The telegram was not very purposeful or instructive, but such as it was we were glad enough to get it. It at least allowed us to go to Gyantse, and though at the time when my advice was asked I said I did not think we should get the business really settled till we reached Lhasa, we certainly stood a better chance at Gyantse than at Khamba Jong. In all civilized countries envoys who have to negotiate a treaty go straight to the capital, and how it could ever have been expected that in Tibet, where all power was concentrated in a supposed god, who relied upon the support of Russia in any difficulties, we should have been able to negotiate a treaty at anywhere short of Lhasa, it is hard now to realize.
However, as I told Lord Curzon at his camp in Patiala, where I took leave of him on my return to Tibet, I meant to do my very best to get the thing through. He once more gave me the same warm encouragement he always extended to those in India whom he believed to be working well, and I left again for Darjiling.
While we were making preparations at Darjiling for the next move, correspondence was also taking place from headquarters. The Viceroy, in reply to a letter of the Lhasa Resident’s of October 17, stating that he had nominated a Colonel Chao in place of Mr. Ho, that he had asked the Dalai Lama to send a Councillor of State to accompany him (the Resident) to Khamba Jong, but that all this required time to settle, and asserting that the Tibetan passes were guarded by soldiers, and requesting the Viceroy, therefore, to instruct the British Commissioner not to move from the present camp, told the Resident that he understood that Colonel Chao was of lower, not higher, rank than Mr. Ho, and that, as the Resident’s departure was contingent on the Dalai Lama’s nomination of a Councillor, and as the Dalai Lama had for four months past failed to send, as desired, an officer of the highest rank, he saw no prospect of the Resident arriving at Khamba Jong within any reasonable time. The Viceroy then recapitulated our various grounds of complaint, and concluded by saying that, in these circumstances, he had no alternative but to transfer the place of negotiations to some more suitable spot, where he hoped they might be resumed. And as the Resident had stated that the Tibetan passes were guarded by soldiers, he had been compelled to take measures to insure the safety of the Commissioners in moving from Khamba Jong, and to prevent any possible interruption of communication with them.