It is melancholy to think that the Dalai Lama paid no heed to this well-intentioned advice, and then, when calamities had fallen upon his country and we were just outside Lhasa, fled on the pretext of retiring into religious seclusion, and left his country to take care of itself.
An excellent description of the jong and monastery will be found in Chapter VII. of Landon’s “Lhasa.”
Strong reinforcements had now come up from India: the remainder of the mountain battery, under Major Fuller, a wing of the Royal Fusiliers, the 40th Pathans, and the 29th Punjabis; and on June 13 I set out to return to Gyantse with General Macdonald to relieve the Mission escort at Gyantse and, if need be, to advance to Lhasa, while Colonel Reid remained in charge of the communications.
At each post we stopped at the officers in charge invariably reported that the people were well content with us on account of our liberal treatment. The villagers themselves were thoroughly friendly. They were making money by selling their produce at rates very favourable to themselves. They were only afraid of the officials and Lamas. Captain Rawling, who had explored in Western Tibet in the previous year, and was well acquainted with the Tibetans, and who was now stationed at Phari in charge of a transport corps, specially remarked this. What the people were now afraid of was not our stopping, but our withdrawing, and leaving them to the vengeance of the Lamas.
This is a dilemma in which we are constantly being placed on the Indian frontier. The people of a country into which we advance are often ready to be friendly with us if they could be certain we would stay and be able to support them afterwards. But if they know we are going to withdraw they naturally fight shy, for those who show us friendship would get into trouble when we left. This is one of the many reasons which make me favour our keeping up a strong continuous influence when once we have been compelled to advance into a semi-civilized or barbarous country. It is often highly inconvenient to have to do this, but it is the most humane course, and I am not sure that it would be so inconvenient if it were followed consistently. It need not mean annexation or petty interference, but it must mean sufficient influence to prevent relapses to barbarism.