First Russia, Then Tibet by Robert Byron, from Project Gutenberg Canada (2024)

by Robert Byron

TO EMERALD CUNARD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Traveller's Confession

PART I. RUSSIA
I. The New Jerusalem
II. Creed and Observance
III. The Russian Aesthetic
IV. Moscow
V. Leningrad
VI. Veliki Novgorod
VII. Early Russian Painting
VIII. Yaroslavl and Sergievo
IX. The Ukraine

PART II. TIBET
I. The Air Mail
II. The Desert Lands
III. Anglo-Himalaya
IV. Into Tibet
V. The Plains
VI. The Pleasures of Gyantse
VII. Lunching Out
VIII. Winter Comes Early
IX. A Tibetan Pilgrimage

Thanks are due to Country Life, the Daily Express, the Week-End Review, Harper's Bazaar and the Architectural Review for permission to reproduce the substance of articles.

FIRST RUSSIA, THEN TIBET

The Traveller's Confession

It has been the boast of some travel-books to contain nothing that caneither instruct or improve their readers. The boast is one I should liketo make; for a book that entertains by its art alone will always be morewelcome than one that forces attention upon its learning orrighteousness. Of these qualities, it is true, the following pages areinnocent enough. But the motives that prompted the journeys theydescribe were not so innocent. I have travelled, I must confess, insearch of both instruction and improvement. As member of a community,and heir to a culture, whose joint worth is now in dispute, I woulddiscover what ideas, if those of the West be inadequate, can withgreater advantage be found to guide the world. And to this end I wouldalso know, in the language of my own senses, in whom and what the worldconsists. These vast considerations, let me hasten to add, find smallplace in the present volume. But they are responsible for its generalattitude, since it is only from the sum of isolated journeys that eventhe shadow of an answer to them can ever be expected.

A conception of the whole world in terms of personal knowledge is heldby contemporary opinion to be not only impossible as an attainment, butcontemptible as a goal. Real knowledge, according to this view, is theprerogative of the specialist, and is contained, as it were, in cells towhich he alone has access. A specialist has been defined as 'one whogrows to know more and more about less and less'; as the cells multiply,the scope of each diminishes and the truth contained in it shrinkscorrespondingly. To suggest that real knowledge must come from a studynot of this or that particular cell, but of the relatioship between themall, is to invite ridicule and hostility. For the bureaucracy of themind, like that of the State, is jealous of those who would scrutinizethe harmony of its departments. Yet for some persons there exists anorganic harmony between all matter and all activity, whose discovery isthe purpose of their lives and whose evidence, being inexhaustible, canonly be selected by the good judgement and perpetual curiosity of theindividual. From this process derives that most invaluable of humanresources, an absolute standard of worth capable of unlimited extension.

These persons are the travelling species. The pleasures of travel needno reiteration. But when the impulse is so imperious that it amounts toa spiritual necessity, then travel must rank with the more serious formsof endeavour. Admittedly there are other ways of making the world'sacquaintance. But the traveller is a slave to his senses; his grasp of afact can only be complete when reinforced by sensory evidence; he canknow the world, in fact, only when he sees, hears, and smells it. Hencethat craving for personal reconnaissance which can only be lulled byacquaintance with the broad compartments of race, politics, andgeography that comprise our earth. From the specialist's point of viewsuch acquaintance must always be superficial. The traveller can onlyreply that at least he desires to know more and more about more andmore.

This book presents two excursions whose very diversity is symbolic ofthose formidable contradictions which make it a privilege and a puzzleto be alive in the twentieth century. The first part is concerned withRussia, where the moral influence of the Industrial Revolution has foundits grim apotheosis; the second with Tibet, the only country on earthwhere that influence is yet unknown, where even the cart is forbidden totraverse plains flatter than Daytona Beach, and the Dalai Lama himselfrides in a man-borne palanquin. Prior to the Industrial Revolution eachcountry had evolved a unique tradition of civilization. In Russia thetradition has succumbed completely to the virus of the machine. In Tibetit has remained as completely immune from it. Among nations which enjoysuch traditions, the two countries represent the extremes of political,social, and mental difference from the accepted mean. These extremes areconfirmed even by their appearance. Russia is lower and more colourless,Tibet higher and more coloured, than any country on earth. Suchconfirmation is more than a coincidence. It is an explanation.

Extremes of this kind must provoke different reactions in the sametraveller. The ideas of Russia are preached, and act, as a challenge tothose of the West. The ideas of Tibet offer no challenge; they maintain,simply, a passive resistance towards those of the West. Thus in Russiaone must think, argue, and defend. In Tibet one need only observe andsympathize. Russia, moreover, presents a sort of caricature of the West;art, politics, and thought alike have derived from Europe and can onlybe understood in terms of their European ancestry. Tibet has no relationto the West whatsoever; the historical faculty becomes superfluous;observation consists in the assimilation of pure novelty. Thesedifferences are reflected in the form of my book. The contrast betweenits two parts is more than one of subjects; it lies between differentstates of the traveller's mind. If the book has a unity, it must belooked for in this contrast. And also, perhaps, in one other thing. Ihave written throughout, I hope, with respect for the aspirations andconvictions of my fellow-men, even when I cannot share them.

PART I. RUSSIA

'Tell me, sir, how shall the mind be elevated if the body be exhaustedwith material preoccupation? Consider the complex conditions under whicha Northern family is obliged to live. Think of the labour expended uponthat unceasing duel with the elements--the extra clothing and footwearand mufflers and mantles, the carpets, the rugs, the abundant and costlyfood required to keep the body in sound working condition, the plumbing,the gas, the woodwork, the paintings and repaintings, the tons of fuel,the lighting in winter, the contrivances against frost and rain, thenever-ending repairs to houses, the daily polishings and dustings andscrubbings and those thousand other impediments to the life of thespirit!... At close of day, your Northerner is pleased with himself.He has survived; he has even prospered... He fancies he has obtainedthe aim and object of existence. He is too dazed with the struggle toperceive how incongruous his efforts have been. What has he done? He hassacrificed himself on the altar of a false ideal. He has not touched thefringe of a reasonable life. He has performed certain social andpolitical duties--he knows nothing of duties towards himself. I amspeaking of men from whom better things might have been expected. As forthe majority, the crowd, the herd--they do not exist, neither here noranywhere else. They leave a purely physiological mark upon posterity;they propagate the species and protect their offspring. So do foxes. Itis not enough for us.'

NORMAN DOUGLAS

1. The New Jerusalem

The European visitor to Russia who values the inheritance of Europeanhumanism finds himself regarded as a baneful reactionary full ofpontifical formulas which aim not only at the pursuit of 'objectivetruth', but at the immediate destruction of the Russian State. Incompensation he will derive--unless already infected with prejudices ofhate or enthusiasm--an exhilarating stimulus to rational thought fromthis attitude towards himself, a realization that his world's horizonhas been suddenly extended beyond all preconceivable expectations. Hewill discover, possibly against his will, a preponderance of what he hasbeen taught to call obscurantism and tyranny which must necessarilyoutweigh the best of social purposes. Nevertheless he will be obliged toadmit that so great an intellectual stimulus must itself contain theseed of intrinsic good. The question is how to explain thiscontradiction.

Let no one concern himself with this essay whose hope is for informationabout Russia of a detached, scientific kind--a mere observation ofphenomena such as naturalists conduct in tide-forsaken pools. TheBolsheviks are men, not animals. I meet them as a man, not as a socialzoologist. Since their every word is spoken in defence of a dogma, sothen let mine be. This must be a personal account, a mobilization ofpersonal feelings in defence of the European tradition; an attempt tokeep in view a more scientific truth than that embraced by the recordsof the field-naturalist, and to see Russia, not as reactionaries andenthusiasts both see her, in ethical relation to the present, but incultural relation to the future. The forces at work are older than theRevolution, and will long survive it. They are inherent in the countryand people, though hitherto partially concealed beneath a Westernveneer. Hence the shock of their emergence and the universal curiosityas to their future part in history.

I cannot sufficiently emphasize the fact that the opinions hereexpressed are entirely confined to those which formed of their ownvolition in my own mind and which, in fact, did not take conscious shapetill I had returned to England and settled down to consider the evidenceI had collected. During a large part of my time in Russia I enjoyed thehospitality of Sir Esmond Ovey, H.M. Ambassador to the SovietGovernment, and of Lady Ovey; I spent much of my time with other membersof the Embassy; and I naturally sought the company of various Englishmenresident in Moscow. Of the kindness they all showed me, and of the painsthey were at to promote my journeys and inquiries, I can only make thisbare acknowledgement. But I must affirm categorically that the colour ofthe interpretation which I put on such facts as I gathered is entirelymy own. So indefinite had this interpretation remained till the very endof my stay in Russia, that if one had asked me, as the ship sailed outof Odessa, what colour it was, I could not have answered him. Thisquestion was in fact put both in Constantinople and London. I had noanswer to make, and was considered in consequence either a dullard or anequivocator.

The assurance of my address is the assurance of the ignorant. If I claima good enough eye and a sufficient experience of other countries to haveenabled me to appreciate the visual arts of Russia, and to judge them bygeneral standards, it is only to admit my disadvantage in seeking topaint their present environment. For my concern with laboratories, featsof engineering, and isolated social experiments, is so faint as to benegative; and it is chiefly these particular branches of Bolshevistactivity which arouse the enthusiasm of foreign visitors. In six weeksone must choose one's field; I chose to avoid conditioned reflexes, Fordlorries, and abortion clinics. Yet it needed no knowledge of engineeringto feel the romance of 'construction' at Dnieperstroi--as I felt itbefore at Sukkur--nor the uplift of an Astor to pay credit to somehyperborean Demeter for the apple cheeks and fur-lined helmets of thechildren in the streets. If, sometimes, a note of rancour sounds, blameit on that immemorial Russian bureaucracy, which chose to regard me,rather in spite of itself, as an undesirable character. This arose frommy irresponsibility in visiting Russia neither with an avowed purposenor as a conducted tourist. Nearly all foreigners buy their toursbeforehand, and are therefore obliged to keep to set routes. This is notto say, as so many people infer, that the visitor is only shown what theauthorities want him to see. On the contrary, free movement withinRussia to-day--except in the Turcoman republics, which are reserved forAmerican millionaires--entails fewer formalities than before theRevolution. The advantage of the conducted tours is simply theirremarkable cheapness; and since they are, very conveniently,'conducted', the tourist is naturally treated to the show-pieces of theexisting regime. But as these seemed to me, even by anticipation, bothextremely uninteresting and fundamentally insignificant, I trusted to myown arrangements, and may here take the opportunity of thanking thosewho helped me make them. Travelling was consequently more difficult, butequally more entertaining. Should any echo of the laughter provoked bymy journeys reach the ears of my Russian friends, they will be able toignore, or at the best pity, such irreverence. Levity is the music thataccompanies the European's whoring after false gods, gods which, infact--and all fact is Marxist--do not exist. The orthodox Marxist, likethe orthodox Christian, need only give thanks that he is not as others,and leave them to stew in their own delusions. Doubt is unbecoming tohim, and susceptibility to foreign opinion is tantamount to doubt.

* * * * *

The supreme moments of travel are born of beauty and strangeness inequal parts: the first panders to the senses, the second to the mind;and it is the rarity of this coincidence which makes the rarity of thesemoments. Such a moment was mine, when, at the age of three, I venturedon to a beach in Anglesey, and found a purple scabious; such again, whenI stood on the Jelep La and surveyed the peaks of Tibet; and such oncemore, as I walked up the side of the River Moskva late in the afternoonof my second day in Russia. The Red Capital in winter is a silent place.Like black ghouls on the soundless snow the Muscovites went their way,hatted in fur, lamb, leather and velvet, each with a great collar turnedup against the wind that sweeps down the river from the east. With bentheads they hurried past, impervious to collision with one another, ormyself, as though desensitized by a decade of mass-living. Farther on,at the corner by the bridge, stood a line of hackney sledges, whoseowners, the rearguard of capitalism, sat huddled in their portentousblue coats. Other sledges of robuster build trailed by, bearing piles ofhay and boxes. When they came to the slope by the bridge, they all beganto go sideways, while their horses scrabbled at the ice.

This, at last, was Red Russia; this horde of sable ghosts theBolshevists, the cynosure of an agitated world. It was more than Russia,it was the capital of the Union, the very pulse of proletariandictatorship, the mission-house of Dialectical Materialism. I lookedacross the river. Before me stood the inmost sanctuary of all: theKremlin.

A curious irony has dowered the creed of utilitarianism with thisedifice as the symbol of outward power. While collective man sitswithin, the walls deny him and the domes laugh aloud. Fantastic one hasalways known it to be from photographs. But the reality embodies fantasyon an unearthly scale--a mile and a half of weathered, rose-colouredbrick in the form of a triangle that rises uphill from its base alongthe river. These airy walls, which in places attain a height of fortyfeet, are hedged with deep crenellations, cloven and coped in whitestone after the Venetian fashion. Their impalpable tint and texturemight suggest rather the protection of some fabled kitchen-garden thanthe exigencies of medieval assault. But from their mellow escarpmentsbursts a succession of nineteen towers, arbitrarily placed, andexhibiting such an accumulation of architectural improbability as mighthave resulted had the Brobdingnagians, during a game of chess, suddenlybuilt a castle for Gulliver with the pieces. As my eye moved westward,seven of these unbelievable structures marked the half-mile prospective,itself slightly askew, of the base-wall. At either end the angle-towerswere taller than the rest, each a cylinder finished with a machicolatedbalcony and surmounted by an octagonal cone, a kind of dormeredcracker-hat tapering skywards to a bronze pennant. Between these twomarched five squatter towers--steep, rectangular cones of dark greentiles, broken by a middle storey of the same rosy brick, but varying inheight and breadth. These five towers, though they vary in particulardimensions, reflect a pattern introduced by the Tartars. Thus thehistorian may distinguish a Sino-Byzantine fusion accomplished under theaegis of Italian architects. Be that as it may--my attention waselsewhere. For now, within the walls, rose a white hill, as it were along table covered with a cloth of snow, lifting up to the winter skythe residences of those vanished potentates, Tsar and God: to the westthe two palaces, nineteenth century Russo-Venetian, cream-colouredagainst the presage of snow in the sky; the little Italian palace of thefifteenth century, whose grey stone façade of diamond rusticationsconceals the tiny apartments of the early Tsars; and then theCathedrals: that of the Annunciation with nine onion-domes; that of theDormition, where the coronations took place, with five helm-shapeddomes; and that of the Archangel Michael, whose central bulb stands highabove its four smaller companions; nineteen domes in all, each finishedwith a cross, most of them thinly gilt; and then, higher than all, themassive belfry, crowned with a flat onion; yet still overtopped by theultimate cupola of the tower of Ivan Veliki, colossal in solitude, theclimax of this Caesaropapist fantasia. I looked down to the river belowme; I looked up to the sky; I looked to the right and I looked to theleft: horizontally and vertically, towers and domes, spires, cones,onions, crenellations, filled the whole view. It might have been theinvention of Dante, arrived in a Russian heaven.

And then as the lights came out and the snowflakes, long imminent, beganto wander down in front of them, the scene became alive. As I reachedthe turn to the bridge, a company of soldiers came marching up theopposite street; the Red Army! visible agent of proletarian power andhardly less fantastic to my eyes than its fortress over the river. Intheir grey serge dressing-gowns swinging right down to the feet, andtheir grey serge helmets with pointed Tartar crowns, they looked like somany goblins on an infernal errand. Tramp! tramp! swung the grey sergeskirts; but not a footfall sounded. From the shoulders of each goblinslanted a pair of skis, taller than the man himself, and ready to whiskhim down upon some country churchyard to prod the dead. As they wheeledround to cross the bridge, they broke into a ringing chorus, takingthose earnest, melancholy parts which are associated with all Russiansinging. The theme of the words was doubtless Revolutionary, and, if so,not ill-suited to the effect achieved--as though the troops of ancientRussia were sallying out to a Holy War. It was quite dark now; the snowfalling fast. Behind the chanting goblins the Kremlin rose aglow withelectricity, like some ghostly back-cloth to the hurrying city, towerupon tower, dome upon dome, piling up from the rose-red ramparts and thesnowy eminence within them, to the last gigantic onion of Ivan Veliki,450 feet above the black river.

I followed the soldiers, and, climbing a steep road parallel with theeast wall of the Kremlin, reached the Red Square. Half-way across theexpanse of floodlit snow a queue had formed, ant-like in the distance,to see Lenin. The tomb was open.

I took my place next to a young Turcoman. His pale, aquiline features,properly moulded and furnished with bones, were those of an individual,and seemed companionable, despite the outlandish fleece that crownedthem, among these casual-bred Slavs. But for a group of peasants clad inleather and shod with birch-bark, they presented the usual characterlessappearance of all urban populations--the mass-man about to pay hisRussian homage to his new and Russian Christ.

A halt preceded our entry while they swept out the snow left by theprevious pilgrims. Then, two by two, the Turcoman with me, we enteredthe bronze wicket in the low balustrade. Two sentries, with fixedbayonets and sheepskin ruffs, stood on either side of the door. Thevestibule was blank, but for the Soviet emblem--hammer and sickle on aglobe supported by sheaves of wheat--in silver relief on the grey stone.Turning to the left, a flight of stairs and a subterranean corridor ledus down to the vault.

In the midst of this tall, dim interior, sheeted with sombre,close-grained stones, the mummy lay on a tall pedestal sheltered by aninverted cradle of plate-glass, and brightly lit. Below, in pairs ateither end, stood four sentries. We lengthened into single file.Mounting a flight of steps, I took my view and, in virtue of theatmosphere, paid my homage. Round the walls, I noticed, ran a frieze ofvitreous scarlet lightning.

Lenin must have been a very small man. He rests on a bed of dun-coloureddraperies, which engulf his legs with the tasteful negligence of amodiste's window. His upper part wears a khaki jacket buttoned at theneck. The finely modelled hands and features are of waxen texture, likethe petals of a magnolia flower. The beard and moustache turn fromstraw-colour to brown, a fact which caused Bernard Shaw more surprise(so he told me) than anything else in his self-patented Russian Elysium.One might have said: A nice little man, fond of his grandchildren, andgiven to pruning his trees. I wondered whether a countenance so placidand benign was not really made of wax. For rumour insists that thesewers of the Kremlin recently overflowed into the shrine, to thedetriment of its keepsake. But when I got outside, I had not walked ahundred yards before I met an old man with features, beard, andexpression exactly similar to those I had just examined. So that thereneed be nothing inherently false about the present appearance of therelic.

The Red Square was so called long before the Revolution, since theRussian words for 'red' and 'beautiful' are the same. Still the snowfalls, each flake softly sparkling in the electric haze. At the northend of the great white oblong rises the blood-coloured bulk of theHistorical Museum, a building in Ye Olde Russian style, but nowtransformed into something fairy-like by the snow filigree on its twinsteeples and twisting rooflets. Along the Kremlin side runs the samecrenellated rose-red wall, interrupted by three towers. That near theMuseum, which carries a slender, cold green spire, was blown up byNapoleon, but rebuilt according to the old design after his departure.At the other end of the square, to the south, stands the famous Spasskytower, a castle of brick surmounted by Gothic pinnacles and finials ofwhite stone, which remind one of Wren's Tom Tower, and were actuallybuilt by an Englishman, Christopher Holloway, in 1625. This bears a richoctagonal steeple, decorated with a gilt clock-face. From the topmostapex shines the emblem of the Tsars, a golden eagle, whose glintingdouble heads act as a signpost to the stranger lost in the 'China Town'opposite.

These two towers, with one other on the west side, are the chiefentrances to the Kremlin. Between them the wall is broken by a blindtower of the rectangular double-cone type, above which appears a flatdome of green copper, in the austere Greek style of the later Catherineperiod. From this dome floats a plain red flag, emblem no longer of therowdy May Day farce in other capitals, but invested with the dignity ofits architectural surroundings. Beneath the wall runs a series of lowtribunes in grey-white granite. These are interrupted, immediately belowthe tower, by Lenin's tomb, which is backed by a screen of small blackfir-trees.

The tomb is squat and powerful, instepped like a Ziggurat, and polishedlike a public-house. It is built of red Ukrainian granite and black andgrey Ukrainian labrador, which contains flecks of iridescent blue likethose on a butterfly's wing. The lantern is surmounted by a monolith ofred Karelian porphyry, 26¼ feet in length and weighing 59 tons. Thecolour of the granite is not our anaemic pink, but a deep rhubarb-red,slightly tinged with ochre. This colour strikes a mean between thescarlet flag and the pink walls, and fits the monument harmoniously uponits ancient stage.

The architect of the mausoleum is Stchousev. His original design, whichstood for five years, was of wood. The present, though similar incharacter, is stronger and more ruthless. It is constructed--or givesthe illusion of being constructed--of superb blocks of stone, whosegigantic size is reminiscent of the Inca walls. The form is gainedpartly by the use of the three colours, black, grey, and red, as aninstrument of proportion, and partly by the irregular succession ofsteps on which these colours are employed. But these steps, thoughirregular, are far from haphazard. Their ratios, both of height andwidth, are calculated with the utmost nicety, so as to increase theeffect of power and strength. The base of the monument is slightly abovethe level of the Square, and is enclosed within a low parapet, whosefront corners are rounded, and whose rear corners are finished with twosmall pavilions. This parapet, these pavilions, as well as the long rowsof tribunes which run parallel with the Kremlin wall, are built of agreyish white granite, only semi-polished, and having a very close andhard texture. Within the parapet on either side of the entrance havebeen planted small fir-trees, which, it must be hoped, will not beallowed to grow too high.

Last of all, at the far end where the ground begins to slope down to theriver, rises the famous church of Basil Blajenny--Basil the Blessed.Lying slightly below the general level of the square, yet with no otherbuildings behind it, it closes the panorama like some phantom shipice-bound against the skyline. Or in circus mood one might compare itwith a giant's coconut-shy, whose drab nuts have been replaced bysea-urchins, leeks, pineapples, and peeled pomegranates at differentlevels--multi-coloured fruits, spiral, spiked and fluted, that temptLenin's ghost to warm itself on cold nights by potting snowballs atthem. There are always a few nocturnal drunks about the Red Square.Perhaps some staggering mystic, or a frozen cabman, or a posse of GPUraiders, passing by in the small hours, have already seen thatall-familiar figure clambering wraithlike up its mausoleum for one moreshot at the embodied past. I can hardly be sure that I myself, after acertain party at the Metropole, did not discern one or two extra-humanmissiles hurtling through the air towards that green pineapple with thered scales... But the less of this the better. When I emerged frominspecting Lenin's more solid remains on this particular afternoon itwas barely tea-time. Suddenly the Spassky clock rang out the hour on thelast of the Moscow bells, whose deep melodious chimes never failed, solong as I stayed in the town, to give me a little start of melancholyand pleasure. And as the first clang echoed over the snow and along thered walls, a black smoke of crows shot up into the sky, cawing andcroaking their contempt for that motionless anachronism, the Tsar'seagle.

The vision was over. I had exchanged the experience of a moment for amemory that will support me till I die. I shall never see Moscow againas I saw it on that afternoon.

* * * * *

But beside the Moscow of dreams waited a Moscow not less unique--that ofmen. I left the square by the side of the Historical Museum, where theIberian gateway used to stand, and, crossing the Opera Square, came tothe Hotel Metropole. Here I was to deliver three precious lemons for theuse of Albert Coates, who was suffering from a carbuncle. I was also tomeet a young English communist named Morgan.

I expected a hatchet-faced consumptive. I perceived a Nordic giant.Morgan was once a chauffeur, but having seen light in a Russian film,had made his way to the land of promise and creative outlet. As thatland had seemed to him from a distance, so it had continued to seem,despite loneliness, language difficulty, and food shortage during theearly months. I admired his courage in having overcome such obstacles.He now worked with a band of students drawn from thirty-sevennationalities, dividing his time between Materialistic philosophy andthe Moscow film studios, and receiving a salary on which he lives. I hadbrought him some parcels, which, being ignorant of their contents, I hadpersuaded the customs officials at Negoreloje not to open. He seemed toassume, therefore, that I, too, had found light. Our conversation was,consequently, at cross-purposes. It started with my asking the waiterfor some vodka.

M.: We don't want any of that dope here.

R.B.: Sorry, but I can't live without alcohol.

M.: Oh, well, I suppose you'll grow up some time.

R.B.: I suppose so. But I'm beginning to doubt if I shall ever grow up into a communist. (Morgan looked surprised.) Anyhow, I'm not interested in politics. What I want to know is, not whether the Five-Year Plan is going to succeed, or how many million peasants will know the alphabet in ten years' time, but whether anything really important, any advance in human thought or happiness, is going to come of so much misery as the Russians have gone through. I feel it will; but I can't see how it can, when you substitute a banal ideology for the free exercise of the mind. Soviet culture, for example--what and where is it?

M.: You're full up with the old ideas; you don't understand. Our art must be a collective art, and we've got to produce an intelligentsia that will think and create collectively. It was different during the revolutionary period, when everyone was inspired. The construction period, which we're settling down to, is harder to express in art.

R.B.: You mean there isn't the same epic feeling of excitement?

M.: That's right. The struggle goes on though, just the same.

R.B. (petulantly): I wish to God you'd tell me what you mean by this struggle you all talk about. Struggle with what? I shouldn't have thought there was anyone left in Russia to struggle with by now.

M.: Don't you understand that everything's a struggle. If I put this glass of water on this table, the glass and the table are at war--their actual contact is a struggle. It's the same in social evolution. The workers can only build socialism by struggling, by continuing the class war right through.

R.B.: So that when you've done away with classes, all you do is to create new ones and make an aristocracy out of a few million factory workers, who rule the country by oppressing, i.e. struggling with, the remaining majority. How anything creative, or even interesting, can come from this obsession with class, I fail to see. It's worse than England.

M.: There's not much you do see. Now look at Beethoven. Of course we admit he was a genius. But you can see how the class-struggle of the time comes out in his symphonies. Or Wagner. When he had been exiled for revolutionary opinions, he wrote the Ring. Then he became a good bourgeois again, and the result was Parsifal.

R.B. (soothingly): Parsifal is dreadful, I admit. I suppose if I translate what you're trying to tell me into ordinary language, all it means is that genius is the product of environment. There's nothing very new in that. And may I ask whether you think Newton could ever have thought out the law of gravity in the environment of modern Russia?

M.: Of course he could have. Our laboratories here are better equipped than any in Europe.

R.B.: I'm talking about thought, not experiment--something that goes on in one person at a time. If you take all the great periods of human invention, scientific or otherwise, you'll find that people were free to think as they wished. There was an atmosphere of disinterested inquiry. The nineteenth century in England, for example--it produced Marx's Capital among other things, and he says as much in the preface. [1] Or the Renascence...

M. (incredulously): The Renascence!! Coo! there you are. The Renascence was simply a phase in the class-struggle, the beginning of the capitalist age, when the merchants and the bourgeoisie began to rise to power.

R.B. (firmly): My dear Morgan, you remind me of an evangelical preacher, who's right before God, when everyone else is wrong. I don't mind being wrong. But I haven't come all the way to Russia to argue with people like St Athanasius. It's too boring. I admire your enthusiasm, and I wish to understand what gives rise to it. It doesn't help me in the least to be told that everything that ever happened was a manifestation of the class-struggle. Do you think there were revolutions among the lung-fish? I dare say the Revolution was an excellent thing for Russia. I wouldn't put the clock back for a moment. But what I want to know is whether it holds the seed of hope for the rest of the world beneath this desiccated husk of class ideology.

M.: We're absolutely different. You can't be expected to have the right outlook. You're...

R.B.: I'm of a different class, you mean?

M.: That's it. Your voice--it sounds affected to me.

R.B.: Perhaps it is. But I don't see that that's any reason why we should start a class war over this table, or why the GPU should send old professors to the Urals for writing about Byzantine icons.

M.: They belong to the wrong class--they're our enemies. The intellectuals have let us down too often. We can't take any more risks, when the war may come at any moment.

R.B.: There you go again. What war?

M.: It's happened once. What about the Intervention?

R.B.: D'you think the whole of England is peopled with Churchills?

M.: I don't know about that, but war's coming all right. Why, it's beginning already in Manchuria. What's more, I tell you seriously that in two or three years' time I hope to be inviting my comrades from here to stay with me in Buckingham Palace.

R.B.: That's a very bourgeois ambition. (Inconsequently) Do you get on with Jews?

M.: I'm pretty used to them after living in the East End. I like them. Still, they're not quite the same as yourself. Let's go up and see Sylvia Chen.

R.B.: Why, is she a Jewess?

M.: No, she's a daughter of Eugene Chen and a French negress. Her brother's a commander in the Red Army, and she's a dancer.

[Footnote 1] 'The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison with those of England, wretchedly compiled... We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions of inquiry into economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship and respect of persons, as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters on public health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing and food... In England the progress of social disintegration is palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent... For this reason, as well as others, I have given so large a space in this volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation. One nation can and should learn from others.'--Capital, Preface to the first edition, 1867.

We went upstairs to Miss Chen's apartment. Though her shelves groanedwith the early fathers of Materialism, she was temporarily engrossedwith the difficulty of obtaining new dance records, since Jazz isproscribed by the Russian customs as 'ideologically incorrect'. EvenMorgan, now released from argument, admitted the hardship of thisdeprivation. They put on an old record, and Miss Chen hopped about, apretty creature against the antiquated plush of her surroundings.

'What are you going to do in Russia?' she asked me.

I said I hoped of course to go to Leningrad, and also to Novgorod to seethe old churches.

'Churches?' she answered. 'Whatever interests you about that kind ofdead stuff?'

I felt I could hardly explain.

II. Creed and Observance

[1]

I have given the above conversation as one specimen out of many. I hadcome to a new world: Morgan was to me as the kangaroo to Captain Cook oras the Erewhonians to the Edwardians. Yet since he was neither beast norfiction, I could not, and cannot, treat him and his like with the politedetachment of a zoologist. [2]This is the normal attitude of the visiting foreigner, than which, if theRussians only realized it, nothing is more insulting to them. Nevertheless,beneath the insane babble of Marxian clichés, I was conscious of forceswhose reality was not to be denied, and whose significance aroused my avidcuriosity. This curiosity, I knew, would go unrequited unless I could seebeyond the fanatics and jargon that obscure every view in modern Russia.

[Footnote 2] The original publication of this phrase in the Architectural Review has enriched the Russian vocabulary. On 8 April 1933, Pravda appeared with the headline: 'Diehards' Zoological Hatred of the Soviet Government'.

The first condition of understanding for the stranger is to realize thatthe Revolution and all that followed it were the outcome of processeswhich began with Russian history and will end with it. The ByzantineOrthodox Church has always been distinguished from the Catholic in thatits ideal is rather the attainment of heaven on earth by means ofcontemplation than the pursuit of a satisfactory after-life. From thedomination of ideas which this Church exercised from the tenth centuryon, no Renascence ever delivered Russia. Nor were the serfs, as in othercountries, liberated from their material slavery by an economic demandfor fluid labour. Thus the Russian has always conceived of progress as amass-advance towards an immediate millennium rather than as a successionof steps taken by gifted individuals towards objective truth. While nocountry has produced more theorists on the theme of human betterment,their concern has always been with the prompt delivery rather than withthe quality of the perfection supplied. Only by this means could themass of humanity, whose mystic elevation has always been the keynote ofRussian speculation, be adequately embraced. The individual, wedded toobjective thought for its own selfish sake, was ignored as a permanentfactor in the social scheme, for the obvious reason that the Russianshave no conception of the individual in this sense--a fact which emergesplainly enough from those travesties of humanity which form theindividual heroes of Russian novels.

In the last century, the rise of an intellectual class gave mouth andpower to this Russo-Messianic concept of collective uplift. At the sametime there arrived from the West the new industrial idea of a purelyphysical universe ruled by a God who was nothing more than achemist-engineer. Such an idea, reacting on the pervasive mysticism ofOrthodoxy and the fantastic sects that had sprouted from so fertile asoil, produced a philosophic vacuum, a kind of mystic nothingness, whichwas elaborated into a system by Bakunin (1814-76) under the name ofNihilism. Then began the classic era of sacrificial plotters, whosedramatic assassinations attracted the attention of the outside world. Itwas complacently imagined by their liberal sympathizers in othercountries that the murderers, if slightly misguided in their methods,were inspired by the desire to free their country from a brutalautocracy. Even to-day this idea is ingeniously fostered in the minds offoreign tourists by the transformation of the fortress of Peter andPaul, where the chief rebels were confined, into a museum for thedisplay of Tsarist atrocity. The hatred of the anarchists for theMonarchy was doubtless genuine and disinterested. But if anyone wishesto disabuse himself of the illusion that they wished to substitute forit a regime of Anglo-Saxon liberty, let him read the appendix to RenéFülöp-Miller's Mind and Face of Bolshevism, which contains quotationsfrom The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov, written byDostoievsky in 1871 and 1879. Even these prophetic utterances aresuperfluous. For did not Lenin say that freedom was a bourgeoisprejudice?

The European may stigmatize as merely destructive the Russian theorist'sobsession with a joyless, unwilled mass-nirvana, and as impracticablehis conception of the human mass as the one and only agent of humanadvance, obedient to the impulses of its Narcissistic mysticism. He mayeven be permitted a just indignation when these ideas threaten thestructure of his own laboriously evolved tradition. But it serves no endto curse the Russians for thinking as they do, or to depreciate theirideal of enabling the mass to exchange its bestial sloth for an inspiredself-immolation on the altar of industrial productivity. It is not ourideal. We aim at an increasing distribution of material benefits withina framework that preserves the prerogatives of the individual. But letus understand that Bolshevism, whether it prove economically feasible ornot, derives directly and genuinely from the Russian view of theuniverse, which regards the passion of the mass-man for the sake of themass-man as the highest form of human expression.

Meanwhile Nihilism and its like offered incentive to individualself-sacrifice, but no programme for co-ordinated action. Thisdeficiency was to be filled in part by Karl Marx, who propounded a newphilosophy of historical evolution, and in part by Lenin, who, with theusual Russian impatience to be in at the Second Coming, extracted fromthat philosophy a social doctrine capable of immediate application, and,since evolution was concerned, conceived himself to be the proper agentfor speeding up that cumbrous process.

Karl Marx arrived in London in 1849, and there devoted himself toresearch among the voluminous materials that had already been collectedanent the conditions of the English working classes. In his lightermoments he entertained a wholesome respect for class distinctions andestablished authority: 'he attended at the Society of Arts a soiréegraced by the presence of royalty... he liked his wife to signherself "Jenny, née Baronne de Westphalen"... finally, he acceptedthe office of constable of the vestry of St Pancras, taking thecustomary oath, and donning the regulation uniform on galaoccasions.'[3]He retained his enthusiasm for Germany, 'sang the praisesof German music and literature', and regarded Germany's part in the warof 1870 as purely defensive.

[Footnote 3]A. Loria, Karl Marx (London, 1920), p. 48.

His contribution to thought was his conception of society as somethingfluid, in a state of perpetual change and becoming, and his adumbrationof a law governing this process. It is claimed that, as Darwin tobiology, so he stands in relation to sociology. The claim is somewhatexaggerated, for whereas Darwin could base his deductions on the wholeof the world's history, Marx was necessarily confined to thatcomparatively narrow field contained in the written records of a fewthousand years. Starting with the premise that all 'value' is theoutcome of labour, his law of evolution naturally developed a purelyeconomic complexion: all societies are based on the exploitation oflabour in some form or another, and since the exploiters cannot beexpected to relinquish their privileged position of their own accord, itis only by explosions of violence that the changes rendered necessary bychanging methods of economic production are brought about; theseexplosions are the outcome of a permanent, though generally latent,struggle--the class war; as for politics, morals, religion, art, and therest, these are but the ideological expression of that struggle. InMarx's opinion, the moment was at last approaching when labour shouldfree itself from the last of a succession of exploiting classes andassume the whole fruits of its own toil for itself. Thus his theory ofsocial evolution dissolves, or is dissolved by those who would put it topractical use, in the mist of an imminent millennium. One is left indoubt as to whether, once the workers cease to be exploited, the Marxianlaw will continue to operate or not.

In putting forward his theory of the evolution of society according toeconomic laws, Marx added something to the general technique ofhistorical inquiry. But in seeking to found, upon the basis of thoselaws, an all-embracing philosophy, he displayed a lack of scientificmethod which must be ascribed to the Jew's inability to apprehend thereality of emotions and ideals of which he himself has no personalexperience.

It were redundant to indicate which particular points in the Marxianphilosophy brought grist to the revolutionary mill. But it cannot besufficiently stressed how easily these theories might have disappearedinto the limbo enjoyed by most of their kind, but for theirtransformation into a militant creed of action at the hands of Lenin.For good or evil, Lenin was one of the most remarkable characters inhistory, not only by virtue of his influence on the fate of millions,but for his individual pertinacity and consistency in working towards anapparently impossible goal. In the Marxian theory he saw a practicalinstrument and he shaped it to that end. To read his works after thoseof Marx is like turning to the Athanasian Creed from the Sermon on theMount. He found in Marx the raw material for both a politico-economicprogramme and a philosophy to uphold it. When the time came, the weaponswere ready forged, and he brought them into play.

[2]

Into the exact nature of the political organism that to-day exists asthe result of Lenin's activities, I do not propose to inquire; ablerheads than mine have run themselves against this brick wall, and willcontinue to do so. But I wish to record a very definite impression on mypart of the nervous insecurity and strain that prevails among alleducated and semi-educated people in Russia, members of the CommunistParty included. The incidents that contributed to form this impressionwere cumulative in their effect, and in any case too numerous torecount. Indeed, its origin was atmospheric as much as circumstantial.But if it was a correct impression, its importance is vital to thesifting of the ashes whence the phoenix of collective culture musteventually arise. The stranger must inquire what produces it.

In describing the system under which they live, the Russians themselvesinvariably make use of two terms, one political, the other economic.These are 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' and 'State capitalism'.

The 'proletariat' is a name for that hypothetical mass with whose aimsLenin, as a good Russian, necessarily identified his own. But the word,when used in the Marxian sense, denotes a fluid supply of labour,without anchorage or possessions, at the beck and call of economic, i.e.capitalistic, demand. Unfortunately, this particular kind of massscarcely existed in Russia at the time of the Revolution. Thus theBolsheviks, having established a government which has alienated thesympathies of the intellectual class by its tyranny and an economicsystem which, if judged by their own material standards, was, and is, atotal failure from the point of view of the peasant, lack the chiefsupport postulated by their creed, the very lynch-pin of the wholetheoretical structure. Until this support is created--that is to say,until at least a bare majority of the Russian population has beenrecruited into the ranks of the true proletarian nucleus already centredin the large towns--the present rulers of Russia must continue in theirpresent state of nervous insecurity, particularly when they consider thevolume of existing discontent, passive though it be. Hence the franticefforts that have been, and are being, made to create a fluid ruralproletariat by impressing peasants into the collective farms--by, infact, the artificial stimulation of that very process which the whole ofCapital was meant to damn for ever and ever.

Says Marx, after lauding the independence of the English peasant beforeour great enclosures took place: 'What the capitalist system demandedwas, on the other hand, a degraded and almost servile condition of themass of the people, the transformation of them into mercenaries, and oftheir means of labour into capital.' Says Lenin, in his article on Marxwritten for a Russian encyclopaedia: 'If, finally, we wish to understandthe attitude of Marxian socialism towards the smaller peasantry... wemust turn to a declaration by Engels expressing Marx's views: "Whenwe are in possession of the powers of the State, we shall not even dreamof forcibly expropriating the poorer peasants.... Our task as regardsthe smallholders will first of all consist in transforming theirindividual production and individual ownership into co-operativeproduction and co-operative ownership, not forcibly, but by way ofexample, and by offering social aid for thispurpose."'[4]Well might Marx cause an earthquake in the Highgate cemetery and Leninburst his mausoleum to fragments, could they have witnessed thetreatment of the Russian peasant carried out in their names during thelast five years.

[Footnote 4] Lenin, Collected Works, Authorized English Edition, vol. xviii, p. 42.

So bitter and so widespread has been the resentment aroused by thistreatment that Stalin, temporarily at least, has had a stop put to it.It is the result, not of socialism, but of State capitalism, as theRussians admit. Marx was at pains to point out that capitalists alwaystend to absorb one another. 'Along with the constantly diminishingnumber of the magnates of capital... grows the mass of misery,oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation.' Is this true of Russia,where the number of capitalists has been diminished to one? If so, whatwill be the result?

Either the peasants, incensed beyond all reason, will resist allattempts to proletarianize them; in which case they will be permanentlyat odds with the communist aristocracy of the towns, and the class warwill go on, thus vindicating Marx's theory of evolution. Or they willsurrender themselves to a joyless impersonal exploitation by the State,redeemed by elementary education and broadcast culture; and Marx'stheory will either die of classless inanition or receive its mostterrific vindication in a subsequent revolt on the part of theexpropriated against the one grand expropriator--the State. Bothalternatives hold possibilities well calculated to disturb the presentrulers. They have staked everything on the Five-Year Plan. This, if itsucceeds, should create a purely industrial proletariat of sufficientsize to support them and recruited without the ill-feeling produced bycompulsory measures. Meanwhile the tension, as of a man fighting for hislife, pervades the whole country. It may not conduce to the pursuit ofobjective truth or the creation of great art, but it results in a greatactivity and exercise of the mind.

[3]

It was recognized from the beginning by Lenin and his coadjutors thatallegiance to their politico-economic system must depend, in the longrun, on a general acceptance of its concomitant philosophy by thosecapable of even the most rudimentary mental activity. In attempting tosecure this allegiance they were at once face to face with the weakestlink in their carefully forged chain for the bondage of theindividual--with, in fact, a link so weak as to constitute a gap. Toremedy this deficiency they have exercised an ingenuity which deservesthe success it is receiving. But the very contrivances to which they areobliged to resort, reveal more clearly than anything else the totallyunscientific character of the philosophy to which they are committed.

The exponents of Dialectical Materialism, as the creed enunciated byLenin is called, regard the universe as composed solely of phenomenawhose reality can be subjected to the empirical test of their ownsenses. Religion is their bane. It diverts man's attention and effortfrom the society in which he lives; its priesthood is invariably theagent of political and social stagnation. This view is rational enough,and, though one may take occasional exception to it, not difficult toacquiesce in or at last to understand. But the Materialists are also thevictims of a frenzied and irrational hate for those ancient beliefs andinstitutions which symbolize, possibly in its crudest form, the searchof mankind for a central Reality and, consequently, the prime obstacleto the spread of the New Gospel. This hate, amounting almost todementia, has prevented them from conducting any detached inquiry intothe reason why religion exists and always has existed. Ostrich-like theyhave failed to recognize that religion fulfils some fundamental humanneed.

