Our camp under the pass was right in among a lofty knot of mountains, one of which rose to a height of over 24,000 feet above sea-level. A magnificent glacier descended a side valley to within 500 yards of the camp. The whole scene was desolate in the highest degree. And though we were on the highroad to Lhasa, the road was nothing but the roughest little mountain pathway rubbed out by the traffic of mules and men across it.
The afternoon and evening of the 17th were occupied in reconnoitring the position of the Tibetans. They were very strongly posted at a narrow gorge three miles from our camp on the north side of the pass, and their position was flanked by impassable snow mountains. The old wall of Colonel Brander’s time had been extended on either hand till it touched precipices immediately under the snow-line. Behind this lay a second barrier of sangars. Like all the walls which the Tibetans so skilfully erected at such places, this was built up of heavy stones. The position was manned, according to our latest information, by about 1,500 Tibetans.
At 7 a.m. on the morning of the 18th, when now, even in the height of summer, there was still a nip of frost in the air, the advance troops marched off. The Royal Fusiliers, under Colonel Cooper, were to attack the centre, and on either side parties of the 8th Gurkhas were to turn the flanks.
While the Gurkhas were slowly plodding up the mountain-sides, I seated myself beside Major Fuller’s mountain battery, and watched the effects of gun-fire at these altitudes. It was most interesting. The pass itself was 16,600 feet, and the battery was a few hundred feet above it, and was for some time firing at groups 5,000 yards away, and some of them on the glacier at about 18,000 feet above the sea. In such a rare atmosphere ordinary sighting and ordinary fuses were quite useless. The shells would cleave through the thin air at very considerably greater velocity than they would pass through the thicker air at sea-level. All the sighting and the timing of the fuses had, therefore, to be completely readjusted by trial and guesswork. Despite this, however, wonderfully accurate shooting was effected by these splendid little guns, and it would have made all the difference to Colonel Brander if he had had them instead of the useless 7-pounders.