CHAPTER XIX.

TIBET AND ITS SECLUSION.

FRIGHTFUL TORTURES-SEALING ON HORSEBACK-REASONS ASSIGNED FOR EXCLUDING EUROPEANS — MORE PROBABLE REASONS -THE GOLD OF TIBET-OTHER MINERALS AND GEMS-GEOGRAPHY OF TIBET.

IF half the stories be true which Mr Pagell has heard from Lamas of the punishments inflicted in Chinese Tibet, it is no wonder that the people of that country are extremely afraid of disobeying the orders of the Government wherever they are so situated as to be within the reach of Government officers. Crucifying, ripping open the body, pressing and cutting out the eyes, are by no means the worst of these punishments. One mode of putting to death, which is sometimes inflicted, struck me as about the most frightful instance of diabolical cruelty I had ever heard of, and worse than anything portrayed in the old chamber of horrors at Canton. The criminal is buried in the ground up to the neck, and the ground is trampled on round him sufficiently to prevent him moving hand or foot, though not so as to prevent him breathing with tolerable freedom. His mouth is then forced open, and an iron or wooden spike sharpened at both ends, is carefully placed in it so that he cannot close his mouth again. Nor is the

torture confined to leaving him to perish in that miserable condition. Ants, beetles, and other insects are collected and driven to take refuge in his mouth, nostrils, ears, and eyes. Can the imagination conceive of anything more dreadful? Even the writhing caused

by pain, which affords some relief, is here impossible except just at the neck; and a guard being placed over the victim, he is left to be thus tortured by insects until he expires. The frame of mind which can devise and execute such atrocities is almost inconceivable to the European; and we must hope that a punishment of this kind is held in terrorem over the Tibetans, rather than actually inflicted. But I am afraid it is put in force; and we know too much of Chinese and Tartar cruelties to think there is any improbability in its being so. It is certain that the Turanian race is remarkably obtuse-nerved and insensible to pain, which goes some way to account for the cruelty of its punishments; but that cannot justify them. In other ways, also, Tartar discipline must be very rigorous. Gerard was told that where there is a regular horse-post—as between Lassa and Gartop-" the bundle is sealed fast to the rider, who is again sealed to his horse; and no inconvenience, however great, admits of his dismounting until he reaches the relief-stage, where the seal is examined!" I heard something about men being sealed up this way for a ride of twenty-four hours; and if that be true, the horses must have as much endurance as the men.

The question arises why it is that the Lassa authorities are so extremely anxious to keep all Europeans out of their country. The Tibetans lay the blame of this on the Chinese Mandarins, and the Mandarins on Lamas

and the people of Tibet; but they appear all to combine in insuring the result. This is the more remarkable, because the Lama country is not one with which Europeans are in contact, or one which they are pressing on in any way. It is pretty well défendu naturally, owing to the almost impassable deserts and great mountains by which it is surrounded; and it has by no means such an amount of fertile land as to make it a desirable object of conquest as a revenue-bearing province. The reason assigned by letter, in 1870, to the Abbé Desgodins, by the two legates at Lassa-the one representing the Emperor of China, and the other the Grand Lama-for refusing to allow him to enter Tibet, was as follows: "Les contrées thibétaines sont consacrées aux supplications et aux prières; la religion jaune est fondée sur la justice et la droite raison; elle est adoptée depuis un grand nombre de siècles; on ne doit donc pas prêcher dans ces contrées une religion étrangère; nos peuples ne doivent avoir aucun rapport aux les hommes des autres royaumes." This, however, is evasive; and, though they may be different in the east of Tibet, the Lamas at Shipki made not the least objection to Mr Pagell preaching as much as he liked ; they argued with him in quite an amicable manner, and afforded us protection.

Is it possible that the gold-or, to speak more generally, the mineral-deposits in Tibet may have something to do with the extreme anxiety of the Chinese to keep us out of that country? They must know that, without some attraction of the kind, only a few adventurous missionaries and travellers would think of going into so sterile a country, which can yield but little trade, and which is in many parts infested by bands of hardy

and marauding horsemen.

But the Mandarins have quite enough information to be well aware that if it were known in Europe and America that large goldfields existed in Tibet, and that the auri sacra fames might there, for a time at least, be partially appeased, no supplications, or prayers either, would suffice to prevent a rush into it of occidental rowdies; and that thus an energetic and boisterous white community might soon be established to the west of the Flowery Land, and would give infinite trouble, both by enforcing the right of passage through China, and by threatening it directly.

That there is gold in Chinese Tibet does not admit of a doubt; and in all probability it could be procured there in large quantities were the knowledge and appliances of California and Australia set to work in search of it. In the Sutlej valley, it is at the Chinese border that the clay-slates, mica-schists, and gneiss give way to quartz and exceedingly quartzose granite-the rocks which most abound in gold. The rolling hills across the frontier are similar in structure to those which lead to the Californian Sierra Nevada, and are probably composed of granite gravel. In our Himalaya, and in that of the native states tributary to us, there is not much granite or quartz, and gneiss is the predominant rock of the higher peaks and ranges. But granite (and, to a less degree, trap) has been the elevating power. There has been a considerable outburst of granite at Gangotri and Kiddernath, and the consequence is that gold is found, though in small quantities, in the streams beneath. Among this great range of mountains there are various rivers,

"Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold.”

The district of Gunjarat in the Hindú Kúsh, north-east of the Chittral valley, is named on account of its gold. Kafiristan, in the same direction, produces gold, which is made into ornaments and utensils. Badakshan is celebrated for its veins of the precious metal, as well as for its rubies and lapis lazuli. Also at Fauladut, near Bamían, and in the hills of Istalif north of Kaubul, gold is found. It is washed out of the upper bed of the Indus in certain parts where that bed is accessible, and also from the sands of the Indus immediately after it emerges at Torbela on to the Panjáb plain. We have it, too, in the bed of the Chayok river. Gold is also washed out of the bed of the Sutlej, a little below Kotgarh, where the people can get down to that bed. Now, where does that latter gold come from? We may go a long way up the Sutlej before finding rocks likely to produce any of that metal, unless in the minutest quantities; but advance up that river to the Chinese frontier and we come upon a stretch of country which is extremely likely to be the matrix of vast gold deposits. Great quantities of gold may be washed out of that region by the Sutlej, and yet not much of it finds its way below Kotgarh, because so heavy a metal soon sinks into the bed of the Nor does this supposition depend entirely upon my unsupported geological conjecture; because it is well known to the Kunáwar people that gold is found in Tibet, not very far from Shipki. The largest of these gold-fields are at Shok Jalung, the Thok Jalung of Major Montgomerie, which is in lat. 32° 24', and long. 81° 37', at a height described as about 16,000 feet. But there are many more of them, especially about Damú, near the Sutlej, not far from its source, and at

stream.