After the Revolution, religion in Russia fell, or was thrust, into verygeneral desuetude. No sooner did this happen than the needs which,however superficially or improperly, it had hitherto satisfied, madethemselves apparent in an atmosphere of licence, restlessness, anddisillusionment. Village life had lost its keystone; the peasant histheatre; among the educated or semi-educated classes was felt an equallack of that faith or code without which life cannot be regulated. Inaddition, the new rulers were not slow to discover that they, too, hadlost something, and that this was hardly the moment to dispense with thetraditional ally of all government. 'Religion,' they had thundered, 'isthe opium of the people.' The practical value of this maxim now becamefully apparent to them. Since all pre-existing religions were proscribedby the new philosophy, there was only one course open to them in theirneed for a popular soporific. This was to erect the philosophy itselfinto a religion. And this they have done. They have preserved thejealousy of the God of Israel while dispensing with the God himself, andthe external ceremony of the Orthodox Church while dispensing with theChurch. In place of the single God enthroned in heaven, they havesubstituted the Mass enthroned on earth; in place of the Church, ahierarchy no less intolerant--YOUTH. It is a different kind of opium;its dreams are less reposeful. But it works.

The Italian Professor Achille Loria closes his monograph on Karl Marxwith words which might almost be supposed, by one ignorant of theircontext, to emanate from a newly discovered papyrus of St John theDivine:

For the day is coming. And in that day, when remorseless time shall have destroyed the statues of the saints and of the warriors, renascent humanity will raise in honour of the author of this work of destruction, upon the shores of his native stream, a huge mausoleum representing the proletarian breaking his chains and entering upon an era of conscious and glorious freedom. Thither will come the regenerated peoples bearing garlands of remembrance and of gratitude to lay upon the shrine of the great thinker, who, amid sufferings, humiliations, and numberless privations, fought unceasingly for the ransom of mankind. And the mothers, as they show to their children the suffering and suggestive figure, will say, their voices trembling with emotion and joy: See from what darkness our light has come forth; see how many tears have watered the seeds of our joy; look, and pay reverence to him who struggled, who suffered, who died for the Supreme Redemption.

True, the Rhine still waits its promised monument. But I could not helpthinking, as I walked about Moscow on 22 January, what a graceful and atthe same time inexpensive gesture the British Government might make byunearthing the bones of Marx and his Jenny in Highgate[5]and presenting them to Russia. Lenin, after all, is only second best.Still, he makes a very decent pilgrimage, and the patriot type of saintis certainly the more fashionable at the moment.

[Footnote 5] They share God's acre with those of Thomas Hood the poet, and Lillywhite the cricketer. Coleridge is round the corner in a coke-house. I am indebted for this information to Mr John Betjeman, the father of necropolitan research.

Lenin died on 21 January. For some inscrutable Russian reason his deathis mourned, or was this year, on 22 January. The Red Good Friday provedthe occasion for elaborate manifestations of dolour, such as mark thesame season in Rome. To all shops and offices of any pretension, redbanners, bearing the hammer and sickle in gold, and bound in black, hadbeen distributed, and now hung motionless in the cold fog with whichnature was participating in the national grief. The grandiose front ofthe Bolshoy Theatre, the Opera, was draped on either side with animmense arras of the same character; while across the portico the nameLENIN was blazoned in scarlet light, like a gigantic IHS. In addition tothis Latin ostentation, something of the English Sabbath had crept in.The sale of alcohol was forbidden, lest the dignity of the occasionshould be marred by the usual inebriate holiday-makers. Even food wasdifficult to obtain. At the same time hotels and restaurants werecrowded with congresses and delegations assembled to observe the sacredday. In the Red Square, a queue had formed such as one sees in Londonwhen a dead king lies in state, twisting and turning over the greatexpanse of snow, like one of those wire puzzles that have neither endnor beginning. From morning till night it shuffled convulsively along, afoot at a time. There might have been ten or a hundred thousand people;I could find no means of computing. But it struck me that none of themwould have been there, to stand for an hour in a temperature of severaldegrees below zero, unless actuated by genuine emotion and a personalconviction of the solemnity of the occasion.

The instances of resemblance between the outward manifestations of theMaterialist faith and those of the older religions could be multipliedindefinitely; they astonish the visitor at every turn. In factories andclubs, the icon corner has been replaced by the Lenin or the Marxcorner: hideous busts of pseudo-bronze stand on pyramidical pedestalsdraped in red, bowered in red, and backed with red. In the separaterooms, less expensive coloured prints replace the erstwhile lessexpensive icons, forerunners of a new and monotonous hagiographydepicting Stalin, Kalinin, Krupskaya, and Budenny. In the large towns,every third shop window teems with these frightful representations, ofall sizes to suit all purses, and exhibiting a lack of artistrysickening to behold. On being told the sum formerly derived by thePechersky Lavra in Kiev from the sale of holy pictures, I was anxious tolearn what profit accrued to the present government from the samesource. The answer to my inquiry was, that far from there being anyprofit, the State actually incurred a considerable loss in promoting thedistribution of its blessed effigies.

In addition to dead saints, there are the living Early Fathers, theJeromes, Clements, Origens, and Athanasiuses, who thunder out theirdaily commentaries on the central creed and its application to the dailyemergency with the prolific inconsequence induced by modern printingfacilities. In Kremlin, commissariat, club, factory, institute, andschool, these Early Fathers reside and multiply, seeking heresies anddefinitions with the appetite of Byzantine Christologists. Fortunatelyfor their happiness, there is no end to either, since their dogma isbased on the most uncertain of all sciences and the details of itsproper practice are as elusive as quicksilver.

These Christian similes may sound far-fetched; but though individualdefinitions of what does and does not constitute a religion may differ,they do in fact convey better than any other the mental atmosphere ofBolshevist Russia. It is as easy for us--for me--to laugh at theideological hair-splitting and Salvation Army jargon that have grown upround the Materialist creed as it was for Gibbon to ridicule theMonophysites and the Monothelites. Yet the purpose of these ideologicaland Christological controversies is the same, and an eminentlycomprehensible one: namely, to expand the provisions of a central creedso as to cover every possible contingency by a formula that shall beintelligible to the illiterate or the semi-literate mass. Where theparallel may possibly lose its force is in the nature of the spiritualforce or faith behind the two religions.

The faith that inspired the earlier Russian revolutionaries was, as Ihave tried to explain, a conviction that the redemption of humanity mustand could be attained through the mental and material advance ofhumanity in the mass. This was Lenin's faith. It may incorporate a kindof devil-worship. But judged by the measure of his devotion to hisfaith, Lenin was a great and noble man. I could not help asking myself,when in Russia, whether, now, this same faith was not giving place toexternal boastfulness and megalomania, a kind of hollow, invertedFascism. One hears too much about the enthusiasm of YOUTH, in Russia aseverywhere else. The very phrase is suspicious; it cloaks an emptiness;great movements cannot draw their force from supporters in a state ofpetrified immaturity. Russian YOUTH may feel itself predestined todominate the globe. Drunk with titanic visions, it may hurl itself downmines and into factories. For the moment, the Five-Year Plan provides apsychological safety-valve to this bursting intoxication, thisclass-chauvinism. But where is the original faith? What will sustain theyoung shock-brigaders and komsomols of to-day twenty years hence, if thereward should not prove equal to their hope?

To these questions, to the question whether Materialism is destined toendure for centuries as a vital force, or to crumble away like anerveless tooth, I can put no answer. Meanwhile, it seeks to reinforceits dominion with every device of jealous obscurantism and personaloppression known to the medieval Church or the Spanish Inquisition. Thefaith may survive the longer for such conditions, the social structuregain in strength. But art and culture must either die, as they died withJulian the Apostate, or assume a form as yet unknown, as they assumed inthe Gothic cathedrals. So far, only darkness is descending, while thenew light has not begun to shine. But the Dark Ages lasted fourcenturies. Must Russia wait as long, plunged in her scientific night?

At a certain stage of their development [wrote Marx[6]] the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing production relationships, or, what is but a legal expression for the same thing, with the property relationships within which they have hitherto moved... A period of social revolution then begins. With the change in the economic foundation, the whole gigantic superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations, we must always distinguish between the material changes in the economic conditions of production... and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic, in short, ideological forms, in which human beings become conscious of this conflict and fight it out to an issue.

[Footnote 6]A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, 1904).

The italics are mine. They enshrine the kernel of Bolshevist truth:thought, creative power, can have but one beginning and one end, oneincentive and one purpose--the furtherance of the class-struggle.

Education thus becomes a question of instilling into children (from theages of six to sixty) the belief that the continuance of this struggleis the proper aim of all human beings and the particular aim of all goodRussians. As far as general principles are concerned, a speciousamorality is inculcated by the most elementary copybooks. Spy on yourneighbour and cherish the machine! is the motto of Russian childhood. Inthe towns, the principal churches are occupied by a litter of postersand photographs which remind one of a dismantled coffee-stall. Closerexamination reveals a pictorial exposure of the iniquities and classbias of all religions--Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christianity,the Sects, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Buddhism. The Calvinistic fury ofMaterialism can tolerate no rivals. Crowds of children trail roundbehind their teachers, as we see them at the Burlington Houseexhibitions, imbibing knowledge of the hard and fast line between thenew Right and the new Wrong as laid down in these Anti-God Museums. Thesame line is apparent in the Press and in public entertainments. At thePress it becomes no Englishman to throw stones; I can only blush inguilty silence. But on the Moscow wireless, during the Englishprogramme, I heard one thing that might have shocked even Mr Maxton. Thespeaker was describing the industrial activity of Sverdlovsk, a town inthe Urals once known as Ekaterinbourg. In their spare time, he said,smiling children and workers might be seen going in and out of the houseof Ipatiev--now a museum--'where the family of Romanov met the fate itjustly deserved'. The man's voice, I thought, faltered as he spoke hissilly text. And well it might. If this is how the Bolsheviks conducttheir propaganda abroad, the world is safe from revolution for a longtime. I should like to go to Sverdlovsk and see the children smiling inthe death-cellar of those other children. The sight would bear noblewitness to the power of the new faith, and also to that cowardly,hypocritical pretence of infallibility, mark of all religions, whichmust needs brazen out the most repulsive accidents.

The atmospheric oppression of a land where the only truths are the classwar and the machine, and where all culture must be subservient to thoseends, is alleviated by the novelty--one might even sayeccentricity--that results. The air is mixed with laughing-gas. But itis a stifling air--how stifling I only realized on reaching Kiev, whichpreserves in some indefinable way its old university tradition of thehumanities and allows one to breathe normally again. Not that I wasunhappy in Russia. I can truthfully say that in no foreign country haveI ever enjoyed myself so positively, been so sheltered from boredom, orfelt such regret at departure. But this was partly due, I must confess,to the pleasant feeling of pugnacity that woke in my bosom. The systemis intended for the world--that is clear from the start. Try your damnedreligion on me, I felt, and you'll get as good as you give! And so theydid, now and then. Yet I could not but respect persons so deeply engagedin a definite purpose and so homogeneously subscribing, with heart orlip, to a definite belief. Such fixity was hardly to be despised by amember of that nation whose chosen patriots are Noel Coward and WinstonChurchill. It was rather to be envied.

My first real consciousness of the Great Untruth was brought to thesurface by a Beethoven concert conducted by Oscar Fried in the MoscowConservatorium. They were playing the Pastoral Symphony. It was not abad performance, though the instruments lacked tone. When it was at anend, I looked up and remembered where I was. And then, suddenly, it cameto me that here--not in capitalism, nor in Christianity, but here on theconcert platform in these tattered scores--was the enemy thatMaterialism can never conquer and that must ultimately and inevitablyconquer Materialism. It seemed to me that to allow such a performance totake place in public was simply an act of quixotic folly on the part ofthe authorities. In theory, no doubt, the Pastoral Symphony providesexemplary illustration of the class war in rural Austria. In practice...I turned my attention to the audience and read, or thought I read,my own thoughts in their faces. Only a group of shock-brigaders, younghierarchs in tall boots, looked sullen, as indeed it was their duty todo. They would have explained to me, had I reproached them for theirattendance, that music, above all arts, conduces to the socialization ofemotion. This means, in ordinary language, that it moves a lot of peopleat once. But if I had asked them how it is that certain compositionswield this invaluable power in a greater degree than others, or whetherthe emotion produced by them is not the outcome of a highly incorrectrevelation of abstract beauty, I do not know what they would havereplied. The functions of art are one thing. Its creation and effect areanother. Either art must be proscribed in its entirety, as St Clement ofAlexandria recommended; or, if its effect is considered beneficial tothe general mass, then the individual must be allowed free play withabstractions in order to create it. The learned doctors of Materialismargue that a class war for the redemption of humanity should beabstraction enough for any artist. This may be so. A spontaneous culturemay spring from the soil of mass-betterment. But I could see no signs ofit. When I asked for any, they could only answer with Christ: 'A wickedand adulterous generation seeketh a sign; and there shall no sign begiven unto it.' This was disappointing. Still, I persisted in my search.

At Morgan's instance, I went to see the two most recent sound-films madein the Russian studios. Russian films of the revolutionary or epicperiod have aroused great hopes. These, depicting the present period ofconstruction, proved by contrast somewhat disappointing.

The first was called Sniper. It opened with a regiment of Britishtroops in kilts made of duster-cloth being cheered off to the front tothe strains of 'Tipperrarr-ee', which tune, I afterwards learnt, theyhad been taught to sing by Morgan. A confusing succession of incidentson various fronts followed, during which No-man's-land was suddenlytransformed into a maize-field, in order that harvesting women, whom theGerman Army was gallantly assisting in their labours, might be shot downby the Allied guns. Finally, the scene changed to the new Russia, inwhich all the workers but one of a certain factory devoted their leisurehours to rifle-practice. This one, a feckless youth, maundered aboutwith a tennis racquet; until one day the capitalist invasion began, andthe tennis racquet proved of little service in defending either itsowner's person or his fatherland. I was reminded of those ridiculousBritish productions sponsored by the Empire Marketing Board to promoteimperial fellowship. And I must say, in all justice, that even theMoscow Press was loud in its denunciations of such crudity.

The other film, on the other hand, had been acclaimed as a nationaltriumph, and has presumably obtained popularity abroad, since Iafterwards found it showing in Constantinople and it has since been seenin London. The photography was generally good and in parts excellent.Its title may be rendered as The Way into Life.

The theme was the redemption of those homeless children that have grownup like animals and have infested Russia since the great famine. Theyare shown at first as thieves and thugs. Then, while sleeping in acellar, they are rounded up and transported to a deserted church in thecountry which they turn into a workshop. Their gradual transformationinto useful members of society is effected by a kind of scoutmaster whoseeks to inculcate into them the public school sense of honour, and ismaterially assisted in this admirable work by the hero of the film, aworthy Tartar boy named Mustafa. But evil influences persist. While thescoutmaster is away, a disaffected section of the boys, despite theopposition of those led by Mustafa, breaks all the machines. Thescoutmaster, on return, cannot conceal his pain, but instead ofreproaches he produces a toy train from a brown-paper parcel. This hesets going on toy rails; and, inspired by its example, they start tobuild a real railway. Meanwhile the disaffected section has discovered alog-hut in the woods where prostitutes congregate and vodka circulatesfreely. To this horrible resort they lure Mustafa and his disciples, nowclad in smart lounge suits. But when the orgy is at its height, thelatter, at a sign from their leader, draw revolvers, shoot up a numberof strange but repulsive men, and bind the evil women, who are now in astate of blubbering dishevelment. By now the line is finished. The nightbefore the opening Mustafa goes down it on a trolley, singing a Tartarsong as the dawn breaks, the birds begin to chirp, and the bull-frogs tocroak. But an enemy lies in wait; the trolley is upset and Mustafastabbed to death. After some delay the ceremonial first train, manned bythe now fully reclaimed boys, starts its opening journey without him.Then they find his body, and placing it reverently on the front of theengine, steam into the terminus of a small town, where rejoicing at oncegives way to grief. In real life, I am glad to say, Mustafa is stillwith us. Moscow now realizes that he is human after all, and that he ismore broad-minded in his pleasures than the film would have us believe.

There were moments in this film of real emotional solemnity, such asthat of the Tartar song at dawn. But for me these were entirelyovershadowed by the didactic unreality of the whole story, and by thecatechism in Right and Wrong which the audience was obliged to answer inorder to keep abreast of the plot. It was the atmosphere of Eric, orLittle by Little and The Fairchild Family over again, with the samefascination of the contemporary social document. I would have given halfmy time in Russia to have read into the hearts of my fellow-spectators,and to have discovered whether this crude antithesis of Materialistvalues had inspired them with real emotional piety, or had renderedtheir entertainment, as it had mine, just a little tedious.

It would be possible to continue indefinitely the list of experienceswhich went to prove how utterly impossible, and, from the Materialistpoint of view, undesirable, it is that any form of disinterested,non-political, or non-economic culture should ever flourish on the soilof modern Russia. But there came to my notice one final instance whichrevealed, more plainly and more grotesquely than anything else, themendacious and futile obscurantism to which the new religion finds itnecessary to resort in its own self-defence. There hangs in Moscow oneof the finest and most representative collections of modern Frenchpictures that has ever been assembled. Over the entrances of each roomare printed notices, which are designed to assist the appreciation ofless sophisticated visitors. In appending a selection from thesenotices, I withhold comment that would be impertinent to theintelligence of the English reader and offensive to my Russian friends:

MONET: Age of transition from capitalism to imperialism. Taste of the industrial bourgeoisie.

CÉZANNE: Age of the preliminary period of imperialism. Taste of the industrial bourgeoisie.

PISSARRO and SISELEY: Age of the preliminary period of imperialism. Taste of the industrial bourgeoisie.

GAUGUIN: Taste of the rentier.

CROSS and SIGNAC: Taste of the lower and middle bourgeoisie under the influence of the lower industrial bourgeoisie.

VAN GOGH: Taste of the small bourgeoisie.

MATISSE: Age of distorted imperialism. Taste of the rentier.

[4]

While the doctrine of Materialism ascribes all artistic creation to thegenius of the mass and epoch rather than to that of the individual, itmust perforce admit that the concrete fruits of such creation do owetheir shape to some effort on the part of the individual, even thoughhis proper function is only to interpret and organize the taste andemotions of the mass and epoch; and that the successful fulfilment ofthis function, impersonal though it be, requires of the individual adegree of concentration and thought which distinguishes him from thecommon herd and thus postulates the existence of an intelligentsia. 'Weworkers,' say the good partymen, 'will create our own intelligentsia.'So they may do--though how, neither they nor I can explain. But whateverits origins, this intelligentsia will constitute a different class fromthat of the 'workers and peasants', and as such a suspect class. Alldisinterested thought, such as we regard as the first condition ofcultural development, is rendered impossible in Russia by the jealousyof the prevailing religion. But even those of the intelligentsia whosincerely subscribe to that religion--'one must believe in it, or onecannot live here', said the son of a former landowner, now an engineer,to me--even they are subject to a system of bewildering impedimentswhich makes the foreign observer wonder how their task can be adequatelyperformed and whether anything truly inventive can ever result fromtheir efforts. I would emphasize the fact that I am writing here, not ofthe disgruntled dispossessed, but of those who are honestly desirous ofworking for and with the new system, but whose vocations necessarilyplace them in the intellectual class.

Sixty years ago one of Dostoievsky's characters spoke as followsconcerning the social system adumbrated by another:

One thing in his book is good, the idea of espionage. In his idea every member of the society spies on the others, and is bound to inform against them when necessary. All are slaves and equal in their slavery... First of all, the level of education, science, and innate natural talent falls. A high intellectual level is possible only to superior talents; but we have no need of superior talents. Superior talents have always seized power for themselves and led to despotism. Men of talent cannot help becoming despots, they have always done more harm than good; therefore they are driven out or put to death. [7]

[Footnote 7] From The Possessed, quoted by René Fülöp-Miller in The Mind and Face of Bolshevism.

This prophecy is somewhat exaggerated, since Materialism has great needof superior talents and its exponents admit the fact. But it containsmuch that the visitor to Russia can recognize.

Those less fortunate observers, who are obliged to commit themselvesentirely to the excellent facilities offered by the Russian touristagency, remain completely oblivious to that unique state of affairswhich most clearly distinguishes the lives of Russian humanity fromthose led by humanity in any other part of the globe. This state ofaffairs consists in the universal, all-pervasive practice of espionageand suspicion conducted among all grades of the Materialist society. Iheard it said that one in every fourteen persons in the whole of Russiais in some way or other an agent of the secret police. Whether this istrue, I do not know. But my own short experience revealed to me thateven the boldest flights of fiction conceived by the late Mr EdgarWallace had visualized nothing to compare with the reality of thoseexcitements which the Russian people are daily privileged to enjoy. Nowthat I am back in England, no report circulated by the die-hard Pressseems too preposterous to believe, even though, in nine cases out often, I do not believe it. At times, during my visit, I began to doubt myown sanity; but never for long; some conversation with those who hadactually experienced the ordeals of Russian citizenship or residencealways intervened to restore it. Plotters, saboteurs, informers, kulaks,assassins, counter-revolutionaries, and the ever-renascent bourgeoisie,native or foreign, lurk behind every window, playing their assignedrôles with the ineradicable malignancy of the Vauriens in Elmer Rice'sPurilia. Against these vile creatures, the Communist Paragonians,members of that unspotted élite, the partyproper,[8]are engaged in ceaseless warfare. It is a kind of film-land, where allthe types are prearranged and Goodness shines with perpetual brightnessin its everlasting victory over Sin. Even prostitutes, being forbiddena trade-union, cannot flourish.

[Footnote 8]This body numbers only about two millions.

The secret police are known as the GPU. This is pronouncedGaypayooh--but only by foreigners. By Russians the term is neveruttered. They may sometimes talk in whispers of the 'three-letter men'.But generally they prefer not to mention them at all. It became one ofmy favourite amusements to enunciate the fatal syllables in publicplaces, in order to watch the tremor of surprise and apprehensionelicited from everyone within hearing. On one occasion, it happened thatmy companion and I had inadvertently settled ourselves in a railwaycompartment reserved for the State couriers. The first of them to arrivenaturally expostulated, and on seeing that we did not understand,pointed to the red tabs on his collar. 'Oh!' I said, comprehending,'you're a GPU man, are you?' At which even he, who was, started asthough I had stuck a pin into his behind. He proved afterwards aCrichton of courtesy and assistance, even getting out of his bed atthree in the morning to see us comfortably off the train.

But there is another and repulsive side to the picture. It must beremembered that the majority of those who enjoy the real power in Russiato-day are men who spent their early lives hunted from pillar to post bythe Tsarist Okhrana; they were imprisoned; they were sent to Siberia;and the old spirit of suspicion and revanche still lives in them.Lenin and Trotsky were different. They too may have harboured thesefeelings. But their constructive energy outweighed them. To-day Russiais ruled by men of meaner mould, men whose twisted outlook infects thewhole Soviet Union with a spirit of malice and suspicion. The whole airis poisoned by this evil. Every man lives in fear of his neighbour. Eventhe school-children are admonished, in the books from which they learnto read, to train themselves as spies in their own villages. I do notexaggerate. I talked with persons who had been recently summoned tocross-examination by the GPU and with persons who had recently been thevictims of their midnight raids. I learned from first-hand of their coldchamber. I found that distinguished scholars whom I had wished to meethad 'disappeared'. I experienced personally their postal inquisition.Yet such information was acquired purely by chance in the most casualfashion. I was far too interested in the permanent Russia as it was andever shall be, and was enjoying myself far too much there, to go nosingabout in search of evil. Finally, after the Foreign Office had begged meto extend my stay, some unknown authority thought it better not toextend my visa. But then, I thought, in a country that celebrates itsOctober Revolution in November, one should not be surprised that theForeign Office cannot grant its own visas.

It is none of my purpose or business to censure the government of Russiaand the priesthood of Materialism for maintaining a body of agents andpolice such as have always been found necessary to uphold the governmentand religion of that country. It may reasonably be assumed, from thehistorical evidence, that the Russian people and those who comprise therest of the Union can only be governed by a despotism based onespionage, and that some such body must always be inherent in theRussian State. I am simply concerned to note the mental effect of such asystem, whose rigour has been steadily increasing during the last fiveyears, and whose brunt is borne mainly by the intellectual class, notnecessarily on account of subversive activity, but simply because it isthe intellectual class. It is they who are pilloried as the publicenemies in theatrical trials; it is they whose every word and action iscircumscribed by terror of the 'ideologically incorrect', whoseavocations are supervised by semi-literate youths chosen from the partyranks, whose numbers are continually depleted to swell the Ural camps,and whose families suffer from cruel uncertainty. Such measures may benecessary; there may be enemies lurking in their midst; considering thedifficulties under which they work, I should be surprised if there werenot; these things again are not for me to affirm. But what I willaffirm, and what I would beg the reader to share with me, is my contemptfor those foreign intellectuals, and particularly those English ones,who, while finding in Russia the exemplar of social and economicplanning, the climax of constructive politics, the paradise of YOUTH--inshort, the model towards which all truly progressive persons must lookfor world redemption--are so intoxicated with admiration that they canspare no word of sympathy for their fellow-intellectuals, the men inRussia likest to themselves, for whom there is no place or hope underthe system they so ardently covet. That this system would immediately,on attaining power, annihilate these miserable hypocrites, thesehypnotees of every windblown theory, these bastards by uplift out ofcomfortable income, is the one satisfaction I could derive from itsintroduction into England. These Fabian ghosts, these liberalpoliticians, socialist editors and female peace-promoters, are the verypeople who anathematize without cease the tyranny of Hitler and histreatment of the German intellectual. But in Russia, where they arebuilding not only socialism but Fordson tractors, the treatment of theintellectual does not matter: what counts freedom of thought orscholarship or individual creation beside the regeneration of the GreatUnwashed? Very little, I dare say. And as little as these things countin that new world, just so little in this old one count those men whoseinheritance they are and who renounce them for a mess of Bolshevistpottage. Let us rather have amongst us the red revolutionary who triesto seduce the troops and goes to prison for it, than these Russophilenthusiasts who acclaim the downfall of their own kind as the ultimatetriumph of civilization.

Despite its cruelty, it is possible to argue that the old intellectualhas deserved his fate, on account of his procrastination of soul and hisslowness to ally himself with the new movement when it rose to power.But it is not only the old intellectual that falls under the ban ofprevalent suspicion. The new--the inventors, planners, engineers,specialists, editors, architects, film-producers, and their like, allthe prophets of the modern age--suffer from the same intolerable lack offreedom. In 1930 the campaign waged against them by the GPU reached sucha pitch of fury that the authorities began to count the cost. Rykovproduced figures to show how the Five-Year Plan was being hampered bythis insensate policy. Until at last Stalin, who is a realist when thetruth penetrates to him, called off the terror. The GPU, it was felt,was getting too big for its boots, with the result that administrativemeasures were taken to diminish its power. At the same time the salariesof the specialists were increased. These measures, it is evident, havesince been reversed, and the terror re-started, in order to throw theblame for the failure of industrial projects on to specialists andforeigners. In any case the evil has been done, and it will take morethan temporary half-measures and periods of leniency to undo it. MauriceHindus asks: 'Can Russia make man as inventive, as creative, asconstructive as a capitalist regime which lays at the feet of a Ford, aRosenwald, a Woolworth, a Rockefeller, all the rewards that this earthcan afford? This is the crux of the Communist challenge toCapitalism.'[9]In my opinion, this is not the crux; the nationalenthusiasm for the work in hand seemed, among nearly all those Imet--even among such minor actors in the drama as archaeologists andmuseum curators--to provide its own reward. Where the crux lies now(Hindus wrote at the beginning of 1929) and where the whole system isthreatened with breakdown, is in the terror of responsibility which hasresulted from the preposterous campaign against the intellectual of thelast five years. One of the foreign specialists in the country assuredme that no sooner did he leave his office on one of those frequent tripsto which his business called him, than his whole department absolutelyceased to function owing to the positive physical fear that nowaccompanies the taking of any decision whatsoever. Certainly, he said,there were other difficulties in the way of the Five-Year Plan; thesedifficulties, however, could be overcome. But in this doctrinal andactual proscription of the intellectual class he saw an insuperableobstacle to the Plan's success. And he prophesied that unless thepsychological effects of the last three years were removed--unless, infact, the class war should cease--the immense factories now inconstruction would either have to be placed under the management offoreigners or bankrupt the State by their total failure.

[Footnote 9]Humanity Uprooted, p. 82.

In concluding this very incomplete account of the psychologicalatmosphere in which the Russian intellectual moves and attempts to havehis being, I would mention two last factors whose significance is by nomeans negligible and which serve, in some degree, to counter-balance thedisabilities enumerated above. These are Russian nationalism and theparadox involved in the Russian worship of the machine.

The Allied intervention in Russia after the war was over was the mostfutile, most stupidly conducted, and most subsequently harmful adventurethat modern history can show. The Materialist philosophy had postulatedat least a brand of internationalism, even if that brand meant onlyloyalty to international socialism. Owing to the intervention and theattitude that the greater part of the foreign Press has inherited fromit, there has resulted in Russia a mental isolation from the rest of theworld which was at first merely negative, but which is now crystallizinginto a positive national egotism of the most pronounced kind. Owing tothe general impossibility of travel, of corresponding with foreigners,or of obtaining foreign books, both the educated and the semi-educatedRussian honestly believe that in themselves alone is concentrated allthe really progressive thought of the whole world; in which belief theyare confirmed by the agreement of the foreign enthusiasts. This state ofaffairs, though it hardly conduces to a profitable use of the world'sintellectual resources, sustains the Russian intellectual in his presentdifficulties by placing him, at least in his own estimate, in the van ofhuman affairs. His vanity, moreover, is flattered by the enormouscuriosity which his country continues to arouse. It is not unpleasant tobe regarded either as a bogy or as a saviour, but never as a nonentity,by virtue of one's very nationality. In addition, this mental chauvinismis reinforced by continual war scares. The reader may find it hard tobelieve, but I can assure him that I emerged into the streets of Moscowone morning to discover the hitherto sober trams adorned with posterscalling on the wise citizen to buy his gas-mask before it was too late.Malicious rumour said that the army stocks having been found to bedefective, it was now sought to unload these essential householdrequisites on the civil population at seven roubles apiece. Be this asit may, no Russian seemed to think the admonition absurd. 'What aboutthe Intervention?' came the inevitable retort. But the real explanationis, that deep down in the hearts of the population endures an olderpatriotism than that inculcated by Materialism--a patriotism which mustalways be associated with 'Holy Russia'. I was told of a certain eveningat the opera about a year before, when it happened that the principalsinger had ended his part, the climax of the piece, with the words: 'GODSHALL SAVE RUSSIA'. Whereupon the audience rose to its feet in thestress of its collective emotion and cheered away its feelings till theroof shook. It was not the voice of the old Christians that cheered, butthe voice of Russia, of the Russia that has stood and shall stand tillthe world's end.

The paradox involved in the prevailing adoration of the machine lies inthe fact that this cult should find its most devoted adherents in themost unmechanical country in the world. In the early days of thiscentury, when Russian literature and Russian ballet swept over WesternEurope, an idea grew up that the average Russian lived in a romanticSlav twilight, a cherry orchard of his own incapacity, where everythingwas excused by wringing of hands and a reference to temperament. Whetherthis ever was so, I doubt; it certainly is no longer. Russianincompetence of to-day is something cosmic, almost brutal, scorningexcuse and seeking none. Should circumstances happen to obtrude it onthe foreigner, and he happens to remark on it, this is considered anexhibition of bad form on both sides. During one week in the Ukraine, mycompanion and I experienced no less than five railway mishaps, in one ofwhich--though fortunately it happened to the train in front--nineteenpeople were killed and over forty injured. Our eyebrows rose; finally,when the memory of this tragic accident had evaporated, we broke intouncontrollable laughter, and teased our guide till the poor man almostlost his faith in Progress. Was this the country of the Five-Year Plan,we asked, rejoicing in our ribald scepticism. But our inquiry lackedgenerosity. For those five mishaps explained precisely why Russia isthe country of the Five-Year Plan.

On another occasion, when there was no boat waiting at the end of thejourney, I discussed the question more calmly with an intelligent youngJew, who fully understood my detestation for the machine cult. Hereplied that to appreciate its meaning, I must realize what the Russianshad gone through during the period of Civil War, the Intervention, andthe great famine. When the first party of foreign tourists reachedLeningrad in 1926, forty cars were needed to transport them toTsarskoe-Selo. Forty pre-war cars were collected, and twenty-five moreto act as a reserve. Even so, that party failed to arrive atTsarskoe-Selo, which is about twenty miles away. He said that when, sometime later, the first new cars that had been seen since the Revolutionarrived from America, crowds followed them in the streets in order totouch them, as though a Cardinal were in progress with his ringoutstretched. He himself had been among them. And though he smiled atthe memory, he still treasured the rapture he had experienced on seeingthe first Russian-made lorry actually in movement. Then he went on tospeak of his father, a poor nep-man, who had been taken away and neverseen again after the reversal of the New Economic Policy. What arestricted life he had led, immersed in his family and his littlebusiness. Now here was his son, my friend, partaking in great events,mover in a great world force--though only a tourist guide. He was happy;I have never known anyone more content. Yet this youth, who had placed asacramental finger on the first Ford car, was as impatient and active asmyself in climbing about rickety scaffoldings in the biting cold tostudy the fourteenth century frescoes of the Novgorod churches.

Those who see fit, like I did and still do, to loose their gibes at theRussian cult of the machine, should recall England of the 'forties and'fifties. Let them read Macaulay's panegyric on his country's factoriesand railroads, couched in the language of an artist before theParthenon; and having read, let them envy rather than despise a countrythat can still enjoy, in the twentieth century, that blend of assurance,novelty, and excitement which produced our own greatness in thenineteenth. We have had time to profit by the mistakes of our nativematerialists, our Victorian rationalists and economists. So perhaps willthe Russians also profit when the time comes. Meanwhile the air is freshand stimulating. The intelligentsia of Russia, both the survivors of theold and the children of the new ages, are victims of every disadvantagethat dogmatism and jealousy can invent. But they escape,notwithstanding, the one supreme disadvantage that can afflict anintelligentsia--that of lethargy and complacence.

Last, and most precious of possessions, they have still their owncountry. They have escaped the desperate fate of the émigrés. I metone lady in Moscow, the avowed survivor of an old Russian family, whohad recently married a foreigner, and, having obtained his nationality,was able to leave Russia and visit her friends of the old days in Parisand Riga. This lady has suffered much from the Bolsheviks--particularlyduring the last two or three years. But she assured me that afterexperience of the mental Bourbonism by which her old friends sustaintheir lingering hopes of a restoration, she was glad to think she stilllived amid the fears and discomforts of Red Moscow. Because she wasstill a patriot, they ended by regarding her as a traitor. It is thispatriotism which, above all else, makes the lives of educated men andwomen in Russia to-day still worth living.

III. The Russian Aesthetic

It has already been explained that the antagonism between Russia and theWest is more than a conflict between principles of ownership andindustrial morality. The word 'Bolshevism', divested of thoseflesh-creeping associations so gallantly propagated by the Toryimagination, represents not merely an economic system, but a fundamentalway of thought inherent in the Russian species. To this way of thoughthas been added an abstract and all-embracing philosophy, which wasconsciously and sensibly elaborated by Lenin as an instrument ofrevolution and which bears the name of Dialectical Materialism.

The basic proposition of this creed is that everything perceptible tothe senses is real and that everything real holds in itself the germ oforganic change. Such a doctrine is in essence mystical, in that itopposes the physical or chemical explanations of change, and thereforeof life, put forward by mechanistic thinkers. It thus contains a greatand practical truth and is well adapted to its present function--that ofa religion whose outward manifestations have already been shortlydescribed. But behind it, and more important to the understanding ofBolshevism's uneasy relations with the outer world, is that immemorialRussian sentiment of a cosmic national egoism which demands theregeneration of the mass rather than of the individual and producesintrospection on a sacrificial scale. At the end of the last century,when Russian literature began to receive the fulsome appreciation ofWestern Europe, the implications of this sentiment were hardly realized.As a theme for Dostoievsky it was superb. As a theme for translationinto practical politics it was not taken seriously, save in the sphereof Central Asia, where the fears of Anglo-Indian strategists werefinally set at rest by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Ouraffinity with Russia was with Russian artists, not with the visionarieswhom those artists portrayed. Now the visionaries have become men ofaffairs. Their kingdom is of this passing, empirical moment, and theywould like to include us in it. To this desire we do not agree.

Meanwhile the aesthetic genius of the race, which once inspired us withadmiration, still persists, and will flower again--though whether in theimmediate or the distant future is hard to prophesy. The reader insearch of observations on this genius may feel by now that to have beenlured, as he has been, into a maze of political and economicconsiderations, is nothing less than an abuse of this confidence. If hefeels thus, I must ask him to remember that modern Russian culture isstill in its embryonic stage--if indeed it has yet been conceived atall; that the main interest it presents is rather as a field forprophecy than as one of completed achievement; that even the embryo isstill obscured by the shell of a still mortifying past on which hasfastened the inevitable mushroom-crop of contemporary plagiarisms; andthat if the foreign observer is to discern any sign of original life, hemust seek it primarily in a study of the individual educated Russian andof the evolution he is now undergoing. Of that evolution, of itsattendant pains and mental voltage, I have attempted some slightaccount.

To the traveller whose first stay in a new country is limited to a monthand a half, and whose view of it can therefore be only cursory, the mosteasily apprehensible clue to the cultural genius of its people is theirnative architecture. In the golden helmets and onions of the churches,in the towered Kremlins, baroque palaces, Empire streets, Revivalistmuseums, and ferrocrete tenements, the history and character of theRussian people stand revealed. I ask myself what future can come of soincongruous a past and present as this diverse architecture symbolizes.And I find answer in a permanent and impersonal factor, separable fromtime and politics, which, for architecture in particular, must play adecisive part in the eventual development of Bolshevist taste, and onwhich all prophecy in that respect must be based. This is theconsistently unique tradition of colour and form displayed by all thevisual arts in Russia from the eleventh century onward. Architecture,being the most functional of the arts, is essentially the art of themass. And it is in architecture that this tradition must find life againor prove itself sterile and the culture of the Revolution sterile withit.

The Russian aesthetic is often called, by the glib classifiers ofWestern Europe, an Oriental one. Certainly it may have borrowed a motivehere and there from the Moslems and Chinese. But its essential spirit isa purely Russian one. And such superficial resemblances as itsarchitecture or painting may display to those of the East, derive fromthe fact that each has had the same aesthetic problems to overcome.These lie, as always, in the landscape. The Russian scene providesneither form, nor colour, nor shadows of rich texture. Apprehensibleform, gay colour, and rich magnificence, must therefore be supplied byart. But the Russian landscape is not merely negative. Its illimitablespaces and skies, its limpid summer clouds, and its precise outline ofdetail against the winter snow, all determine the manner in which itsdeficiencies shall be filled by artifice. It holds a latent power whichlikes to speak in terms of the grandiose and monumental. No difficultyis too great, no scheme too vast, for this power to overcome. It planscities on a scale commensurate with the huge rolling rivers by whosebanks they stand. At the same time it employs the poetry of field andvillage and the peasant love of fantasy. Somehow, by some genius of thepeople, aesthetic order results: buildings are grouped as though on aperpetual back-cloth; paintings are composed; the domestic arts aresane. The lyrical note is absent; there is none of that intimateperfection which reaches to the hidden places of the mind. All is open,fully apparent on a glance, blatant even; there is no hidden measure, noeconomy of means; yet all is within bounds and betrays a love ofwell-being which is not dissimilar from that of our own prosaic isle.

For his means of architectural expression the Russian has alwaysborrowed the grammar of some foreign tongue and made it the basis of alanguage entirely his own. The earliest was Byzantine, which heenlarged, as he has enlarged everything, heightening the churches out ofall recognition and replacing the neat lead vaults and saucer-domes ofthe Greeks with helmets and onions. These in time he gilded, coloured,and patterned; he grouped them at different levels; he multiplied theminto forests or inflated them singly to overwhelming dimensions. Atlength came the Tartar invasion. Round these churches grew walls andtowers of Tartar pattern, to form the local Kremlins and fortifiedmonasteries.

Then the Italians arrived, only to become more Russian than the Russiansthemselves. Venetian Gothic, classical pillarettes and arcades,machicolated balconies, elaborate rustications, and a wealth of faience,all came to swell the Russian harmony, brought by foreigners whoseprivileged position and adoption of Russian aims made them thecounterpart of the specialists employed under the Five-Year Plan to-day.Released from the severe canons of their own countries, they threwthemselves headlong into the Russian love of fantasy; they planned andthey built with an emphatic eccentricity which is rendered none the lesscoherent by virtue of its very size. Far from being stifled by thisforeign invasion the native motives, the gay colours and ubiquitousbulbosities, flowered anew like plants in a freshly manured garden. Theeleventh century cathedral of St Sophia at Veliki Novgorod, built underthe direct influence of the Greeks, has less of a specifically Russiancharacter than the riotous and variegated churches of the sixteenthcentury, built after two centuries of Italian predominance, such asthose of Yaroslavl or the Moscow suburbs.

With the reign of Peter the Great, whom Lenin acclaimed as a spiritualancestor, a new and more systematic process of Westernization began.Churches and the dwellings of the nobility became baroque. Rastrelli,the architect of the Winter Palace and Tsarskoe-Selo, covered Russiawith stupendous belfries, towering accretions of arches and pillars, butas intrinsically Russian as the monasteries in which they stand. Atlength followed the Empire style which the Russians, though stilldepending on Italians for their original designs, made particularlytheir own. The ruthless interminability of their official buildings grewtill the eye cannot grasp them. A Government colour-wash was invented, aflat tawny yellow, against which pillars and ornament stand out inwhite. Towers persisted, great spikes such as that of the LeningradAdmiralty. At the same time a charming domestic architecture grew up,massive and low-storeyed, as though the domestic architects were stillbuilding with beams and tree-trunks for their pediments and pillars. Theornament is bold but never florid in the German way; the space is alwaysso filled as to create either a pattern or an almost exaggeratedlyindividual piece of design; there is always meaning.

As the last century progressed the Russians, like ourselves, fellvictims to the prevalent revivalism. The most grotesque andextraordinary structures resulted from the inspiration of so varied apast; the palaces of the Wittelsbachs or the inventions of Sir GilbertScott seem Palladian in their simplicity when compared with theseneo-Slav town-halls and Kremlinesque museums. Yet the innate feeling ofthe Russian race for the monumental, its long practice in the orderingof fantasy, its general lack of aesthetic inhibitions and love ofaesthetic plain-speaking, have invested even these buildings with avirtue unknown to their contemporaries in other countries, and onewhich, under the magic of snow, attains almost to charm. This, ofcourse, was the 'preliminary period of imperialism'. Finally, as theBoer War broke, a blast of art nouveau swept in from the West, todestroy the last vestiges of sanity and taste; though in Russia eventhis style assumed a form so freakish and preposterous as to rescue itfrom the smug suburbanism of its manifestations elsewhere. Follows aninterval of ten years. When the curtain lifts there appear Lenin's tomband the graceless, but still monumental, concrete structures of the newindustrial era.

In the provision of colour, the Russians have always relied for theireffects on flat, cleanly outlined fields. The tints are emphatic, almostelementary; but the natural taste of the people, their skill inharmonizing and interweaving the various colour-fields into a balancedrhythm, together with the gigantic areas over which--in architecture atleast--colour is employed, prevent the dominance of that shallowfolkiness which so often strikes a false note in pictorial andphotographic reproductions. In this province more than any, the Russianshave retained their Byzantine inheritance, as the icons show; but hereagain they have added their own principle of frank appeal to the eyerather than the mind. How that principle, applied to architecturalcolour, survived into the nineteenth century, may be seen to-day in thestreets of Leningrad, where the present authorities have not onlypreserved and renovated the old Government yellow (said to have beenintroduced by an Italian to remind him of the sun), but are also engagedin restoring the palaces of the nobility to their original gay state.

