The Chinese hosts, who apparently thought little of crossing the Tibetan frontier over a succession of Alpine passes such as no Western general in the world's history has ever encountered, failed to penetrate farther than Kunjut. The Mongol invasion of Tibet early in the sixteenth century (which is so graphically described in the Tarikh-i-Rashidi by Mirza Haidar) was tentatively pushed into Kashmir _via_ Ladakh, and was defeated by the natural difficulties of the country--not by the resistance of the weak-kneed Kashmiri--much, indeed, as a similar expedition to Lhasa was defeated by cold and starvation. No modern ingenuity has as yet contrived a method of dealing with the passive resistance of serrated bands of mountains of such altitude as the Himalayas. No railway could be carried over such a series of snow-capped ramparts; no force that was not composed of Asiatic mountaineers could attempt to pass them with any chance of success; and these northern lines, these eternal defences of Nature's making may well be left, a vast silent wilderness of peaks, undisturbed by man's puny efforts to improve their strength. Certainly the making of highways in the midst of them is not the surest means of adding to their natural powers of passive obstruction, although such public works may possibly be deemed necessary in the interests of peace and order preservation amongst the "snowy mountain men."
Chinese pilgrims no longer tread those rocky mountain-paths (except in the pages of Rudyard Kipling's entrancing work), and the tides of devotion have set in other directions--to Mecca or to Lhasa; but the fact that thousands of Buddhist worshippers yearly undertake a journey which, for the hardships entailed by cold and starvation between the western borders of China and Lhasa, should surely secure for them a reserve of merit equal to that gathered by their forefathers from the "Tsungling" mountains, might possibly lead to the question whether the plateau of Eastern Tibet does not afford the open way which is not to be found farther west. If a Chinese force of 70,000 men could advance into the heart of Tibet, and finally administer a severe defeat on the Gurkhas (which surely occurred in 1792) in Nepal, it is clear that such a force could equally well reach Lhasa. It is also certain that the stupendous mountain-chains and the elevated passes, which are the ruling features of the eastern entrance into Tibet from China, far exceed in natural strength and difficulty those which intervene between the plains of India and Lhasa. We are therefore bound to admit that it might be possible for an unopposed Chinese force to invade India by Eastern Tibet; possibly even by the valley of Assam. There is, however, no record that such an attempt has ever been made. The savage and untamable disposition of the eastern Himalayan tribes, and their intense hostility to strangers may have been, through all time, a strong deterrent to any active exploitation of their country; and the density of the forests which close down on the narrow ways which intersect their hills, give them an advantage in savage tactics such as was not possessed by the fighting Gurkha tribe in Nepal. But whatever the reason may be, there is apparently no record of any Chinese force descending through the Himalayas into the eastern plains of India by any of the many ways afforded by the affluents of the Brahmaputra. We may, I think, rest very well assured that no such attempt could possibly be made by any force other than Chinese, and that it is not likely that it ever will be made by them. We do not (at present) look to the north-east (to China) for the shadows of coming events in India. We look to the north, and looking in that direction we are quite content to write down the approach to India by any serious military force across Tibet or through the northern gateways of Kashmir to be an impossibility.