I promised the Abbot to respect the monasteries. If they were occupied by soldiers, and we were fired at from them, as we were from the monasteries round Gyantse, we should, of course, have to attack them. But we did not wish to be obliged to resort to force, and as long as we were not attacked we would prevent our soldiers from entering the monasteries. I would also see that soldiers and followers did not enter the city of Lhasa unless in attendance on an officer. The Tsarong Sha-pé asked me to give them a written agreement to this effect. I said I would, provided they would give me a written agreement that traders from the city would not be prevented from coming to sell things to the soldiers in camp, as the Gyantse traders had done. The Tsarong Sha-pé said that this would be impossible without the consent of the National Assembly. I told him that I could not in that case give them the written agreement, and I rose at once and closed the Durbar.
The final effort to stop us had failed, and on August 3 we set out on our last march. The eventful day, to which we had so long looked forward, had at length arrived. We marched up a well-cultivated valley two or three miles broad, bounded by steep snow-capped mountains, and with a rapid river as wide as the Thames at Windsor running through it. We passed numbers of little hamlets and groves of poplars and willows. And then we saw, rising steeply on a rocky prominence in the midst of the valley, a fort-like dominating structure, with gilded roofs, which we knew could be none other than the Potala, the palace of the Dalai Lama of Lhasa.
The goal of so many travellers’ ambitions was actually in sight! The goal, to attain which we had endured and risked so much, and for which the best efforts of so many had been concentrated, had now been won. Every obstacle which Nature and man combined could heap in our way had been finally overcome, and the sacred city, hidden so far and deep behind the Himalayan ramparts, and so jealously guarded from strangers, was full before our eyes.
I have often been asked what were my feelings when I first saw Lhasa—whether I was not filled with a sense of elation. I was filled with nothing of the kind. It was when I left Lhasa that I really had all that feeling of intense relief and satisfaction which everyone experiences when he has set his heart on one great object and attained it. When I left Lhasa I had my treaty, and—what I had always put at more value than the treaty itself—the good-will of the people. When I arrived at Lhasa it was very doubtful if I should be able to get a treaty at all, and still more doubtful if I could get it with the good-will of the people, without which any paper treaty would be useless. To negotiate a treaty with a people acknowledged by those who knew them best—the Chinese, the Nepalese, and the Bhutanese—to be most obstinate and obstructive, time was required. To break through the reserve of so exclusive a people, to make friends of men with whom we had just been fighting, still more time was essential. Yet it was just time that was denied me. I had pressed for it in June, but in too ineffectual a manner, and had been rebuffed. Though this was an avowedly political Mission, military considerations were allowed to preponderate. I could only stay in Lhasa a month and a half or two months. We must be back before the winter. And thus tied, I had to set to work with all speed, but with the outward appearance of having the utmost leisure, to negotiate the treaty. Hurried as I was, I had yet to assume an air of perfect indifference whether the negotiations were concluded this year, next year, or the year after. And irritated though I might be, I had above all to exercise as much control as I could possibly bring to bear to keep down any feelings of hastiness or exasperation, which might ruin our chances of securing the eventual good-will of the people.