But colour in architecture must display something more than gaietyalone. Without richness of texture and material it becomes as tedious asan eternal pantomime. No people has understood this precept better thanthe Russians, and no country has ever been more naturally favoured withthe means of acting on it. Gold leaf for their domes they have alwaysbeen able to afford. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries theylavished bronze and brass upon their interiors and exteriors with theprofusion that, in other countries, attaches to stucco. But the glory ofRussia, from the builder's point of view, is her native quarries. Thevariety of her marbles and glistering labradors, her close-grainedporphyries and granites, her stones of even finer texture--so fine thattheir appearance when polished is almost metallic--and her semi-preciousvarieties such as lapis and malachite, is inexhaustible, and even yethas scarcely been exploited. No shade, no texture that an architect canwant, is lacking.

From conversations with various eminent architects in Moscow, I gatheredthat an official architectural policy was now in process of inceptionwhich will eventually withhold its approval from the drab functionalismof the present era, and allow free play once more to the native geniusof the country. The outstanding example of this genius, as it can andwill be translated into the language of Materialism, is the Leninmausoleum by the architect Stchousev. It achieves its success, as I havealready mentioned, not by any compromise with the past--for a moreruthless, more uncompromising monument has scarcely been erected sincethe Pyramids--but by the harmony of its colour with the oldsurroundings. Before visiting the chief architects of Moscow, I hadinspected the plans submitted from all over the world for the newPeople's Palace, which is to occupy the site of the Cathedral 'of thelate Redeemer' recently demolished by explosion. This site is in thevery heart of Moscow, and closely adjoins the Kremlin. Apart from theutter poverty of inventive ability displayed throughout the competition,I was concerned to notice that the designs were one and all of thatgasometer or packing-case type which may be suitable to factories andeven to tenements, but must inevitably have disfigured the centre ofMoscow beyond redemption if erected on this site--as, indeed, the Tsikskyscraper on the other side of the river has succeeded in doingalready. On my stating my apprehensions to the architects Stchousev andGrinberg, they both replied that, though the prizes would be allotted aspromised, it had been decided to use none of the designs on account ofthose very reasons I had put forward; that the authorities were nowcasting about for ideas of a different character, being convinced thatthe ferrocrete style of the present was entirely unsuited to the dignityof a great capital or to the Russian scene; and that one of the chiefconsiderations in the choice of a new design would be the use of colourand of the fine Ural stones, by which means alone could a specificallymodern building--which the People's Palace must and ought to be--avoiddiscord with its incomparable setting. There are those Russians, andplenty of them, who are sufficiently antiquated in their modes ofthought to regard such discord as the very purpose of their artisticefforts. These victims of Materialist novelty fail to distinguishbetween 'discord' and 'difference'. The first is mean. The second may bemean. But it can also imply a contrast between equals in artistic meritwhich provides the highest form of intellectual stimulus and contains initself a ground of harmony between the opposing monuments. Let the newarchitecture be different by all means. But first let it solve theproblem of differing like a man instead of like a naughty child. When,some years hence, the People's Palace is at last erected, it will bepossible to see how far Bolshevist taste has progressed towards thissolution, and how far the aesthetic genius of the country has begun torecover from the shocks of the last fifteen years.

IV. Moscow

Upon the intellectual and aesthetic background which presented itself tome, and which I have here tried to describe, I can now impose theincidents of a personal journey and the treasures it discovered.

The tourist goes to Spain to see Spain, or to Italy to see Italy; but toRussia he goes to see Bolshevism. I went to Russia to see Russia. When Isay this, people find it obscure and want to know whether the Five-YearPlan will succeed, as though I were an engineer or an economist to tellthem. The true intellectual, I know, is equal to such questions. Havingnever so much as glanced at a factory in his life, he commits himself tothe Intourist Travel Agency, spends three weeks gaping at belt-conveyorsinvented in Detroit, and returns to proclaim the dawn of humanhappiness. Meanwhile his opposite, the die-hard, sits at home broodingmadly over bugs in the butter. Behind this fog of enthusiasm andprejudice, the Russia that was, is, and shall be has disappeared fromthe world's view. Landscape, people, habits of mind and behaviour,buildings, works of art, the new with the old, but seen always inrelation to one another--it is these, rather than the arid spectacle ofSocialist construction, that should provide the traveller'sentertainment.

But the average traveller does not want entertainment. He is out forheaven or hell, Right or Wrong, and determined to find one or the other.Personally, I found Bolshevism even less attractive than the politicalsystems of other countries, chiefly because it is more obtrusive andmore chauvinistic, and because it regards the foreign visitor either asa subject for propaganda of the most tedious kind, or, if that does notevoke serious respose, as a heretic to be regarded with profoundsuspicion. Nevertheless, taken all in all, Russia can give much to thetraveller who wishes to enlarge his experience and knows how to do so byseeing things not as he wishes them to be, but as they are. Past,present, and future exhibit a continuous interaction, rapid andconscious as a film, whose novelty and scale are equalled in no otherpart of the contemporary world. I found little time for dislikes. Icould only observe and be thankful that such a spectacle had not beendenied me.

The proverbial traveller's tale has owed its greatest marvels to thepomps of outlandish potentates, to rituals of ceremony and mannersemployed to express the power of the one over the many. To-day, the mostfabulous of all tales relates the power of the many over the one, andthe absence, equally visible, not merely of pomps and ceremonies, but ofthe amenities hitherto enjoyed throughout the world by those born towealth or rewarded with it. Elsewhere, the social structure rises inpyramid form. In Russia the pyramid has been inverted: the apex, nowreduced to the intelligentsia, has its nose in the ground; while on itbalances precariously a crushing horde of manual workers, invested withthe austere but not always undecorative symbols of their newsovereignty. This gigantic base, now turned uppermost in mid-air whilethe technicians below are seeking to build it a stable foundation,itself rises in two steps. The topmost is that of the politicallyconscious, the urban proletariat; the lower, that of the politicallyangry, the peasants. But the topmost, though a minority, has control. Itprovided the initial force that made the great experiment possible; fromits ranks is recruited the Communist Party proper, which numbers abouttwo millions and forms an aristocracy of faith. This faith, in theultimate success of the experiment, inspires and then accomplishes thedecisions of the executives, central, federated, and provincial. Theorganism that was born in the faith of one man--the faith ofLenin--lives by faith; for material success is not yet established. Atpresent the faith is strong, and its fount is the city of Moscow.

Thither, as to a new Jerusalem, come pilgrims from all quarters of theearth--pilgrims to worship and pilgrims to inquire. It needs only afirst walk in solitude through the streets to realize that here is asociety whose like the world has never seen. Enter the Kitai Gorod, thebusiness and administrative quarter of the town, at five o'clock on awinter afternoon, when the offices are emptying. Streets arc crowded;trams packed, and hung outside with festoons of humanity. Everyone wearssnow-boots; the feet move with quick, short steps over the slipperyhummocks of frozen snow. Only when two groups start to cross the roadfrom opposite sides and collide in the middle beneath the nose of anoncoming tram does general confusion result.

This busy throng is too busy. Impervious to human contact, it jostlesalong in silence and with eyes fixed on the pavement, as though eachmolecule were seeking to be at some destination before its fellow. Thesauntering foreigner is aware of a strange isolation, a kind of negativehostility, emanating not from the individual, who is generally pleasantwhen addressed, but from the impersonal mass claiming power over him,the individual. Thus must the Christian have felt in Constantinopleduring the sixteenth century, when Islam was in the flush of arrogance.And this is the first thing in Russia that the foreigner must realize,if he is to see Russia truly: that unless he can subscribe not merely toa reasoned belief in its aims, but to an inspired faith in the doctrineand practice of Marxism as the one and only means of human redemption:unless he can find within himself not only an admiration for the courageof the Russian experiment and the hardships endured in the testing ofit, but a conviction that he himself would willingly assist in theadoption of it by the rest of the world: then, be he never so filledwith a love of humanity in general and of Russians in particular, he isnevertheless an enemy of Russia and, while in Russia, is among enemiesof himself. Intellectuals of other countries have deceived themselvesinto believing that there can be a meeting-ground half-way. This therecan never be. Sport, intellectual interests, humour, or the remarkableamiability induced by vodka may provide a sort of No-man's-land on towhich both sides sally out to bury their tenets and discover themselvesto be members of the same species. But the armistice must always betemporary. The countless books on Russia issued during the last two orthree years give a contrary impression. But it is precisely because thetours on which their authors embarked are simply a prolongation of thiskind of armistice over a given number of weeks that the impressionsconveyed by this literature are so radically misleading.

Before visiting Russia I had no preconception of this state of affairs;in fact, the crazy propaganda circulated by Conservative politicians haddisposed me to think that personal contact would soon overcome barrierswhich, I imagined, existed only in the Conservative imagination. To findthat those barriers existed also in the form of a religious fanaticismwhich demands unquestioning allegiance, and that the jargon of theRevolution, so grotesque from a distance, was actually the rubric of avital creed, came as something of a shock, and compelled a certainadmiration--for who in these days can afford to despise those who knowtheir own purpose and follow it? Furthermore, it exercised, mentally, atonic effect. To me, an Englishman born to every advantage ofinheritance and opportunity that the modern world can offer, it seemedhighly refreshing to be regarded, suddenly, as the offspring of apoisonous fungus. This is the joy of Bolshevism, from the traveller'spoint of view: it washes away the layers of complacence that accumulatethrough residence in the civilized--perhaps too civilized--capitals ofthe West. At the same time it stirs a new and combative faith in theultimate future of Western civilization and a resolution never tosacrifice individual integrity of thought in face of a hierarchy of Slavideologues who, having found a Saviour in the West as we found one inthe East, would plunge the world into a second Dark Ages that his gospelmay be put to the test.

Though stimulating to the mind, it might, you would think, prove draband depressing to the eye, this working-class state where all property,amenity, quality, and reward have been reduced to the level of thelowest common need. So it might, but for the permanent, historic Russiawhich bears the new organism like a puling infant at her breast. Motherand child are each other's foil. Beyond all this crying and spilling ofindustrial milk lies a grand country, loving things on a grand scale andadorned, first and foremost, with a grand capital. Not Rome nor Pariscan rival the Red Square of Moscow in the beauty of its shape, colour,and proportions. While as for the Kremlin itself, whose triangle ofcrenellated rose-red walls forms a circuit of a mile and a half, whosenineteen various but all unprecedented towers guard the palaces,churches, and barracks that shelter both the treasures of the past andthe Government of the present--the Kremlin, as a visible symbol ofRussian history, lies altogether outside previous visual experience, somagnificent is the scale on which colour and fantasy are presented.

Away from the famous monuments, the shopping streets are at first sightsomewhat depressing. But what they lack in ostentation they make up forby lacking also that semi-erotic, semi-snobbish vulgarity which isessential to the advertisement and sale of goods in the West. Those whoknew the town twenty years ago recall with regret the dashing troikas,the trays of flashing jewels, and the shopkeepers bowing their clientsto the threshold. To-day only the most important thoroughfares are evenproperly paved and asphalted. These have been scheduled as'shock-streets', whose avowed purpose is to impress foreigners with anillusion of prosperity; for the Russians, despite their chauvinism,suffer from the vanity of a débutante on the international stage. Thewindow displays, miraculously achieved out of the most utilitarianobjects, are fairly cheerful; and the crowds of purchasers in the bigstores certainly give no impression of positive indigence, though theirfaces wear a harassed look. The Torgsin shops are the great lure. Thesewere formerly reserved for foreigners, but have now been opened to suchRussians as can pay in foreign currency; while those who cannot, gapeenviously outside the window. Since Russians have been permitted toreceive money from friends or relations abroad, millions have pouredinto this organization to help the Government pay its foreign bills.These are the sole luxury shops, though the luxuries arc only such as anEnglish working-man would consider his due at the week-end holiday.

Except when I wanted a new pair of snow-boots or a tin of biscuits for ajourney, my interest in the Torgsin establishments was confined to theirantique departments. Fine icons, of course, were to be expected. But thedomestic taste of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries proved acomplete surprise. Instead of the florid plagiarisms of French eleganceproduced by Germany and Central Europe in those periods, Russianfurniture and objects of virtue display a personality and a sense ofquality as distinct as those of contemporary England. There is a greatlove of splendour, of colour and gilt, and a great use of ormolu andbronze in conjunction with rare and unfamiliar woods, such as Karelianbirch, and with those superb close-textured Ural stones of whichmalachite is at once the best known and least decorative. But a naturalinstinct for good design prevents this richness from degenerating intomere pretentiousness. Unfortunately, the management of Torgsin have thestrangest idea of current market values, and are so determined that noone shall purchase a bargain that it is impossible to purchase anythingat all. On the other hand, the second-hand bookshops, which abound,provide an inexhaustible hunting ground, where the lavish pre-warpublications of the St Petersburg presses on Russian, Byzantine, andCentral Asian art--unobtainable elsewhere--may be had for about aquarter of their market value. Rare English editions are sometimesfound, and in one shop I came on a series of magnificent aquatints of StPetersburg by Patterson which were worth £20 to £30 each before the warand were now for sale at £1: 10s.

Though it is impossible to meet Russians except on specific business,the Moscow day is pleasantly varied. The first difficulty is todetermine what day it is, since the names of our seven-day week havefallen into abeyance. You use the date, and when it happens to bedivisible by six, you realize that the day is a holiday and all businessis suspended. If, however, you succeed in remembering when the ChristianSunday falls, you can visit the private markets. The larger of these isthe Sukharevsky, generally known as the fleamarket--for obvious reasons.I went with the daughter of the Norwegian Minister, who displayed theprowess of a prize-fighter as we clawed our way through the mob. It wasliterally a question of clawing; for as the ground was of frozen snow,very uneven and covered with an inch of water, the upright position wasmade possible only by the absence of space in which to fall down. If,after one had hit two or three obstructionists sharply in the ribs, thecrowd happened to part, one either lurched forward on to one's enemy'sneck or fell grovelling at his feet. Half the crowd were vendors; theother half, purchasers. The vendors just stand, gazing into eternity,and holding their wares at shoulder level. And what wares! Torncamisoles, threadbare goloshes, soiled shirt collars were the subject ofprotracted negotiation. One man, as we passed, thrust a single spat atus. My companion told me she had heard--though she could not absolutelyvouch for it--that on one occasion a vendor had been seen whose onlycommodity was the ace of spades. Eventually we reached a row ofphotographers' booths. Though we shrank, in the interests of hygiene,from the scarlet-and-gold Cossack uniforms which sitters were in thehabit of donning, the back-cloth of an Italian garden, with a Zeppelinhovering above the cypresses, was not to be resisted. We posed ourselvesbefore an apparatus like a Heath Robinson incubator, and the result wasone which those who have been privileged to see it will not forget.

From the Sukharevsky we proceeded to the Arbat market, a smallerenclosure, where the dispossessed classes sell such treasures, icons,lace, and jewellery, as they have still retained. Here we met thedirector of the Antique department of Torgsin, who was also, like us, insearch of bargains. Thence we took a tram. This statement may seemuninteresting. But the action itself resembled the Eton wall-game. Afterseveral sorties had been repulsed with severe casualties, we boarded thedriver's platform, where only pregnant women are allowed. A little oldman then slammed the door on my companion's arm, who was thus pinnedlike Jane Douglas defending her king. 'Damn you,' I said in English,very angry, 'what do you want to do that to a woman for?' 'Now, now,'replied the offender, also in English, 'you mustn't talk like that,because I understand everything you say. Please forgive me. I am blind.'At this I was filled with remorse, and to make amends we saw the poorold man off the tram at his destination, and put him on his right road.

That evening I went to the Metropole, in bachelor company, to 'seelife'. Unlike India, where one cannot appear outside one's bedroom afterdark except in evening dress, this entailed changing back out of abourgeois dinner-jacket into a proletarian lounge-suit. On arrival atthe hotel, we proceeded into an apartment like the Crystal Palace. Atintervals over this gigantic hall stood enormous lamp-posts bearing eacha basket of two or three hundred naked electric-light bulbs. On a daisthirty Gipsies were exhibiting voice and leg with that artificial vervepeculiar to the modern cabaret. In the middle of the floor a fountainwas plashing monotonously into a piscine tenanted by gyrating carp,whose movements were obscured by a sudden movement of coloured lights.This coincided with the arrival of the dance band. In company with a fewothers I took the floor with a girl from the Leningrad ballet. Later wemoved to the bar, a stupendous perspective of bottles (and cyclamens inbows) which even Shanghai might envy. Behind this the barmaids of Renoirand Toulouse-Lautrec had come to life, so perfect of their type, sobewitchingly plump and peachlike, so masterfully coy, that they mighthave been trained for the part by Mr Cochran, made up by Mr Clarkson,and posed by Professor Reinhardt.

It was half-past three before we emerged into the silence of thesnow-covered streets and the biting cold air. Across the Opera square wedescried an izvostchik asleep on his sledge. He sat huddled in hisgreat blue coat, with icicles twinkling on his beard. We woke him,settled ourselves under the rug, turned the corner by the HistoricalMuseum, and galloped on to the Red Square. Above Lenin's tomb the redflag floated from a green dome over the rose-red Kremlin walls, symbolof the sleeping Muscovites' dominion. But they were not all asleep. Aswe reached the river a party of five came swaying up a side-street,playing a balalaika and singing softly to the night as though it wereJune and they nightingales.

* * * * *

My weeks in Moscow passed like a single day, so great was their variety.The resident foreigners proved a source of unfailing hospitality andentertainment--journalists rushing out to get their despatches censoredby the Foreign Office, diplomats engaged in a civilized existence oftheir own, disciples of Marx ploughing their way through Lenin'scommentaries on the Master, together with such isolated phenomena as MrChattopadaya, brother to Mrs Sarojini Naidu, complaining of the leniencydisplayed by the secret police towards its, and his, political enemies,or Albert Coates in his suite at the Metropole, lying in bed beneath arubber-tree and offering all comers a glass of Caucasian wine. Plays,operas, concerts, and ballets filled the evenings; I came to know thesubterranean labyrinths of the Bolshoy Theatre, with their refreshmentcounters for tea and cakes, as well as those of the Queen's Hall. In theaudiences, the women wore home-made frocks of a pattern two years old,over which, if pretending to elegance, they draped silk shawls. Amongthe men, the high boots and blouses that were the rule three years agohad been displaced by nondescript lounge-suits of dungaree cut and hueand by collar and tie. The proletariat is becoming bourgeois--but howbourgeois I realized only on learning that the sole industrialundertaking of the Five-Year Plan whose output is so far up to scheduleis the Leningrad spat factory.

One Saturday night we drove to the Dragomilovsky Church in the suburbs,where a crowd of two thousand had assembled to hear the singing. As anantidote, next day I sought the Anti-God Museum, where photographs ofSir Henri Deterding, the Pope, and an Oxford friend cranking up a lorryduring the General Strike, typified the forces of reaction. I visitedthe Kremlin, saw the superb collection of Elizabethan and Jacobeansilver, and an English coach of 1625 covered with velvet, the vestmentsbrought from Constantinople by the Metropolitan Photios in 1414, theivory throne that came from Italy with Sophia Palaeologina when sheespoused the Tsar Ivan III in 1467, the countless copes of Persian andBroussa velvets, and such masterpieces of Royal taste in the twentiethcentury as a platinum train in an Easter egg to commemorate the openingof the Trans-Siberian Railway, or a female leg in a high-heeled shoecarved out of agate and encircled with a diamond garter. I made my waythrough the churches and palaces, was shown the tiny apartments, alreadyfamiliar from their enlarged version on the stage, where Boris Godunovplayed with his children, and at length, as I passed between thesentries on my way out, all but collided with Kalinin, the President ofthe whole Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Finally, on my last morning in Moscow, a party assembled at the StateBank to see the Crown Jewels. Elaborate precautions were taken as wemarched through the vaults. Our coats were left behind. An armed guardtramped before and behind. Eventually we reached a small room where thewhole of the imperial regalia lay flashing in glass wall-cases or setout, for personal touch, on a table covered with a green cloth. Finejewels have always excited me. But to see the crown of Catherine, atrellised bulb set with five thousand matched diamonds, supported bybuttresses of matched pearls as big in diameter as a cigarette, andsurmounted by a ruby the size of a pigeon's egg--to see this object,which cost £10,400,000, within an inch of my nose, almost deprived me ofspeech. On recovering, I turned to the table and began fingering theinsignia of the Order of St Andrew, of which the collar, composed ofplatinum and small diamonds and made in Genoa in 1776, was of exquisitedesign and workmanship. The guide was droning monotonously in a corner;the guard outside continued to stroke its revolvers; when suddenly thelights fused and I found myself standing in total darkness with theAndreyev collar in my hand. I dropped it like a hot cinder. Angry voicessounded outside, the officials from the Foreign Office set up a cluckingof disturbed hens, and a roar of laughter went up from the visitors.After a quarter of an hour, during which I was much tempted to slip anear-ring or two into somebody else's pocket, the lights went on again.So demoralized by this time were the nerves of our guards and guidesthat, when I left before the others, to keep another appointment, I wasallowed to wander alone and at will through vaults filled with sacks ofmoney, till at last, unchallenged and unnoticed, I found my way out intothe street.

V. Leningrad

The difference between Moscow and Leningrad is the difference in visibleterms between the historic alternatives that have always confronted theRussian State: sufficiency from within or attraction from without. Atpresent the balance is in favour of the former, and Moscow is again thecapital. Leningrad stands as a memorial to the dominion of Western ideasin Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to a lastefflorescence of Anglophil liberalism, whose hope centred in the Dumaand which failed, when the autocracy evaporated in 1917, to establishdemocracy in its stead. This failure resulted in the establishment of anew autocracy, sustained by a new orthodoxy and a new phase of mentalisolation. While the Kremlin at Moscow exhales a paradoxical sympathywith this renewal of old tradition, Leningrad seems out of joint withBolshevism and wears a sad air, as though mourning for an interludewhich is past. Yet the town remains the most perfectly planned and mostimpressively classical city in Europe, and its beauty is a suprememonument to the individual genius of the Russian aesthetic.

It is customary to imagine the 'Palmyra of the North' as a purelyWestern city, planned in straight lines and executed in a variety ofclassical styles. Certainly the streets are mostly straight and thearchitectural styles borrowed from those of contemporary Europe. But theKremlin of Moscow was built largely by Italians, and is yet the veryessence of Russian imagination. Nor is Leningrad any less so. SinceRussians demand of architecture colour, ornament, and, above all, aprodigious scale, Western forms are made to serve these ends, heightenedby a kind of emphatic eccentricity which is often fantastic in themanner of John Martin or Rex Whistler, but never quaint in the manner ofNuremberg. Thus Leningrad is a city not of architectural units but ofarchitectural landscapes, and landscapes which, if so hackneyed adistinction may be applied to so unusual a subject, are romantic ratherthan formal, despite their groves of pillars and boscage of appliedtrophies. The merit of this immense ostentation is its patent honesty.The national megalomania, combined with a sure instinct for bold, frankdesign, leaves no room for pretty vulgarity. Its expression may beconscious, and have become, in latter years, allusive. But it is neverinhibited, like the Milan railway station. To walk about the streets ofLeningrad is to enjoy more good building, more general and moreimmediately apprehensible, than is provided by any of the world's largecapitals.

I cannot claim that my walks were more than casual, or that I devotedany particular attention to any particular building. Tired ofsight-seeing in Moscow, I looked forward to a few days' coma. Actually,the interlude proved too interesting to be comatose. It began with themost unpredictable event: the train arrived, not of course on time, butbefore it. Consequently, the car from the Consulate had not yet reachedthe station. We had recourse to an antique vehicle which, thoughpetrol-driven, stank like a growler and moved more slowly than anyhorse. Neither of us knew the address of the Consulate; but the driverthought he did, and dumped us on the threshold of a decayed hostelrycalled the Hotel d'Angleterre. A passer-by then said our destination wasopposite the Kazan Cathedral in the Nevsky Prospect. So thither wereturned, and had the pleasure of paying £4 for this circuitousadventure. The block where His Majesty's representative lives is ownedby the Finnish Government--a tolerable landlord, he said. The windowslook on to the cathedral, built in 1801, whose curving colonnadesproduce a miniature imitation of St Peter's piazza.

A little way below the Consulate, where the River Moika crosses theNevsky Prospect--or Prospect of the 25th of October, as it is nowcalled, in celebration of the 'November' Revolution--stands theStroganov Palace, designed by Rastrelli in 1752, whose baroque façadedisplays white pillars on a lilac background. At the opposite corner,across the river, I noticed another building of a rich delphinium blue,also picked out in white. These colours have lately been restored by thepresent municipal authorities. The commonest of them, and not the leastattractive, is the rich matt tawny yellow formerly employed on all theGovernment buildings and lately renovated to its original freshness. TheKremlin, I had thought, must always be the climax of Russian invention.But in Sakharov's Admiralty the voice of the Kremlin spoke again, in1823. This interminable building is more than a quarter of a mile inlength, and diversified with six porticoes, two of twelve pillars eachupholding highly decorated pediments, and four of six. In the middle isa massive archway, almost horseshoe in appearance, flanked by two groupson pedestals of women upholding globes, and surmounted by a tower 229feet high. This fantastic projection takes the form of a slender giltspike, supported on a dome and upholding a ship of appreciable size infull sail. The dome rises from a square Empire colonnade, on top ofwhich stand a row of statues. All the pillars, the panels of ornamentand friezes, the rustications of the base, the keystones of the windows,and the triglyphs of the cornices stand forth in white against thisgorgeous autumn yellow. No less enormous, and in the same colour, arethe buildings of the General Staff, placed in a shallow curve oppositethe Winter Palace; these have no tower, but are broken by a triumphalarch on which the ornament is in bronze. Across the huge Uritzky Square,where the massacre of 1905 took place, the Winter Palace itself appearsas though on a distant horizon. This, again, was built by Rastrelli, butis now a drab brown. I suspect he intended it to be pink.

With the exception of the cathedral of Esztergom in Hungary, that of StIsaac in Leningrad affords the sole example of the Empire style used forecclesiastical purposes on the grandest scale. Designed by Montferrandin 1817, its form is that of a cube whose four sides have each aportico. The pillars of these porticoes are monoliths of pink Olonetzgranite, rising from bronze bases and terminating in bronze Corinthiancapitals. The stone is grey, but a plain course of granite runs roundthe base on a level with the bottom of the pillars. At each corner ofthe parapet massive groups of bronze angels uphold stupendous torches,while gilt cupolas, supported on clusters of pink pillars, rise in pairsbehind the east and west pediments. Above all towers the central dome,330 feet high, resting on a tall drum encircled by a colonnade andtopped by a ring of statues. Though the detail is of the most rigidclassical kind, severe to the point of soullessness, the whole effect isone of extreme magnificence, which only Russia could have produced.

Sated with these overpowering monuments, we sought refuge in theHermitage, which must contain more square miles, worse hung, ofDomenichino and his like, than any gallery in the world. The Van Eyck'Annunciation', the Botticelli 'Adoration', the Rembrandt of a 'PolishNobleman', the Velazquez of 'Innocent III', and the 'Wharton' Van Dyckare all gone, and have not yet, so far as I know, reappeared on MrMellon's walls. But there are still forty Rembrandts left, which isenough for anyone, and was more than enough for me by the time I hadtottered through a league or two of Dutch interiors and turned withloathing from two false Grecos. Tucked away in a corner I found acurious little English gallery, where mediocre pictures by Morland,Wright of Derby, Lawrence, Raeburn, and Romney are interspersed withdecaying sideboards and broken chairs. These give a poor idea of ourculture in the early imperialist period. But I must say, in all justice,that here were none of those absurd notices which disfigure the Frenchcollection in Moscow.

Later in the day, accompanied by Professor Waldhauer and an armed guard,we saw the famous collection of early gold ornaments, which has no rivalin any museum. Part are Scythian, huge lobsterish beasts a foot long,whose design resembles nothing produced by any other race and whosematerial is almost butterlike in its glowing softness. Part have anIranian look, typified in bicephalous bracelets and familiar from ourown Oxus treasure. And part are Greek, from the Chersonese, of mostexquisite workmanship and design. From these we proceeded to thecollection of antique statuary, which has been much enriched from formerprivate collections. Professor Waldhauer begged us to notice a life-likeportrait bust of a Roman Jewess.

The following day we forsook art for history, starting with the Squareof the Victims of the Revolution, a former parade ground known as theChamp de Mars, in whose midst a granite quadrilateral surrounds thecommon grave of 180 Red heroes. On the granite is carved an inscriptionwritten by Lunacharsky in ballad Russian and said to be very moving.Hence we drove to the old British Embassy, now 'the Institute ofPolitical and Communistic Education in the name of Krupskaya'. Here,among the tattered brocades, I caused consternation by mistaking apicture of Kalinin, the President of the Union, for one of Trotsky, andasking, in a voice of assumed indignation, how they dared expose such anobject to their pupils. Crossing the Neva, we reached a small woodenchurch, built by Peter the Great, where a service was in progressattended by some fifty persons. Adjoining, our attention was pointed tothe most hideous yellow brick structure, in a garden, the palace of theballerina Kzeczinska, mistress to the Tsar. This house aroused popularfury at the time of the Revolution, and it was here that Lenin wasconducted from the station after his famous journey in the sealed train,and took up his headquarters. After passing a mosque with a fluted domeof blue tiles in the style of Samarcand, and looking in at the mansionof a former rubber merchant, now a rest-house, where a multitude ofdeserving workers were playing chess beneath a somewhat fortuitous bustof the Saviour, we came to the fortress of Peter and Paul.

This renowned symbol of Tsarist tyranny, so glibly coupled with theadjective grim, has externally the mellow appearance of an old colonialfort, while, inside, it resembles the courtyard of a country brewery. Anold-fashioned, rather dilapidated building, which it is forbidden toapproach with a camera, is the Mint of the Soviet Union. Inside thecathedral, whose gilt spire, 390 feet high, is one of the mostremarkable objects in Russia, are the imperial tombs; outside, a bluepavilion houses a carved boat known as the grandfather of the Russianfleet--a thing of sorry posterity in this generation. Behind the Mint, asort of rambling farm-house contains the famous prisons, now inhabitedby realistic wax models in attitudes of profound despair. I could nothelp inquiring when it would be possible to visit the 'cold chambers' ofthe present GPU under similar conditions. Not that I supposed thatRussia could, can, or ever will be governed without institutions of thiskind. But the hypocrisy of thus rigging out the evils of the pastbecause they were committed in the name of a crown instead of a hammerwas too irritating to be borne in silence. Thereafter our guide, a manof intelligence, ceased his futile rote of moral tales.

My companion had had a cousin attached to the old Embassy, who died in1916 and lies buried in the Lutheran cemetery on the Vassily Island.Since he was anxious to identify the grave and see what condition it wasin, we drove to this desolate necropolis lying in a semi-built districtof tenement houses. While the others sought information, I wanderedalone through a forest of graves covered with snow and overhung withdank trees. Now and then some old lady in black would trudge slowlypast, carrying a wreath of mauve flowers. Amid the lavish mausoleums ofthe past, with all their urns and pillars and funerary vulgarity, thenew graves told of a simpler, harder age. A heap of fresh cut firbranches, or a wooden stele painted scarlet and marked with the Sovietstar--these were the memorials of the present, and told also of thevirtues of their age. They reminded me of soldiers' graves and of thefact, too easily forgotten, that every Russian to-day is engaged in abattle for soul and body whose like we in Western Europe can hardlyconceive.

* * * * *

The streets and squares of Leningrad have not only good architecture,but poignant associations. In them were achieved the twin Revolutions ofMarch and October. The ideas which produced that upheaval germinated inthe previous century. But the history of its actual events dates fromthe night of 16 December by the Old Style, 1916, when the deputyPurishkevitch, drunk with his own heroism, proclaimed to a bewilderedpoliceman that Rasputin was dead and Russia saved.

Fifteen years and a fortnight later I was walking by the side of thenarrow, frozen River Moika, through the Mayfair of old St Petersburg.'Our house on the Moika,' writes Prince Yusupov in his account of theaffair, 'was chosen as the place where our project was to be carriedout.' And unchanged the house on the Moika still stands, a longperspective of yellow stucco with the ornament picked out in white.Above the entrance a coat-of-arms on the attic storey recalls themagnificence of the family of Yusupov-Sumarokov-Elston. But below this,two placards, bearing white letters on a red ground, inform thepasser-by that here may now be found the Club for Scientific Workers andthe Club for the Trade Union of Educationalists. The afternoon was sadand dark. Nevertheless, I experienced, as always in Russia, thatincommunicable exhilaration associated with a first sight of scenesoften and untruthfully imagined.

It happened that my guide was a member of one of the clubs now containedin the palace, and he thought that, though foreigners were not usuallyadmitted, an exception would be made in my case. A fat comrade,golden-haired and rubicund, greeted us with effusion, then galloped upthe main staircase to switch on the several hundred lights of thecentral chandelier. Dazzled by the blaze, we proceeded to the staterooms on the first floor, through double doors of mahogany set withormolu rosettes, through room after room, each richer than the last,furnished in the manner of palaces with silk hangings and gilt cupids,with tables of agate and porphyry, aubusson settees and chairs ofSpanish leather, and mantelpieces of porcelain and malachite. Throughthe small and the big ballrooms we went, through the picture gallery,and down into the miniature theatre, a rococo auditorium about fiftyfeet long, lined with three tiers of boxes. Prince Yusupov himself couldnot have exhibited more pride in his surroundings than did our guide,who begged us to note how the precious chairs were kept in dust-sheets.On reaching the theatre he jumped on the stage and let down adrop-curtain depicting the Yusupov country-house as though it were hisown.

Only two or three of the state rooms were occupied. In one of them wefound an artist who had just returned from a scientific expedition toKamchatka and was hanging a series of landscapes illustrating thebehaviour of volcanoes in those parts. Since he looked under-fed, Iasked if he hoped to sell many. 'Certainly not,' he replied. 'Theworkers must not be deprived of culture.' Half of the pictures would goto the institute that had financed the expedition; the other half wouldremain his. Then his dream was to hold an exhibition abroad.

On returning to the ground floor, a series of passages led us to thewinter garden, where the Scientific Workers and the Trade Union ofEducationalists were eating soup. Beyond this was a billiard-room copiedfrom the Alhambra, and beyond that the apartments of old Prince Yusupov,where they had recently discovered a safe under the floor. I asked aboutthe great hoard of treasure that had been found walled up in the palacethree or four years ago, and our guide replied that the whole place washoneycombed with secret passages. In fact, only the other day a workmanhad lurched into the building drunk and said he could show them some newones, which he himself had built. But next day, when he returned sober,he had been unable to find them after all.

The way now led through a series of locked doors and empty rooms, tillsuddenly we found ourselves in a small octagon about ten feet across andeight feet high. Each of the eight sides consisted of a wooden doorpainted white and inset with a broad panel of plate-glass, behind whichwas a curtain of frilled blue silk. One door led into a still smallerbathroom, beyond which was a no less diminutive bedroom. The walls ofboth these sinister little apartments were thickly padded. A second doorrevealed a plain square room with two windows looking out on the Moika.This was now used as a military class-room; there were posters on thewalls of tactical exercises, first-aid, and how to affix your gas-mask;a rifle on a stand was pointing into the street. A third door opened onto a cavern of darkness. But the other doors gave access to blank wallsonly, so that, once in the octagon, it was a matter of some minutes tofind which door provided a way out of it. In addition, I had noticedthat one of the previous doors leading to the octagon had had to becarefully propped open, as it was self-locking.

These were Prince Yusupov's private apartments, and here came, on thenight of 16 December, 1916, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch,Purishkevitch, and Dr Lazovert. The headquarters of the conspiracy, soto speak, were in the room looking out on to the Moika. Here Dr Lazovertplaced crystals of cyanide of potassium in the chocolate cakes and thewine-glasses. But the scene of action was across the octagon in thatblack void. Peering in, I saw a tiny spiral staircase, barely two feetwide. The guide asked me not to descend, as it was slippery anddangerous. But I persisted, and found a cellar divided by an arch andcovered in six inches of water; for a thaw had set in. From high up inthe wall came a glimmer of daylight. According to Prince Yusupov, thisdank apartment 'had originally formed part of the wine cellar. In daytime it was a rather dark and gloomy chamber, with a granite floor,walls faced with grey stone, and a low vaulted ceiling... I orderedsome antique furniture to be brought down from the store-room.' A largefire was lit. From the roof hung lanterns with coloured glass panes.Purishkevitch has also left an account of the proceedings. 'La chambreétait méconnaissable. Je l'ai vue pendant les travaux et je fus frappépar cette transformation complète d'une cave qui en un si bref délaiétait devenue une élégante bonbonnière.'

Prince Yusupov, borrowing the Grand Duke's car, went to fetch Rasputinand arrived back with his guest about one o'clock. 'The prospect ofinviting a man to my house with the intention of killing him horrifiedme,' observes the Prince in his book. 'I could not contemplate without ashudder the part which I should be called upon to play--that of a hostencompassing the death of his guest.' A nasty complacency lurks beneaththese protestations. But the conspirators had worked on one another'semotions till they had reached the state of Messianic exaltation whichaccounts for most things in Russian history. All Russians are savioursby vocation. These three, thinking to deliver the imperial throne of anunholy counsellor, merely precipitated the extinction of all they hopedto rescue.

On entering the house, host and guest crossed the octagon and descendedby the spiral staircase to the cellar. There Rasputin ate the cakes anddrank out of the poisoned glasses, while his host played the guitar andsang. Upstairs, in 'the study', Grand Duke and deputy waited. At lengththe Prince rushed in with the news that the poison would not work. Aftersome discussion, he took a revolver and returned to the cellar. Theothers followed and stood listening at the top of the stair. A reportwas heard and a thud. The Prince emerged; the deed was done.

After an interval he returned to look at the body. As he did so the facebegan to twitch and the eyes opened. Suddenly Rasputin jumped to hisfeet and seized the youth by the throat. Yusupov struggled, got away,and fled up the stairs, while the monk could be heard crawling up themtoo on all-fours. But instead of making for the octagon, Rasputinescaped by a door off the staircase into the courtyard of the palace.Purishkevitch ran out after him, to see the enormous figure lurchingacross the snow. 'Felix, Felix,' Rasputin was shouting, 'I shall tellthe Tsarina.'[10]Purishkevitch shot twice and the figure collapsed.Meanwhile the Prince was being sick in the bathroom. On learning thatPurishkevitch had succeeded after all, he seized a loaded stick and fellto battering the corpse in a savage frenzy. Purishkevitch was much movedby this spectacle. Then the police arrived, and they shot one of thebest dogs to give colour to the bloodstains and the other shots. Thedog's grave, said the guide, was still in the garden. We looked out. Butthe garden had been flooded, to make a skating-rink for the leisure ofScientific Workers and the Trade Union of Educationalists.

[Footnote 10]The authenticity of this exclamation, as recorded by Purishkevitch,is doubted by those familiar with Russian parlance. Rasputin, or anyoneelse for that matter, would normally have referred to the Empress as'Elizaveta Feodorovna'.

VI. Veliki Novgorod

Beneath the organized frenzy of Bolshevist Russia to be up and doing,the hospitable, easy-going country described by pre-war travellers is nolonger recognizable. Yet here and there, in places which have escapedthe industrial and political tornado of the last fifteen years, theromance of 'Holy Russia' lingers on. Such a place, it seemed to me, wasNovgorod. And its romance, even to one engrossed with the tradition ofConstantinople, was not wholly archaic or irrelevant to the present. ForRussian civilization was originally Byzantine; and from that source,given the conditions of the modern world, Bolshevism is the legitimatedescendant.

It was still dark at seven o'clock in the morning, and the air bitingcold, as the train steamed out on its way to Pskov, leaving me behind onNovgorod platform. When the sledge was found, we drove at a gallopthrough the sleeping streets, bounding over holes and ditches, till ablack line of crenellations cut across the dimly paling sky and markedthe Kremlin wall. An arch gave us entrance. Still at a gallop, weswerved to the right, clattered through a narrow tunnel, and drew up atthe old Archbishop's Palace, now a rest-home for scientists. Opposite, Irecognized the silhouette of St Sophia. Inside, a lamp-lit room awaitedus, furnished magnificently with a late Empire suite of Karelian birchmounted in ormolu and upholstered in silk brocade of white floralpattern on a crimson ground. The lavatory was clean; there was hot waterto shave with; I found a female comrade cleaning her teeth over thewash-basin. For breakfast came coffee boiled with milk and sugar, brownbread of the Hovis type, fresh butter, and cold cabbage-pie. As the dawncrept in at the windows we could see the leaden onions and golden helmetof St Sophia, static and impervious behind a curtain of gently fallingsnowflakes. Against the creamy walls of the cathedral, a line of lowbare trees stood out from the dead white snow with feathery precision,like the skeletons of pressed ferns. As in the twentieth century, so itmust have looked in the eleventh. I was reminded of the white paint andformal architectural backgrounds that appear in icons of the Novgorodschool; and was saying so to my guide when the proprietress came in withregistration forms. My passport? I had left it behind. She pretendedconsternation, and, foreseeing an argument, I gave her my Englishdriver's licence and went out for a walk, leaving the matter to resolveitself, which it did.

Veliki Novgorod is so called to distinguish it from the parvenu NijniNovgorod. In the old days, so revered was this capital of one of thefirst Russian city-states that schoolboys were taught to say 'GaspadeenVeliki Novgorod--Sir Great Novgorod'. Towns in Russia that date frombefore the Tartar invasion of the thirteenth century and retain anythingof their original character are comparatively few. Novgorod is the chiefof them and resembles in size and charm an English cathedral city suchas Salisbury, the centre of a large agricultural district and builtround a Kremlin instead of a close. As a respite from the nervoustension of Moscow and Leningrad, from that scarifying politicalexcursion on which the whole nation is embarked and whose whither nopassenger can foresee, the memory of those two days spent in climbingabout the oldest churches in Russia stand out like a month's holiday ina year of worry. When I asked our boy sledge-driver which of the twoCommunist youth organizations he belonged to, the Komsomols (scouts) orthe Pioneers, and he replied with a contemptuous 'Neither!' my contentoverflowed. I had found a being indifferent to his own regeneration, andthe world seemed real again. The officials responsible for thepreservation of the monuments and paintings were evidently delightedthat a foreigner should witness the scholarly care bestowed on them. Sofew bothered to come--only about two or three a year. Let me only saywhat I wanted to see and facilities would be granted. It was a pleasantchange from the endless restrictions and formalities that harass thetraveller elsewhere.

