistry about which great artists, great soldiers, and great manufacturers of explosives are insatiably curious. The Chinese are believed to control the greatest market for made goods in the world, and are, in consequence, menaced, and courted, and watched intently by every white race on the globe. And now a British expedition has torn down the veil of Lhasa, has compelled her strange potentate to fly from his palace- monastery, and is engaged in settling the terms on which the Mongols of Tibet shall be allowed to retain their independence, if not their seclusion. We know at last the whole Mongol world, and are compelled, by our fears as well as our hopes, to take as much interest in it, in its rulers, its objects, and its possessions, as we take even in the children of Japheth. That is a very great change, it may be for Europe, and certainly for the Mongols.
Since Alexander of Macedon broke into Asia, and found it, as the angry King of Epirus afterwards said, the "women's apartment" of the world, there has been no expedition so picturesque, so daring, or so unexpectedly free, up to the present time, from loss as this invasion of Tibet. It is more like the adventure which children love as " Jack and the Beanstalk " than any ever recorded by grave historians. Colonel Younghusband, General Macdonald, and their followers have ascended into the clouds, have found a vast plateau 11,000 ft., on an average, above the sea-level, studded with even loftier hills, defended by a brave people, ruled by a mighty ogre, who, as the British soldiers advanced, continually roared at them to retire, and now and then threw stones. The cool explorer, never threatening but never dismayed, tramped on and on, over passes higher than Mont Blanc ; through villages in which each house was a potential fortress ; over a river which took six days to cross ; and at last reached a green paradise hidden in hills surrounding the Secret City, where the visitor perceives at first nothing but palaces and " cathedrals " with "golden domes," the huge stone monasteries in which the Dalai Lama and his monks reside, and, amidst a reverential population, accumulate treasure and, it is to be hoped, some wisdom. The picturesqueness of the exploit is fully recognised, for Englishmen are interested in Alpine ascents, and understand what sort of a feat traversing a glacier in the face of an enemy must actually be ; but they estimate war, as Wellington said, too much by " the butcher's bill," and the small extent of our losses has blinded their eyes to the daring of those who incurred them. Colonel Younghusband, who had explored Man- churia on ponies, knew well that Mongols were not cowards, and had no proof whatever that the men who with nothing but spears and swords met our Ghoorkas hand. to hand did not know in the least how to avail them- selves of their natural advantages, or were unwilling to do so. The idea in his camp was that Russia had armed the Tibetans, and that thousands of warriors might come in from the frontier provinces to die in defence of their Pope. Had that idea been correct, the Mission might have been destroyed. Gyangtse might have been a Saragossa. The pass of Karo-la and another pass beyond it could not have been carried if defended, say, by two thousand Japanese; while Lhasa itself was swarming with fanatic Lamas, who, had they possessed that imaginary Russian arsenal, might in one mad rush have destroyed half the advancing force, and then refused food to the remainder. Those possibilities, which were discussed every day among the members of the expedition, made no difference to the quiet soldier-diplomatist, the much-contemned Indian " Political,"—no more difference than the smiling protests of the Envoys from Lhasa or the threats of the incarnate Buddha. He had his orders to make peace in Lhasa, and to Lhasa he went on, over passes in the clouds, through rivers in spate, despising threats and disregarding prayers, till he saw at last the gilded domes of the Secret City, and felt that his work was done.
We suppose, at least, that it is done. It is difficult for men trained in the ideas of the West to believe that a Sovereign whose troops have fled, and whose capital is only not occupied because the victor has no wish to inflict an insult on a theocratic Power, can be insane enough to reject terms of peace which it is known will be moderate, and which, if accepted, will secure the immediate with- drawal of the enemy whose presence he dreads as destruc- tive to his ecclesiastical prestige. The Government of India has no wish to annex Tibet, or any portion of Tibet, and, taught by its experience in Afghanistan, it will, we think, decline to place a Resident permanently in Lhasa. The Lamas could not be trusted with the life of such an officer, and if his life were threatened, we should be com- pelled in the end to annex. The Dalai Lama will be asked, we imagine, to pledge himself not to admit any Envoy from a European Power, and he should regard that demand. as the best protection for his loved seclusion. He will also be asked to guarantee complete abstinence from attacks upon our frontier or that of our protected States, and as the punishment of those attacks is before his eyes, he should give that pledge without much re- pining or demur. He will also be asked, we conceive, to allow of some permanent method of direct communication between himself and the Government of India—say, through a native Agent, as in Afghanistan—and that also can in no way affront his dignity or injure his prestige, while it will protect him against many conse- quences of his own ignorance. And, finally, he will probably be asked to pay out of the useless treasures of the great monasteries part of the expenses of the ex- pedition. That would seem to be indispensable, in order to bring home to the Lamas that they have been defeated ; and if the demand. is a moderate one, it can be easily complied with, for Lhasa must be by this time a perfect storehouse of treasure. There will, however, be nego- tiations round this request, and it is by no means certain that on this or any other point the Dalai Lama will prove reasonable. He has retreated. from Lhasa, possibly from fear of what victorious enemies might do to him, but possibly also to protect a sanctity in which he has been taught from childhood to believe. In the latter case he may refuse to negotiate, alleging that he is in " retreat," and his subordinates, who are obviously afraid of him. may plead their want of power. In that case Colonel Younghusband will be sorely perplexed, for he must get a Treaty, and a Treaty without the Sovereign's signature could be afterwards repudiated. He cannot hunt the Great Lama from monastery to monastery over the whole surface of Tibet, and unless he pursues him, he cannot compel him to treat, or, indeed, to do anything except state with exasperating reiteration that he is engaged in prayer. He cannot very well induce the great Lamas to elect another chief, and he cannot,discover a civil authority whose signature would bind the Tibetans. Colonel Younghusband is, however, an astute man ; he has the Chinese Resident by his side willing to smooth over difficulties, and probably delighted to be able to protect the ruler who has contemned him ; he has some means of strong compulsion still left,—for example, the occupation of the palace-monastery ; and he has good fortune, as is proved by his successful accomplish- ment of a journey which, by all the rules known to diplo- niatists or soldiers, ought to have been impossible. One does not scale the highest great plateau in the world, cross an army over the Brahmapootra without pontoons, and ure a capital never before entered by a European force to baffled at the end by a young priest too ignorant to know when he is let off easily.
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