At Khamba Jong itself no progress was being made. There was, indeed, fear at one time that we should be attacked, and I have not much doubt that we should have been if we had shown any slackness or unguardedness. But Captain Bethune was an officer of much experience, and his men were all accustomed to frontier warfare, and every precaution was taken. Our camp was well fortified and the country round regularly patrolled.
Two Sikkim men who had gone to Shigatse, as was customary, were seized, however, and, we heard, had either been tortured or killed. In spite of our representations, the Tibetans refused to give them up, and, in retaliation, we had to seize Tibetan herds and to remove all the Tibetans I had so far, though at considerable risk, allowed to remain at Giagong.
Some slight chance of a settlement appeared when, on August 21, the head Abbot of the Tashi Lumpo monastery, near Shigatse, came to make another representation on behalf of the Tashi Lama. He was a courteous, kindly man, and was accompanied by two monks and a lay representative, besides the former deputy from the Tashi Lama. The Abbot said that a Council had been held by the Tashi Lama, and it had been decided to make another representation to me. This representation did not, however, differ from the first, and I repeated the same arguments in reply. He was especially insistent about Giagong, and I asked him when one man had a certain thing which another man wished to get from him, which was the wiser course to pursue—to make friends with him, or to do everything to make him annoyed. The Tibetans all burst out laughing at this argument, and I then went on to say that the Lhasa authorities, instead of doing everything they could to dispose us favourably towards them, and incline us to make concessions in regard to Giagong, had adopted a steadily unfriendly attitude; they had sent only small officials to meet Mr. White and myself, and these small officials did nothing but say they would negotiate nowhere else but at Giagong. This was not the way to predispose us in their favour.
The Abbot said the delegates were not small officials, but were next in rank to the Councillors. I said I had concluded they were men of little power, because when I had made a speech to them on my first arrival, and had asked them to report the substance of it to the Lhasa Government, they had refused. If they could not even report a speech, I supposed they would not be fit to negotiate an important treaty.