My first visit was to St Sophia, built between 1045 and 1052 in a stylederived from Constantinople, but greatly heightened, and strengthenedwith massive piers in place of the slender pillars habitually used bythe Greeks. The frescoes of the interior were the work of a centurylater, but have been twice restored, in 1838 and 1893, so that nothingremains in its original state but a dull fragment of Constantine andHelena. The most famous ornaments of the church are its bronze doors,presumably dating from the twelfth century. One pair, damascened andmuch polished, resemble the Byzantine doors of this date; though thedouble crosses rising from floriated bases seem to show Armenianinfluence. The other pair, said to have been brought from Kherson,display a series of reliefs whose iconography and style are of Germaninspiration. These have Latin inscriptions. My attention was alsopointed to the walls of the bema, which are decorated with patterns ofcoloured stone and glass faience arranged in the fashion of opusalexandrinum. Built into the walls have been discovered a number oflarge clay jars, which were placed there to give resonance to thechanting.

A dark winding staircase and a succession of seven locked doors, each ofwhich necessitated a great deal of fumbling, argument, and lighting oftapers, led to the Treasury, whose chief objects were brought out oftheir glass cases for me to examine. The first was a domed tabernacle ofsilver-gilt, eighteen inches high without its cross, which was added inthe seventeenth century. The dome is supported on six nielloed pillars.Each of the six arches thus formed is closed by double doors, which bearreliefs of the twelve apostles. The fine workmanship of these reliefsdisplays a close Byzantine influence; likewise that of the sixmedallions on the dome. But the inscriptions, though Greek, areilliterate; and the filigree panels above the doors have an Orientalcharacter, seemingly Armenian or Caucasian. Next followed a couple ofmassive silver-gilt vases, about ten inches high, and decorated withfigures and vine arabesques in coarser relief. These, according to thecurator, are the earliest examples of purely Russian metalwork inexistence, and were made at Novgorod in the twelfth century under Greekinfluence. Round the rim of each runs a Biblical quotation; round thebase, a legend ascribing the ownership of one vase to 'Petrov and hiswife Barbara', and of the other to 'Petrov and his wife Mary'. Thelettering is Slavonic. A fine Byzantine cross, about two feet high andplated with silver-gilt worked in chevron pattern, was also produced.The medallions on the three arms and at their junction were added in theseventeenth century and probably replaced others of enamel. Finally camean ivory casket of the same date and style, and exhibiting the sameborders of rosettes and panels of dancing cupids as the Veroli casket inthe South Kensington Museum. I had begun to speculate as to whether thismight not have influenced the design of the vases just described, whenmy notice was drawn to a huge gold lock, bearing the cipher of a certainGrand Duke of Holstein. This Grand Duke owed his throne to the EmpressElizabeth; and it is supposed that at a meeting that took place betweenthem in Finland he presented it to her, and that she left it at Novgorodon her way back to the capital. Thus it did not find its place among theother Byzantine treasures of the cathedral till the middle of theeighteenth century.

Scattered about the villages outside Novgorod are a series of smallchurches of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. These are humblerin style and decoration than their contemporaries in the Kiev andVladimir districts--for Novgorod was only a merchant republic. But theirbox-like severity, the preponderance of height over their otherdimensions, and their massive wall surfaces pierced by the fewest andsmallest of windows, express their function as outposts of culture andcivilization in the hostile north and give them an individual charm andinterest. The best known of them is that of the Saviour at Nereditsa,built in 1198 and preserving unrestored its frescoes of the same date.

To Nereditsa, therefore, which is five versts from Novgorod, I said Imust go. The sledge was waiting; but where Nereditsa was our youthfuldriver could not say. A map was found, and with its aid we made our waythrough the town, skidded down a steep bank, and found ourselves on theice of the great River Volhov, among a colony of stranded paddlesteamers. A wind cold as cutting steel stung the grey horse to a freshgallop. We skimmed along the ice as though it had been the track atBrooklands, crouching sideways under the rug with our backs to thedriving snow. In the opposite direction came other sledges, of heavierbuild, trailing in from the surrounding villages a-heap with cabbagesand straw. At one point a line of stone piers forty feet high crossedthe river, gaunt and threatening in the snowscape. This was the newrailway bridge--though as yet there was neither railway nor bridge. Onthe farther bank, a cluster of monastery domes broke the verge of adistant forest which had once, said the driver, been the estate of theDuchess Orlova. At length the church itself came in view, perched on aknoll and overtopped by an immense bulbosity. By its side stood a littlebell-tower with conical roof. We struck uphill from the river, over thefields, and came to a village whose wooden houses were hung withfishing-nets and lobster-pots. Here we found the keeper of the church,an old fellow in a grey beard, who said that he and the otherinhabitants of Nereditsa lived on an island like the English. Inside thechurch, scaffolding led right up into the cupola. If this failed toimprove the architectural effect, it did at least enable the visitor toexamine this most famous of the old Russian fresco-cycles at closequarters and in such comfort as the cold permitted. This was a pleasantchange from the neck-breaking, hour-long scrutinies to which I havegrown accustomed in the monasteries of Mount Athos. The character of thepaintings resembled that of the 'popular' school which obtained in theLevant and South Italy up till the thirteenth century. It was curious tothink that these frescoes, and I who was regarding them, so to speak,through Levantine eyes, were now little more than a hundred miles fromthe Gulf of Finland.

That evening my guide and I went to an entertainment. There was a dancebetween a peasant girl and her beau from the town, a flautist, and anideological dialogue during which a professor of comic aspect raised ageneral laugh by saying that science had nothing to do with politics.For the next day we had planned a longer expedition; and when morningcame, instead of the old grey, a dark brown mare stood harnessed to thesledge. This was a new purchase of the proprietress, who was in a greatfuss, crooning 'Princessa! Princessa!' as she stroked the creature'snose, and admonishing the driver, this time a fully grown man, to takecare of her. But indeed she was worthy of the fuss; we trotted down thestreet as fast as the grey had galloped, threading our way in and out ofthe other sledges, while the passers-by stopped to look. Our first stopwas the Antoniev monastery, where a service was in progress, conductedby a very old priest in a gold cope. The candles were lit; thecongregation numbered about a dozen. The old priest tottered behind theiconostasis to find the keys of an older church, in which a fewfragments of uninteresting painting were still visible. Thence wecantered along an embanked road, swept by polar blasts, till we came tothe village of Volotovo.

I was still in search of frescoes, and our first business was to findthe keeper of the church. The end house, we had been told. But we droveto the wrong end, and then back again, along the broad space between thedouble rows of wooden houses, each of which was banked with hay on oneside to keep out the prevailing wind. In every garden stood tall poles,to whose tops nesting-boxes were fixed. On reaching the right house, wefound only two women at home, who, though busy with household duties andgaping at the foreigner's apparition, begged us to enter. This we did,through the wood-shed, and sat in the kitchen-parlour. In one corner, bythe window, a lamp was burning before a group of icons. A row of heavycoats hung on pegs near the stove, at which one of the women continuedher making of meat pies. I examined an apparatus, painted with roses andsteadied by the foot, for spinning yarn, while the other woman searchedfor the keys. When ready, she seated herself on my knee in the sledge,and we drove up to the church, whose little pathway, graveyard, andsurrounding trees reminded me of England. Inside was anotherscaffolding, which I rather regretted, since, unlike Nereditsa, servicesare still held here. On making use of it, I regretted it still more; foras I stood perched in the drum of the cupola, seventy feet from thestone floor and chattering with cold, the whole structure began to rock.I made hurriedly for earth, but was not half-way down when a weird,unaccountable rumble began to sound, distant at first, then growingnearer and louder, till, as I reached the ground, a deafening roar washeard right overhead. I rushed from the door and looked up. Out of theleaden sky swooped four aeroplanes, painted dark military grey with thered star beneath each wing, and so low that I could see their pilots. Ina flash they were away, sailing over the shallow valley beyond thevillage and up into the sky again. I turned to the country church, built580 years ago, to the dark firs shivering in the wind, and to the rowsof crosses that might have moved some Russian Gray to write anotherelegy. I watched the armed power of the Soviet Union resolve intofour specks and disappear. The old and the new Russia, changing yetunchanged... Snow was falling again, through the silent trees, pilingthe graves a little higher.

In the town of Novgorod itself are several small churches dating fromthe fourteenth century, of which those named after St TheodoreStratilates and the Transfiguration particularly attracted my curiosity.The architecture of these two represents a strange fusion of Greek andGerman influences. While both are square in plan and develop a Byzantineapse to the east, each wall of each square finishes in a trianglesupporting the eaves of a double-sloped roof in the Western manner. Fromthe midst of the roof, on the other hand, at the intersection of itsfour ridges, rises a Byzantine cupola. Inside, the vaults and arches ofthe Greek tradition persist unaltered.

To the church of St Theodore Stratilates I gained access with nodifficulty and was able to study its paintings at my leisure. That ofthe Transfiguration offered an unexpected rebuff. The door provingunlocked, I pushed it open, and was about to enter the nave, when like atigress from her lair sprang a female comrade in a scarlet beret andbanged it in my face. After a minute or two, I tried again. Again themaenad sprang; but this time I had implanted knee and boot on thethreshold, and she could only remain there, chattering and snarling,while I examined her bulbous unlovable visage and wondered, not thatabortion had been legalized in Russia, but that the occasion for itshould ever arise. At length, seeing that my strength was greater thanhers and that I was gradually edging my way in, she called for help andwas joined by a bearded Magog, whose added weight nearly broke my thighand forced me to retire. By now I too was in a rage; for it happenedthat I wished to see the frescoes in this church above all others.Jumping into the sledge, I galloped to the office of the MuseumCommittee to protest. With genuine regret they told me that this church,alone of all those in the district, was not under their control, but wasbeing restored by orders direct from Moscow. They were thereforepowerless to help me. Despite their courtesy, it was some time beforethe nausea engendered by contact with so frightful a variant of thehuman species had altogether evaporated.

I learned afterwards, by a devious means and under pledge not to revealthe teller, that the work of 'restoration' then being pursued by themaenad and her companion consisted in stripping the gold off theiconostasis or altar-screen. Hence their reluctance to allow a foreignerinside. How well this reluctance was justified only appeared six monthslater. Nothing of course could have been more sensible than to dismantlethe iconostasis, if the church was eventually to be restored andmaintained primarily on account of its frescoes--as was in fact thecase; for the Orthodox altar-screen, being very high, necessarilyobscures many of the most important compositions in Orthodoxiconography. I happened, however, to relate the story of my adventureand its cause to various compatriots, more by way of making conversationabout my journey than with any other purpose. Consider my surprisetherefore, when in the following autumn I met a friend in thehunting-field who had lately returned from diplomatic service in Cairo,and who told me the last news he had had of me was my 'report that thedesecration of churches was still continuing in the Novgorod district'.I then understood what the maenad had been instructed to understand, andwhy every foreigner of independent movement in Russia is regarded as apotential agent of capitalist propaganda.

The bill at the Archbishop's Palace was 225 roubles for two of us fortwo days, of which food accounted for eighty, horses for seventy, and'organization' for twenty-five. We had just repudiated the last item,and the proprietress had just opened some tinned sturgeon as apeace-offering, when a man rushed in to say that the train was leavingin twenty minutes, an hour earlier than he had expected. Two sledgeswere waiting. Behind Princessa we galloped once more through the darkstreets, while the luggage followed with the grey and the populacescattered as though the Apocalypse were upon them. As the train puffedout of the station, it came to me, as it comes to me now, that of allthe places in Russia I shall most wish to revisit, the chief is VelikiNovgorod.

VII. Early Russian Painting

One result of my visit to Novgorod was that, on returning to Moscow, Iread a paper to an assembly of professors at the offices of VOKS, theorganization which corresponds in Russia to the Society for CulturalRelations in London. My temerity in so doing was only excused by thefact that in no other way could I meet those of my audience, such asProfessor Grabar, whom I particularly wanted to meet. Each sentence ofmy paper had to be translated into Russian by a lady interpreter with aheadache, whose knowledge of English was largely confined to engineeringtechnicalities. When I had finished, the chairman of the meetingexpressed a polite interest in all I had said, but regretted I had toldthe company nothing of the social effects of El Greco's art. To this Ireplied, with some asperity, that I was perfectly certain the companywere very glad, for once in their lives, to have had a respite fromsocial effects. The lady with the headache thought it inadvisable totranslate this remark. But those who understood English betrayed acynical pleasure in their laughter.

My paper dealt not only with El Greco but also with Russian art as aparallel offshoot of the Byzantine tradition. The adverse circumstancesattending its delivery deprived my arguments of what little force theymight have had in English. But enough of their meaning was apparent forseveral authorities on Russian art to express their dissent during thediscussion that followed. It is therefore with some diffidence that Ipresent the following remarks on such examples of early Russian paintingas time enabled me to see, both in Novgorod and Moscow. In doing so, Imay be forgiven for two reasons; first, because a previous acquaintancewith contemporary styles in Greece revealed that the development ofthose styles was paralleled in Russia with a closeness hithertounsuspected by historians of Russian art; and secondly, because thewhole subject of Russian painting has now been rendered so remote bypolitical barriers that any light on it, however myopic, must be welcometo some people.

The difference between Byzantine and Russian painting is noticeableenough from reproductions and from such icons as are or have beenavailable for study in Western Europe. I had always imagined it to be adifference between a parent art of intellectual and emotionalsignificance and a bastard craft of shallow peasant decoration. But theerror of this view was soon apparent. And so also were the causes thathad given rise to it. For Russian art is in truth less profound, andconcerned with a less abstruse intellectual goal, than that ofConstantinople. Its compositions therefore wear a shallow air inreproduction and in its lesser paintings, which is not only foreign butinferior to the Greek manner; they appear, under these circumstances, tobe preoccupied with mere patterns of colour or light and shade, patternsconceived in two dimensions only, whose artistic meaning is scarcelydeeper than a patchwork quilt. To credit this second-hand effect is tomisjudge a great tradition. Early Russian painting is extrinsic incharacter because its appeal is to the eye and fancy before the mind.But the appeal is made by means whose independent virtues deservecomparison on equal terms with those of the parent art. These means arethe infusion of Byzantine formalism with a native poetry which is aliento the logical Mediterranean; a capacity for placing exquisite andelaborate detail against positive, unfussed backgrounds; superb couragein the use of brilliant colours, of which a glowing white is not theleast remarkable; unerring taste in the juxtaposition of colours,whether in separate fields or closely interwoven; and finally, animpalpable translucency, born of snowscape and birch-tree and the broadsky of the plains. These qualities are subtle and elusive, and areeasily mistaken, in the hands of second-rate masters or in photographs,for a folk-ridden travesty of the original Greek models.

Russian art began with the formation of the city-states and the adoptionof Christianity by Vladimir, Prince of Kiev in 988. The chief monumentof this early period is the cycle of mosaics in the cathedral at Kiev,which dates from the middle of the eleventh century. This is purelyGreek. But the mosaics in the monastery of St Michael, also at Kiev, anddating from the twelfth century, are thought to be the work of Russianartists. These are remarkable mainly for their ineptitude, and beyond awhite background display no specifically Russian characteristics. Thefrescoes which adorn the staircase of the cathedral at Kiev and datefrom the eleventh century have been so restored that their interest isentirely historical. Those which have survived in the church of St Cyrilat Kiev are scarcely more than line drawings in red and white, andincompetent at that. In the Cathedral at Novgorod, decorated in theeleventh century, only a single fragment depicting Constantine andHelena has escaped restoration. This exhibits a crude incapacity whichrepudiates any tradition whatsoever and lacks even the primitive forceof the untutored savage.

It is with the frescoes of Starya Ladoga and of St Demetrius at Vladimir(c. 1200) that the study of Russian painting should begin. These,unfortunately, I could not see. My survey must start in the Novgoroddistrict in 1198. In that year was initiated the cycle of frescoes thatstill adorns the church of the Transfiguration in the village ofNereditsa, near Novgorod.

Six years later Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade. But the LatinEmpire proved only an interlude, and the vitality of Byzantine culturepersisted, and even gained new strength, as the Greek Empire shrank toits final end through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. To thisvitality the mosaics of the Kahrieh and the frescoes of Mistra and MountAthos are a sufficient witness. From it sprang the prime inspiration ofthe Novgorod artists in the fourteenth century.

The child had thus reached manhood ere the parent fell into dotage, andfrom the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries Russian and Byzantinepainting followed two separate roads of artistic discovery, graduallydiverging, yet subject to the same changes of style, and permitting,therefore, classification into the same schools. At length, about 1410,Russia produced a great individual painter in the person of Roublev,who, though deriving immediately from the contemporary Greek source,crystallized the hitherto fluid idiosyncrasies peculiar to Russianpainting into an authoritative national school. The divergence fromConstantinople was completed, and by 1453, when that city was taken bythe Turks, the tutelary function of Greek art in Russia had becomesuperfluous. The full-fledged Cretan school, which followed, has noimportant counterpart in the main stream of Russian art. It produced ElGreco. And he went West instead.

It was not until after the Iconoclast controversy of the ninth centurythat Byzantine art developed its official character of stereotypediconography and gorgeous colour. The calculated splendour thus producedwas symbolic of the abundant wealth and high civilization pertaining toa great capital. At the same time, during the Macedonian and Comnenandynasties, other influences were at work in the provinces, which weredestined to infuse the impersonal magnificence of the official art withqualities more human and sympathetic. These influences, particularly inAsia Minor, found expression in a school of illustrators descended fromthe Syrian miniaturists of pre-Iconoclastic times, whose chief concernwas a lively realism adapted to the instruction of the illiteratethrough the medium of sacred pictures. Thus the figures are short andstumpy, but active, the heads are large, the mouths frown, and the facesin general retain that Hellenistic look of perpetual surprise whichresults from the raised eyebrows, staring pupils and white eyeballs ofthe Fayum portraits. The style produced by this tradition in the tenthand eleventh centuries has been called the Cappadocian, from the factthat its frescoes have chiefly survived in rock-cut churches to thesouth-west of the Euphrates.

In the twelfth century the influence of this style, while unwelcome inConstantinople, spread to Italy; and it also spread to Russia, as thefrescoes of Nereditsa clearly show. Both in iconography and in thevigorous action of the persons depicted, these paintings closelyresemble the mosaics in the monastery church of St Luke of Stiris, nearDelphi, which were done in the eleventh and twelfth century and which inthemselves betray a marked affinity with the work of the popularillustrators. In some scenes, particularly that of the Crucifixion, theNereditsa frescoes seem even more directly connected with thosediscovered by Père de Jerphanion in Cappadocia itself. Their colour issombre, emphatic, and opaque; there is no prophecy of the luminosity tocome. Cold blues, ochre, red, and pink are the outstanding tints. Theportrait of the founder, who holds the church in his hand, shows abearded countenance of scowling melancholy in ochre and brown,surmounted by a fur-edged cap and finished with a long red robe ofByzantine patterned silk, which contrasts with a dark blue background.The general effect of the whole decoration is one of gloomy tensity andearnestness belonging to the North. Beyond this, there is little signyet of native invention. Nevertheless, the inscriptions, though mainlyin Greek, are interspersed with Slavonic letters, from which it ispossible to infer that the artist was a Russian.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Russia was overwhelmed by theMongols; and it is not until the last half of the fourteenth thatfurther cycles of frescoes are available to gauge the growth of acultural tradition. In Greece, meanwhile, the influence of the popularillustrators had invaded the capital and had there joined forces withthe wave of mysticism and insistence on the beauty of suffering thatsubmerged the thought of the Empire in its last days and was theprecursor, in Italy, of St Francis, Giotto, and the Renascence. Theresult was not, as at St Luke's of Stiris, the introduction of a crudedramatic convention; it now took the form of refining, elaborating andhumanizing the various iconographic formulas in the light of newemotions. With emphasis on pain came also a new joy: the details ofnature were better observed and utilized; colour grows brighter and moreluminous. Two schools developed. The earlier, known as the Macedonian,worked on Mount Athos at the beginning of the fourteenth century, whereits cycles may still be seen, not seriously restored, in the monasteryof Vatopedi and the church of the Protaton at Caryes. The later and morejoyous, dating from the last half of the fourteenth century and firstdecades of the fifteenth, flourished at Mistra in the Peloponnese, whereits works survive chiefly in the churches of the Peribleptos and thePantanassa.

The Macedonian school is represented in Russia by the paintings in thechurch of the Dormition at Volotovo, near Novgorod, which date from theyear 1363. These paintings make it equally clear that a native traditionof inquiring mind and free invention was by now already established.

The most immediately noticeable resemblance between the Volotovo cycleand those of the Macedonian school on Mount Athos lies in the markedfacial types which are common to both and which most particularlydistinguish the Macedonian school from those that came after and beforeit. Prophets and Patriarchs, such as the David and Job at Volotovo, havetight woolly curls and beards, both white; they frown furiously; theirheads project beyond their bodies, while their foreheads overhang andtheir jaws are tightly compressed, so that the lower part of the face issmall in comparison with the upper. Christ too remains unaltered: in theDouble Communion at Volotovo, his equally frowning face, fringed by alonger but still compact black beard, is almost identical with that ofhis appearances in the Protaton at Caryes (c. 1310). The beardlessfaces are also similar, particularly those of the women, with theirwell-rounded, highly modelled chins and air of melancholyresignation--features which indicate, in the Byzantine sphere, areversion to the forms of Antiquity. These faces are boldly constructedwith broad impressionistic sweeps. But in the Russian church,impressionism has extended its field; even the faces of the hieraticEarly Fathers such as St Clement, though singularly reminiscent of theirfellows in the Protaton, have exchanged the ancient convention for oneless rigid and angular. In general, however, the sympathy these frescoesexhale is due to Greek inspiration and grows most poignant, as atVatopedi on Mount Athos, in the Crucifixion, a scene of vivid humanityand sorrow. The choice of scenes and their arrangement also tallies withthose of contemporary Greece. If the actual method of coloration isRussian, in its broad zones, light touch, and lack of all save essentialinterruptions, the colours themselves are seen to be mainly Greek. Fromthe Macedonian school have come the prevailing flat mauve, dirty russetpink, and cold blue. Yet here and there are signs of a new spring, as inthe beryl-green draperies of the women in the Raising of Lazarus. Thisderives, not from native sources, but from Mistra.

The native genius has none the less found its own means of expression.Though the scheme of the whole Volotovo cycle is traditional, theiconography of many individual scenes shows a new departure and a firstrealization, in art, of Russian poetry and fancy. The figures areethereal and elongated beyond even the Athonite canon. In movement, anairy grace has succeeded to hieratic pose and crude gesture. Indeed,something of the ballet has come to reawaken these ancient, sacredpersons. In the scene of the Annunciation, a bending willowy angel,whose voluminous drapery and still poised wings bespeak the imminence offlight, beckons with tiny hand to a Virgin who shrinks within herself asa Danilova before the advances of a Lifar. The Virgin, moreover, hasbeen recostumed; her mantle forms a kind of shepherd's hat with cornerson each temple. In the theme of the Maries of the Tomb, theiconography has been radically altered; for though the usual angel isseated on the open lid, Christ is seen escaping, and the Maries, insteadof standing upright, are prostrated before him, while agitated soldiersappear in the background. The Ascension, to a Byzantinist ofconservative taste, is frankly extraordinary. There is no attempt atsymmetry. Apostles and Virgin dart hither and thither in choreographicriot, while tongues of lightning escape from whirling clouds in a cornerof the sky.

In addition to the subjects prescribed by Orthodox usage, the church atVolotovo contains four sketches of partly historical and partlyartistic, but intrinsically Russian, interest. The first depicts thechurch itself, in process of dedication, and shows that from the time itwas built until now not a stone of it has changed. The second portrays abanquet offered to a company of fantastically dressed notables in acontemporary monastery, one of whose white-robed monks serves the dishesfrom a side-table. The other two are portraits of Moses and Alexis,archbishops of Novgorod in the fourteenth century. These are renderedalmost wholly in line and bear no relation to existing formulas, Greekor otherwise. Moses, it appears, died in 1359. But Alexis was archbishopwhen the church was built. His portrait is freer than the other; we seea true Slav face with sparse beard, high cheek-bones, and the contour ofa peasant doll. This is an example of genuine characterization,evidently done from life with the purpose of creating a likeness ratherthan the symbol of a likeness. It is the first example of its kind inRussian art, and one which Greek painting, even in its post-Conquestphase, never attained to.

In 1910 and 1912 two events of great archaeological importance occurredin Novgorod. Frescoes were found under whitewash, first in the church ofSt Theodore Stratilates, then in that of the Transfiguration. The formerwere wholly uncovered. Of the latter, only the paintings in the cupolaare as yet visible. But it is hoped that eventually the whole serieswill be revealed intact.

The significance of these discoveries lies in the recorded fact that thefrescoes in the church of the Transfiguration were painted in 1379 by aGreek name Theophanes, who is known in Russia as 'the Greek', just asDomenicos Theotocopoulos is known in Spain. The lives of these twoartists, Greeks in exile both, offer curious parallels. Both were knownas philosophers. Both enjoyed the fame which attaches to persons ofstrong character and artistic audacity. Theophanes, it is recorded,disdained the hieratic manuals and their iconographic formulas. Hepainted from personal inspiration or from nature, and did a view ofMoscow on a wall just as Theotocopoulos did views of Toledo. One of thechronicles of the time preserves a miniature of him at work, surroundedby a gaping crowd. In 1405 he left Novgorod for Moscow, where hedecorated various churches. Among these was that of the Annunciation inthe Kremlin. He worked here in conjunction with Roublev, who must thus,at an early stage of his career, have come under the direct personalinfluence of a Byzantine master.

The little of Theophanes' work yet visible I was unable to see, owing tothe fury of the maenad in charge of the church which contained it. ButProfessor Anisimov, before he suffered the fate reserved for morerebellious intellectuals under the Tsar's rule and was despatched to anunknown destination in Siberia, delivered his opinion that the frescoesin the church of St Theodore Stratilates, which date from about 1370,may also be regarded with reasonable probability as the work of thisRussian Greco. This supposition is reinforced by the fact that theinscriptions are all in Greek, while those at Nereditsa and Volotovo areinterspersed with Cyrillic characters. It can only be finally confirmed,however, when the restoration of the church of the Transfiguration hasbeen completed.

Directly I entered the church of St Theodore Stratilates, I exclaimed tomyself, without being aware of the above facts, 'Here is Byzantium'; andcertainly these paintings, with their accomplished technique and genuineair of the Greek Renascence, may rank with those of Mistra itself. Yetdespite the immanence of Byzantine inspiration, the Russian genius ofthe dance is present in them also. Here, in fact, for the first and lasttime before the final divergence, the fusion of this genius with theMediterranean capacity for intellectual, three-dimensional design hasbeen fully achieved.

The colours, which are impregnated with that impalpable suggestion ofinterior light proper to the Byzantine masterpiece, derive from the samepalette as those in the Peribleptos at Mistra (late fourteenth century).Their range is the spectrum of a pearl--pink, bistre, wine-red,love-in-the-mist blue, a bright grey, and white. The last two, inconjunction, foreshadow the development of the later Cretan school andits ultimate flower, El Greco. The finest composition of the cycle isthe Descent into Hell, in the western apse. Here the mobile Christ,with hands outstretched in expansive gesture, is framed, but for oneretarded foot, in a circular aura of two greys enclosing a whiteground--the triple aura of Hezychast speculation. On either side of himthose of the Old Dispensation rise from their tombs in supplication;while above the aura clustered angels uplift the cross. If such a schemelacks precedent in purely Greek iconography, the interwoven symmetry andrhythms of the design are nevertheless products of a Greek mind. Thedelicate heightening of flesh-contours with imperceptible touches ofwhite is also very Greek, particularly when applied to the bulges of theforeheads, down the noses, and beneath the eyes, in the manner of themosaicist. This prevails throughout the church. In the upper zone of thecupola, the orb-holding angels, clad in royal vestments and alternatingwith six-winged cherubims, recall the art of the Greek court in thegolden age. At the same time, the free and graceful movements of thewhite-robed soldiers on the Road to Calvary, combined with anarchitectural background in Western perspective, indicate the growth ofa new humanism, coincident with that of Italy, which reached its climaxin the Pantanassa at Mistra in 1428. The frescoes of St TheodoreStratilates, in fact, represent an interlude between the Peribleptos andthe Pantanassa, and in some respects between the Mistra and Cretanschools, an interlude whose monuments, in Greece itself, are lacking.Meanwhile, the development of the Russian tradition continues. Thecompositions are freer, the figures less static, than those of Greece;and in the colours there lurks, beside their intrinsic light, a hint ofthat opalescent shimmer whose full glory was reserved for Roublev infour decades' time.

In addition to the frescoes described above, historical evidencesuggests a possibility that the scene of the Dormition painted on theback of the Donskaya Virgin may also be the work of Theophanes Greco.This icon is now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Having examined theback of it at some length, I found it difficult to convert thepossibility into probability. But there exist also two other and largericons, about five feet square as far as I remember, which the mostrecent Russian authorities are disposed to ascribe to Theophanes. One,representing the Crucifixion, is in the museum at Novgorod.Unfortunately it was late in the afternoon when I got there, and therewas little time for detailed attention; I noticed only a chocolate robewhose folds were illumined with high-lights of pale azure. The other,representing the Transfiguration, is now in the Tretyakov Gallery inMoscow, whose curator, Professor Nikrasiev, expressed a strong belief inits ascription to the Greek. Its colours exhibited those shattering,angular contrasts and fierce lightning effects which are usuallyassociated, in Greece, with the Cretan school--the same azure lightsapplied to robes of rusty red and honey yellow; red lights toolive-green; slate to wine-pink; while the Christ himself, etched ingold, is framed by an aura of light grey-blue, gold, and white.Professor Nikrasiev, before giving his opinion, asked mine; I dated theicon from the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries. But now it isevident, after seeing the paintings of St Theodore Stratilates, that theCretan style, which reached its height at the beginning of the sixteenthcentury, had already begun to develop at the end of the fourteenth. Theicon of the Transfiguration may therefore be the work of Theophanes,and the colours common to both it and the paintings of Novgorod may havebeen subjected, on a panel designed for close inspection, to purposefulexaggeration. For the colours used, apart from their method ofapplication, are essentially the same in both. It was these colourswhich Roublev undoubtedly inherited, through his Greek master, from theshort-lived spring of the Byzantine Renascence, and which he now, in thefirst decade of the fifteenth century, put to a further use.

Andrew Roublev was a monk in the Andronievsky monastery in Moscow. Thefirst mention of him is in connection with Theophanes and the decorationof the church of the Annunciation. In 1408 he was at work in the churchof the Assumption at Vladimir. About 1410, it is thought, he painted thegreat icon of the Trinity for the monastery of that name at Sergievo,where it remained, until after the Revolution, in the iconostasis of themonastery cathedral. Little more is known of the life of Roublev, andnothing more of his work. Yet his influence changed the whole characterof Russian painting, and he attained a prodigious, almost legendary,fame in his own country. In 1551 a church council, condemninginnovations in icon-painting, proclaimed the style of Roublev as thetrue standard of artistic Orthodoxy, to be followed in perpetuity.

Until 1920, justification of Roublev's fame in terms of aesthetic talentwas somewhat lacking, even to the eyes of Russians. Kondakov, forexample, in his book on the Russian icon published by the OxfordUniversity Press, doubts whether the panel of the Trinity was fromRoublev's own hand, and has no inkling of its real artistic value. ForKondakov had left Russia before the icon had been cleared of itsnineteenth century overcoating. Even now, the numerous foreign visitorsto Russia seldom see it. Until 1929 it was at Sergievo. Then it wasremoved to the Tretyakov Gallery, where the central heating immediatelywrought more damage than five centuries of cold and damp. The pieces ofthe panel warped and the paint cracked down the middle. When I saw it,it lay on the restorer's table, so that I was obliged to stand on achair and look down on it from above. The view was a revelation. Beforeme was the greatest masterpiece ever produced by a Slav painter, a workof unprecedented invention, to which nothing in art that I could thinkof offered any sort of parallel. It was not that I saw a greaterpainting than any I had seen before; but simply that here was one whichdiffered, in its greatness, more than I had thought possible from theaccepted canons of greatness.

The panel is roughly four and a half feet square. It depicts the Trinityin the form of three angels seated at a table--a theme often found inOrthodox iconography and based on Abraham's entertainment of strangeguests. The background is light in tone and was probably once white, buthas now an indeterminate texture of dirty cream. On one side rises atower, on the other a hill, both light in tone and distant; while in themiddle, though to the right of the central angel's head, stands a nearertree, green, flat, and formal. The central angel is visible to the kneesonly; the others have their legs in front of the table. All three ofthem present a scheme of colour whose simplicity of equilibrium seemsparadoxical beside the rare and lyrical splendour of the resultingwhole.

The central angel and that on the beholder's right wear full-sleevedrobes, round which cloaks are draped to cover one arm and shoulder. Onthe central angel, these garments are respectively of rich flatchocolate, tinged with red, and of a brilliant lapidary blue, a colourso emphatic, yet so reserved, that in all nature I can think of noanalogy for it. The angel on the right wears a robe whose tint is ofthis same blue, but whose intensity is less. Across this is draped acloak of dry sapless green, colour of leaves at the end of summer, whosehigh-lights are rendered in light grey-green shading off into purewhite. The angel on the left wears a robe of reddish mauve lit with paletranslucent slate colour, over a white vest. All the faces and hands arenut-brown, modelled only by variations in tone of the same colour, andoutlined in black. The outspread wings, whose feathers are denoted bythin gold lines, are a flatter and paler brown, something between teaand toffee, which strikes a mean plane between the figures and the tree.Each head is encircled by a plain white halo which was formerly, thoughnot perhaps originally, encased in metal.

The first simplicity of this scheme resolves eventually into somethingnot so simple. The composition has an inner construction which is weldedfrom the contrast not between colour-fields alone, but between tones andtextures. While the middle angel asserts its focal claim with suchpositive affirmatory force that the eye almost recoils, it is preciselybecause the side angels are able to absorb this force and dispute itthat the eye, instead of recoiling, is entranced by a vivid interaction.This process results, chiefly, from the cloaks of the side angels. Thecolours of these garments have been described in general terms. But inreality there is no describing them; one might try, with equal success,to analyse the palette of Rembrandt's flesh. The reddish mauve and thepale slate, the leaf-green lit by grey-green and white, are seen tocomprise on examination of the miracle, not merely these, but all thecolours of the pearl spectrum. They shimmer, like hills over a desert inthe evening. Such ethereal transparency, enclosed by broad, flatcolour-fields, has its own mobility and force, which curb theaffirmation of the central figure and balance the design equally.

Long and close as I looked, I could not be certain how Roublev achievedthis effect. I could only suppose it was by use of small brushes andmany pigments. But I was certain enough that the method, whatever itwas, has produced a painting which has no like in European art. Even inthe faces the touch of genius is apparent. He has followed the formula,has eschewed the use of colour on flesh to a point even in excess of it.Yet the faces live and their earnest, downward glances bespeak a vital,if supernatural, intelligence on the part of the strange neutercreatures that bear them. Though Roublev was master of all he inheritedfrom the Greeks, of formulas and colour alike, his real inspiration wasRussian. The poetry of the country lives in his paint, the strength ofit in his design. Yet in his monkish gravity lurks something greaterthan melody and dance, something extra-national, which belongs to theworld. Until Roublev, Greek art can claim the authority of a parent overRussian--the latter produced nothing that approaches the mosaics of theKahrieh. But in Roublev the slowly matured independence of the child wasfinally proclaimed. This proclamation was final in another sense also.For it was not until the literature of the nineteenth century that theSlav genius again scaled the heights discovered by an obscure monk,whose one memorial is a panel of three angels.

Roublev left a school, whose icons betray his aims, but not his genius;almost at once, imitation of the master degenerates into formula. Of hisultimate effect on wall-painting, the frescoes of the monastery ofTheraponte, done between 1500 and 1502 by the master Dionysios, must bethe criterion. Photographs of these paintings reveal an art of sweepingdesign and grand invention. But photographs are not enough, and themonastery lies so encompassed by marshes in one of the northernprovinces that no one I asked in Moscow could even tell me the name ofKirillov, its nearest station. The best I could manage, in quest ofRoublev's successors, was a visit to Yaroslavl, whose churches weredecorated in the middle of the seventeenth century. The churchesthemselves have many beauties, as I shall tell. But their frescoes speakdeath to the Byzantine Orthodox tradition. Here are all the faults ofRussian art redeemed by none of its virtues. Formalism unchallenged anduncomprehended has become the ally of insane elaboration and peasantgarishness. It remained for the eighteenth century to create a seculartradition of painting, and for the nineteenth to produce suchaccomplished, if synthetic, realists as a Verestchagin and a Repin,together with that last nauseating throw-back, whose very name is animpiety, the neo-Byzantinist Vroubel.

* * * * *

It is possible to object that the above survey, in omitting allreference to the icon schools, takes a very limited view of Russianpainting. The objection is just; for icons comprise the great bulk ofRussian painting before the sixteenth century, while frescoes arecomparatively rare. But the two arts are essentially different. Many ofthe fresco-painters, it is true achieved nothing but a moribundformality; many of the icon-painters, on the other hand, created worksof the greatest beauty and feeling. But the fresco belongs to the grandtradition of art, while the very nature of the icon condemns it toperpetual approximation with the crafts. The fresco-painter, unless heis out to produce a mere wallpaper, as at Yaroslavl, must necessarilyexercise some talent for spacing and movement and balance, some attemptat three-dimensional composition over an area and plane which vary witheach individual church; however ungifted, he must invent, to achieve hisobject at all. The icon-painter, however gifted, need never invent; ifthe impulse to do so is in him, he is restricted as a rule to therefinement of detail within a narrow convention. Such refinement,especially in the Novgorod school of icons, has often amounted togenius. But that genius has inevitably been limited by, or at leastadapted to, the lesser medium in which it worked. Roublev, who was alsoa fresco-painter, refused to be thus hampered, though his panel of theTrinity is technically an icon. He was born of the grand tradition andcontinued it.

During my stay in Russia, with so much to see of politics and people, Idared not adventure into the labyrinth of the icon schools, for fearthat, while my visa lasted, I might never emerge from it. I did see,notwithstanding, some noted individual icons, whose present state andwhereabouts deserve a cursory mention.

The paintings in the museum at Novgorod have been selected and arrangedwith as much discrimination and taste as a private collection. Thebetter known and much reproduced examples of the Novgorod school areelsewhere; many of those now in the museum were undiscovered before theRevolution and have only been gathered in from the surrounding churchesduring the last ten years. That this should have been possible is atestimony of at least one service rendered by the Revolution to art. Ihad not time for detailed study. I can only say that the chiefimpression made by the collection was one of uniform quality which incolour and emotion surpassed even the finest icons of Athens and MountAthos. The most famous icon in the collection is the fourteenth centurypainting of St Theodore Stratilates in white top-boots. One early panelstood out from the rest on account of its unique secular theme--that ofthe Novgorodians sallying out to fight their enemies the Suzdaliansbefore the walls of the town, with the course of the battle depicted inthree zones and the skies filled with flying arrows. Every icon seemedto have been picked for its perfect condition, and indeed the majorityof them have been conserved rather than injured by the layers of greaseand smoke that had accumulated on them. I visited the restoration roomnear by. A large panel of St Nicolas Lipna, dated 1294, lay on the tableunder the care of a single man. Its restoration was nearly finished andwould have taken, when complete, a year and a half of this man's life. Imet no man in the Soviet Union more content with his lot.

In the museum of the Pechersky Lavra in Kiev, towards the end of myjourney in Russia, I saw the oldest icons in the world. These werebrought from Mount Sinai in the eighteenth century by the RussianMetropolitan Porphyry. They date from the sixth, and are executed onsmall panels in the wax painting that obtained at that period. Onerepresents SS. Sergius and Bacchus, between whose two heads is that ofChrist in a medallion; another, St John the Baptist; and a third, theVirgin and Child. All three bear a close relation to the Fayum andCoptic tradition of portraiture. The brushwork is bold andimpressionistic, greens and pinks being used on the flesh; the eyebrowsare raised and the eyes themselves stare unnaturally. An explanatorynotice informs the visitor that in the year 392 the Emperor Theodosiusforbade the placing of portraits on mummies. Consequently, icons ofsacred personages were done in the same style and used instead.

Before the Revolution, the most famous of all holy pictures inRussia--and the most efficacious in its transmission of human prayers tothe authority competent to grant them--was the Iberian Virgin of Moscow.This stood in the Iberian Gateway, a double, twin-spired arch thatadjoined the Historical Museum and gave access to the Red Square. Owingto the increase of motor traffic, this ancient structure had lately beenpulled down and an inscription erected, above the site of the Virgin,which reminds the passer-by of Lenin's familiar tag: RELIGION IS THEOPIUM OF THE PEOPLE. When I was in Moscow, the icon was still preservedin an obscure chapel. Thither one evening I was conducted. A service wasin progress beneath the low barrel-vault, attended by some fifteenpeople. The Iberian Virgin hung on the wall at the farther end, and Iwas eventually able to creep up and examine it with the aid of a taper.Artistically it proved disappointingly wooden and seemed to date fromthe sixteenth century. But I was pleased to have seen so remarkable andrevered a relic of old Russia.

Not long after my return to England, I received a letter from Moscow tosay that the Iberian Virgin had suddenly disappeared. Rumour insiststhat it has been sold to Greece. I have written to Athens inquiring, butcan get no confirmation of any such transaction.

The chief collection of icons in Moscow is in the Tretyakov Gallery.During my visit this was in process of rearrangement, but ProfessorNikrasiev kindly allowed me access to it, and I wandered about a smallroom turning over the heavy panels like the pages of some giganticwooden book. Two formalized Virgins attracted my attention. The firstwas the Donskaya, dating from the fourteenth century. Virgin and Childincline towards each other with expressions of love and sympathy. Butthe expressions are fixed and the faces too rounded, like an apple in anadvertisement. This is no likeness of a woman, but a likeness of alikeness. Over the head is draped a mantle of deep chocolate, beneathwhich, framing checks and neck, bursts forth a veil of ultramarine sobright that the eye, in this case, docs recoil. This blue is richer andmore allusive than that employed by Roublev on his middle angel. Thesecond Virgin, known as the Smolenskaya, is a huge, extra-life-sizecomposition, terrifying in its crude, rigid majesty, like the carving ona Red Indian totem-pole. Again the Virgin wears a chocolate mantle,beneath which hangs a slate under-veil lined with vermilion. The face isapple-red and brown; the nose resembles a large church key and the eyesarc like black peas. This icon is primitive in the true sense of theword, and seemed to show what Russian art might always have been had thetradition of Constantinople never come to it.

For the tradition of Constantinople, as I looked about, stood incarnateon an easel before my eyes. Another panel of the Virgin I saw, which isbelieved to have been sent from Constantinople by the EmperorConstantine Monomach in the middle of the eleventh century, which wascertainly in existence by the middle of the twelfth, and which isundoubtedly the work of a Greek painter emanating from the sphere of thecapital during the golden age of Byzantine art. During its first twocenturies in Russia this icon remained in the cathedral of Vladimir andis known as the Vladimirskaya or, in Western parlance, as Our Lady ofVladimir, under which title a monograph on it by Professor Anisimov waspublished by the Seminarium Kondakovianum of Prague in 1928. Eventuallyit became the Palladium of the Russian state and monarchy, and in 1395was transferred to the Kremlin, where the two sheaths of gold that usedto encase it are now among the state treasure. After the Revolution itwas disencumbered of these ornaments and subjected to expertrestoration. This discovered that the original paint had survived onlyon those parts which had been always exposed, namely, the two faces.

