During the interview, which lasted three hours, the conversation was of a discursive nature, as the Ta Lama clearly had no power even to discuss anything else than our advance to Lhasa. I gathered that what he and the other delegates, and probably also the Dalai Lama himself, feared was the turbulence of the war party among the monks of the three great monasteries, leading to some futile collision with our troops which would not have the slightest effect in stopping us, but which would merely irritate us into sacking Lhasa. Probably what the Dalai Lama’s party also feared was that these same turbulent monks might turn upon the Dalai Lama himself and make away with him.
I told the Ta Lama that I considered it a great pity that he and the other able councillors who had recently met me had not come to Khamba Jong, for the Secretary of Council who had met Mr. White and me there had not comported himself in at all a conciliatory manner; he had, in fact, irritated us considerably, and made a peaceful settlement impossible. This surprised me the more because the Chinese Government had informed the Viceroy that the Dalai Lama had agreed to Khamba Jong as the meeting-place where negotiations should take place.
The Ta Lama replied that what the Dalai Lama meant was the Khamba _boundary_, not Khamba _Jong_. I told him that this was hardly intelligible, as the Khamba boundary was along the top of mountains. We clearly could not sit on the top of a mountain and negotiate: we had to meet on either the one side or the other, and as the Amban and Tibetan officials had come to India on the last occasion, it was natural that we should expect to meet in Tibet on this. I added that when the Chinese and Tibetan officials came to India we treated them as our guests, as Mr. White, who was present at Darjiling, could testify; we provided houses, food, and transport for them; allowed them to have their own soldiers as escort; and took them down to Calcutta to visit His Excellency the Viceroy. On the other hand, when Mr. White and I arrived at Khamba Jong last year we were not even allowed to _buy_ supplies.
The Ta Lama said that what was meant by the Khamba boundary was not the top of the mountains, but the wall at Giagong. He did not deny that Tibetan officials had been treated as guests at Darjiling, but he said we did not realize the great expense the Tibetan Government had incurred in transporting them to the Indian frontier. I then asked the Ta Lama what reason they had for originally starting this trouble, which after all originated in their invasion of Sikkim in 1886. Why did they send troops into the territory of a British feudatory State? We had lived for so many years without troubling one another: why did they start a trouble which had lasted up to the present time?