The Chinese Resident sent his bodyguard with pikes, and three-pronged spears, and many banners to escort us, and of our own troops I took two companies of the Royal Fusiliers and the 2nd Mounted Infantry. Two guns and four companies of infantry were also kept in readiness in camp to support us at a moment’s notice.
Many a traveller had pined to look on Lhasa, but now we were actually in this sacred city, it was, except for the Potala, a sorry affair. The streets were filthily dirty, and the inhabitants hardly more clean than the streets; the houses were built of solid masonry, but as dirty as the streets and inhabitants; and the temples we passed, though massive, were ungainly. Only the Potala was imposing; it rose from the squalid town at its base in tier upon tier of solid, massive masonry, and, without any pretence at architectural beauty or symmetry, was impressive from its sheer size and strength and dominating situation.
We passed numbers of clean-shaven, bare-headed monks from the great monasteries round, one of which alone held 8,000. They were a dirty, degraded lot, and we all of us remarked how distinctly inferior they were to the ordinary peasantry and townsmen we met. The monks, as a rule, looked thoroughly lazy and sensual and effete; the countrymen and the petty traders in the town were hardy, cheery people, and as we rode through the city really paid very little attention to us.
The Resident, with his staff, received me in the usual pagoda-shaped, Chinese official residence. He again referred to the obstinate and insubordinate attitude assumed by the Tibetans, and said that in Eastern Tibet they had given the Chinese a great deal of trouble. I expressed my opinion that the Tibetans were grossly ungrateful, for they owed much to the Chinese, and certainly, after the Sikkim campaign, they would not have come off so easily in the ensuing settlement if the Chinese had not interceded on their behalf. It was merely on account of the friendly feeling we entertained towards the Chinese that the settlement we then made was so light. Now, however, that they had repudiated the settlement which the Amban had made on their behalf, and had otherwise offended us, the new settlement would, of course, be more severe, and I should be greatly obliged if the Amban would make them understand from the start that the terms which I was going to demand from them would have to be accepted.