Already, from Professor Anisimov's colour reproduction, I had gainedsome idea of the beauty of these faces; but the reality, the sudden viewof the picture on the easel, opened a new experience in art, just asRoublev's Trinity had done. To describe the colours that make theVirgin's face, the apple-red and translucent sepia-green of cheeks andneck, the touch of pure cold white on the nose, the glowing vermilion ofthe lips and the corners of the eyes, the unfathomable purplish darknessof the pupils and of the compact lines that mark the uppereye-lashes--to write these details is merely to transcribe the score ofan unheard symphony. Even technically, there is no other picture likeit, for it is the only painting of the high imperial art ofConstantinople which has survived. Furthermore, and apart from academicconsiderations, it is one of the very few paintings in which anecclesiastical formula has ever been made the vehicle, withoutmodification or extension, of as profound and touching a humanity as arthas ever been able to express. This humanity exists not within thelimits of the convention, or in spite of it, but through it, in thelanguage of it. In one sense, then, it is no longer a convention. Yet itis the fact of the convention which augments, by its impregnablereserve, the vitality of the emotion beneath it. The emotion is simpleenough: a mother caresses the child whose check is pressed to hers andwhose pale gentle fingers fondle her neck. But simple emotions endurethrough the ages. In those grave, whiteless eyes and sad small mouthlive the eternal sorrows and joys and the whole destiny of man. Such apicture can bring tears to the eye and peace to the soul. I have knownno other picture so able. When I took leave of Our Lady of Vladimir, Igave her my constant devotion. For me, she has set a new standard to theold religious painters, and how vivid this remains I know by the factthat certain pictures I used to hate have now, in my mind, forfeitedeven the dignity of a separate existence.

VIII. Yaroslavl and Sergievo

While Veliki Novgorod retains something of the character of early Russiabefore the Tartar invasion, the monuments of Yaroslavl commemorate theexpansion of commerce that marked the seventeenth century. The town hadbeen altogether ruined by the Tartars in 1237, but was colonized anew byIvan the Terrible with merchants imported from Novgorod. It lies on theVolga, 150 miles north-east of Moscow. With Europe by Archangel, andwith Persia by the Caspian, these merchants traded. The English built anaval shipyard there; Dutch, Germans, French, and Spaniards followedthem. Great prosperity came to the town, and found expression in aseries of churches whose spacious proportions and richness ofarchitectural decoration had no rival in the Russia of their time.Unlike those of fifteenth century Moscow, these exhibit little foreigninfluence. The native aesthetic, so long nourished by the Italians, wasnow putting forth its own flowers, before the Italians should arriveagain with the canons of later classicism.

Since the inception of the Five-Year Plan Yaroslavl has again come tothe fore, thanks to its position on the Volga and on the main lines fromMoscow to Vladivostok and Archangel. The ASEA, a Swedish engineeringcompany, had until 1932 a factory there for the manufacture ofelectrical machinery--the only foreign concession left in Russia at thetime. My guide and I had made no preparations for our visit beyonddeciding which train we should catch. This took us to Spolye, where, atsix in the morning, we were met by a Swedish engineer. He drove us toYaroslavl in his car and installed us in the flat of his manager, whohappened to be ill in Moscow. My gratitude for this kindness wasincreased when my guide discovered that the local hotels were not onlyuncomfortable to a degree that alarmed even him, but were absolutelyfull.

After breakfast, we took a tram to the middle of the town, and asked ourway to the once famous churches. Even the aged, to whom our inquirieswere chiefly directed, appeared to have forgotten their Maker, and gapedunhelpfully as I mouthed the names of Ivan Predetchi and IvanZlatoousta--Johns the Baptist and Chrysostom; for my guide was such amilitant atheist that these superstitious sounds were beyond him. Indespair, we mounted a sledge, whose giant driver, wearing a full-skirtedblack coat tied with a red sash and trimmed with white astrakhan, droveus to a ruined church which he said was the cathedral of the ProphetElias. So it might have remained, in my imagination, had not twoofficials also driven up at that very moment, who informed us that itwas not. We must go, they said, to the Museum Chancellery in the Spasskymonastery, where they would give us all information. To the Spasskymonastery we went, a white-walled enclosure guarded by massive squaretowers with wooden conical roofs. The courtyard was also in ruins; forthere was a lot of fighting at Yaroslavl in the Civil War. Its singleinhabitant asserted with glee that the Museum Chancellery was elsewhere.At the same time a sentry tried to confiscate my camera. So I gave thedriver a prod and we drove off at a gallop. Suddenly I recognized thereal cathedral of St Elias, having already seen a photograph of it. TheMuseum Chancellery was opposite. On entering, we were told that acommittee meeting was in progress and could not be disturbed. I venturedto suggest that it could be disturbed, and, dragging my guide with me,burst into its room, followed by a protesting janitor. Thereupon thenecessary officials placed themselves at my disposal, showed me a numberof Slavonic manuscripts and told me how to reach the monuments I was insearch of.

The nearest was the cathedral of St Elias, whose five domes, outergalleries and detached bell-tower with conical roof exhibit the chiefcharacteristics of the Yaroslavl style. This was built in 1647; thedomes are green; the outside is covered with plain whitewash. Butwithin, the frescoed walls reveal a jungle of sacred themes in thebrightest colours, which are still enclosed in the schematiccompartments ordained by the Byzantine Church, and thus represent thelast and most fantastic offspring of the Orthodox tradition of Christianart. This was the only interior we had access to. I was glad to haveseen it, but had no desire for more, since the interest of the paintingswas hagiographical rather than artistic.

Our next objective was the church of St John Chrysostom in the suburb ofKorovniki. This place is separated from the town by a tributary of theVolga, across which a herring-gutted iron bridge, known as the'Amerikansky Most', carries the trams, while sledges take a short cutover the ice. The churches of Korovniki--for there are two--areovertopped by a huge leaning bell-tower, octagonal in shape and toppedby a dormered cone. That of St John Chrysostom, which was founded in1649 at the expense of two merchant brothers called Nejdanovsky, isdecorated with brick patterns which take the form, on the base, of ablind arcade conceived in that squat, bulbous manner associated inEngland with Tudor bedsteads. Mingled with these patterns are panels ofthe local faience, and at the east end the three windows are surroundedby wide curving frames of the same material. As an architectural mediumthis faience can only be compared with the Mexican azulejos. Later inthe day we found an even more lavish example of its use, on the churchof St Nicolas Mokri (1672), where the smaller onion-shaped cupolas areentirely formed of chevron-like tiles in peacock blue and green variedwith a deep wine-red. Here the same window frames again appeared. Boththese and the panels, and occasionally even the cornice of a porch, aredone in high relief, to the extent of two inches. The colours, which arevery pure, are for the most part blue, green, and yellow, on a whiteground.

Thence we drove to Toltchkovo, another suburb, where we caught sight ofanother campanile, still more oblique, and rising in octagonal tierslike a chocolate wedding-cake. From each tier glittered a row of giltballs, upheld by a series of pinnacles. This, we knew, must be thechurch of St John the Baptist (1671). But how to reach it no one couldtell us. At length we stopped at the lodge of a paint factory, where twosentries and a posse of comrades disputed our passage, convincedapparently that I was a professional saboteur sent by the BritishGovernment to upset the paint-front for 1932. My guide, by this time,was convinced of my disinterestedness--having seen me literally reducedto tears by the cold in my fingers while photographing on my belly inthe snow at Korovniki--and calmed their fears by telling them, with apitying glance in my direction, that he had been unable to drag me to asingle factory and that all I cared about in this world was churches,churches, churches. Finally I offered them each a Gold Flake, andentrance was granted. I also lit one myself, and in five minutes mighthave been seen, after all these precautions, perched on a large tank ofinflammable oil and smoking hard, while I adjusted my camera. Thisquestionable behaviour, let me say at once, was due to absent-mindednessrather than a desire to give my life for the destruction of theFive-Year Plan. The church itself proved worth the effort. Above astructure of rich chocolate-coloured brick decorated with ribs androundels of cold green faience, the five scaly onion-domes on their tallstalks shone out over the snowy landscape in a sudden ray of sun, asthough the melted gold, deep and vivid as the middle of a buttercup,were actually running down them.

Owing to the shortness of the winter day, combined with the reluctanceof the inhabitants to leave their beds, there is only time in Russia forone meal in every twenty-four hours. This takes place when we have tea.That evening I was to dine with the Swedish engineer who had met me atthe station. At half-past four he fetched me from the manager's flat andwe walked about a mile to his house. Here four other Swedes, alsotenants, awaited us. Each had his own room, frescoed--in the style ofthe Bystander--by his own hand. 'Mr Byron,' said the engineer in anearnest, indeed apprehensive, tone, 'we hope you are not a teetotaller.'

After a tiring day out of doors in extreme cold, when the face hasflushed and the body suddenly relaxed in the warmth of a comfortableroom, life can offer no more supreme content than the first sip of someGod-given stimulant. The divine beverage on this occasion consisted ofport, brandy, and vodka mixed. There followed zakouska, eaten withvodka alone. With the vodka came beer, and with the beer the meal itselfand port. This was the dinner. After an interval, those invited inafterwards began to arrive. They were all Russians and the only ones Iever met under normal conditions. First came a lady and gentleman, theformer of refined aspect and restrained dress, whose uncle had formerlyowned the house in which we sat. For them green chartreuse was broughtout. Then followed a youthful doctor with a twinkling eye, accompaniedby two ladies of a different type. One of them was his wife; 'but', Iwas told, 'it makes no difference'. The doctor played the piano. Theladies and gentlemen took the floor. The piano was succeeded by thegramophone; the drinks succeeded one another. The doctor gave us adance, squatting on his haunches and kicking his legs in front of him.The furniture began to disintegrate under the berserk assaults of itsowners. The doctor and I, though lacking a common tongue, engaged inearnest conversation: he pointed to his wife and pointed to the stairs.The refined lady and gentleman went home. At half-past two, when theparty had lasted ten hours, I did likewise, guided through a mile ofsuburbs by one of my hosts, whose mirth, despite the uncertainty of ourprogress over the frozen hummocks, had suddenly evaporated into atearful melancholy.

The next morning I had an appointment to see over the ASEA factory at aquarter to ten. I arrived on time and so did my friend the engineer. Theothers were still in bed, and their various chiefs were wondering if anepidemic had struck the house. This foreign factory, I say with pride,was the only factory in Russia that I visited. The afternoon I spent bythe shores of the Volga. That night I left for Sergievo, bearing afeeling of eternal gratitude towards this oasis of merriment in thedesert of grim purposes.

We were due to arrive at seven o'clock. I awoke at eight, somewhatalarmed lest we had passed our destination, only to learn that we stillhad ninety kilometres to go. Soon after, the delay was explained by anoverturned goods train whose engine lay on its side, faintly breathing,like an expiring elephant. This was very convenient, since it had begunto snow, and the warmth of my flea-bag was preferable to a long wait ina wayside station. We reached Sergievo--now called Zagorsk--at teno'clock, and walked straight to the monastery. Seen across the valley,behind a curtain of gently falling snowflakes, the clusters of domes,encircled by a white wall with fat red-washed angle-towers andovertopped by Rastrelli's belfry, 320 ft of pink-and-white baroquearches, seemed more like a painted back-cloth than a thing of threedimensions, substantial and inhabited.

Nor was this illusion altogether unjust. These monasteries and Kremlinsthat flash their colours over the gloomy landscape are, in truth, aback-cloth to the modern stage, and redeem the play, if the audience bea foreign traveller, from the monotony of a fore-doomedindustrialization. The Troitskaya Lavra at Sergievo is one of the mostfamous of them. Founded in 1340, and always the object of imperialfavour, its corporation of 100 monks became the owners of half a millionserfs, so said the lady who showed us round between pants ofindignation. After the Revolution the monastery became a museum and ahaven for savants, but was now deserted. The savants had been accused ofa plot and were dispersed, some to 'manure Socialist fields', others topopulate the Ural towns and the lumber-camps.

The peace of the snow-covered courtyard, large and irregular as twoOxford colleges, with its churches, refectory, and lines of cells, wasbroken only by the cawing of crows in the bare trees. Beside theentrance to the blue-domed cathedral, a squat tomb, half hidden by thetrunks of a small coppice, still shelters the remains of the Tsar BorisGodunov. We were shown the Metropolitan's apartments, where thefurniture used by Peter the Great remains untouched. And then I asked tosee what was formerly the greatest treasure of the monastery, theembroidered sheet or banner presented to it in 1499 by Sophia, wife ofIvan III, Princess of Constantinople--so the broidered inscription callsher--and last historic figure of the dethroned family of Palaeologus. Myrequest evoked first pretended ignorance of any such object, thenpetulant annoyance, and finally acquiescence, on condition that I madeno attempt to accompany the curator to the store-room where the sheetwas now hidden, as it was in such a muddle!

After a wait of two hours, I was able to examine the precious relic, alarge panel of faded silk embroidery in which patches of a deeprose-crimson stand out against the remains of a blue background. Aseries of familiar themes such as the Annunciation, Ascension, andPentecost, surrounds a central rectangle which depicts a Hetimasiaor Preparation of the Throne. Two narrow columns, stretching from thelower corners of this rectangle to the bottom of the banner, contain theinscription worked in metal thread. This was kindly transcribed for meby an old man, the last of the savants, and runs as follows:

In the year 7007, in the time of the pious Grand Prince Ivan Vasilevich and that of his son the Grand Prince Vasili Ivanovich and the Archbishop Simon Metropolitan, this cloth was made by the intention and command of the Princess of Tsargrad [Constantinople], Grand Princess of Moscow, Sophia (wife) of the Grand Prince of Moscow, who prayed to the life-giving Trinity and the miracle-working Sergius and affixed this cloth.

Zoë--or, as she was afterwards known, Sophia--Palaeologina introducedthe ceremony and aloofness of the Byzantine court into Muscovy, and itis significant of the importance attached to this link with the Romansuccession that, thirty years after her marriage, her maiden titleshould still have taken precedence of her husband's.

When he had finished, the old man and I had an argument about religion.The old man, whose great years seemed to render him impervious to theterrors of proletarian censorship, said that religion, whatever itsform, must always be necessary to mankind. I suggested that thenecessity was now filled, in modern Russia, by the new Christ in the RedSquare. 'Perhaps,' he replied, 'perhaps.'

At the station, later, I caused a commotion by taking a nip of vodkafrom a bottle I had bought in the village shop. Such licence is notallowed in public. On getting into the train we heard people saying thatthey thought they would risk the front coach, despite the accident ofthe morning and the appalling disaster that had taken place near Moscowtwo or three days before at a cost of nearly two hundred lives. Thetrain was a local one. There were no lights, the seats were of wood, andthe wheels, I felt convinced, were square, not round. The atmosphere waslike some unsavoury anaesthetic. A Red soldier fell asleep on my bosom.Myself reclined on the ampler person of an old peasant woman. So wereturned to the capital.

IX. The Ukraine

The first really surprising impression that Russia had made on me waswhen, after leaving the Polish frontier, I sought the dining-car andfound myself embowered in a coppice of cyclamens, each of which wasobscured by an enormous white bow. These bows were not so incongruous asthey sound. For the coach itself was a survival from the same epoch oftaste and resembled, both in ornament and dimensions, the dining-room ofthe Ritz Hotel in London. Indeed, these enormous broad-gauge caravansthat lumber across two continents are the traveller's first indicationof the Russian's inherent hankering after a kind of megalo-comfort. Itis a pleasant vice, and a sympathetic one to the Englishman. I enjoyedthose interminable journeys, with their ceaseless accidents. Thewagons-lits seem to have come through the Revolution without a scratch,brass intact, velvet undimmed. The conductors have come with them,pleasant old fellows always ready with a glass of tea from the samovarin the corridor, and proud of their clean white linen. Even the ordinary'soft' carriages, which hold four, are by no means unpleasant; choose anupper berth and you have control of the ventilator in the roof. My bestjourney was from Leningrad to Moscow in the Red Arrow, which passedthree other trains bound for the same destination and exceeded anaverage of thirty miles an hour. In the middle of the night I wasawakened by two comrades having a dormitory feast beneath the light of astandard lamp in a pink silk shade. Their mumbling gossip was not at allto my pleasure, and I was obliged to shout to the conductor before theinterloper would remove himself and leave my berth-mate to go to bed.

A week's journey in the Ukraine, with which my stay in Russia ended,gave my companion and myself a taste of railway travel as a pastimewhich may or may not have been typical of the country, but was certainlyvaried in its excitements. The actual process of departure from Moscowinvolved us in several days' unremitting effort. My visa had expired;worse still, I had omitted, on arrival, to register with the police. TheForeign Office was easily placated, but not the police, who insistedthat I should be out of the country by 18 February. There ensued adetailed examination of my notes, diary, and the books I had bought, onthe part of the customs, who finally stamped, packed, and sealed them ina manner designed to reassure their fellows at Odessa. Lastly, a Turkishvisa was necessary. But the getting of this produced a pleasantsurprise. For the Turkish officials, generally so palsied and tiresome,had been inspired to a brusque efficiency by the fabulous incompetencearound them.

After so much turmoil, the actual start of our journey, by the 7.35 p.m.to Harkov, seemed like Nirvana itself. Owing to the vagaries of a rivaltrain, which had accidentally escaped from the station on to our line,our actual departure was delayed an hour. We arrived at Harkovcorrespondingly late next morning and at once conceived a dislike forthe town, which is without feature except for a good modernist postoffice and the Palace of Industry. The latter lies on the outskirts ofthe place, and when complete will form a circle of skyscrapers, joinedby bridges, in the middle of an empty plain. Even now, with onlyone-fifth of its circumference built, its appearance is that of anindustrial 'folly', whose architect has tried to go one better thanStonehenge. We also discovered that the only hotel was full. All theycould allow us was the temporary use of a suite containing the luggage,though not the person, of a French duchess. We borrowed her bathroom toshave in; but delicacy forbade us to appropriate her bed, and as therewas nowhere else to stay, we decided to go on to Dnieperstroy thatnight, to see the dam. This was a departure from our programme, whichhad been so arranged as to avoid the Five-Year Plan. But foreseeing thequestions that would be asked at home, we now concluded we ought to havesomething to say on that subject.

Before leaving, we lunched at the 'Dynamo Country Club' outside thetown, a spacious institution approached by two modernist lodges andhaving its own stadium where a few of the members were engaged in adesultory game of ice-hockey. The walls of the dining-room were severelypanelled in the modern French style with woods of various colours; thelighting was in glass strips, flush with the wood and running up thewalls and along the ceiling. But the designer responsible for thiselegant severity could scarcely have foreseen the addition of a wholeforest of barrel-trunked palms fifteen feet high and tied, once more,with giant bows. When, too, each table sported a dead chrysanthemum alsotied with two and sometimes three white bows, the room itself resembledmore a deserted florist's than an essay in collectivistpsycho-furnishing. The food, apart from these impediments, wasdelicious--Ukrainian borscht with cream, kidneys and potatoes, andtangerine salad. Then we drove to the station, where we found ourselvesushered into the Tsar's waiting-room. For our guide, foreseeingdifficulty in securing sleepers at such short notice, had given theauthorities to understand that we were persons of high importance, onwhose comfort would depend the future course of relations between Russiaand England. Our conversation with the station-master, who came hurryingalong to pay his respects, was truly royal in character:

'Sixty trains per day before the war and 115 now? You don't say so!'

'Certainly; and in summer there are 129.'

'What strides!'

'The place has grown since the capital was moved from Odessa. In 1913there were only 286,000 inhabitants. Now there are 600,000.'

We acted as though we could hardly believe our ears, with the resultthat, when the train came in, a whole compartment was emptied ofprotesting passengers to make room for us. In the corridor hung a noticeoffering prizes to travellers and transport workers for sensiblesuggestions anent the management of the railway. Before the end of theweek we had several suggestions to make.

Sleep that night came fitfully. At 3 a.m. the train almost broke in halfand I received a sharp blow on the temple from an iron door. We were nowat Alexandrovsk, and on descending found ourselves engaged in a life anddeath struggle with a mob of maddened peasants, who had been waitingseveral days to find a place on a train. It was a horrible scene; oldwomen, bent and weeping, were knocked to the ground; we had much ado toextricate our luggage, and then guard it. At last a car was found, justvacated by the duchess, who was returning from the dam to her violatedsuite. This took us several miles across country to the new town.

Morning revealed brilliant sunshine, a hotel which, though but latelyfinished, was already falling to bits, and an apparition of poachedeggs. After eating these we walked through the building town, a scene ofindescribable confusion, but tranquil compared with the dam itself.Here, on the great elevated highway that spanned the frozen river, twostreams of black and muffled humanity were striving to maintain theiropposite courses, shrieking engines drawing heavy goods trainsthreatened toe and heel alike, sentries wrapped in greasy fleecesmenaced each errant passenger with their bayonets, and a wind like ajagged razor whipped across ears and lips. For about three-quarters of amile--the breadth of the river--we continued thus, deafened andterrified, balancing precariously on ice-covered rails and catchinghorrid glimpses of the sluices below, where the water came roaring downfrom under the ice, as the frozen boards of the footway creaked andgaped. At length, in the head office on the farther bank, a conclave ofofficials and engineers awaited us. Their brains, they said, were oursto command. What, precisely, had we come to study, and what statisticsdid we need? Such questions left us speechless; it would scarcely havebeen polite to have admitted that the only reason for our presence atDnieperstroy was that of the duchess's luggage at Harkov; butremembering a similar occasion on the Sukkur barrage in Sind, I essayedsome feeble questions: sluice-gates, forty-nine; three locks on the leftbank; nine turbines of 90,000 horse-power. The officials were notdeceived. With admirable tact they changed the subject by asking us whatwe should like for lunch.

Armed with a special pass, I departed to take photographs. Owing to theposition of the sun, this meant returning to the bank whence we hadcome, and reluctant to face the terrors of the bridge, I decided toentrust myself to the ice, promising to keep carefully to existingtracks, since the rate of unexplained disappearances had lately becomealarmingly high. Suddenly, as I reached the very middle of the river, acannon started to fire; blinded by the glare, I could scarcely see whereI was going, and now I began to imagine that the whole surface of theriver was about to shiver and crack beneath this fusillade of noise.Then my eyelids froze together; this, at least, I reflected, had beenspared St Peter. Tottering forward, I reached the bank at last, to begreeted by a man of wild aspect, who jumped out from behind a slag-heap,and after demanding a cigarette, which I gave him, ran away as though Iwere a leper. I now walked for a mile down-stream in search of avantage-point. In the distance, the dam stretched across the river likesome huge grey fortification, partly hidden by clouds of steaming spray.Trains, diminutive as those in film collisions, crept along its top.From the forty-nine sluice-gates came the water from under the ice,swirling down the rapids formed by two rocky islets, and bearing on itssurface a spate of tiny ice-floes, round and white as polar lotuses.

We lunched in a sort of seaside villa, one of a row built for the nowdeparted American experts. The food, elaborately dished and served, wasadmirable. Flagons of vodka were followed by Crimean champagne. The morewe swallowed, the more argumentative everyone became. We Europeans, wesaid, were possessors of a cultural and political inheritance which hadaccrued during two thousand years, and which we now saw no reason tothrow away. The Russians replied that it was merely a class inheritance.In that case, we maintained, we required no further justification of aruling class. Finally, our host, who was an educated man of delightfulmanners, said that whatever one might think of socialism in theabstract, in practice one could not live in Russia to-day unlesssustained by a belief in it. We then turned to country sports. Game, ourhost informed us, was by no means free. He belonged to a club in orderto shoot, which cost him sixty roubles a year; as his salary was 6,000,this, he thought, was not excessive. He regretted that he had not got usa hare for lunch. In the old days they used to hunt hares and foxes withborzois; but not now; it damaged the peasants' corn.

In the evening we attended a concert given by a Ukrainian choir. Theprogramme was in two parts: the first, traditional; the second, andlonger, ideological. The latter was rendered the more tedious by thepresence of a composer, who set about teaching both performers andaudience some feeble revolutionary ditties of his own composing. At theend of the concert, the distinguished foreigners were handed a visitors'book, for signatures and comment. This is the usual procedure amongthese vain redeemers. At the dam we had confined our praise to thecuisine, feeling that the duchess had done enough for the engineeringwith the words 'Oeuvre des Titans!' Now we wrote that, admirable as thesinging had been, we could not help regretting that it should have beenwasted on such deplorable material. It was a little uncivil, perhaps,and caused some dismay, but we felt the necessity now and then ofsounding some note other than the Shavian parrot-song which all Englishvisitors to Russia arc expected to utter.

Midnight found us once more at Alexandrovsk, seated on a hard bench inthe station-master's office. The train was two hours late; itselectricity had failed, and there was only one candle, which we stole.But as was usual in my experience, the bed-linen was clean and theconductor did his best to make us comfortable. Not even the inevitableaccident disturbed our sleep.

Back in Harkov again, we received a call from the director of the Opera.He wore a coat of Siberian stag, whose hairs rattled like straw andrained to the ground as he moved. This he had acquired while making afilm in the Arctic. Had the film been a success? we asked. 'Oh dear,no--not nearly enough ideology in it.' He preferred his present job.Classics were classics and could not be interfered with.

After dinner, eaten to a band, we started for Kiev, on a journey whichproved the eeriest of them all, and confirmed in me a suspicion that thechief value to Russia, and to the world, of the Five-Year Plan will beits unassailable witness to the futility of materialist economics. Thistime it was the heating that had failed. I sat huddled in my flea-bag.We had two strangers with us: one a member of the secret police in hornspectacles, who looked like Harold Lloyd in the rôle of Torquemada; theother a nondescript, who suddenly announced that he was getting out atPoltava. What a name for one's destination, I mused, and picturedCharles XII fleeing in his litter. It was our fourth successive night inthe train. When we woke, the sun was shining and the train had stopped.An accident, of course, we knew. But this time it was something to wakeup for. The hind coach of a local train in front of us had becomederailed owing to overloading. As we and the other passengers stoodbareheaded in the snow, a single engine steamed majestically past usdown the line carrying away nineteen bodies in a luggage van. Forty morewere injured and our remaining whisky allayed the misery of a bearded,bleeding old peasant.

There seemed little chance of continuing that morning. At the back ofour train was a special coach with wireless aerial and Packard carattached, containing the President of the Ukraine. From here we wereable to borrow hot water and make ourselves soup. At last, as dusk fell,we steamed into Kiev along the banks of the Dnieper. From a wooded hill,the golden domes of the Pechersky monastery flashed their famous welcomeover snow and forest and the huge frozen river--no welcome of hope tofaithful pilgrims, but a message of impotence and desuetude in a worldof trained cynics.

The chef at the hotel was an artist, and also a friend of our guide. Hegave us a dinner of fabulous excellence--for which, and for its fellowthe next night, the manager tried to charge us £50. Afterwards we wentto the theatre where Stolypin was shot in 1911, and saw Prince Igor.This one performance was worth a whole week of the pretentious BolshoyTheatre in Moscow. The audience, too, was different; its faces were morecheerful, its clothes less devoid of amenity. Next morning we met theduchess, face to face, in the hall of the hotel. 'I'm leaving for Polandthis moment', she said. 'Come and see me in Paris.' Her scent, whichlingered, was a cheerful reminder of class privilege.

The treasures and monuments of Kiev are many, as befits the earliest andmost civilized of Russian capitals. Our first visit was to thecathedral, which was built in 1036 on a Greek model, but was so restoredin 1705 by the Hetman Mazeppa that its architecture is now interestingmainly as an example of Ukrainian baroque. Inside, however, the mainapse has retained its original mosaics, which are dominated by a greatVirgin. This figure, which seems but mediocre in photographs, revealedto us a masterpiece of Byzantine art in its highest epoch.

According to Professor Vassilievich, the surface of the vault whichbears the Virgin comprises not one curve but three; so that if a sectionof the structure were cut through from the roof and observed from theside, it would resemble the sketch opposite. The top curve contains thehead and shoulders, the middle curve the belly and thighs, and the lowercurve the knees and all below them. This device saves the figure from anappearance of toppling forward, and prevents the head from assuming asize disproportionate to the rest of the body. An Italian would havesuited his drawing to the vault. The Greeks chose to adapt the vaultlest it should distort their drawing.

The colours of the Kiev Virgin are unique in Byzantine mosaic, andunique, therefore, in their effect, among all works of art. The figurestands alone, without scenery or fellow--an apparition of majesty in thegold emptiness of its quadrant. The arms are uplifted from the elbows,in austere mediation between man and God; the knees bend and the feetare planted apart. A voluminous robe permits the contours of the legs.From the shoulders depends a mantle, which is swathed diagonally acrossthe bosom and drops fanwise to the level of the knees behind, in acascade of angular creases. This mantle secretes its colour in a tone ofunfathomable darkness, on which the high-lights of each crease repeat,though with more glitter, the gold of the background. But the robebeneath the mantle, together with the sleeves that protrude from it, areinvested with a tint whose radiant singularity no one that has seen itcan ever forget. This tint is a porcelain blue, the blue of harebells orof a Siamese cat's eyes, an adamant, extrusive colour that stands clearfrom the aureate haze of the vault to proclaim its wearer's invinciblepersonality. Below the robe, shoes of royal scarlet complete thisproclamation. Round the waist is tied a cord of lilac pink, whosebrightness exactly equals the brightness of the blue and which strikes amean between that colour and the scarlet of the shoes, thus forming,despite its tiny area, the pivot of the entire composition. On the cordhangs negligently a little gold towel with a fringe. The sleeves havetight, patterned cuffs, also in gold.

On the curving wall, immediately under the vault, appears the DoubleCommunion. The Apostles, six on either side, approach with loping treada canopied altar, at whose either corner a separate Christ dispenses thetwo elements. The draperies of the Apostles are grey, buff-yellow, andwhite, sewn with double seams of an emphatic red. Christ wears a darkblue mantle above a gold robe. Faces, hands, and feet are rendered inshell-pink, and the whole mosaic has a fresh and airy quality whichcontrasts with the overwhelming, solitary grandeur of the figure above.In a second zone, below the Apostles, stands a row of Early Fathers,hieratic figures which have been restored from the hips downwards.

The cathedral contains, besides other more fragmentary mosaics, a superbByzantine relic in the shape of Prince Yaroslav's tomb. This potentate,whose daughter married King Harold of England, died in 1054 afterbringing the Kievan civilization to the height of its early splendour.His tomb is a monumental sarcophagus, about nine feet long, which liesin a dark chapel half hidden by the encircling walls and by afloor-level which has encroached considerably on its original height. Ingeneral form, with its acroteria and sloping roof, it resembles thoseark-like porphyry coffins that once held the Byzantine Emperors and nowstand in a row outside the Museum at Constantinople. But in this casethe material is white marble from the Proconnesus, and the whole visiblesurface is richly carved in the style of the sarcophagi at Ravenna,though with the addition of later motives. Russian authorities concur indating the tomb of Yaroslav from the sixth century, and presume it tohave been brought from Kherson on the death of the prince.

At the west end of the cathedral, on either side of the main entrance,arc two broad spiral staircases, whose walls were painted in theeleventh century with scenes of secular life in Constantinople. Therarity of such scenes, even in manuscript illuminations, is notorious.And when we found the iron gates leading to each staircase locked, wepromptly sent our cards to Professor Vassilievich, who lived in a housenear by and was, we were told, engaged in the reparation of thepaintings. Though it was a 'sixth day', and therefore a holiday, theProfessor most kindly emerged from his leisure and eventually devoted alarge part of the day to showing us round the town.

The paintings on the staircase were discovered about the middle of thelast century, when they were ruthlessly restored. After three years'work, one series has now been almost wholly disencumbered of itsaccretions. It begins with hunting incidents, such as a man shootingwith a bow and arrow at an animal in a tree, or a rider on a white horsebeing attacked by a lion. Farther up appear individual portraits,equestrian and otherwise, framed each by two columns and surmounted bythe badges of the Hippodrome factions, of which the most frequent is ablack crescent on a blue circle. These, it is thought, must representthe faction champions. Then comes the royal box, an extension of theGreat Palace, tenanted by the Emperor and Empress, and also the box ofthe diplomatic corps, whose occupants appear to be Persians. Otherspectators of high rank are grouped in a series of loggias. Theentertainment offered by the Hippodrome games comprises a man in Turkishfancy dress, three horsemen chasing a wild horse, mummers in oddcostumes, men playing pipes and harp, and a boy climbing a pole balancedon a man's shoulder after the fashion described by Liutprand during theChristmas dinner of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Variousgraffiti have lately come to light, which are in Greek, and from whichit may therefore be supposed that the artist was a Greek, painting frommemory the scenes he had actually witnessed.

Accompanied by Professor Vassilievich, we now drove to the monastery ofSt Michael, whose church contains an uninspired twelfth century mosaicof the Double Communion, a copy, probably by Russian artists, of thesame theme in the cathedral. More interesting proved two red-graniteplaques of mounted saints in low relief, which date from the twelfthcentury and have a Middle Eastern look. Each plaque depicts two ridersaffronted: one, SS. Theodore Stratilates and Mercury, the other SS.George and Demetrius. The first pair tramples a dragon; the second, aman in armour, who may represent Julian the Apostate. Thence wecontinued to the monastery of St Cyril on the outskirts of the town,whose few remaining frescoes have already been mentioned.

Later in the day, Professor Vassilievich took us to the Académie desSciences, where we bought the first and only volume of its newly startedAnnual, showed us the old bookshops, and introduced us to such friendsas he met in a manner which seemed quite abnormal after the ferociousisolation of Moscow. It was like an afternoon at Oxford. Even at thepresent time, he said, there were 50,000 students in the town. He talkedof his boyhood and the Civil War, when Kiev was captured and recapturedfifteen times, and once three times in a single day; sometimes, fornearly a week at a time, it was impossible to go out for thestreet-fighting. After dinner, following his advice, we went to thecathedral to hear the Saturday evening service. Scene and singing had atragic grandeur. From her glowing golden vault the giant Virgin gazedupon the packed congregation with eyes nine centuries old, while thebasses boomed like water-beasts in the jungle and the trebles wildlyrose. At the climax of the service the sacristan, with whom we had madefriends in the morning, beckoned us behind the iconostasis, where thepriests, in gorgeous copes, were performing their private evolutionsabout the altar. It was with some embarrassment that we profaned thesemysteries. But their sacred character was lessened by the sight of eachpriest, whenever his turn came to be exposed to the public gaze, runningacross the bema and combing his hair before a draped mirror evidentlykept there for the purpose.

One more journey lay in front of us. There had, of course, been anaccident on the line, and the train, which was due in at 6.30 p.m. andhad made us hurry over our dinner, arrived eventually at 1.45 a.m. Therewas no further accident that night. But early next morning the wheels ofthe coach in front of ours were observed to be on fire. We waited anhour, while they removed it, in a wayside station. Snow was falling in athick curtain; through it, a loud-speaker fastened to the station roofwas relaying an old gramophone record of Peer Gynt. It was our last dayin Russia, and the sound of those tinned melodies whinnying theirglorious message of scientific culture through the snowflakes, over thebroken train, to the white unpeopled landscape, served as a melancholybut precise epilogue.

There was still time for one more mishap: another train got ahead of usby mistake. Already the ship was due to have left. At Odessa we drove atracing speed along the quays, while the sun set like an expiring furnaceacross the frozen sea. The ship had gone--but it was believed that shemight be found elsewhere taking in oil. Bundling some customs officialsinto one of our two cars, we pursued the ship up the coast like a gangof bandits.

At one o'clock in the morning I looked from my porthole. We were moving,crunching through the ice-floes in the wake of an ice-breaker. Thelights of Russia receded. Then we reached the open water, and alreadythe wind seemed a little warmer.

PART II. TIBET

I. The Air Mail

The journey here described may with some justice be called unusual,since, apart from the survivors of the Younghusband expedition andcertain officers of the Indian Army and Government, they arecomparatively few who have accomplished it. Travel within the Tibetanfrontiers involves obvious difficulties, of which one is anunpredictable degree of physical discomfort. But such a journey as ours,when regarded as a journey among journeys, can make no claim to beconsidered unique or even remarkable: the difficulties were overcomewith moderate effort; the knowledge gained was such as to satisfy onlythe personal curiosity of those who sought it. In thus unloosing asecond torrent of personal anecdote I have but one purpose and excuse;which is, if I can, to please the reader with some pale reflection ofthe quality of pure enjoyment which became known to me during my firstvisit to Asia Magna. To travel in Europe is to assume a foreseeninheritance; in Islam, to inspect that of a close and familiar cousin.But to travel in farther Asia is to discover a novelty previouslyunsuspected and unimaginable. It is not a question of probing thisnovelty, of analysing its sociological, artistic, or religious origins,but of learning, simply, that it exists. Suddenly, as it were in theopening of an eye, the potential world--the field of man and hisenvironment--is doubly extended. The stimulus is inconceivable to thosewho have not experienced it.

If, as I think must be so, the European can attain this experience mostvividly in Asia, it is to Asia north of the Himalayas that he should go.There the very face of the earth, the atmospherics, clouds, and colours,are absolved from all known criteria. And there, in Tibet, alone of theworld's political compartments, have the effects of the scientificrevolution not yet intruded on the outward picture of everyday life.

From an early age the fact of Tibet's existence had coloured mythoughts, fastened there by 'Y for Yak' on a zoological alphabet. Later,in course of some military operations with my school OTC near Goring, afriend and I fell to concerting fabulous schemes for our futurebetterment: a visit to Tibet was one; but, we agreed, the most fabulous.With the coming of responsibility the purpose waned, as other purposessuch as engine-driving had waned before it. Until one day came a letterfrom India, tempting me with 'a trip to Sikkim'. Sikkim?--the atlasshowed a small state in the Himalayas bordering on Tibet. Obviously, Imight even see a yak in Sikkim. But why Sikkim? Why not Tibet?

Modern literary travellers are divided into those to whom expense is noobstacle, and those who profit from an absolute lack of any moneywhatsoever to achieve picturesque suffering and strange companions. Imyself escape these categories. Unaccustomed to starvation, andpreferring, at all times, luxury to squalor, I had neither desire norintention of beachcombing my way to Central Asia. Simultaneously, toeffect even the preliminary voyage to India under conditions of normalcomfort seemed a matter of prohibitive cost. Yet the phantom, onceinvoked, would not be laid. Go I must, and set myself to will the means.How they occurred, by what slender fortuity, was an event that stillleaves me breathless when I think of it.

I had been asked to join a party for supper after the theatre. Itpromised little entertainment: at first I refused; then wentunwillingly, and still more unwillingly to a subterranean night-club.There I sat, scarcely able to keep awake and preparing an abruptgood-bye, when there entered an acquaintance, who informed me that LordBeaverbrook was in search of new writers. This particular acquaintance Ihad not seen for two years, and but for my weak-mindedness in sitting upwhen I should have been asleep, might not have seen for another two.

It was already plain to me that since the initial difficulty of reachingIndia at all was to all intents and purposes insurmountable, I had bestaim at travelling by the most expensive route possible. This was the AirMail, which had then been only a week or two in regular service. If LordBeaverbrook wanted new writers, he might want new subjects also. Let meoffer both.

Next day, thanks to the good offices of our mutual friend, I visitedLord Beaverbrook. Undeterred by the exuberant presence of LordCastlerosse, I treated my host to several profound thoughts (hastilyformulated in the taxi) on the more effective welding of our imperialties; observing, though without undue emphasis, what a vista ofpossibilities had been opened by this new route to the East. My seed,though I did not know it, fell on a rich plough. For a fortnight laterLord Beaverbrook's Empire Free Trade Campaign burst on the public.

I pursued this advantage. Numerous conversations followed. I evenattempted, without success, to write on my chosen theme for the EveningStandard. But my plans got no further, and the theme was outside myknowledge. Meanwhile, if I was going to India, the time was rapidlyarriving when I must come to a decision as to dates and makearrangements. At length, one sunny June morning, I sat with LordBeaverbrook in his garden overlooking the Park, and I asked him in plainterms whether he was prepared to pay my passage to India in return forsome articles. He knew, as I knew, that no articles on such a subjectcould possibly be worth £126 in the open market of journalism. But witha generosity which the march of politics can never efface, he assented,walked indoors, and reaching for an ivory telephone, gave the necessaryinstructions to his office.

I informed my family of the good news, and feared some possibleobjections on their part to the hazards of the new route. My mother,however, could think of nothing but the drawing-rooms of Anglo-Indianrelatives. All she asked was that I should not bring home a Buddha. Myelder sister supposed that now I should have to become a sahib. 'Areyou a sahib?' she inquired dubiously. My younger sister, recalling thefield of my previous activities, muttered under her breath: 'Now it'llbe tribes instead of monks.' My father remained acquiescent, merelytoying with the probabilities and pains of sunstroke.

During the ensuing weeks my parents' ears were filled with theprecautions taken by past and present administrators of the IndianEmpire, men and women of all ages and complexions, to preserve theirhealth. One had worn a tummy-belt for forty years; another had taken anightly dose of quinine over the same length of time. One thing wascertain: my instant demise could be averted only by a miracle; and thechances of that miracle would be dangerously handicapped by a firstarrival in the hot weather. Reluctantly I submitted to variousinoculations. The aeroplane was to leave on Saturday. On Friday morningI enjoyed the important sensation of a farewell lunch at the Ritz,attended by Miss Tilly Losch. That evening numerous friends sent metelegrams, couched as though I were going to execution. My ticket layfatting in a breast pocket, a book of coupons for lunch in this country,dinner in that, and transit in between. I spent till midnight fittingclothes, medicaments, and stationery into a kit-bag and a blueRevelation suitcase.

The morning of Saturday, 27 July brought a feeling of relief, as thoughit were the first day of the holidays. Whatever the horrors in store, atleast they could be met passively, and without the exercise of thatwearing initiative demanded by the packing of an unprotected bottle. Atnine o'clock I reached Airways House in Charles Street. Body andbaggage, I weighed two and a half pounds under the permitted complement.At the aerodrome we hurried through passages and barriers, and emergedfrom a door to find the City of Wellington buzzing and roaring on thethreshold; its three enormous propellers threatened our hats with theirwind. I crept up the diminutive gangway to my seat. A door shut. And themachine cantered across the aerodrome, turned, galloped back, and roseabove a sea of small red houses.

My first sensation was one of suffocating depression. But for a quarterof an hour in a tin and canvas Flea, which looped the loop for an extra7s. 6d. and fell in half the week after, I had never flown before. And Inow beheld myself in a dark cabin scarcely five feet across, twistingabout in a constricted wicker space, and convinced that my whole beingwould soon disintegrate altogether under pressure of sheer noise. A longdormant home-sickness rose within me, an ache for train or boat, the oldand comfortable friends of travel. A trip to Paris might be borne. Butto contemplate the continuance of this inferno of drill, buzz, and roar,and these attitudes of a strait-jacket, for eight days on end was torelinquish faith in the beneficence of earthly fate. My mother'sgood-bye assumed an aspect of tragedy. I dreamt of the lazy days on deckthat might have been, or the blue velvet of a wagon-lit, to take theplace of these preposterous cretonne curtains, over-waisted andfunctionless as those of a doll's house. When Air-Marshal Sir GeoffreySalmond, seeking to levitate himself from the chair behind, accidentallyrapped me on the head, I all but turned and knocked him through theaeroplane. Only the merry-go-round motion of the bumps provided somerelief, which was increased to pleasure by the sight of severalpassengers at their cuspidors.

