Tibet, the Bengal Government said, was a well-regulated country with which our Hillmen were in constant communication. When Europeans went to the frontier and tried to cross it, there was no display of violence or disturbance. They were civilly turned back, with an intimation that there were orders not to admit them. All the inquiries of the Lieutenant-Governor led to the belief that the Tibetans themselves had no objections to intercourse with us. The experiences of the great botanist, Sir Joseph Hooker, who in 1849 had travelled to the Tibetan border, and Blanford among the recent travellers, and of Bogle and Turner in the past, were singularly at one upon this point. The Commandant of Khamba Jong, who had met Mr. Blanford on the frontier in 1870, assured him that the Tibetans had no ill-will to foreigners, and would, if allowed, gladly receive Europeans. The fact appeared to be, the Lieutenant-Governor said, that “the prohibition to intercourse with Tibet is part of the Chinese policy of exclusion imposed on the Tibetans by Chinese officials and enforced by Chinese troops stationed in Tibet.” He fully sympathized with the Chinese desire to keep out foreigners in China. “But,” he said, “in Tibet there is not wealth enough to attract many adventurers; there is room only for a moderate and legitimate commerce;” and among a people so good and well regulated as the Tibetans there would be no such difficulties as existed in China. If the road were opened, it would be used only by fair traders and by responsible Government servants or travellers under the control of Government.
In seeking to press the Chinese for admittance to Tibet, he said, the most emphatic declaration might be made that, having our natural and best boundary in the Himalayas, we could not, and would not in any circumstances, encroach on Tibet, and we might offer to arrange that none save Hillmen or classes domiciled in Tibet should be allowed to go in without a pass, which would be given under such restrictions that Government would be responsible for the conduct of the holders.
The Lieutenant-Governor adduced as a further reason for entering into formal relationship with the Tibetans that, if we had an understanding between us, we should together be able to keep in order the wild tribes inhabiting the hilly country between British territory and Tibet. And he instanced the case of the Mezhow Mishnies, who for murdering two French missionaries in 1854 were punished both by us and by the Tibetans, and who, in consequence, ever after had “a most salutary dread of using violence.”