This was a somewhat gloomy outlook; still, I was a good deal encouraged by my interview with the Tongsa Penlop. Mr. Walsh had been able to dispel many illusions, and at subsequent interviews the Tongsa Penlop had been a good deal impressed by General Macdonald and Mr. White, the latter of whom founded a friendship which has had most beneficial subsequent results.
The Tongsa Penlop I found to be a straight, honest-looking, dignified man of about forty-seven years of age. He bore himself well, dressed well, gave me costly presents, and altogether showed himself a man of importance and authority. He said he was most anxious to effect a settlement between us and the Tibetans. The latter had been very obstinate and wrong-headed, but the Dalai Lama was a young man, who needed good counsellors, and unfortunately there were bad men in Lhasa, who acted in his name to the detriment of the country. General Macdonald had told him that we were prepared to receive negotiators up to June 25, and he (the Tongsa Penlop) had, accordingly, written urgently to the Tibetans to send a negotiator before that date. Would not I, therefore, show patience up to then?
[Illustration: THE TONGSA PENLOP (NOW MAHARAJA OF BHUTAN).]
I asked him whether he himself would be inclined to be patient if he had been attacked four times at night after waiting eleven months for negotiators to come. He admitted that he would not, and would feel more inclined to go about killing people; but he said I was the representative of a great Government, and ought to be more patient than he would be. I said I had named June 25 as the date up to which I would receive negotiators, but since then I had been again attacked at Kangma, and I could not answer for it that the Viceroy would still allow me to receive negotiators.
I said no Englishman liked killing villagers who were forced from their homes to fight us. We knew they did not want to fight, and we had no quarrel with them. But, unfortunately, it seemed impossible to get at the real instigators of the opposition to us except by fighting, in which the innocent peasant-soldiers, and not the authors of the trouble, suffered most. If these latter would only lead their men I would be better pleased, for then they would appreciate what opposition to the British Government really meant. The Tongsa Penlop was much amused at the suggestion, but said the leaders always remained a march behind when any fighting was likely to take place.