As we rose to between three and four thousand feet, the patchwork ofEnglish fields, heavily embroidered in elms, disappeared in a haze. Aline proclaimed the Channel, and, after half an hour's gloom, anotherthe coast of France. Here the patchwork was cleaner, strips and squaresof ripened corn interspersed with larger and more irregular shapes ofgreen velvet woodland; occasionally a white road showed like a liningbeneath, with sometimes a stumpwork of trees along it. One o'clock foundus at Le Bourget, lunching beneath a wallpaper of inebriate birds. Thosearound us ate delicious omelettes. We, coming from England, were treatedto a parody of our national beef.

At two o'clock we embarked again for Basle. At lunch I had made theacquaintance of a professional journalist, named Butcher, who said heloathed flying, but flew everywhere for copy. He was now sick.Eventually hills appeared, and clouds, the latter suffusing the cabinwith an odd winter light. Then the town lay beneath us, and we glideddown to the Birsfelden aerodrome, where the customs house was adornedwith a series of excellent modern frescoes, depicting 'Porterage'. Hencea bus took us to the Hotel Euler. The drive revealed the 'Crewe ofSwitzerland' as a charming, shady town, with many old houses, fountains,and flowerbeds. The local zoo was advertised with posters of seals.

From the hotel I went to the Kunsthalle, which, though officially shut,was in fact open. The barkings of a dog brought its master, who, on myexplaining that I had come by aeroplane especially to see El Greco'sLaocoon, admitted me to the galleries. Unfortunately this picture wasno longer there. It has since appeared in London. The main interest ofthe collection was the Holbeins, which included the famous miniature ofErasmus in old age, and a water-colour of Edward VI of England holding asmall, flap-eared dog. The keeper drew my attention to the phantasies ofhis fellow-citizen Böcklin, who enjoyed a great vogue about 1880.

After dining on the terrace of the hotel, and surrendering the requisitecoupons from our tickets, the party, now depleted to five, proceeded tothe station, accompanied by various officials of Imperial Airwayscarrying the sticks, coats, and parcels that had been left behind. 'Wehave to treat our passengers like children,' they observed resignedly.The train was in; wagons-lits were reserved; we disposed our baggage;but there was no engine. This arrived three-quarters of an hour late,and then rushed through the Alps at an immense pace, interrupted byhalts of such violence that on one occasion I fell out of bed.

Morning dawned in northern Italy. More of the company's officials,smartly uniformed in blue serge and gold braid, met us at Genoa. 'Theydon't half run the houses up here,' remarked one passenger, who had notbeen in Italy before. After traversing the untidiest port in the world,we came to a small barge, the property of the SANA (Società AnonimaNavigazione Aerea), where poached eggs and strawberry jam lay invitingon a table.

Already the heat was sweltering. Out in the harbour glittered the whiteCalcutta flying-boat, the City of Rome, with a small Union Jackfluttering from its cockpit. After a slight delay, caused by thechecking of the mails, we went off in a launch. The Union Jack wasfurled; the hatch closed; we were away. The rise of a flying-boat,particularly when there is a swell, resembles all that Luna Park justfails to achieve. The engines roar; the floats on the wings dip, firston one side, then on the other; at each wave a great bump lifts themachine. The speed increases, clouds of spray lash the portholes; tillsuddenly we have exchanged elements and the sea is beneath. Aftercircling a good-bye to the seaplane base, we set off to the south,leaving the coast of Italy on our left. One of the party, CaptainBennett-Baggs, whose stature was such that he exceeded in personalweight the full quota allowed each passenger with his luggage, took thesecond controls.

A pleasanter and more intimate atmosphere now prevailed. The portholesonce opened, it was cooler; the noise was less, the engines being setbehind, on the wings; and the seats of inflated leather allowed freermovement. Outside, the wings gleamed white against the lapis of theMediterranean 500 feet below, and the floats beneath them looked likehuge silver fishes accidentally caught out of the deep. From time totime the wireless operator sent us messages: Elba on the right, Leghornon the left. In due course, we passed over Ostia, circling a salute tothe seaplane base, where we could see the Dornier-Wal machines lyingeach in its little dock. According to schedule, we should have lunchedthere; but the water was too shallow for a safe descent. Instead, theengineer now produced a typical Italian lunch of ham, salami, chicken,new rolls, cheese, Russian mushrooms, nectarines, and wine. These we atefrom tin trays, which slid up from the backs of the chairs likeprayer-book racks. There were two forks, three glasses, and one cup, toassist us.

Another note arrived, asking if we wished to fly over Vesuvius and lookdown the crater. We did. But when the Bay of Naples came round thecorner, a cloud was covering the top of the mountain. The town and itsdependencies, stretching in a circuit of thirty miles round the shore,presented a gorgeous panorama in the golden glitter of a southernafternoon, as we passed between Ischia and the mainland, flew overPosilipo, and came spirally down upon the harbour. New officials met us.The customs obliterated themselves. On the bus, we talked of Mussolinias Mr Smith, and of the pleasures of Capri in yet more cryptic terms.

After a bath at the Hotel Excelsior, I drove out beyond Posilipo, andoff the main road down a one-way track enclosed between the high mudwalls of vineyards. This led to a gate, within which rows of painfullywatered carnations bespoke the Englishman's determination to carry hishome with him. P. was in the drive, clad only in vest and trousers, andabounding in classical lore. Here was the rock, like so many rocks inthis neighbourhood, where Vergil wrote the Aeneid; there the palace ofLucullus, its painted rooms still intact; beyond, the tunnel whichSejanus, minister to Tiberius, cut through the rock to the same mainroad, rather than use the drive which my taxi had reluctantlynegotiated. The R.s must endure it, as the tunnel is a nationalmonument, and must therefore be permitted to fall into decay.

Having undressed, we descended the cliff on which the villa stands by aseries of other tunnels and quarried steps, to bathe. It was like ahome-coming to float once more on the buoyant waters of theMediterranean, and swim with an ease that two years' absence from thesea had made me forget. We plucked a fat sea-urchin from a rock, whichthe gardener later identified as a female. At dinner, the food was fromthe sea, the wine from the garden. Mussolini was here referred to as MrJones. P.'s brother, then in the Air Force, said that before coming outto Italy he had received rigid instructions not to speak to, or bespoken to by, any member of the corresponding Italian service, for fearof being thought a spy. Afterwards, we sat looking over the bay, asemicircle of quivering yellow stars in the blackness. Up in the skyhovered a stationary comet. This was Vesuvius: the railway its tail, andthe observatory its body.

Recalling my obligations to the Daily Express, I made ado to return,eventually leaving in a pony-cart drawn by a diminutive brown Pegasus,which had no thought for the ravines that yawned beneath each corner. Atram was waiting on the main road, which took me back to the hotel. Isat up till one o'clock composing an article, and rose again at five totype it.

Unbuttoned, unshaven, and unfed, I clattered into the hall at a quarterpast seven, to find the other passengers already waiting. At a quarterto eight we were off again, crossed the instep of Italy with anoccasional bump, touched the southernmost point of the Gallipolipeninsula, and, an hour later, landed in the harbour of Corfu for lunch.I had last spent seven hours of an April day here, painting an island,which had then been green and yellow. To see it now dull brown gave me ashock. Above us, the lion of St Mark spoke of Venice. An argument withofficials ensued, who forbade us to disembark our cameras, though wecould see a party of German tourists busily taking photographs on thecliff above our heads. It was as though the fact of travelling by airhad invested us with supernatural powers of espionage. To settle thematter, I produced a laissez-passer from the Greek Minister in London;whereupon, to the astonishment of the rest of the party, I was hailed asa 'friend of Greece' and permitted anything. During lunch, Sir GeoffreySalmond said that he might be old-fashioned, but that All Quiet on theWestern Front was not a book to leave in the drawing-room. Butcherreplied with a perk of surprise that all that sort of thing was endednow, and wasn't he a bit behind the times? To which the Air-Marshalsighed: 'Well, I suppose there are drawing-rooms and drawing-rooms.' Hethen recalled that Corfu had once been British, and what bloody fools wewere the way we always gave a good thing away. It was on the tip of mytongue to hope for a similar restoration of Cyprus from the LabourGovernment, but I was too content to be in Greece again to bother withan argument.

After examining an Italian Dornier-Wal monoplane, and a French machinewhich was painted an aesthetic orange and bringing mails from Beyrut, weflew round to the back of the island to see the Achilleion, the palacebuilt by the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and later vulgarized by theKaiser. Then we continued southward along the coast, till an easterlyturn took us inland over flat marshy country. Being anxious to take aphotograph of Byron's death-place, Captain Stocks, the pilot, invited meinto the cockpit, where I perched my feet on two aluminium platformsbehind him. As I stood, my head and chest were above the wind-screen,and, since the propellers were behind, could remain there withoutdiscomfort. Below us, a marshy plain stretched into the distance; to theleft, mountains; to the right, mountains; in between, patches of waterreflecting the blue sky; and all the land emitting that subtle rosyglitter which is Greece. And here was I, on my fourth visit in fiveyears, arriving in the sky--arriving not with rush and hurricane, as maybe imagined; but moving with measure and circumstance through the bluevault; the great wings spreading like a house behind me; and the pilotat my feet finding it superfluous to exercise more than the slightestcontrol over so rational and self-sufficient an instrument oflocomotion. The sensation was superb and like no other. A ship is alwayson the water, a dependent, humbler than the humblest wave. This proudvehicle, on this unflecked, sunny afternoon, asked no visible substancefor support. Standing with head bare, drunk with the wind that tossed myhair and ran over my skin beneath a fluttering shirt, I travelled assovereign of the universe, a solar emperor.

As Missolonghi approached, I descended from my perch to the spaceintervening between the cabin and the cockpit, where the wirelessoperator sits. Here was a porthole from which, at a whistle from Stocks,I achieved a successful picture, taking care to keep the bellows of thecamera out of the line of the wind. The wireless operator, who assisted,was Mr Stone, familiarly known as 'Sparks', whose personality kept mehappy during the whole voyage. His round eyes and small piscine mouthsuggested some ever-present outrage, until, at short intervals, thewhole face would expand into a coil of smiles as ripples spread overdisturbed water. The face is a sad memory, for Stone, with Pembroke theengineer, was drowned when the City of Rome sank with four passengersjust outside Genoa in the following October.

At length we reached the Gulf of Corinth, flying close round the greatobelisk of a mountain which stands at its entrance, and which, for thoseon shipboard, is the first real view of Greece. There lay Patras,spattered white over the opposing shore; there Lepanto, a brown villagebeneath us; there, across the peacock water, the SPAP railway runningalong the coast. In an hour we were over Corinth. The same trains werein the station; the same restaurant where I have eaten so many oddthings on so many odd journeys; the same slag-heaps whence I had paddledon my second day in Greece. The Gulf curved round to meet itself, toend, but for that diminutive incision which leads to the Aegean. Alongthe Canal and over its bridge we flew, while a toy train puffedlaboriously across it, and a still more farcical boat crawled stealthilyalong the bottom of the reft. At length, as we rounded Salamis, thechimneys of Piraeus hove in sight, followed by the Acropolis and thetwisted cone of Lykabettus.

In Athens, to my disappointment, Imperial Airways had arranged for us tostay at the Acropole Palace, a new hotel having a bathroom to eachbedroom, but situate in a low, slummy quarter of the town, and lackingthat maturity of personnel which is essential to comfort. A flood ofreunions awaited me. I learnt that the bookshop had sold fifteen copiesof my last book. Dr Zervos presented me with a basket of Mocca coffeewhich had actually grown in Mocca. Later we assembled at the HotelGrande Bretagne, where Stocks, Bennett-Baggs, and the Air-Marshal werealready installed in the bar. Dinner we ate at Mr Rompapa's open-airrestaurant in the Zappeion gardens, newly surrounded by an artistictrellis-work. At midnight I dropped asleep as I sat. The other party satdrinking till four o'clock.

On Tuesday morning we left the hotel at the comparatively reasonablehour of half-past nine. Just outside Piraeus we circled low over acapsized fishing-boat, a grisly wreck in the crystal blue water, andwirelessed a description of it to the mainland. Butcher, theAir-Marshal, and myself were now alone. A following wind brought us toSuda Bay in Crete by half-past twelve, where a welcome effusively andlavishly English greeted us. For the company had stationed here a yacht,the Imperia, formerly the property of numerous millionaires, and ableto ride any sea in case of a forced descent in bad weather. A bathe fromthe side, which, like all Greek bathes, will live in the memory forever, was followed by a six-course lunch set at a table whose posy offlowers might have come from an English garden. Our appetites weresharpened by the witticisms of Captain MacLeod and Chief Officer Horn,who had lately been described in the English Press as 'Adams in anEveless Eden'.

That afternoon Captain Stocks again permitted me the joy of sitting inthe cockpit. The White Mountains, legendary home of the human vampire,were cloudless, and he decided to fly across the island and through themby a broad pass, which I had already traversed on foot two years before.Stocks had told us how, one evening in the dark, he was attempting thiscourse, when the altimeter stuck; the pass was approaching; he wasunable to make the requisite height; until, frightened and desperate, heknocked the dial, and the hand jumped up three thousand feet. Such weremy own sensations now. With the nose of our great winged ship tiltedupward, swaying slightly, dropping suddenly, leaping up again, we madeas though to crash into the huge barren hill-side, as the vineyards andcypresses gave place to a speckling of rock and scrub. Stocks tapped thealtimeter, which this time did not shoot upwards. On which--though itafterwards transpired that my apprehensions were simply the result ofoptical delusion, and that we actually had plenty of room--we turned,avoiding, as it seemed, the encircling mountains by a hair's-breadth,and executed a broad spiral to increase our height. Then we wentstraight for the pass. Still my optical delusions persisted. At everybump, as the mountain currents tossed us from side to side and the wingsdipped up and down, the escarpments and rocky slopes leapt intothreatening proximity. I looked down. There was the road up which I hadmotored on a cold October morning; there the house where I had found mymules; there the village where an escort of police had joined me; andthere, cleaving the pass itself to a depth of a thousand feet, theairless gorge down which I had picked my way, a black thread twistingand bulging as it led down towards the sea. We were over. Suddenly theisland dropped away from us, and the smoother southern slopes, aridbrown in the summer heat, fell down to the village of Sphakia, where Ihad slept the night in a policeman's blanket already inhabited. From thetop of Mount Ida on our left to the bottom of the sea fifteen miles outthe earth's surface drops some 23,000 feet. As the island receded behindus, it seemed as though any moment might see us engulfed in thisappalling abyss. Slowly and safely we descended, till the flat blue seagradually developed a warp and woof, and at last each wave could bepersonally distinguished. We were heading southward for the coast ofAfrica.

There was something impressive about this transition, in the space oftwo hours, from one continent to another. From Spain, the change is notso great; the coasts resemble one another. But here, as the line of deadorange limiting the inky sapphire sea stretched interminably on into thedistance, it was plain that this was a land like no other, endowed withdifferent shapes, colours, and lights, a vast land of black races and ofstrange self-centred cultures that have remained isolated from the greatmovements of taste between Europe and Asia. As the aeroplane circledover the harbour of Tobruk, a burnt plain of measureless extent wasdisclosed, rippled but never hilly, and merging, fifty, a hundred, athousand miles away, into a horizon of opal mist. I looked involuntarilyfor Capetown. I seemed to recognize the place. Then I thought ofEgyptian art, and the recognition was explained.

Tobruk, the only landmark for hundreds of miles along this desert unionof land and water, is the capital of the Italian province of Cyrenaica,and the centre of a sponge-fishery conducted by the Greek divers of theDodecanese. The town consists of an area of mud shanties, interspersedwith one or two official buildings and guarded by a wall fortified withbarbed wire, outside which no Italian dares venture. Only recently, saidStocks, he had arrived to find the quay covered with dead and wounded.Into a crowd of Arabs and negroes, gathered on the one pier, andtattered and draped in the proverbial colours of the East, we steppedashore. Tea was waiting in a small café, behind which, adjoining acourtyard filled with embarrassing domesticities, was the ImperialAirways' agent's bed- and sitting-room. The latter he placed at mydisposal, whence, after composing another article for the DailyExpress, I emerged in a stream of perspiration to bathe. The Governor,a depressed man wearing pince-nez, kindly lent us his Ford, and also,since we were proposing to leave the town, supplied us with an escort,lest a hostile force (silhouetted, on camels, as in Purilia) shouldappear from over the horizon and steal our clothes. As we drove along,bent and ragged old Arabs, seeing the official flag floating from themudguard, favoured us with the Fascist salute, which looked more thanusually ridiculous under such circumstances. The agent told usafterwards that they have a deadly hatred of the Italians, and that thelatter are literally not permitted to leave the town at all except inthe bathing season, and then only for a distance of 500 yards. The waterwas delicious; but not Greek.

Sir Geoffrey Salmond was staying at the Residency, and Stocks, Butcher,and myself dined alone on a verandah overlooking the harbour. The agent,who was only nineteen, had written out an elaborate menu. Stocks talkedof his early trips during the inauguration of the service, of thedifficulties of obtaining petrol, the lack of mechanics, and his ownconsequent sleeplessness. The crisis had come when a hungry débutante,returning from India with her father, had reached up into the rack andgobbled down the crew's lunch. Butcher said that the Air-Marshal seemeda wiry man for his age. Stocks said tough was the word. We gave himmuch credit for his charm of manner towards the personnel of the route.

As we left Genoa, there had appeared in the sea below us a yacht similarto that stationed in Suda Bay, which was then on its way to Tobruk forthe accommodation of passengers. Unaware of this, however, anenterprising inhabitant had taken and furnished a house in the back ofthe town, in which we were now put to sleep. Through the windows camethe sound of dervishes' drums. The rooms were tall and clean, andboasted mosquito-nets and plush-covered chairs. On being called athalf-past four, I discovered a cement pool filled with cold water, andwas able to enjoy a bathe.

After breakfasting in the same café, we took off at five minutes to six.The colour of the water was astounding--a sharp, deep scarab-blue,beside which even the Greek sea seemed pale. Inland, the desertstretched for ever, with no sign of a human being. We crossed theItalian frontier, a range of low hills, and dropped a bundle ofnewspapers at Mersa Matruh, where we observed, painted in large letterson a roof, HILLIER'S GUEST HOUSE. It was here subsequently, after twosuccessive accidents, that the Maharani of Cooch Behar dried her clothesand slept, while William Gerhardi bound up the heel which the propellerhad all but removed. The weather had been rough; the City of Rome hadsunk that very week. Stocks, who had fortunately escaped that disasterowing to illness, was their pilot. In trying to take off he struck abuoy. After two or three hours a rescue machine arrived, and they setoff again, only to hit a reef. Water rushed into the cabin; and they allemerged on to the roof, whence a boat took such of them as thepropellers had left intact to shore again. I was in Calcutta at thetime, and my letters arrived stampless and stained with sea-water.

At a quarter past eleven came the beginnings of Alexandria. As we passedLake Mariut, an extraordinary illusion presented itself. The water,owing to its excessive saltness and the angle of the sun, shoneabsolutely white; while a long shadow, probably caused by mist, exactlycoincided with its farther shore. The effect was that of a snow-cladhill rising against a November sky. Beyond, the town stretched enormous.We circled over the harbour and came down in front of King Fuad'spalace.

On the quay we parted from the Air-Marshal, who was continuing hisjourney by Air Force machines. Sadly I said good-bye to Stocks, who hadbeen a host as well as a pilot, and whose visitors' book, now at thebottom of the Gulf of Genoa, we had all signed. I shook hands withPembroke and Stone. And turned to find Mr Casulli, an acquaintance ofthree years ago, waiting to greet me with a gleaming La Salle car.Having lately been reading those scarce and entertaining publications,E. M. Forster's Guide to Alexandria and his Pharos and Pharillon, Ianxiously inquired the site of the old lighthouse, whose groundreflector, illumined by a giant bonfire, was one of the wonders ofAntiquity. As we drove along the sea-front, the tall houses, with theirweathered, plum-coloured bricks and ancient timbering, were strangelyreminiscent of our own Tudor architecture. At Mr Casulli's office thecashier bore the appropriate name of Athanasius. Mr Casulli talked ofthe horrors of the cotton-market. Then we drove out to his house tolunch--a palatial residence decorated in the Victorian Arab style andset in a garden of flowering shrubs and trees. Madame Casulli said thather children's English governesses always insulted her because they werenot supplied with English food.

II. The Desert Lands

The new aeroplane was timed, according to our information, to leave attwo o'clock. Aboukir aerodrome is some twenty miles from Alexandria. MrCasulli drove his La Salle at between sixty and seventy miles an hourthrough the burning heat, past his own farm, where he grows bananas,dates and cotton, and breeds Arab horses, till as far as King Fuad'spalace, where the road, no longer subject to royal criticism, changedcharacter and obliged him to slow down. We reached Aboukir with fiveminutes to spare, to discover that the mails from the City of Rome hadnot yet arrived. Consequently there was a delay of an hour. The otherpassengers, who were also waiting about, included two directors of theFrench air mail from Marseilles to Beyrut, and a Persian boy returningto Teheran after four years' school in York.

Eventually we took off at three o'clock in the City of Cairo, apowerful machine, able to climb on two of its three engines. The routelay over the northern border of 'the Wilderness', that land where thechildren of Israel wandered and suffered and children of Christianeducation continue to do likewise. Very strange it looked in theafternoon light, a sea of dunes, each rotund hummock casting anelliptical blue shadow on the golden sand, till all were absorbed into ahorizon of jagged, opalescent mountains. The villages were few--smallclusters of square mud buildings accompanied by occasional palms andsparse scratches of cultivation. Sometimes camels were returning to themalong tracks dotted serpentwise among the dunes. Even from a thousandand two thousand feet, every footprint was visible.

We reached Gaza for tea. The Imperial Airways' hangar and hostel liesome way out of the town, on the site of the various battles which tookplace here during the war, and of which the Turks generally had theadvantage. A former gunner was among the passengers, and as he had beenbadly wounded on this spot, and had not seen it since, we allowed him toindulge his reminiscences. The British trenches, which we later visited,were still littered with bones and shredded clothing. Live bombs arealso found, which the local gipsies use for killing fish, to the outrageof resident sportsmen. That we were now under the beneficent shadow of aBritish mandate, was recalled to me by the following conversation:

R.B. (to the HOSTEL SUPERINTENDENT): That's a nice spaniel you've got there.

SUPERINTENDENT: Yes. Damn good with birds.

R.B.: Have you been shooting much round here?

SUPERINTENDENT: Don't you know that the grouse season doesn't open till August the twelfth?

The hostel was comfortably planned, a double line of one-storeybuildings containing bedrooms, shower-baths, a dining-room, and officesfor the staff and mails. In front, a garden was in the making, ageometrical arrangement of whitewashed stones, in which bananas,cypresses, and one eucalyptus had been planted among tree-geraniums.Here tea was waiting, surrounded by arm-chairs.

On my suggestion that we might bathe, the superintendent produced a car,and Butcher, the gunner, and myself motored down the seven miles to thesea. The Frenchmen declined to come; they had had 'assez de transport'.On the way we passed through the town, which, as my readers willremember, was formerly a stronghold of the Philistines. Amos, Zephaniah,and Zechariah heaped their curses on the place; 'baldness is come uponGaza,' asseverated Jeremiah. While Samson, very rightly threatened bythe inhabitants for practices inimical to public morality during hisfirst night's sojourn, snatched away the town gates. The scene of thisexploit is now identified as lying on the left of the general store.Historians may cavil. But they cannot, we were glad to learn, questionthe survival of Delilahs.

By the time we reached the shore, twilight was deepening. A furiousorange sunset marked the limit of the sea, against which a three-mastedbrigantine lay anchored in silhouette. We hurriedly undressed beneath athatched shelter, and avoiding the melon-rind with which the shore wasstrewn, stepped into water which was almost too hot to be refreshing.Slow oily waves lifted us on to the jagged edges of concealed rocks. Afisherman's line became entangled in my legs. It grew wholly dark. Onthe way back the driver informed us that he had just spent £5,000 onplanting and maturing a grove of Jaffa oranges.

Dinner was nasty and inadequate. Since, however, the hostelsuperintendent had only just recovered from one nervous breakdown, andavowed himself threatened with another at the prospect of exposure inthe Daily Express, I told him that the catering was beyond allexpectation. The Frenchmen were patently dissatisfied. But as there wasno single person present with whom they could communicate unless I choseto assist them, they suffered in silence. After dinner we agreed thatthe French understand the English better than the English can everunderstand the French.

On Thursday morning we were called with tea at five o'clock, and thentold to go to sleep again as the mail train from Port Said had brokendown, according to its usual custom. At seven we breakfasted offkippers, which Captain Alcock, our pilot and brother of Sir John, hadbrought from Alexandria. Then the arriving mails were found to beheavier than expected, and the aeroplane had to be relieved of acorresponding amount of petrol. By this time the superintendent waspositively haggard. We took off at eight o'clock, flew over Bethlehem,caught a glimpse of Jerusalem such as Richard Coeur de Lion must havehad, and came to the sinister depression of the Dead Sea where theJordan, a sluggish stream, leaves it, carrying a bed of green up thelandscape in much the same way as it does on physical maps. In front,the Moabite mountains expanded before us. The formation of the wholecountry was most extraordinary, resembling a giant architecture. Domesand towers, temples of ribbed ornament, bulging chimneys, obelisks andcenotaphs, façades and dorsal roofings, were endlessly repeated, to forma natural municipality of impalpable burning rock, from whose bottomlessstreets wraiths of opal colour came floating up the vast crackedperpendiculars. What wonder that the Chosen, crawling ant-like abouttheir pastoral pursuits, evolved the forbidding deity for which thislandscape must answer posterity, as the coasts of Greece answer for theevolution of form and sense?

By degrees the cliffs and canyons grew less, till they merged into asandy plateau strewn with black stones. Here, for no apparent reason, wesuddenly began to descend. The explosion of rockets, which the pilotsent out to find the direction of the wind, sounded like an enginefailure. Alarm was dispelled by the sight of a small metal circle, suchas usually communicates from the pavement to the coal-cellar, set byitself in the middle of the desert, up to which we manoeuvred in a stormof sand, and which in fact gave access to a tank of petrol. A quarter ofa mile away stood the fort of Kasr Kharana, a ruin, in whose upperchambers skeletons lay still in their clothes. 'Hah! des cadavres!'muttered the Frenchmen. Outside were Turkish graves, from which jackalshad abstracted the contents.

It was now midday, and the heat of the air, as we took off again, seemedscarcely possible, like the conditions of a dream. Even at five thousandfeet it felt as though a stream of flames were playing through thewindow upon the neck and face. Enormous bumps hurled us up and down, tothe visible distress of the other passengers, as the wings dipped fromside to side, and the aeroplane fell through space like a stone, orleapt towards the heavens with the quiver and thrill of a hunter at afence. The Persian boy and Butcher frankly collapsed; the gunner wasdisturbed; and even the Frenchmen, experienced fliers, admittedafterwards that it had been 'une voyage pénible'. We lunched at Rutbah,where the Nairn Transport Company rents a large square fort from theGovernment of Iraq. Members of the local camel corps, ferocious men withdaggers stuck all over them and rifles in their hands, guarded theentrance. Within the courtyard, which was filled with tattered andirrelevant humanity, stood a comfortable and very cool lounge, suppliedwith weekly papers. The wife of the superintendent brought two tamemongooses to play with the guests. She said that her chief amusementswere learning to gallop on a camel and shooting gazelle from a car. Ishared a table with the gunner, who, on discovering my first and moreexclusive Alma Mater, remarked that he wouldn't have thought it, andproceeded to expatiate on the airs of her offspring out East. I wasflattered.

In the afternoon the heat became even greater. It was so unusual, soimprobably violent, that I wondered how it was that I or anyone elsecontinued to survive under such conditions. A lake appeared; and then amuddy ribbon, fringed with palm woods: the Tigris. A haze of dustproclaimed the city of the Arabian Nights. We landed for tea. I askedwhy, of all invented hats, the Iraqis should have chosen the blackVictorian forage-cap for their national head-dress. No one knew.

The Maude Hotel, a ramshackle wooden quadrangle, was prepared for ourreception. I retired to my room in the interests of the Express andwrote: 'The heat is like a joke; the paper shrivels as I type; the glassfrom which I drink, though filled with iced ginger-beer, emits a sharpwarmth.' Attached to my room was a wooden bathroom, which I thought heldthe seed of hope. But the water, having trickled through half a mile ofpipe-line under the desert, was steaming hot, and even after it waspoured out took seven hours to become only gently warm.

Dinner we ate in the garden, a spacious enclosure of date-palms, whosebunches of fruit hung ripening below their leaves. Farther down electriclights protruded from their trunks. The food was excellent, consistingof fish from the Tigris, roast duck, and an exquisite almond-ice tastingof cyanide of potassium. 'This hotel has always good food,' said thewaiter, with that aristocratic intonation peculiar to Arabs. 'You shalltell other gentlemen.'

As Butcher and I ate, a sound of singing spoke a romantic Orientalmessage out of the night. Our attention, however, was diverted from itstragic cadences to the idiosyncrasies of our companion, an American,whose name, if the reader will be so kind as to believe it, was Boggins.He was suffering from an accretion of phlegm, and was engaged infertilizing a cactus hedge near by. 'I've spent the greater patt of thelasst few yearrs in South Amurrica,' he informed us. 'But my companywannted me to come out here'--spit... splash--'so I guess Icame'--snort; spit... splash, spit... splash. 'I believe Crosseand Blackman's are yewerr leading manufacturers of canned goods, arethey naht?'

'Crosse and Blackwell is the name.'

'Well, whether it's Blackwell or Blackman, I guess they're the onesI've heard of,'--spit-spit-spit, SPIT!!... splash.

The birds in the trees above twittered on, protesting.

At this juncture, like the first whiffs of a gas attack, the fact thatIraq was officially within the sphere of Anglo-India was announced bytwo compatriots, who came to join us. 'Give the sahib a whisky,' saidone to the waiter. So I was a sahib, curious though it seemed. 'Whatdid you think of Alex.?'[11]said the other. 'My memsahib's there at themoment.' This remark was calculated to inform me that, being married, hewas not perhaps the guide to pleasure that I expected. Undeterred, Ireplied that I wished to see the town. Even though it was dark, mydesire was surely natural. Bagdad, like Athens and Rome, is one ofchildhood's cities. 'What on earth for?' came the reply. 'There'snothing in it but a lot of bloody wogs.' None the less I persisted, andstood myself on the Maude bridge-of-boats. Across the huge river camethe strains of an Orientalized tango and the reflection of café lights.Every variety of Arab filed before me--fat and thin, draped andtrousered, running madly, pensively singing, Bedouins in 1880moustaches, the more sophisticated in those of Charlie Chaplin, somewomen veiled, others (particularly those of substantial bust) in thescantiest of cotton frocks, and children tottering beneath fezes largerthan themselves. The streets were filled with dashing horse-cabs.

[Footnote 11]Alexandria.

The party meanwhile had gone to the 'Arabian Nights', a gloomy outdoornight-club, furnished with a proscenium at one end. At the other tablessat Arab gigolos in Palm Beach suitings, Bedouins in those gorgeoustrappings which the features of Colonel T. E. Lawrence have rendereddepressingly familiar, and a few Englishmen aglow with righteousindiscretion. Tarts in tulle and spangles sat avidly in the background,while our group discussed their pasts and those of every other whitewoman between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea for the last tenyears. 'That one, as a matter of fact, really used to haeve a verynaice little body... You see the woman with the drum; a bit fat,what? When she came out with the Army of Occupation she was a damnuseful bit o' work. Then they tried to send her away, and she married awog and took his nationality, and here she is for good and all, serveher right... Soccially, Bagdad's all raight, I can tell you. Theclubs are absolutely delaightful... of course no one but Britishers.There's hunting and poeloe, horses to be had cheap, and all sorts ofracing... What are the new shoews in town now?'

By this time it was nearly midnight, and as the 'shoew' here had not yetbegun, I walked back to bed, observing on the way that the distantmelancholies which Mr Boggins had so forcibly eliminated during dinner,had in reality proceeded from the mouths, not of wistful houris, but oflarge pink gramophone horns. I bathed in the now cooling water. Butsleep was banished by the piercing wails of what I could only suppose tobe a hyaena in travail on the floor beneath. Stumbling into thecourtyard, and out into the street, my pyjamaed figure conjured theporter from the gutter, and he silenced the animal, bringing me a largebottle of beer besides. It was now one o'clock and I slept. At tenminutes past two, I was awakened. After a meal of fried eggs, we droveout to the aerodrome, and took off, in complete darkness, at ten minutesto four. It must be explained that, according to schedule, we ought tohave reached Basra the evening before. But owing to the delay at Gaza,and the possibility of water in one of the tanks, Alcock had thought itadvisable to stop in Bagdad, and make this early start instead.

On land, it was comparatively cool. But 'hot air rises'. And as we rosealso, the darkness became a suffocating inferno. Fortunately the pilotreceived a wireless message to the effect that a following wind was tobe found at an even greater altitude, and was thus able both to increasehis speed from 90 to 120 miles an hour, and to relieve our discomfort.The arch of Chosroes at Ctesiphon was concealed from us. And though, bythe time we reached Ur, the sun had risen, it failed to reveal the homeof Abraham. At Basra, the home of Sinbad, we landed to exchange pilotsand toy with a second breakfast at the British Air Force base. Alreadythe sun was sending out a pale, searing heat. Passing over a group ofoil refineries and tanks that resembled a village of small gasometers,we came to the head of the Persian Gulf, and reached Bushire, on thenorth side, about half-past ten, to find a third breakfast awaiting us,this time of fish. We were now in Persia. A soldier uniformed like theShah stood by the machine. Customs officials, to show their importance,rummaged through every cranny of our luggage. A horde of semi-naked men,brown and black, proceeded with the process of refuelling, mounting byladders to the upper wing, and there connecting the tanks with theAnglo-Persian Oil Company's wheeled container by means of long hoses.The aerodrome was blistering. As we prepared to leave, the residentengineer begged the pilot to obtain from Karachi a watering-can with arose, as he had some seedlings for whose health a fine spray wasessential. Astonished at the incongruity of man and his environment, wewere off again, flying at 5,000 feet along the side of a yet higherrange of mountains. The shores of the Gulf presented a desolate andpurgatorial appearance on this blazing August morning, lacking entirelythe sharp blues and golden cliffs of the Mediterranean. Land and waterhad been sucked of their colour by the sun, and displayed only amalignant pallor.

During the journey, we ate sardine sandwiches, crumbling with heat, anddrank lime-juice and water from an earthen pot, which had kept itsurprisingly cold. The next stop was Lingeh, where refuelling was againnecessary. Here the heat became a white delirium, dancing over the arid,pebbly dust, hurting the eyes and weakening the breath. A few palms anda group of women stood in silhouette, as upon a snow-field. A cluster ofbee-hive domes in the background sheltered a group of wells.

Crossing over to the southern shore of the Gulf of Oman, we were nowabove the forbidding peaks of Musandam, a huge menacing complex ofwhittled humps, grey-black against the baleful yellow sunset, and cleftby two titanic fiords, in whose bottoms the water gleamed a pale silver.This extraordinary formation is one of the oldest pieces of the world;it stood before the Himalayas. Alexander's admiral, Nearchus, saw it,but declined to visit it. Pliny knew of it. Even now it is inhabited bya race known as the Shihuh, whose language is unintelligible to otherArabs.

We were above the sea again, when the sun, whose intensity had beensteadily increasing since we left Genoa six days ago, was suddenlyconcealed. The atmosphere became sticky. It was the Indian monsoon,stretching out to meet us. Crossing a lagoon, we circled over Jask, andlanded for the night, having flown 1,070 miles that day. At theaerodrome, a strange figure, with the bearded face of a sheikh, butwearing linen plus-fours, greeted us. This was Dr Williamson, aprofessing Moslem, and known as Hadji Williamson, since he has made thepilgrimage to Mecca. A Ford lorry was waiting for us, a recentinnovation, which the inhabitants, accustomed enough to aeroplanes,regarded as the devil. This took us to the house of the Indo-EuropeanTelegraph Superintendent, a resident of thirty years in one of thehottest places in the world, whose employers had never troubled toprovide him with a means of making ice, though there was a largeelectric power-house almost in his garden. He was not the firstEnglishman in Jask. Sir Thomas Herbert, visiting the place in the earlyseventeenth century, wrote the following epitaph[12]

Here lies buried one Captain Shilling unfortunately
slaine by the insulting Portugall: but that his bones want
sence and expression, they would tell you the earth is
not worthy his reception, and that the people are blockish,
rude, treacherous and indomitable.

[Footnote 12]Communicated by Sir Arnold Wilson.

Atwood, the pilot, and I had thought to bathe. But as it was now dark,and sharks had lately become as plentiful as shrimps in two feet ofwater, even leaping out to nip people's legs as they walked along thebeach, we thought better of it. The heat was most oppressive, envelopingthe body in a clammy film. After a dinner of stuffed crabs, we went tobed beneath a rush awning on the roof, where a cool wind got up and gaveus a full night's sleep.

The following morning we took off at six o'clock, and continued alongthe inhospitable coast till the Persian boundary was passed and we wereover Baluchistan. Range after range of mountains, ramparts of droughtand desolation, stretched into the hazy distance, pallid and oppressive.As we passed over a ravine, a sudden bump sent Butcher and myselfleaping from our seats almost to the roof of the cabin. At midday wecame to Gwadar, where a single tent, a stack of petrol tins, and a potof tea, were pitched in absurd isolation on a plain of white dust. Not ahouse nor a habitation was in sight, and the Imperial Airways' agent, avoluble Indian, had taken the whole morning mounted on a camel to reachthe landing-place and prepare for our reception. It was exactly a weeksince we had left London, and we thought of our first lunch at LeBourget, as we drank the tea. Then we re-embarked for India, flyingthrough a bank of cool cloud. A new coast appeared, arid, but lessforbidding. Ten minutes more, said the mechanic. The vision of anAmerican city in the Middle West expanded beneath us. We landed someeight miles the other side of it, ten minutes ahead of the scheduledtime.

A number of dark-faced gentlemen in white leg-draperies, blacksmoking-caps and umbrellas, surrounded the aeroplane. An English customsofficer begged me to inform him if I had brought any gramophones,bicycles, or pianos, and if not, whether I was engaged in gun-running.Some friends of a friend met me with their motor, and pointed myattention to the new airship hangar, the largest single-story buildingin the world, and constructed entirely of corrugated iron. 'The numberof men,' they remarked with relish, 'killed in the process wasenormous.' This observation I subsequently published in the CalcuttaStatesman, to the great indignation of the Karachi Press, who harpedon 'Author's Callous Remark' for several weeks. The casualties, it waspointed out, had actually been extremely few. Having inspected theinternal height from which the bodies had fallen, we set off for thetown.

This, I said to myself, suddenly remembering, is India; and looked outfrom beneath the hood. Beneath a depressing, overcast sky stretched anasphalt road, black and efficient, whose objectives were convenientlylabelled on a white English signpost in black letters. Occasionally abungalow stood up, carefully shrouded in a front garden. Otherwise theearth lay bare, a dead mauvish brown, sprouting tenuous bushes of cactusgrowth or small fig-like shrubs with mauve flowers that fluttered in thewind. In the background ran a low railway embankment, interrupted by ahorizontal bridge. Above this appeared the distant towers of the Englishchurch of the Holy Trinity, the Scottish Denominational church of StAndrew, and the Gothic lecture-hall, all executed in yellow stone. Thisplacid scene was enlivened by a lady in a yellow sari and a gentleman inwhite draperies on a bicycle, going one way, and a string of camels,evidently afraid of the asphalt, coming the other.

It transpired that my welcomers, without whose kindness I should nowhave been in tears, had made me an honorary member of the Sind Club, apalace of comfort, good food, and eternal drinks, set in a compound offlowering trees, where I found myself in possession of a suite of threerooms and the usual offices. An inscrutable brown wizard with a whitemoustache was also at my disposal. 'To-night, of course,' they said,'you'll only want a dinner-jacket.' Ruefully I apologized for theloathsome contingencies of air travel, explaining that limitations ofweight had prevented the inclusion of evening clothes in my luggage. Byday I might have arrived wearing a grass loin-cloth, for all anyonewould have cared. But the Indian night holds no place for the undressed.The dilemma was solved by my agreeing to dine alone in my room. This Idid, assailed by the sensations of a first day at school, andexperiencing that singular feature of Indian life, the difficulty ofever lighting a cigarette owing to the unceasing fans. Outside, amilitary band was playing composite tunes for the entertainment of a'front-line' dinner. To-morrow was August the Fourth; but that being aSunday, the dinner was to-night.

I awoke next morning to a whistle of wind that would have alarmedMacbeth's witches, on which were borne the noises of the parrot-house atthe zoo: the monsoon and the local birds. Timidly I ventured tobreakfast. Nothing could have exceeded the friendliness of the members;my diffidence began to disappear. But the pall of my absent clothes hungover me, and I was motored into the town to a Mussulman tailor, who thatevening delivered in my room a white suit with pearl buttons. Theappropriate shoes were supplied, with no less expedition, by a militarybootmaker named Mohonjee Nagjee.

The week's flight, though I was unconscious of it at the time, had leftme exhausted. And in the interval between my arrival on Saturdayafternoon, and the departure of the boat for Bombay on the followingThursday, I was content to do little. Various incidents enlivened thedays. There was the shock of discovering that chota hasri, which I hadalways believed to be a form of suicide, in fact denoted early morningtea. The men with whom I consorted embarrassed me by asking what Ithought of them and their fellows. To which I replied, evasively, that Inoticed a sort of sadness creeping over those lately arrived. Oneafternoon we went down to the harbour to bathe. It was a gloomy scene;heaps of rotting fish lay about our feet, providing food for emaciateddogs; across the water was a pier laden with goods trucks and cranes.The sky was heavily overcast. As I clung to a rusty buoy, thewretchedness of the world was completed by the unavailing efforts of twoIndians to land a cow from a boat with a high curving triangle of saillike an old slave dhow.

But during this time my thoughts were really on the journey I had justcompleted. I see it now as one of the great experiences of a life, aperiod of vivid, unclouded enjoyment in its revelation of a huge expanseof the world's surface, of unsuspected and unimagined beauties, of heatand desolation beyond credence, of a new pleasure in physical movement.Of the revelation that was to follow, of India itself, I have writtenelsewhere. The present excursion describes yet a further revelation.India exists, as an entity conscious and distinct, on account of theHimalayan frontier. I was now about to cross this frontier, and torecord, with my own senses, the degree of India's separation from theplateau of Central Asia.

III. Anglo-Himalaya

Three persons were involved in the proposed expedition: G., who hadalready been some months in India and from whom had come the originalsuggestion of a trip to Sikkim; M., who was sailing at the beginning ofSeptember; and myself. Once Lord Beaverbrook had decided how and when Ishould reach India, M. and I, who were in London, resolved to make Tibetthe ultimate and definite goal of our respective journeys to the East.

The first thing to be discovered was whether, under any circumstances,permission could be obtained to cross the frontier between Sikkim andTibet; and if so, from whom. Inquiries were transmitted to Mr WedgwoodBenn, then Secretary of State for India. He replied that, provided wekept to the trade route, the Government of India would place no officialobstacle in the way of our going as far as Gyantse.

It only needed the pronouncement of a Labour Minister on any subject inthe Indian sphere to provoke the ridicule of better informed opinion.Insuperable difficulties were forecast by those who knew, they said,what they were talking about from first-hand experience. Apprehensive offailure, and bewildered by the contradiction between authority andexperience, I sought the help of Sir Charles Bell, whose works on Tibetproclaimed him endowed with both these virtues. Sir Charles said thatsince the indiscretions of the last Everest expedition, permits to crossthe frontier had been harder to obtain; but that he thought, onjudicious application to the right quarters, we should find the way opento us as far as Gyantse, where, ever since the Younghusband expeditionof 1904, the British Trade Agent at Yatung had been accustomed to spendpart of the year, and where a small detachment of Indian troops wasstationed to ensure his safety. A general permission for travellersapproved by the Government of India to proceed thus far had been one ofthe fruits of his mission to Lhassa in 1921. Gyantse, he said, was thethird largest town in Tibet. Naturally, I replied we were anxious to gofarther, to Shigatse or Lhassa, the other two. But on our discussing thedetails of the expedition, its probable cost and our earliest possibledate of starting, it appeared that, unless we were to be crippledfinancially by the expense of transport and physically by winter on theHimalayan passes, Gyantse must remain our ultimate objective; and thisapart from the evident impossibility of proceeding farther, unless indisguise and at the expense of honour.

Here at last was some concrete and hopeful information. But oursatisfaction was quickly undermined by Lord Zetland, who expressedlugubrious doubts. As a former Governor of Bengal, and one who had notonly travelled over the first part of our route, but described it withcharm and understanding in Lands of the Thunderbolt, he spoke with aweight that could scarcely be denied. The Viceroy, he told M., was ouronly hope.

By good luck Lord Irwin had just arrived in England on leave. Fanned bythe conflict of opinion into enthusiasm for a project which he hadpreviously regarded as fantastic, M. now got into communication withColonel Harvey, the Viceroy's Military Secretary. He was optimistic. Hewould write, he said, in the Viceroy's name, to Sir Denys Bray, theIndian Foreign Secretary, to Colonel Weir, Political Officer in Sikkim,and to the Governor of Bengal. This was two days before I left England.That same afternoon we telegraphed to G. that if our Himalayan journeywas to become a trans-Himalayan one, he would be well advised topostpone the bungalow reservations as originally contemplated. Sikkim,he had given us to understand, was a favourite resort of Calcuttaholiday-makers. And since only a limited number of Europeans arc allowedin the state at any one time, he had been anxious to ensure that weshould be among them in the following October.

No sooner had I reached India and joined G., than fresh prognosticationsof official opposition assailed us. I therefore wrote personally to SirDenys Bray, to whom Sir Charles Bell had given me an introduction. Hereplied that the Government of India would place no difficulties in theway of our proposed journey; but that we must first receive formalpermission from Colonel Weir as Resident in Sikkim, a post which, thoughoutwardly insignificant, carries with it the highly important duty ofliaison between Lhassa and Delhi. This at last was a definite concessionwhich could not be contradicted and which was soon after confirmed by aletter from Colonel Weir himself, warning us that officers from Gyantsewere being replaced about the time of our proposed start and that weought to reserve in advance accommodation in the rest-houses along theroute.

It was impossible to wait for M., and we were obliged to makearrangements without consulting him. In course of a voluminouscorrespondence with the Trade Agent at Yatung, we settled our dates andstages so as not to interfere with those of the returning officers. Wereceived a frontier pass, accompanied by a list of conditions which wemust promise, in writing, to obey. The chief of these were that weshould neither fish nor shoot, since Buddhism, despite the carnivorousdispensation accorded Tibetans on account of their climate, objects onprinciple to the taking of life; that we should not deviate from theestablished trade route; and that we should subsequently write orpublish nothing likely to offend Tibetan susceptibilities without firstsubmitting it to the Government of India. It seemed that not only hasthe Dalai Lama a touching weakness for the illustrated Press, but thathe also shares the susceptibilities of Western nationalism; and that onfinding in the pages of a London weekly a pock-marked harridan of greatage and squalor facetiously described as a 'Tibetan Beauty', he wasprovoked to official recrimination. This, and similar unwise pictures onthe screen, were the work of what was then the last Everest expedition;and it was generally, though wrongly, supposed that there would be noother such expedition for many years to come.

G. and I, who had been travelling among the temples of Dravidia, nowreturned to Calcutta, where we fell to earnest preparations for thejourney. That we could go, and would go, was settled. But formidableprophecies continued to distress us. These, uttered in all sincerity,only echoed those of Sir Charles Bell and were concerned with thequestion of physical endurance. Though we had calculated (wrongly as itturned out) to anticipate the Tibetan winter by returning before themiddle of November, it was evident that we must expect severe cold. Itrequired some effort to persuade ourselves of this fact: the climate ofa Bengal September is such that even to move across the room beneath theblast of an electric fan induces a protracted sweat. Nevertheless, weranged through the bazaars purchasing mattresses, bales of vermilionblankets, and sweaters. We employed a regimental tailor to make us coatsand jodhpurs of a carpet-like material, blackish green in colour, and soimpenetrable that each fitting necessitated a cold bath and half anhour's rest afterwards. Wind-proof waistcoats, of the type supplied tothe Everest expeditions, water-proof gloves without fingers, Balaclavahelmets, water-bottles, satchels, and all else that the polar-tropicalnature of our route demanded, were provided by the Calcutta branch ofthe Army and Navy Stores.

This establishment proved, in the matter of stores, an omniscient andomniprovident godmother to our project. It happened that Captain Noel,the photographer whose jocular sub-titles had so disturbed the DalaiLama, had lately arrived in Calcutta for the purpose of revisiting thescene of his former exploits. Having arranged a large commissariat, helearned, on reaching Darjeeling, that he would not be allowed to crossthe frontier. Consequently, he had returned his stores, and the boxeswhich had been specially constructed to fit both them and theconvenience of mules were therefore available for us. Hour upon hour wepored over lists of commodities potted and commodities tinned, labouringto tabulate a menu for each meal of each day. Eventually it was decidedthat every week's provisions should be fitted into two boxes, whichcould be carried by one mule. Each box should be supplied with aduplicate list of contents, one inside it and one with us. Each alsoshould have its own key, and be supplied with the necessary openers. Thetheory was ideal. But the practice resulted in the contents of everysingle box being strewn over the floor on our first night out.

At length M. arrived, lucky to have escaped the acrimonious discussionswhich these attempts at organization involved. His fellow-passengers, hesaid, had consisted wholly of generals. The wife of one of them, findingon board a young officer who could play the piano to her banjo as it hadnever been played before, had had him transferred then and there fromthe Khyber Pass to her own garrison town. Such is the convenience ofwireless in imperial affairs.

During the previous fortnight, immersed as we had been in things of theflesh, culture had not been altogether neglected. G., to whom linguisticobstacles are unknown, insisted on our taking Tibetan lessons from aSikkimese who was otherwise employed as a translator by the AsiaticSociety. His long pigtail and twinkling elfin face, the spit of anautumn leaf, endeared him to us; while his sense of humour bore withequanimity G.'s suggestion that the whole language was an invention ofhis own, composed solely to annoy us. The inflections defeated usentirely. It seemed humanly impossible, when listening to him, todistinguish 'nga' (meaning 'I') from 'nga' (meaning 'drum'), or todistinguish either of these from 'nga' (meaning 'five'). 'Not"nga",' he would instruct, 'but "nga"'; while we strained our earsin vain to catch the remotest difference between the two utterances. Allwe could do was to repeat the accursed syllable in bass, baritone, andalto, evoking in reward a pitying grin. Another difficulty was that theTibetan language is not one language but three: ordinary, honorific, andhigh-honorific. The first is used towards the common people; the secondtowards gentlemen; and the third towards the Dalai Lama. It might bethought that these distinctions were merely a question of prefixes. Butno: even the roots of the corresponding words in each have no relationto one another whatsoever. Our teacher had no experience of teaching.And as we had no time to master the grammar, our method was to conceiveourselves in situations common to travel in all countries, and then totry and learn by heart the remarks or questions appropriate to each. Butas it was impossible to arrive at a single phrase without firstdetermining the social status of the person addressed, and as at thattime our acquaintance with class distinctions in Tibet was notextensive, the greater part of our lessons was taken up with rules ofetiquette and deportment, knowledge of which later proved of some value.Nevertheless, we gradually progressed to such formidable structures as:'May I wear your yellow hat?' 'Can I become a monk in your beautifulmonastery?' 'But I must first visit my dying mother.' Our success wasillusory. During the whole trip we scarcely uttered a dozen wordsbetween us. These, at least such as emanated from myself, will berecorded later, with due prominence.

Among the rules of politeness which our teacher impressed on us, nonewas more essential than that which entails the presentation of a whitescarf by a caller to his host on arrival, and by a host to his caller onthe latter's departure. These scarves, like the language, are of threegrades. But as there was no prospect of our calling on the Dalai Lama weonly needed to supply ourselves with two. These we had arranged topurchase in the Chinese quarter of Calcutta, whither our teacher, on themorning of M.'s arrival, conducted us. A deep passage led to severalflights of stairs, up which we climbed. The floors were covered with redspittle, product of the betel-nut's encircling leaf; whiffs of absentsanitation floated through half-opened doors. Unwitting, we were usheredinto a room filled with sleeping forms, who arose only to display theirsores and bandages. Food and tea lay mouldering in yesterday's utensils.Suddenly our teacher remarked: 'In Tibet-side, sir, you won't find theshops and houses clean like this.' Hurriedly purchasing a scarf, whichwas reputed to have come from Pekin, and was indeed wrapped in a Chinesenewspaper, we left the building with foreboding.

M., thanks to the good offices of the Viceroy's secretary, had receivedan invitation for himself and his party to stay at Government House,Darjeeling, during the final preparations for departure. We had hoped toattend the Darjeeling Knights Errant Ball, the climax of theAnglo-Himalayan season, to be held on 30 September. It would, we felt,have been the Duchess of Richmond's party to our Waterloo. But owing tothe bungalows of Sikkim being, many of them, already reserved, we wereobliged to start a day earlier than expected, and had to forgo thispleasure. We were invited for Saturday the 28th. I decided to leaveCalcutta on Wednesday night, to make the last arrangements andacclimatize myself to the height.

That afternoon, on receiving from the Army and Navy Stores the railwayreceipt for the transport of the boxes, I noticed that thirteen had beensent instead of the prescribed twelve. It then transpired that G. and M.had gone clandestinely to order a whole case of whisky, with a view toan orgy in Gyantse, where, we were assured, we should not be welcomesave as harbingers of debauch. This extravagance recoiled on their ownheads, because before half the journey was over they came to dislike thetaste of whisky more even than that of water boiled over yak-dung.

The Darjeeling mail, like all trains that leave precisely at thedinner-hour, was without a dining-car. Still holding a bunch of cheesestraws, I rattled off towards the north, tortured by the coughs andsneezes of an incipient cold. The heat was extreme, and the fans onlyserved to increase it. Morning brought Siliguri, whence it was necessaryto proceed by motor. Actually a mountain railway, two feet wide, reachesDarjeeling. On front of each engine sits a man dropping sand, in casethe wheels slip. But this takes six hours, and I had much to do.

India was gone. My car, a crimson American vehicle, lavishly appointedwith silver plate and sporting an enormous metal serpent that belchedwarnings to the corners, was owned by two russet-skinned hillmen, whoseround black caps, with their red buttons and twinkling slit-eyes,bespoke the fringe of the Celestial Empire. Their natural humour wasapparent in their driving. Birds on the wing we destroyed in flocks. Buta cow, similarly threatened, retaliated with a smart clip on theserpent's eye.

The road led out of the station yard, turned a corner, and made straightfor a towering rampart of dark, greenish blue hills, stretching this wayand that as far as the eye could see. I felt a qualm of disappointment.I had hoped of the Himalayas something more than the Alps. And here,immediately, appeared that hard, uncompromising prussian-blue, the enemyof colour and form in landscape, which our grandmothers delighted tostipple from their Swiss hotels, which explains why the German race havenever produced a single painter, and never will, and why there are somany tedious interludes in Wagner's music. In a flash, we were at thefoot of the hills. We rose a little. And there, behind us, stretchingsouthward to an infinite unbroken horizon, lay the turgid greens of theBengal plain. The sun was already in the heavens, a sinister prophet ofthe midday heat.

On the flat, the railway and the road had progressed side by side. Butonce in the hills it seemed as though their courses were the outcome ofa game of catch-as-catch-can played by the engineers as they went along.The road to Darjeeling ascends seven thousand feet in forty miles,during which the two tracks, intricate as sweet-pea tendrils, intersectthree or four times in every hundred yards, and once, or sometimestwice, on every corner, so that the descending train may impale theascending motor to the best advantage. At every station the chauffeur isforced to stop and inquire what traffic, engine, hand-trolley, train,cart, bus, or motor, he is liable to encounter during the ensuing stage.While the news of his own advent is immediately telephoned to thestation above.

The road, for the most part, wound upward through magnificent forest,beneath whose huge arching trees it seemed no more than a footpath. Aprofusion of vertical creepers, tassels of vegetation thirty or fortyfeet in length, fell from their branches. Strange plants and shrubscarried flowers that had previously existed only on porcelain or in oldladies' bonnets. Gradually we rose, passing from shade to sun and shadeagain, while rare glimpses revealed the plains unfolding fartherdistances beneath. Troops of pigtailed elves, of that rarefied Mongoltype assumed by the peoples of the southern Himalaya, wandered by. Suchdwellings as appeared from time to time were constructed, as are all thebuildings in this romantic region, of corrugated iron and flattenedpetrol tins, painted red.

Suddenly, round a corner, the snowy back of Kanchenjunga leapt into thesky, a stupendous horizon of glittering vertebrae, packed withcotton-wool clouds, and encroaching on three-quarters of the heavens.Below, a profundity of spurs and valleys, darkly feathered in pines, waslost in shadow like the bottom of a well. The heart beat; the breathcame quickly. Until, round another corner, appeared Darjeeling, and allrelapsed into hate and misery.

Imagine Margate, Filey, and Bognor Regis wholly roofed in red corrugatediron; distorted into a phantasmagoria of chalets and châteaux, such aseven they have yet to achieve; vomited into the tittups of an Italianhill-town; and then lifted bodily on to a long spur, a promontory risingfrom a sea of depths that seemed to pierce the very core of the world;overseen by the white throne of God, a continent on end, trees, cliffs,and shores of snow five miles high, as the eye travels up them to theblue vault above; and still preserving all the inevitable accessories ofour national life: the exclusive clubs, the Anglican, Scottish, andRoman Catholic churches, the Tudor hotel, the seaside milliners, and thepolo-ground in the bottom of a tea-cup; streets without motors, butmunicipally railed; rickshaws pulled and pushed by crowds of raggedMongols; tiny ponies with saddles like high-chairs for children who canscarcely walk; all the races of the Himalayas: Nepali women with theirhuge necklaces of gold beads and red flannel, like Lord Mayors' chains;the elfin Lepchas and Sikkimese; emigrant Tibetans, mottled lumps ofturquoise in the men's ears, the women's chests hung with enormousrhomboid charm-boxes, silver and jewelled; the clouds, as the morningadvances, closing in, arriving mysteriously from both above and below,till the last glimpse of Kanchenjunga is obscured behind a wall of mist,the valleys themselves are lost, and at last, thank God, even Darjeelingis invisible but for the two nearest villas and their front-gardens;such is the conflict of joy and horror at the first sight ofAnglo-Himalaya.

Having reached the Tudor hotel, somewhat out of breath owing to theheight, I changed hurriedly into a tweed suit, and having made thenecessary arrangements concerning the Sikkim bungalows, discarded thetweed suit and retired to bed and a fire for two days, in order to curea dribbling cold. During this process, Naspati, the local contractor fortransport, brought Ah-Chung and An-Den, whom he proposed that I shouldengage as cook and sirdar, the latter to act as personal servant andoverseer to the whole caravan. 'Pö kyeh schingi yüdgam?' I said, meaning'Do you speak Tibetan?' Their astonishment was profound; but waslessened when they discovered that it was almost all I could say. Asweeper was also produced, to perform the menial offices connected withsanitation. I engaged them and, rising, proceeded to the bazaar, thereto fit them with new boots and sweaters.

That night the maître d'hôtel requested me to share my dinner-tablewith others. 'We shall soon have everyone sitting at separate tables,'he complained. Observing that the dining-room held about a quarter ofits full complement, and that half the waiters were standing idle, Irounded on him with such ferocity as to shatter his belief ingood-fellowship among guests for good and all.

The following day was Saturday. Early in the morning I proceeded toGovernment House, at the end of the promontory, with my luggage on thebacks of ragged coolies. The procession resembled that of an impecuniouspedlar. None the less a squad of small soldiers in shorts presented armsat the gates, and I proceeded down a neat Victorian drive, windingthrough pinched Victorian lawns, whose appropriate conifers seemed aboutto topple over a bottomless precipice on the farther side. At the end ofthis vista stood a Victorian seaside boarding-house, beneath which, on alower level, nestled a less forbidding child. This was the guest-house,approached by a terraced garden of Iceland poppies, which would havebeen charming had it not been disfigured by the inevitable commemorativeslab, informing the future archaeologist that it had been designed bythe Earl and Countess of Lytton. Inside, however, lurked comfort andgood taste: flowers in vases, chintzed sitting-rooms, blazing fires, andspacious writing-tables, appointed with sealing-wax and gilt-embossedinvitations to guests to order horses or rickshaws at their ownconvenience. Those of the latter attached to Government House were likesmall barouches, picked out in red and resplendent with coronets. ADCsheaped us with drinks. We could be in or out to meals as we pleased,provided that notice was given beforehand. It was country-houseentertaining in perfection.

The others had arrived, and at lunch-time we were lined up in thedrawing-room by one ADC, while another fetched the Governor and LadyJackson. We were then introduced, ate, slept, had tea, and afterwardsreceived a call from Mr Laden-La, a twinkling Sikkimese with a minutepointed moustache, chief of the local police and a prominent freemason.He talked of Tibet, described his experiences in the Younghusbandexpedition of 1904, when they lost a man a night from pneumonia, andsaid that he had been employed on Sir Charles Bell's mission to Lhassain 1921. He had then stayed behind to organize a Lhassa police force,and had received the rank of general in the Tibetan army. This army hadnow been disbanded, all but a few regiments on the Chinese frontier,owing to the monks' fear lest its leaders should be planning a coupd'état. He was in Lhassa at the time of the Everest expeditions, andwhen the reports came through of the films shown in Darjeeling byCaptain Noel making fun of Tibetan customs, and the Dalai Lama hadreceived his English illustrated papers doing the same, he was sent forby the latter and called upon to explain. At the same time, it appeared,a trio of monks had been persuaded from Gyantse to London without thenecessary permission, and had there dressed themselves up for exhibitionin the robes of their superiors, a proceeding which had increased thedispleasure of the Tibetan authorities. In the period immediatelyfollowing the 1921 mission he had actually transported two motors overthe Himalayan passes, assembled them at Phari, and driven as far asGyantse in a day. But these had soon been stopped. Conversation thenturned on the impossibility of proceeding farther than Gyantse, andthose who had tried to do so since the war. General Pereira had arrivedat Lhassa from Pekin, and had vowed that not the offer of a millionpounds would tempt him to return that way. Dr McGovern had reachedLhassa from Darjeeling in the guise of a coolie, and had subsequentlylibelled Laden-La, who had obtained indemnity from hispublishers[13]There was Sir Charles Bell's mission in 1921, during which thepermission was obtained for the Everest expeditions, and Mr Kingdon Wardand Lord Cawdor were allowed access to the river Tsango-po orBrahmaputra. A French female Buddhist also reached Lhassa disguised as abeggar, and turned publicist after the event. Colonel Baileysubsequently visited the capital during his tenure of the Residency inSikkim. This year Colonel Weir, his successor, was also to have gone.But at the last moment a message was sent asking him not to proceed.

[Footnote 13] We frequently heard it stated by ostensibly well-informed persons that McGovern never reached Lhassa at all. His account of his experiences there may be partially fictitious. But that he succeeded in his objective, all who were in Tibet at the time or immediately after agree. Furthermore, he was an extremely brave man, as anyone who has travelled in Tibet in winter will testify.

The most curious attempt was that of Mr Carpenter, a wealthy American,who had succumbed, in later life, to the doctrines of theosophy. Itappeared from his account that there dwelt in Shigatse 'three masters',from whom he used to receive messages, transmitted no one, nor he, knewhow. Anxious to visit them, he arrived at Darjeeling and, with the helpof Laden-La, composed an ornamental address to the Dalai Lama, which waswritten on parchment in both English and Tibetan. This was enclosed in abinding of ornamental leather, in which were set, as medallions, twogold ten-dollar pieces. The whole was wrapped in the requisitecomplimentary scarf, of the third and highest order, being printed allover with prayers; and was then despatched to the British Trade Agent atGyantse, to be forwarded to His Holiness. Mr Carpenter waited; no answercame. At length, with our former Tibetan teacher as sirdar, he startedout with a large train and came to Gyantse. There he waited again. Tillat length he telegraphed. An answer came back saying that there might behope for him in four years' time. Being a man of honour, he refrainedfrom proceeding surreptitiously to Shigatse in search of 'the masters',and returned.

It appears that the only means of making certain of reaching Lhassa atthe present moment is to embrace the profession of telegraphist. Thetelegraph and telephone to India are much valued by the Tibetans, andhave to be kept in order. A European was in Lhassa at the time of ourtrip, superintending them.

Laden-La finally warned us that the villages were full of ferociousmastiffs, who were liable to tear us from our ponies; and that themonks, if we stepped over their lines of prayer-cushions instead ofgoing round them, might be expected to stab us in the back. The dogswere certainly savage, when tied up; when loose they were usually toobusy with their amours to notice the casual itinerant. From the monks wereceived nothing but hospitality and smiles.

* * * * *

We dressed, gulped down cocktails as big as lemonades, and assembled inthe drawing-room for dinner. An ADC fetched the Governor and LadyJackson as before. Two ADCs preceded them in to dinner, while theytalked over their shoulders. This was in contrast to the procedure ofLord Irwin, who, when I lunched at Delhi, went in behind his guests. Aregiment of chuprassies, uniformed in gold and scarlet, wearing blueand gold puggarees, and clinking with medals, formed a double line atthe entrance to the dining-room and made salaam as we entered.Simultaneously an invisible band, concealed behind the kind of net usedfor theatrical waves, struck up a nursery rhyme. We sat down. Duringdinner the Governor recounted with indignation how the crowds at Dacca,whither he had lately gone on tour, had shouted 'Jackson, go back!' Thenursery rhyme gave place to Elgar. The meal drew to a finish. TheGovernor rose and said 'The King-Emperor', while the band played it andeveryone stood clasping glasses of port to their stomachs, each handtrembling at a different pace. When the tune had ended, all grunted 'TheKing-Emperor' and sipped nervously. Before the utterance had died away,two ADCs had flung down their glasses and marched from the room. TheGovernor and Lady Jackson followed, still talking over their shoulders.Groups were then formed for conversation, until at length Lady Jacksonretired.

A few minutes later an ADC strode into the room, stood to attentionbefore the Governor, and, having waited for the latter to finish what hewas saying, observed: 'The house is on fire, Your Excellency.' He thenstrode out again to telephone for help, leaving us all ratherbewildered. Ladies first, thought G., and ran upstairs with afire-extinguisher. 'Don't come in,' shouted Lady Jackson through thedoor. G., who had never used a fire-extinguisher in his life, wasdetermined to do so now, and emptied it up a neighbouring chimney. Bythis time a quarter of an hour had elapsed. The flames--we wonderedwhere they were. Then the telephone rang. 'Is that Government House?'said a voice. 'I'm ringing up to know if there really is a fire.'Meanwhile the Governor was lost. M. and I, shaking with laughter,emerged from the front door in search of the flames, to find himstanding forlornly in a puff of cloud that had settled on the drive,upholding an umbrella and blowing wild blasts on a pocket siren. 'I keepon whistling,' he moaned, 'but what's the use? The guard doesn't come.'Indoors the telephone rang again. 'Is that Government House? This is thefire-brigade speaking. Do you want any help with your fire?' The heroicADC was now half-way to the roof, hanging like a sloth from a drain-pipeand straining every nerve to locate the flames. Suddenly the guard, thefire-brigade, and 120 servants arrived in the hall simultaneously andstood to attention. In face of such forces, further assistance on ourpart seemed superfluous. But we should like to have seen the flames.

Sunday bore the proper English stamp. At first I cast it off by goingfor a ride on a polo pony that threatened to precipitate me to the footof Kanchenjunga at every twist of the neatly gravelled footpath. Thenthe clouds rolled up and in at the windows. It became dark and cold. G.and M. disorganized the Government of Bengal by staying in bed tobreakfast. His Excellency and Lady Jackson set bravely out for church inrickshaws drawn by men uniformed in the colours of the Eton Field.Naspati arrived leading three ponies for our inspection. At his commandthey cantered gaily up the road; and thenceforth could not be urgedbeyond a slow walk till induced a month later with whips purchased inGyantse that would have flayed a rhinoceros.

Midday, there was a lunch-party, which included the parson.

'Do you get much snow here in the winter?' G. opened politely.

'Oh! quantities,' was the reply.

'How marvellous everything must look!'

'Yes; and, you know, it's such wonderful snow.'

'Oh, is it? How?'

The parson leaned forward confidentially: '...wonderful forsnowballs,' he whispered.

I sat next a bishop, robed in purple, who kindly quieted my doubts as towhether the Abyssinian Church really had canonized Pontius Pilate.'Another curious feature of their observance,' he continued, 'is theirconsecration of bishops by breathing instead of the laying-on of hands.As the Abyssinian bishops-elect often find it difficult to come toAlexandria, where the Coptic Patriarch resides, a paper bag is employedas intermediary. The Patriarch breathes into it. It is sealed,transported to Abyssinia, and there exploded over the bishop-elect'shead with a loud POP!!'--and he burst into a thunderous guffaw whichastonished the whole table.

We had arranged to leave at ten o'clock on Monday morning, though G. andM., a prey to mounting depression, considered this unreasonably early.The mist was impenetrable; a heavy rain was falling; we became helplesswith packing; M. cut his finger--'for the first time in ten years,' hesaid, and doubted if he could start. Having said good-bye to our hosts,and numbed our senses in Madeira, we at length set off in a motor tosome incorporeal landmark known as the eighth milestone. Nine mules hadpreceded us; two remained for our personal luggage. As it was downhill,M. elected to walk.

G. and I mounted our ponies. He, I remarked, had the air of a Jesuitmissionary about to win a continent. I, he remarked, was the retreatfrom Moscow. From in front came a mutter of Virgilian cadences, M.'sobservations on the local flora. After an hour and a half, tea-gardensand then a factory emerged from the fog and proclaimed Peshoke, wheretheir owners, Mr and Mrs Lister, gave us a delightful lunch. Theirvisitors' book was a wall, strewn with the names of the famous, eachattached to a line denoting its owner's height. From their garden, aprecarious terrace in a world of verticality, we could look down two orthree thousand feet into the Teesta Valley below, an inky wellimprisoning a fleet of porcelain clouds. We had started amongrhododendrons and conifers. Henceforth the vegetation was tropical, andM.'s remarks became a saga. Cathedrals of trees, branchless for fiftyfeet, flanked the winding cobbled descent. Parrots called; cicadas,unceasing treble sirens, riddled the consciousness; sheets of cobweb,containing black and yellow monsters, and crusted with lichen, tiltedthe hat on the back of the head; butterflies like iridescent batsflitted through the sun-spots; bells and trumpets, red and white, hungfrom bushes or raised their heads from tangles of fleshy leaves. Therewas no colour, no atmosphere; only a world of rich, downright greens. Atlength the Teesta river came in sight, a broad muddy torrent, caughtbetween stupendous walls of forest, and spanned by a suspension bridge.On the other side of this a motor was waiting, which took us up toKalimpong by an astounding road, the victim of numerous landslides,which in one place looped round and crossed itself on a bridge. My head,which had remained normal at Darjeeling, had begun to hum to itself ondescending 4,000 feet to Peshoke; at the Teesta, only 500 feet up, itrecovered; now, ascending 5,000 feet to Kalimpong, it began again.Behind us, as the sun set, all the hills turned to black, and only themotionless porcelain clouds caught the rosy glitter.

At Kalimpong, we stayed at the Himalayan Hotel, kept by Mr Macdonald,for many years British Trade Agent at Yatung in the Chumbi Valley, towhom Sir Charles Bell had given me a letter of introduction. He wasassisted by Mr Perry, his son-in-law. Our arrival coincided with that ofthe late Trade Agent at Gyantse, and his wife, who said that the winterhad begun a month early this year, as indeed we were to discover. Theyhad with them a Lhassa terrier puppy, which resembled a fluffy brown andwhite Pekinese. After dinner, Mr Macdonald gave me elaborateinstructions as to Tibetan etiquette, the officials to be approached,the scarves and presents to be distributed; and next morning, with theaid of a lama, wrote us a number of letters of introduction, invoking myfriendship with Sir Charles Bell. He it was who, at the time of theDalai Lama's flight to India, dressed the commander-in-chief of theTibetan army up as a British mail-runner, and thus enabled him to escapeover the frontier unmolested by the Chinese troops that were in pursuit.

G. and M., having gone to bed unnaturally early, woke and were wanderingabout at eight o'clock; but being determined to make a late start,refrained from dressing till half-past ten. They then sat till middaykeening over their last bath, last hot meal, last knife and fork, lastday on earth. Meanwhile I walked into the town with Mr Macdonald, andpurchased from a fat Tibetan woman with a goitre a Tibetan hat of blackfelt, heavily embroidered with gold, and possessing four fur flaps,those to protect the ears being longer than the others. Of those of thesuperior type, which boast a crown of hard silk adorned with a finial ofred coral beads, I could find none to fit. Mr Macdonald said thatKalimpong, as the centre of the large Tibetan wool-trade, was a growingplace; whereas Darjeeling, being off the main route, owed its raisond'être simply to Government House with its legislative and socialtrain. Formerly, Europeans were not allowed to live in Kalimpong. Now, aspecial development area had been set apart for them. The place ischiefly famous for its propagation of Himalayan arts and crafts, whichdeluge Calcutta, during the winter season, with nauseating 'fancygoods', and for its orphanages. A child from one of these, born andeducated in the Himalayas, eventually obtained a job in Calcutta. Whenhe reached Siliguri, seeing the whole plain of India stretching awaybefore him, he observed: 'What a football field!' Such is the beautyof British education.

On our return to the hotel, Mr Perry handed me a tin box, containing awedding present for the eldest son of Rajah Tehring and his newlymarried wife, a daughter of the former Tibetan commander-in-chief whomMr Macdonald had assisted over the frontier. Rajah Tehring and hisfamily lived, we were told, on an estate about six miles away fromGyantse. Meanwhile the mules had been loaded, and the ponies sent onahead to a spot two or three miles along the road, where we joined themin a motor. We mounted; and I was ambling peacefully along in front,when M., looking like a Victorian engraving of Lord Cardigan at the headof the Light Brigade, flew past and disappeared round a corner. The pathwas only a few feet wide; bottomless valleys yawned beneath it; and headmitted that he had avoided riding for eleven years; but his pony wascosting five rupees a day, while ours were only four; so that weconcluded he was after his money's worth. After some time, he had sloweddown, when a small girl, bobbing up from under a precipice, sent him offagain. Then he dismounted, and G. took his place, though not for long.He was lengthening the stirrup leathers, when the animal suddenly leaptinto the air, and he fell off into the dust. The saddle-bags, which werereally the cause of the trouble, fell with him, disintegrating ourlunch. Mercifully, a pot of pickled beetroots escaped destruction.Another mile revealed the pony taking its ease beneath a clump ofbamboo. I mounted with trepidation, but proceeded more quietly, as thesaddle-bags had now been transferred to a senile travesty of a quadrupedwhom nothing could disturb.

The path took us from 5,000 feet to 7,000. The hill-sides were largelycultivated. Scanty attempts at afforestation were apparent. We lunchedin a cloud, on a flat stone. The baked potatoes had continued cookingagainst the pony's belly. After another two hours downhill, a greenslope appeared. My pony broke into a gallop and brought me to a pink andwhite building, the rest-house of Pedong. A babel of confusion followed,ponies unsaddling, mules unloading, everyone calling for hispossessions, the cook awaiting tea. The store-boxes were opened, butnothing could be found. Eventually whisky, tea, sugar, flour, milk,biscuits, tongue, French beans, and cherries were set aside for theevening. Ah-Chung, the cook, a diminutive pigtailed witch who hadministered to the first Everest expedition, begged us to eat a chickenfor dinner. He was carrying several in a wicker basket. Knowing theconsistency of the Indian fowl, we thought it wiser to await a higheraltitude, where the corpse could keep and soften. It grew dark aboutfive o'clock; lamps were lit; and we slept or read till dinner. Thesirdar waited, assisted by a coolie who smelt. M. was now outwardlycheerful.

Owing to misunderstandings, breakfast was not ready till a quarter pastnine. The whisky had no cork, and must be decanted into a water-bottle;the pickled beetroots refused to resume their lid; the camera had beenpacked in the bedding. From outside came the clatter and shouts ofloading. These trivial irritations seemed strange at first. As the dayspassed, and our organization improved, they grew less, becoming merelyan unpleasant routine. Below the rest-house lay a village, where aguard, uniformed in dark green with a messenger-boy's cap, demanded ourpasses. Sikkim, the only Buddhist state in India proper under Britishsuzerainty, does not allow Europeans within her confines without specialpermission. Having seen we possessed it, the guard returned to dig hisgarden, and we crossed the frontier.

Our day's objective was Ari, a point exactly opposite Pedong, about fourmiles away on the wing, nine by earth. The broad cobbled path ledsteeply downward. A train of 100 mules on their way from Tibet toKalimpong, each carrying packs of raw wool, interrupted our progress.Trees with the stature of factory chimneys, rank, weeping palmsglistering like seaweed, broad-leaved shrubs, plump lilies, stood aboutus. Overhead, the spiders wove, the parrots called, and orchid tubersdropped serrated sheaves of browning leaves. Land-crabs, encased inblack tortoiseshell, edged their way along the gutters. Streams felldown the hill, to rest for a moment in stone drinking-troughs and thengo on. From the shadows flitted butterflies of every size and pattern:slowly flapping swallow-tails of nocturnal emerald, lit with squares ofiridescent azure, elliptical wings of soft mouse-brown, spangled with acrescent border of sky-blue; purple emperors, exotic and enormous,flashing streaks of iris from their bouncing silhouettes; a shower ofhot golden yellow petals rising from a clot of dung; a huge orange-tipsailing white and ruddy gold through the green depths; a flag of red,white, and yellow netted in black veins; all floating through thepatches of sunlight, and then disappearing among the sinister,indistinct shapes of the vegetation.

On reaching the bottom of the valley, being now very hot, we bathed inthe river, lying horizontally on the surface of the water and clingingto successive boulders, till the current tore them up, and we were sweptdown to others. Such was the speed of the water that the impact of headand body created a waterfall in itself. A thousand feet above, we cameto the village of Rhenoke, where a state visitors' book was presentedfor our signatures. The rest-house at Ari was set in a garden of pebbledpaths, surrounded by rose-bushes and chrysanthemums in flower. Beneath,the valley fell down, and rose again to disclose our resting-place ofyesterday. During dinner, marwa, the local drink, was brought. Itconsisted of hot water, poured on a crush of millet, which was containedin a segment of bamboo a foot high and three inches wide, and suckedthrough a reed. The taste was indefinite, and the alcoholic virtueremote.

Next morning, we descended into a valley as dank and rich asyesterday's, and then followed a river upward. Stupendous, overhangingfaces of mountain stood about us; at every turn it seemed as thoughthere were no way but to attack them; yet still the river wound onthrough some unforeseen cleft. The vegetation increased. On the opposinghill the tops of the trees glittered in the midday sun, while all therest was black: bananas like torn green flags; the tangled ribbons ofthe seaweed palm; huge ivy shapes; starry bunches of magnolia leaves;and round us, as we rode, the festoons of orchids and ferns, and a kindof creeper, having itself a trunk, whence depended great herring-bonesof green oil-cloth leaves. The river was now below us, a foaming threadcleaving this inverted arboretum. Above, the sky was reduced to a meretriangle whence fringes of cloud came encroaching on the rim of ourprison. Then suddenly the bottom of the hills widened into a valley,where there was a village and a number of monks were chanting in theupper room of a house. The river was with us again, and had latelyengulfed the road. Slithering down the aftermath of an avalanche, wecrossed it on two tree-trunks, while the animals with some difficultystood up against the current. Then began the ascent we had beenexpecting, a series of hairpin twists on a perpendicular face. After twohours of sliding and panting, we came to Sedonchen, as the cloudssettled down for the night. Below the rest-house, through increasingmist, appeared the broad-eaved roofs of low houses, the villagerstrailing about their affairs, sheep huddled in a tiny square, whencewhite prayer-flags fluttered sadly from their masts, and a wool-trainarriving to be unloaded for the night. Beyond there was nothing. Thewhole scene was perched in space. Gradually the edges of the fartherhouses were swallowed up. The night increased. A perceptible cold madeus shiver. We had tea, and then dinner. The latter consisted ofAh-Chung's chicken, potatoes, onions and carrots, 'cling' peaches, and asardine savoury.

IV. Into Tibet

The morning of Friday, 5 October, disclosed a view such as only theHimalayas can offer, range after range, peak after peak, filling thedistance, with Kanchenjunga, on the right, making tentative bows fromits place in the sky through the floating clouds. Below, the hill upwhich we had climbed was too steep to be visible. But the village wasthere, which seemed slightly surprising, after its disappearance thenight before. The wool-trains were setting out, the fluffy, hide-boundpacks being loaded, and the animals defiling one after another down thepath and out of sight. During the morning, we met others, varying fromthirty to a hundred mules, usually on some precipitous turn of thenarrowing path, which obliged us to stand patiently and wait till theywere past. The leaders wore collars of heavy bells, and were decoratedwith scarlet yaks' tails. Many had little head-pieces, shaped like thosethat elephants wear, and embroidered with cabalistic designs in brightcolours. The men in attendance wore either the usual Tibetan robe ofdark maroon serge, loosely caught at the hip, or else a species ofplus-four made of the same local stuff. On their feet were high feltboots with canoe-shaped toes, appliquéd in red and green over theinstep, and tied round the back, where they were slit, with brigand'sgarters. The effect was frequently completed by a Homburg hat severalsizes too small which was affixed to the top of the head by means of thepigtail.

The ledge to which Sedonchen clings lies 6,500 feet above sea-level.Above, the path zigzagged inexorably up a continuous perpendicular face,the cobbles becoming rougher, and the precipices, falling sheer from thenarrowing footway, more unnerving, though their full menace was lost ina sea of grey cloud, whence came the noise of cadent, invisible waters.The luxuriant vegetation, which the last two or three days had madefamiliar, disappeared. Silver firs stood up, strangely ornamental. Otherconifers, jagged and torn with age and wind, rose gaunt from the mist.Below them, walling the path to a height of twelve feet, grew woods ofrhododendrons, their leaves, in star-shaped bunches, varying in lengthfrom two inches to ten, and coloured with a bluish grey unknown to theEnglish varieties. The textural effect of the fine leaves against thebroad, the innumerable permutations of a daisy pattern, broken bythin-elbowed branches, angular as strung bones, was one of great beauty,recalling the minutiae of Chinese ivories, save for the impalpablecolouring and the wraiths of mist. Suddenly, out of a cloud, a solitaryTibetan emerged, dressed in a padded, full-sleeved robe of weatheredred, which reached to the knees and gave an illusion of pregnancy, sincethe stomach, where it was caught across from shoulder to opposite hip,was used as a pocket. On his head he wore a tall conically crowned hat,with its brim, broad and scalloped, turned up in front. His face wasparchment coloured, the eyes narrow, and the lips and cheeks very red, atypical Tibetan characteristic, giving the appearance of a sinisterwaxen doll. On his back he carried a frying-pan. From his waist hung asilver-sheathed knife in the place of a bayonet.

The ponies, panting and steaming, seemed on the verge of collapse, whenthe trees and rhododendrons gave place to a gloomy silhouette of hutsthrough the darkening fog. Being in advance, I practised a Tibetansentence upon two women and a baby, who said it was four miles on toGnatong. The road now ceased to climb and branched off to the left; wehad risen 5,000 feet in four miles, the latter being marked bymile-posts. Our other companion was the single telegraph wire to Lhassa,attached to trees or posts as convenience demanded, and during the stagewe had just completed, carried vertically up the mountain-side withtantalizing directness, while we wound from side to side of it. Soonafter the village we passed the tree-limit, and at half-past twelve cameto Gnatong, 12,000 feet up. Having been unable to sleep the previousnight, I had lit a candle and read a book by Edgar Wallace. This work,though forming part of a sixpenny edition, was encased in a lavishgilded binding, and was prefaced by an announcement that the editors ofthe series were anxious to place within reach of the proletariat notonly the classics, but an ornament to the home. In commercialcompensation, the paper used resembled an antique blotter, and the typewas barely distinguishable. As a result, I had developed a headache,which was now considerably increased by the height.

Gnatong lies in a cup of peaks, a place of about twenty houses, whichinclude a telegraph and post-office. At the rest-house, recentlyconstructed, we ate our lunch and warmed ourselves by a fire, paying afee of eight annas each for the privilege. Afterwards we sent a telegramto Yatung, announcing our arrival on the morrow: a premature precaution.I posted some letters in time to catch the downward mail, which hadcrossed the Jelep La that morning, and which we later met, four runnersof nondescript appearance.

It was now five miles to Kapup. The scene was almost Scottish in itscolouring; yet the colours were richer and more precise. Across thehill-sides, whose tops reached into the clouds and were lost, lay greatexpanses of dank yellow grass and the dank yellow leaves of dead flags,scattered with black boulders, and interspersed with tiny rustlingstreams. From this yellow sprouted clumps of a short star-leaved plant,of a lucid pinkish red. In addition, the slopes were covered withpatches of dwarf rhododendron, small-leaved, and growing to the heightof gorse. So that, as a whole, the receding hills alternated betweendank yellow starred with autumn red and a rich, inimitable blue-greygreen, a frightening, melancholy colour, merging into the acrid purplishblue of farther valleys darkened by hibernating clouds; while here andthere escarpments of square-jutting rock, black and grey, increased thegloom and inhospitality of the scene. A vulture flapped from a knoll tojoin its fellows, crouching lumps of feathers, with their naked headsand necks moving in and out like those of comic dolls. As we ascendedfarther, my headache reduced me to the borders of insanity, and my ponyhad to be led. The turn of a corner disclosed a lake, a smoky,forbidding sheet of water, long in shape, and lying a thousand feetbelow us. Far away, a pink speck proclaimed the roof of the Kapuprest-house. Above it, towering into the sky, a yellow tendril threadedits way up the purple silhouette of mountain--the road over the Jelep Lainto Tibet.

The rest-house, down to which I staggered in a condition of gibberingsightlessness, had two rooms only, in which fires were already blazing.Ah-Chung, who had gone ahead, had fever; but managed, none the less, tocook our dinner of steak and kidney and plum puddings. I went to bed, tolisten to the hammers on my skull; but ate, and felt better for it. Inthe next room G. and M., elated with rum, turned their thoughts andconversation to London, but not their charity. So presumably peoplethink and talk when marooned on that disappearing phenomenon, the desertisland.

As we ate dinner it began to rain. Every drop, echoed and magnified bythe corrugated iron roof, filled us with a mounting apprehension. Athalf-past eight I went to sleep, and consequently woke at three. Despitean aluminium hot water bottle dressed in a small pink vest, fiveblankets, and a great-coat of that nineteenth century consistency whichcan, and had, come through forty years unblemished, I was cold. It was13,000 feet, I said, as I twisted from side to side and ground myselfinto the coverings. But the cold came up through the mattress, which wasthin. The noise of the rain was like rifle-fire. The wind howled. Whenday broke, the surrounding peaks and the pass over which we had totravel were obscured by falling snow. We lay in bed irresolute, till thesirdar came in to say that both cook and sweeper had fever, and that inany case it was impossible to start. That this was not so we knew. Butwe agreed with him.

After a breakfast of sausages, potatoes, tomatoes, poached eggs, scones,and coffee, we settled down in front of the fires. The single bookshelfwas furnished with several copies of the Revue des Deux Mondes. M.read Wolf Solent, a soil-reeking novel by J. C. Powys, which he saidharmonized exactly with our present surroundings. G. lay on the floor,his now perceptible beard protruding from the rim of a yet moreponderous tome, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism.

Lunch was welcome, as it is on rainy days. In the afternoon, impelled bythe gloom and a temporary cessation of the rain, G. and I walked up thevillage street, which consisted of two shacks and a seat. The rain thenbegan again. Having collected some rhododendron seeds, and had a glimpseof the lake, we returned.

That night the stars showed, and the morning brought a cloudless sky.The snow-spattered hills glittered in the sun. Leaving before theothers, I urged my pony towards the pass. The slope was gradual, and theground dotted with large trumpet-like gentians of indescribable blue. Abird, inky blue, with a rusty tail and a white spot on its head, hoppedfrom a boulder. Wagtails, half white, fluttered about. Then I was in thesnow, two or three inches of it. Till suddenly two cairns appeared, oneon either side of the path. Dismounting, I looked down, and across, toTibet.

The scene, as became the moment, was spectacular, revealing terrestrialconformation on a scale that the eye had never witnessed and theimagination never dreamed of. Vanished for ever was the prussian-blue ofAnglo-Himalaya and the Alps, that immanent, formless tint whichoppresses half the mountains of the world. A new light was in the air, aliquid radiance, presage of scenes with which the whole earth offers nocomparison. Here was no gradual transition, no uneventful frontier, buttranslation, in a single glance, from the world we know to a world thatI did not know. It was only a glimpse. Not for three days, till we wereout of the Chumbi valley, was the reality upon us. But I knew, as Ilooked, that here was a land where natural coloration, as we understandit, does not apply, a land whose effulgence affirms intent more positiveand less explicable than the fortuitous convenience of warmth and light.

From my feet the mountain fell away, sheer down, till the path hiditself underneath, and only reappeared a thousand feet below by the sideof a lake, a cold tarn, dark green like a slab of inlaid ice. This wascontained on a precarious landing, whence the mountains rose in acircle, falling back to the dorsal ridge on whose lowest point I nowstood. The lower slopes supported scattered regiments of dark greenfirs. Beyond the lake a valley formed, falling down, down, down into ahaze of wooded declivities, until, forty miles away, a new range stoodup, a heathery buff colour of chocolate bloom, with every valley black,and every spur agleam, in the radiant morning sun. The eye moved upward,to come to rest, far above its own level of 14,300 feet, on a wavy lineof snow, a glittering girdle to the blue sky, whence two sparkling whitepeaks, the grandiose Chomolhari and another, thrust their heads above apuff of cloud into the firmament. On either side the clouds weregathering; I was barely in time; within ten minutes the peaks were gone.Then, as I still looked, a line of men came crawling up themountain-side beneath my feet, so diminutive, so absolutely smallagainst the surrounding heights and distances, that my pony and I,silhouetted on the summit with India at our backs, seemed of colossalstature. Their approach disclosed a party of Bhutanese coolies, bearingheavy loads, and hung with curious household utensils. The majority woredark glasses, and one a finely woven straw hat shaped like the lid of adirty clothes-basket. The party immediately climbed on to the larger ofthe two cairns, where they remained busy for some minutes rearrangingthe large branch that stood from its midst. This was hung withprayer-flags, tattered pennants of various colours, to which the coolieswere adding their own, taking care to ensure their being well placed.Then they went off, and I was left alone to gaze.

After an hour the others arrived, and behind them some of the servants,also furnished with appropriate prayer-flags. During the first part ofthe descent it was impossible to ride. We could only slither down thesnow, and then the mud, till we came to the lake and the trees began.Yet we were afterwards informed that the two elephants in the DalaiLama's zoo at Lhassa had crossed this way. The milestones were no more;and the path, even now that the valley proper offered a more rationalfoothold, was more obstacle than assistance, as though some giant in hiscourse had been playing football with the boulders. We passed occasionalvillages, small hutments in the forest, their broad-eaved wooden roofsheld down by stones, and adjoined by large open stables. A riveraccompanied us; yaks, black and silky as though caparisoned in Victorianhearth-rugs, grazed by its side. On the slopes around us the autumncolouring attained an incomparable richness and variety. Flowing goldenlarches; duller yellow maples; shumack of flaming red; innumerableblue-grey rhododendron bushes, the smaller bearing occasional orangeflowers; huge silver firs, their tops broken with age and storm, whichgave place, as we continued, to pines with brushes of bright greenneedles; flowering shrubs of many kinds, tenuous and spiky; and clumpsof Michaelmas daisies to remind us of the same season in England; allstood about us, as we walked, rode, or slithered, crossing andrecrossing the river by delicately engineered wooden bridges.

There accompanied our party a youth on a grey pony, whose frisky paces,unhindered by stones or mud, were our envy. Summoning my few words, Iengaged him in conversation. Was he Tibetan? No, Bhutanese. Where was hegoing? To Rinchengong, round the corner--the corner indicated being amountain-slope the size of Skiddaw. Wasn't there a monastery there? Yes,and he was going to be a monk. What was his name? Dambü. Thereafter,words failed me.

I was ahead, and having rounded the intervening mountain, had caughtsight of the roofs of Rinchengong, when a noise of drums proclaimed someevent. Turning a corner, I was confronted by a religious procession.

It produced a curious feeling, almost fear, this first contact withpersons, clothes, and observances of utter strangeness. For many years Ihad thought about Tibet, read about it, and gazed longingly atphotographs of its huge landscape and fantastic uniforms. None the less,the reality came as a shock.

The valley had widened a little. In front, and all round, the hills roseup, covered with dank yellow grass and the bright green pines. In themiddle distance appeared the roofs of Rinchengong, approached by a fewpatches of cultivation. Between these, hemmed by two tumbledown stonewalls, came a troupe of about forty women and children. The latter wavedand laughed; the former carried on their backs long boxes containing thesacred books. They were dressed, as the majority of Tibetans are, in acoarse serge of mauvish purple. Their black hair was done in the mannerof Nurse Cavell's. The faces were well filled, the mouths often sensual.The skin was ivory; but the cheeks and lips, like those of the man wemet among the rhododendrons, were brilliant apple-red. This paintedeffect is the distinguishing characteristic of the Tibetan appearance,and at first seemed strangely unnatural.

In the midst of the women and children walked numerous monks,shaven-headed, and swathed in the manner peculiar to Buddhist monks, inthick red serge; some striking thin, slightly barrel-shaped drums; onebeating a large cymbal. Occasionally they wore hats, astounding shapes,high-pointed cones of red, or Phrygian caps of the same colour. This wasevidently the red-hat sect. At the head of the procession moved a benigngrey-headed figure, who smiled as I dismounted, but in reality told ourservants to take us round another way. In the rear, borne in apalanquin, came a golden image preceded by a scowling fat monk. Onemight have been the Virgin, and the other a priest, in an Italianvillage.

Rinchengong lay on both sides of a new and larger river, which wascrossed by a wooden bridge supported on two horizontal piles of hugebeams, each layer protruding farther from the bank than that below it,so that the topmost ones almost met beneath the middle of the footway.The houses were of two and three storeys, tall and solid, with heavysquare windows paned in glass (twenty years ago there was only paper)and set in richly carved and coloured wooden frames. The ground floors,entered by massive double doors, were used as stables; the upper,beneath the roof, were open and stored forage. In the centre of the townrose a magnificent chorten, an onion-like erection rising from asquare base and supporting a spike of brass that glittered in the sunlike gold. This was surrounded, as is usual, by a plantation of peeledmasts, twenty feet high, down each of which a single narrow flag,printed with the prayer Om Mani Padme Hum, was tacked to within sixfeet of the ground. Nearby stood a rectangular edifice, like a largestone chest, about twenty feet long, eight high, and five broad, throughan arcade in which could be seen a row of prayer-wheels, revolving reelsa foot high. Along the outside, innumerable little painted plaques borethe faded image of Buddha. These chortens and mendongs are to befound in all the Tibetan villages, and sometimes standing by themselveson frequented paths. As we passed out of Rinchengong we observed an oldman, with two wisps of white moustache depending from the outer cornersof his mouth, seated on his doorstep slowly turning a brassprayer-wheel, which revolved, as he waved its handle, by means of asmall weight on the end of a chain.

The way continued along the banks of the new river, the Chumbi, a broad,tearing volume of water flecked by little waves. Cultivated fieldsstretched from hill to hill. There were even patches of flat grass, onwhich my pony alone could be induced to gallop. In the villages, eachwith chorten, prayer-masts, and mendong, the inhabitants gazedfixedly at us, their ruddy faces sometimes breaking into smiles,sometimes not. The telegraph wire was still with us. We lunched by theriver-side. The scene, for the moment, might have been in Canada. Atthree o'clock, after travelling eighteen miles and descending to 10,000feet above sea-level, we came to Yatung, a large place with a mainstreet flanked by prayer-masts, and overlooked by the bungalow and UnionJack of the British Trade Agent, and the tin barracks, complete withpissoir and football field, of his twenty-five Indian soldiers. Therest-house lay opposite, across the river, set in a paled garden ofhollyhocks and Japanese anemones. Its interior disclosed unexpectedluxury: brocade curtains, padded arm-chairs, reproductions ofGainsborough, Romney, and Franz Hals, an original and somewhatunfortunate still life, numerous books and more copies of the Revue desDeux Mondes, evidently the former property of a political officer. Overthe mantelpiece hung a coloured portrait of the Prince of Wales, clad inthe golfing fashions of 1924, and holding a cairn terrier.

The following morning brought a steady downpour of rain. Being rathertired, we did not start till late. Two or three miles out we encounteredan official of the local post-office, who said that beyond Gautsa, ourday's objective, snow was falling.

'Gyantse you're going to, are you?' he continued. 'My God, your faceswill be in a state.'

'We've got cold cream and vaseline.'

'They're no good. If you do use them, rub 'em off before you go into thesun... Well--good luck! I don't envy you. Cheero!' And we parted.

The rain was falling steadily. There was a darkness in the air. Abovethe path, on the right, stood a line of ruins, the old Chinese barrackswhich fell into desuetude after the recall of the imperial troops in1911. We passed along a soggy plain, the bottom of an elliptical cup ofhills, in which the river broadened into a placid stream and yaks werenibbling at the sedges. A bridge crossed the river and a path led up toa monastery on a ledge in the opposite hills, a new building restoredout of all picturesqueness. It was here that Lord Zetland and MrLaden-La consulted the oracle as to the fate of the war; to which, afterexhibiting a series of spasms, he gave a Delphic answer of no greatperspicacity. We had hoped for his advice ourselves with regard tocertain domestic problems; but had learnt, before starting, that he hadlately been seduced by a woman in a wood and consequently relieved ofhis duties.

Beyond the plain the valley narrowed into a forbidding gorge. Now wewere level with the river; now 300 feet above it; now it was boundingand foaming above us. Gigantic peaks, inclining from our very footfalls,towered into the remaining sky. The path was steep, a series of rockysteps, interspersed with pools of mud. The raindrops trickled slowlydown the long red hips and haws of Chinese roses. We fell into a tranceof gloom, as the wet percolated down our necks and up our sleeves. Timehad ceased. The ponies picked their way of their own accord. At length,almost unknowing, we arrived at Gautsa, a scattering of wooden huts,which seemed as though half sunk into the ground for fear of the sombreramparts about them.

That afternoon, before the light went, it began to snow here also. Itcontinued during the night and the following dawn. When we awoke therewere six inches on the ground, and half as much on every branch andboulder. It was impossible, the sirdar said, to start. That might be;but this time we were not to be daunted. G. and I were muffled in ourcarpet suits, helmets, mackintoshes, and fingerless gloves; M. hadbrought his winter-sports clothes and looked like an illustration in theTatler, save that the smile was lacking. The path was invisible; wewere advised to leave its discovery to a mule; and Ah-Chung, envelopedin a mackintosh with a frilled hood, set off ahead like some cardinal onhis way to a session of the Inquisition. In view of its superiorstrength, my pony had been loaded anew with the saddle-bags. Alarmed atthe rattle of tins and bottles, he set off at an angry pace, heedless ofthe snow's foundations, and lurching and slipping, passed themule-train. As we rose to 13,000 feet, the snow deepened to a foot, andthe trees gave place to bushes. The path, high above the river, became aledge. A frightful desolation hung in the air, as the snowflakes floatedpersistently from the bilious leaden sky, down from above, past, anddown again, to the river miles below, which had become a trickling blackribbon in a world of white, enclosed by stupendous white escarpmentsthat allowed it no banks and rose sheer from either edge of the water.Only the water's distant rush and trickle broke the tingling silence.Should we get through? should we get through? The question became anobsession. We were mounting. Would not the snow be deeper at the top,once out on the Phari plain? To be baulked, to turn back in face of allour preparations, to have stood on the threshold and been barred, toadmit that an inch or two of snow had got the better of us--thesethreats drummed my mind. Not a footfall had we seen; we were enteringthe unknown; the plains might be full of huge drifts in which we couldmove neither back nor fore and should only freeze to death; and theservants were plainly apprehensive. Suffering was tolerable. But notfailure, even though it entailed a hero's death.

The path was now scarcely more than a yard wide. Beneath it, theprecipice to the river was increasing in depth, and the pony was pickingits way more gingerly, when suddenly the whole ledge was blocked by anavalanche of snow that had left a dirty track on the white slope above.Thankful for my high Cretan boots, which I had brought from their nativeisland as a mere curiosity, I set about to trample down the snow, whichwas soft and, as it stood, came to the height of my chest. The pony,following at reins' length, decided to make a rush for it, and in doingso let its hindquarters fall over the edge. I pulled it back till it wasfirmly embedded in the drift, and continued my trampling. This was noteasy, owing to lack of breath and superfluity of clothes. Eventually Imade my way over, piling up a rampart on the outer side, to preventfurther alarms. Immediately in front lay another similar obstacle,rather larger, into which I delved spasmodically, while the pony stoodalone, looking slightly supercilious. After half an hour the train camein sight, like a string of black insects crawling slowly up the whiteslope. At the first drift Ah-Chung dismounted and led his mule. The nextfell heavily and had to be relieved of its boxes. However, the groomsand muleteers, having come thus far, displayed an admirabledetermination; and after much digging and stamping, both obstacles werenegotiated.

A little farther on, where the bottom of the valley had rejoined thepath, we reached a solitary hut, outside which a mail-runner waswaiting. The downward post from Phari had not arrived. Our hearts sank.We decided to wait a little, while the men drank tea out of tin mugs,and we did likewise. Ten minutes later the four postmen appeared, andafter them a large wool-train. Both said that, once out on the plain,the snow grew less. We set off again, this time with a definite track tofollow.

At length the valley widened, the snow ceased falling, and themountain-sides fell back at a more gentle incline, till we were ridingover an upward-sloping plateau. Over its brow came two men mounted onyaks, and leading another packed with their belongings, uncouthsilhouettes as they plunged through the snow, the riders flinging thesingle rope attached to the nostril from one horn to the other. We metat a bog, whose presence was discovered by the sudden disappearance ofthe mule bearing G. and M.'s luggage. Its head remained visible, and itwas rescued. But the suitcases were immersed. The sun began to shine ina vague way, but not vague enough to prevent, after an hour or two, astrange burning feeling in the nose and the sirdar's going snowblind.But for Ah-Chung, our servants seemed to have come ill-provided for thetrials they must have foreseen. Half of them had no glasses. Thatmorning one of the grooms had been left behind owing to his havingneither boots nor shoes. He did not catch us up till the evening beforewe reached Gyantse. And on the journey down, when conditions were worse,I was forced to distribute my own shoes and stockings to others.

We reached the plateau proper, and knew that we had reached Tibet. Thesnow, save on the surrounding hills, gave place to bare earth andstones. A great herd of yaks was grazing--calves, cows, and bulls, theirdeep shaggy black unrelieved save by an occasional streak of white uptheir bushy tails. Beyond them rose the huge twisted cone of Chomolhari,24,000 feet high, whence jagged cubes and triangles of overhanging rockwhere the snow could obtain no hold, protruded nakedly. The earth aroundus was pitted with small holes, dwellings of the marmot, a peculiaranimal between a rabbit and a rat, which sat on its hind-legs, whiskersa-quiver, till our actual approach, then disappeared over its threshold.

At last, beyond a stretch of cultivation, Phari Jong, or Castle, stoodup, an impressive mass misty grey in the afternoon light, itsperpendicular lines slightly convergent and gathering to a squat centraltower-storey. A few wisps of smoke proclaimed the town. The castleseemed nearer than it was, as things do in Tibet; my pony had gone lame;and it was another hour before we reached the rest-house compound. Thiscontained also a post-office. The postal service from Gyantse to Phariis bi-weekly, and accomplished by mule; between Phari and India it isdaily and on foot. The service is maintained by the Indian Government ata cost of between £5,000 and £6,000 a year. The receipts we did notdiscover. It is much appreciated by the Tibetans, whose own arrangementsbetween Lhassa, though daily, are not so certain. Rich inhabitants ofthe capital and of Shigatse frequently send their letters and parcels tothe Gyantse post-office by private messenger. Their volume isincreasing, since communication with China, whence Tibetans draw most oftheir amenities, is become more and more precarious overland, and theroute by Calcutta and the sea is preferred.

Despite our exhaustion, both physical and mental, we hastened todespatch the letters of recommendation with which Messrs Macdonald andLaden-La had provided us, to the Jong, accompanied by the requisitescarf. Each Jong is the seat of two Jongpens, administrative officialswith magisterial powers over certain districts, who are supposed to actas a check on one another. The occupants of the Phari office, probablyyoung officials beginning their careers in Lhassa, were absentees, asoften happens, and their powers were delegated to two representatives.In about half an hour these arrived in person, one cadaverous and tall,the other plump and short, both lacking numerous teeth, and wearing thesingle ear-ring, four inches long, of turquoise drops jointed in gold,which is the mark of all persons of substance. Their robes were of theusual purplish cloth. On their heads they wore ordinary black-and-goldcaps, with the fur flaps turned up windmill-fashion, and underneath longpigtails. We were told later that they were very poor. We presumed themto be the victims of grievance or neglect, since they opened theconversation by suggesting that we should take a letter for them to theDalai Lama, the reason being that all correspondence arriving by theordinary channels is carefully scrutinized by secretaries before beingpresented to His Holiness. We could only regret that we should have noopportunity of delivering it.

The following morning I awoke in a condition of physical misery such asI have never experienced before or since. Phari, 14,300 feet abovesea-level, is possibly the highest town in the world. My head, yesterdayquiescent, had begun to drum and throb as though an hydraulic machinewere pumping all the blood in my body into it. The cold was bitter. Inaddition, my whole face was a suppurating jelly of yellow liquid, whichnothing could stanch, and which dripped through my beard over the sheetsand on to my clothes, as I fitted my body into them with palsiedmovements. Though it was only six o'clock, and barely light, the sirdarsuddenly announced that the castellans had arrived again. Mopping myface with a handkerchief, I emerged into the sitting-room, to find thenaked corpse of a sheep lying on the table, accompanied by a number ofeggs. We pressed them to tea, and then raw whisky, which they sippedwith as much distaste as we ourselves. They accepted, as returnpresents, tins of ginger-nuts, smoked salmon, sardines, and chocolate.As my pony had not recovered, they promised to find another.

We were anxious to visit the Jong itself, and encountering the tallercastellan on a dung-heap an hour later, I framed the request in Tibetan.An emissary was appointed to lead us. The town was unprepossessing, asall travellers have found it. The houses, constructed, save for a fewsolid buildings on the outskirts, of turfs, were scarcely above thelevel of the ground; so that columns of smoke came wreathing out ofholes in what seemed to be mere platforms of earth, about the height ofthe shoulder. Stacks of yak-dung, in round kneaded pats, lay everywhere;for we were out of the wood area, and had had to pay heavily for ourfires at the rest-house. The streets, seven feet wide, were runnels offilth, and strewn with bones and pieces of bloody hide. Enormous ravens,croaking and disgusting, crouched on the house-tops or flapped a fewfeet above our heads, as though in appetite for ourselves. Stocky blackmastiffs, fortunately tethered, barked at our approach. Yaks, ponies,and mules were tied by the hind-leg in open stables.

The Jong, which was shelled by the British in 1904 and has since beenrepaired, proved considerably smaller and less substantial than itsexcellent lines had seemed to warrant. Ascending by a flight of steps,we were ushered through a doorway four feet high into a low room, whoseceiling was supported by a wooden crutch-pillar in the middle. Though itwas not distinguishably clean, there was no smell and the windows wereopen. One of the castellan's wives, assisted by numerous servants, gaveus tea from a blue enamel kettle in glasses marked MADE IN JAPAN. This,though boiled with milk and sugar, was 'English' and cheered ourspirits. Should we be passing this way again? We must come and see them.She was a pretty woman in a somewhat solid way, and her complexion cleanand fair, with the usual blush on the cheeks. After twenty minutes wetook farewell, mounted our ponies, and set off over the plains.

V. The Plains

This account must now enter upon that stage familiar to all readers ofTibetan travel-books, in which the desolation of the country overwhelmsall other impressions. While the eye is dazzled with colour and form ofsuch intensity and glitter, and on such a scale, that it seems as thoughour drab and commonplace planet had been exchanged for the moon or someother heavenly body, an unwilling, clandestine fear lurks in the shadowsof the stranger's being, as though he were threatened with gradual buttotal extinction, with that cessation of being or becoming whichBuddhism teaches to be the goal of man and his perfecting. Readers ofTibetan travel-books may find little excitement in our short journey,carried out under conditions of comparative comfort over one of the mostfrequented highways and one of the most comparatively hospitable partsof the whole Tibetan plateau, a journey accomplished by British officersseveral times a year as part of their normal routine. What is thisbeside the laborious and dangerous incursions from the north and east,where the altitude and savagery of the country surpass anything onearth, of Huc, Prjevalsky, and Pereira? None the less the slow ride of150 miles over the frontier reveals enough of Tibet and of the characterof the landscape to invest with reality the monotonous, agonized recordsof those more adventurous explorers, whose words fail them to paint thehorror and beauty of their journeys. Tibet, for us now, is no longer the'land of mystery', a piece of dark brown on physical maps, gripped by anunholy hierarchy, and possessing no amenities of life beyonddevil-dances and butter statues; but a physical, aesthetic, and humandefinition as implied by the words France or Germany. Henceforth itexists on the map of our intelligence as well as of our atlas. If, saythe newspapers, this or that is happening in Tibet, this or that meanssomething. In Terra del Fuego it does not. This or that, moreover, isinvested with a particular romance. We see again the parched distances,the damson hills and gilded rocks, the encroaching snows, the yaksploughing the pale dusty earth of the valleys, the threshers singing onthe outskirts of the four-square farm-houses, the laughs of thepassers-by, the burning turquoise sky, and the pop-eyed clouds. We havea part in the country. We wish it well.

From Phari the way led over three or four miles of plain, through thestreet of a village, and then sloped gradually up to the Tang-La, animperceptible pass 15,300 feet in height, and the summit of our journey.As we rose, patches of snow reappeared; while the enclosing hills werecovered with white down to their junction with the flat. On the right,Chomolhari, grown enormous, towered over us, rising, as it seemed in theclear air, from only a few hundred yards away, a massive cone whosejutting, naked peak, wrenched round the wrong way, threatened to crashfrom the clouds 9,000 feet above upon our heads. Beyond it, as wedescended from the pass and inclined towards the north-east, asubsidiary range, jagged outline of unbroken white, stretched away tothe north, its depressions filled with swollen, shining clouds. Thereare no clouds like these clouds. Shaped like those of Chineselandscapes, the dancing light, the very essence of light, neither silvernor gold, but light, fills their underneaths and middles with sharp,three-dimensional shadows, so that their protuberant white bodies assumea reality that could be tossed and caught, if only reached. A pinkpervades them: complement of the sky, the oppressing ultramarine sky,dark as the interstices of waves, near as the speckled visions beneaththe eyelids--a pink which is on the snow as well, and on all the land,an emphatic tint of unearthly propinquity. In the foreground, reflectingthese marvels, ran a small river, broken by diminutive islets andcrossed by a humped bridge. Beyond, the ground rose in a kind of terraceat whose top stood a Tibetan rest-house. Through the double doors of theouter wall appeared a square compound of stables and a house, where ourmen stopped to drink tea. The lame pony stopped also, and I had to goback for it.

An interminable flat, ten miles long, now confronted us, across whichthe metal telegraph-posts expanded into a single dotted line. These werenot so incongruous as they sound; for Huc recorded lines of black polestraversing similar plains for the guidance of travellers. Over to theright, towards the roots of Chomolhari, a donkey lay recumbent while awoman beat it, and its foal ran this way and that in perplexity. On theopposite horizon, where low hills began again, a strange glacialformation, the top of some stupendous range, flashed like a sheaf ofcrystals in the blue. As our eyes strained ahead in pursuit of theposts, till the hills circled in, we could distinguish Tuna, a scatterof black rectangles, whose details became clearer as the hours went by.The tedium of our progress seemed insupportable. I yearned for my life'sterror, a horse that would run away. Mounted on a species of small dog,having the appearance of an autumn chrysanthemum and the shoulders of aneel, over which my saddle and myself were continually falling on to itsneck, I jolted along, sometimes inducing a series of rapid stumbles bydint of simultaneously lashing one rein about the head and the otherabout the tail. G. and M., though higher off the ground, were in nobetter plight. By a disastrous oversight we had brought neither whip norswitch. For four days on end not a bush nor a twig did we see; and afterSamoda there was only a prickly scrub, which tore the hands and broke atthe first blow. The duration of our stages was made half as long again,and the tedium correspondingly increased, by this circumstance.

Tuna, where the Younghusband expedition lay encamped for a whole winter,is 14,700 feet above sea-level, and commands a square view of the entireChomolhari range. As the sun set, shadows of a frigid, incalculable bluegave new form to the great extended mass and its dominating peak. Seatedon a chair in three greatcoats, I sought to sketch it; but a steely, icywind drove me in. By the light of a lamp I continued, till my head beganto ache. During the night my whole skull seemed to be splitting intosections like the pigs of an orange, among which I took a new shape asthe Governor of Bengal attending a garden-party under compulsion, anddressed in a mackintosh designed by Bert Thomas, whose drawings inPunch I had been looking at.

The morning, which came at last, was the crisis of the expedition. Myown face, for which I had constructed a mask out of two handkerchiefs,had ceased to drip, and was now covered with yellow scabs, which adheredunpleasantly to the surface of the beard. But those of M. and G. hadliquefied in the night, and they arrived in my room to breakfast,speechless with despondency. The cold was intense; the room was filledwith the odour of yak-dung and lamp-smoke; my head was pounding; and Ihad whispered to myself, during the despair of dressing, that if--ifeither of the others were to suggest an about-turn, I should not opposehim. To endure this pain for three more weeks would be merely theweak-mindedness of the strong.

M., his face dripping, unshaven, and crinkling with nausea as it openedto receive a piece of tinned sausage, spoke the first reproach that Ihad ever known of him: 'Why have you brought us to this horribleplace?'--as though it were any more my doing than his. Whereat G.,employing the dogmatic tone of an Early Father, announced: 'I am goingstraight back to Phari.' It was that tone that saved us. 'You can,' Isaid resentfully, though ten seconds before I would have followed him.'I'm going on. Anyhow I rather want to see Lake Dochen.' I had no suchdesire; but as we should reach it that morning, it seemed the nearestincentive. 'Well?' we both inquired at once of M. 'I'm so wretched,' hereplied, mopping his face and pushing away the sausage, 'that I'mindifferent. But I don't like not keeping to my plans.' 'Grotesqueweak-mindedness!' snarled G.; and to me: 'If you want to see LakeDochen, GO and see Lake Dochen.' Thereafter no more was spoken. Outsidethe window the noise of the loading mules went on; then stopped. Theyhad gone. The sirdar cleared away the breakfast; Ah-Chung was on hismule. We put on our scarves, gloves, and helmets and, mounting,continued northward.

We now left the Tuna plain, and, turning a corner of mountain, came toanother, containing Lake Dochen, whose waters, after a long expanse ofmarsh, revealed themselves in a series of peacock blue and greendiagonals, stretching out towards the same Chomolhari range, whichseemed to follow us as we moved, though the peak was now at our backs.We were anxious to make good time, as we had set ourselves a doublestage of some twenty-five miles. At an angle of the lake stood thebungalow of Dochen, a mile over half-way, which M. and G. decided toavoid, in order to take a short cut across the lower ground by the lake.Feeling exhausted from want of sleep, I wished to eat in comfort at atable, and, taking the saddle-bags containing our joint lunch, proceededto the bungalow, outside which a huge train of ponies and their groomswas waiting. Entering the door, I encountered Captain Smith, the BritishTrade Agent at Gyantse, who was on his way down to Yatung and had haltedfor the same purpose as myself. His companion, the doctor, galloped offto stop the others. Meanwhile I drank greedily at some Ovaltine, andfelt nourished for the first time in weeks. Captain Smith, politelyaverting his eyes from my swollen face and purple lips, said that thesealtitudes did not suit him either, and that he hoped never to seeGyantse again. The doctor, returning, said that if they didn't, theydidn't, and there was nothing to be done about it, which depressed me.During lunch, another officer, McLeod, came in: he had shot a gazelle,which was outside, in process of dissection, that he might give us ahaunch--a tiny animal, about three feet high, with horns like aduiker's. Smith said afterwards that we all looked pretty bad, and thathe wondered at the time if we should get through.

'Oh, you've got a Tibetan hat, have you?' remarked the doctor as we madeto depart.

'Yes,' I answered. 'It's almost saved my life. D'you like it?'

'Well, I shouldn't wear one myself, you know--not warm enough.' Sayingwhich, he assumed a scanty tweed thimble. As the Tibetan hat ispresumably the warmest hat in the world outside the Arctic Circle, heevidently considered me a traitor to the Anglo-Saxon decencies.

'Personally, I like Tibet,' he continued. 'The Indian troops at Gyantseare frightfully keen on hockey. I really get all the games I want. It'sa bit lonely sometimes. But as I say, I get all the games I want.' Andhe shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of perfect satisfaction.

We went our way, they theirs, to our envy, at a canter. That morning Ihad acquired a second pony no bigger than a dog, also orange anddecrepit. A third was now produced, similar in appearance, but of adifferent spirit. To my surprise it trotted smartly away from thebungalow, and, turning the corner of the lake, proceeded up its westernshore. After about seven miles we came to a river, flowing out of thelake in a westerly direction, evidently to a lower level. This hadcreated a gorge, into which I turned, finally losing sight ofChomolhari. Above the path a squat square tower, slightly tapering andbuilt of coarse brown stones, bespoke the strategic significance of thispoint in the route. Coming to a village, where the gorge widened, Imistook it for Kala, and, on reascending from questioning twofarm-women, fell in with a party of riders who were evidently in a hurryto be at their destination before night fell. Some were carrying guns;saddle-bags of reddish brown hide bounced from their high, carpetedsaddles. They rode mules, which trot very quickly, without the joltingof a horse; for no Tibetan ever rises in his stirrups. I had offered acigarette to the one beside me--a present which, being forbidden by law,is always welcome--and was continuing at my normal pace while he stoppedto light it, when suddenly he passed me at the gallop, and my pony, likea Gadarene swine, set off after him. The reins were rotten, and wouldhave broken had I exerted any strength. Up and down the narrow path weclattered and thundered, till at last I and mine slipped off it into twofeet of water. This made no difference to our speed. Then the sackingunder the saddle fell off, one girth broke, and I came to rest sittingon the animal's ears in the midst of the whole party, who lookedextremely surprised. My competitor had retrieved the sacking, and nowreaffixed the saddle. Kala was upon us, and he pointed my way to thebungalow.

Immediately I sat down the blood in my head began to pound with aviolence unknown to the previous days, and I relieved the monotony bypicking my face. The others arrived, and as soon as mirrors wereforthcoming, did the same. We were now without speech of any sort, orthe desire for it, and moved about our occupations with a desperatefortitude. It was remarkable what a vivid interest the face couldprovide. Every evening henceforth it was our first concern andrecreation on arrival. At first in small pieces, caked with ineffectualgrease; then, where there was no beard, in great streamers, skin afterskin peeled off, leaving us with raw, wet complexions like a rabbit onthe brink of the pot. Only the lips remained impervious to our pains,ringed with sores that made every bite a martyrdom. The most remarkablefeature of our joint appearance was G.'s nose, a prominent organ, whichassumed a colour to warm one's hands by.

That evening at Kala we ate the gazelle's haunch, which was excellent,with French beans and mushrooms. How many more days? we asked; and wentto bed.

Kala gives its name to another lake, where the British Trade Agent'sparty had shot a brace of geese, one of which they had very kindly leftbehind for us. We only caught a glimpse of the lake, as the road led offin the opposite direction, across a plain six miles long, whose surfacewas covered with star-shaped cracks like the bottom of a dry pond insummer. Since leaving Lake Dochen, the landscape had changed; we werenow below 14,000 feet; and the glacial effects of the Chomolhari rangeand the lake had given place to deeper and more tangible colouring.Damson, brown, and gold, the hills rose above us as we reached the endof the plain, their tops sugared with a blueish snow, and their colour,unlike the misty depths of a Scottish glen, intensified by a microscopicclarity of detail which revealed every pebble two and three thousandfeet above our heads. Behind, the blue of the sky pressed forward. Thehills were very close. A huge conformation of sharply outlined boulders,slides, and checky strata rose above our heads, colour of gilded caramelsatin, tinged with pink: a dark tone in itself, despite the blaze of sunthat covered it; behind which, as my eye reached its rim, the skyappeared as dark again, comparatively, as a pool of ink soaking on to aclean sheet of blotting-paper, and yet losing none of its colour ofpowdered lapis. Words are inadequate to describe the effect. The lightwas such that the colours had assumed a relationship and tonalityoutside the normal ken. And as the sun, vilely near, beat upon us, andthe mind strove to believe the scenes that confronted it, the desolationincreased. After leaving Phari, we had found ourselves on the moon;there was something credible in that; we have all imagined the moon. Butneither we nor anyone else had ever imagined this. Save for our ponies'hoofs, and the bone-like rattle of dead irises, a ponderous silence hungfrom the mountain-tops as we rode through the middle-day, and the sharpoutlines of the stones grew blacker and longer. 'Oh for a tree!' groanedM. from the depths of a temperament that finds beauty only inluxuriance. 'What a country for motor-racing!' murmured G. 'I shall tellSegrave.' 'Well, it won't see me again,' replied M. sharply, 'tillthere's a wagon-lit.'

After Samoda, where we stayed the night and ate the goose with a tin ofsweet corn, there were no more plains. The road, imperceptibly butsurely descending, led through a series of valleys, more hospitable inappearance, where the sun blazed hotly and there was little air: oneither side the same golden brown hills, with their tops now almostclear of snow; overhead, from one summit to another, the sagging bluefirmament; fields of cultivation; yaks, two at a time, straining forwardto drag their wooden ploughs through the dry baked earth, each teamdirected by a fur-hatted, high-booted peasant; in the distance, squarewhite farm-houses, their perpendiculars still convergent, and furnishedat the four corners with small turrets, whence groups of sweet-peasticks gave the prayers of the inhabitants, untidy shreds of rag, intothe universe. Around stood the farm-buildings, and beyond them, walledenclosures stacked with corn, in which threshing-floors had beencleared, and men and women, up to their waists in golden chaff andstraw, were jumping and beating to release the grain. As they workedthey sang long-drawn rhythmic utterances on one or two notes, filledwith a cumulative solitude, as though the hills themselves werespeaking. These chants of the ploughmen at work, borne miles alongthrough the clear air and the dancing light, from where, betweenriver-bank and stony hill-side, two long black specks and one uprightone could been seen moving slowly to and fro over a given limit, ringthrough my head still, recalling for ever the land and its people.

A short distance down the valley, at Samoda, we passed an old monastery,backed by a tall square tower, whose temple and outer courtyard were inprocess of reconstruction. A nondescript crowd gathered on the roof andlaughed at us as we rode by. As the valley expanded and twisted intoanother, a series of ruins, all of brown stone, black-shadowed andconical, were visible from a farther slope. Adjoining a farm-house inthe distance was a walled grove of yellowing willows, the first treessince we left the Chumbi Valley above Gautsa. A butterfly flittedfrivolously across the track. That evening we stayed at Khangma, wherethe telegraph-wire was tapped, and we telephoned to Captain Blood atGyantse. Next morning the valleys continued and the sun grew hotter. Ared-leaved berberis dotted the hill-sides. In the river swam fish threeinches long. On its banks hopped huge iridescent magpies and speckled,crested hoopoes. Mules, outspanned, were grazing on a stretch of grass,while their drivers lay, as they had spent the night, in the shelter oftheir loads.

Suddenly river and path converged to enter the 'red-idol gorge', passingbeneath the string of prayer-flags that marked the gate to this place ofsanctity. The walls of the gorge, of a brilliant golden stone, displayedan astounding geological formation, like a mighty pile of sandwiches andbuns. At the bottom every rock was heaped with miniature cairns, builtof marble fragments. Down the vertical face of one enormous boulder hadbeen carved the life-size figure of a Buddha, painted in red, white, andcold blues and greens, and sheltered by an arbour of loose stones. Thenthe gorge widened into another valley, and we reached the bungalow atSaugong, to find that Captain Blood had already sent ponies to bring usinto Gyantse on the morrow. There, for the first time since Phari, myhead ceased to ache. We were now below 13,000 feet.

The rest-houses between Phari and Gyantse, whose hours of tedium andmisery are stamped indelibly on our memories, are of a Tibetan ratherthan an Indian type, and externally at least resemble the other Tibetanrest-houses which we saw, and which complete the routes to Lhassa andShigatse. The ever-guiding wire comes to rest at a low square enclosure,not unlike a Tibetan farm-house, though more kempt in appearance. Adouble door gives entrance to a courtyard, cloistered with kitchens,sleeping-places for the servants, and shelters for stores awaitingfurther transport. Outside, a few men are standing about, perhapsloading or unloading their animals. The women attached to theestablishment, dressed in the same coarse stuff as the men, and possiblywearing the astonishing semicircular hoop of the Gyantse head-dress, ora jacket embroidered with swastika and crescent, stand or sit in theremains of the afternoon sun, dropping and catching their spools ofyarn. Tiny children, in miniature serge robes, play at their feet, orpractise their woollen slings in the direction of straying yaks. Thetraveller arrives, dismounts painfully, and with his knees unable tostraighten, shouts 'Chowkidar!' for the caretaker. His pony is led awayto a stable at the side. He traverses the courtyard, where, if thealtitude and season permit, dwarf hollyhocks, marigolds, and cornflowersare growing in pots, and enters the bungalow at the back, which strikescold after the sun outside.

Two doors on the courtyard give access to two main rooms, behind whichare two smaller ones, and off them two bathrooms containing washstandswith tin basins, tin wash-tubs, and rickety commodes, small and rusty.The other rooms have a bed and a fireplace each, the latter a hole inthe wall of such depth that all the heat is effectually conserved in thechimney. In the smaller rooms are a table, wooden chairs, and abookshelf containing Edwardian novels without covers, whosebeginning- and end-pages are gradually disappearing, copies of theJournal of the Royal Geographical Society and the Revue des DeuxMondes, and a bound volume of Punch. The walls, to the height of fourfeet, are washed in shiny pillar-box red, a colour that came to sickenus, above which they display a cold green. Between these two runs a bandof red, blue, and green stripes, each three inches in width and pickedout with gold. Over the doors and windows hang curtains of a charmingTibetan stuff, coarse and hairy, and printed all over with littlecrosses like a medieval tabard. This is made in many colours, theprettiest patterns being red crosses on yellow and red on white. Thesecurtains can serve as supplementary blankets, and even, if the clothesare wet, as Roman draperies. On the floor lie Tibetan carpets, possiblyten feet square, of bold colouring and Chinese design, which bear asingular resemblance to those found in the more cultured residences ofsuburbia.

The caretaker hurries in, places a wisp of some dried scrubby-lookingplant in the fireplace, shreds a yak-pat on to it, piles others above,and thus makes a fire, which, if it is to exude a yard's radius of heat,must be re-fuelled every ten minutes. The pronunciation of the word'yak-pat' troubled us at first; till we evolved the refined form of'yappet'. In the same way our Swedish biscuits, entitled by their makers'crisp-breads', became more euphemistically 'crippets'.

As it grows dark a turmoil without announces the arrival of servants andmule-train. The luggage is hastily disposed in the wrong rooms, thenchanged about. The sweeper, muffled to the nose, crouches in thecourtyard, filling the lamps from Ah-Chung's can of oil. These, whenbrought, are of two varieties: one with a glass chimney, the worst maketo be had, which either flickers dimly, or else, when turned up, emits avolume of smoke like an oil-well on fire, so that the whole room isclouded with fluffy black smuts that form a paste in the nostrils duringthe night--the glass having cracked meanwhile, putting it out altogetherand leaving us to indemnify the caretaker; the other of an ingeniousGerman type, without a glass, but burning a certain proportion of air,which is impelled into it by a ticking clockwork that runs down now andthen, and again leaves us in sudden darkness. In the wake of theseuncertain luminaries come tea and scones, with butter, jam, and milk outof tins. This meal reveals what the Press calls a human touch. Thanks,it appears, to the forethought of the late political officer in Sikkim,Major Bailey, and his wife, each bungalow is furnished with severalspecimens of Goss ware, whose municipal heraldries bring poignantreminders of happy romps at Dolgelly and improving afternoons atStratford. It was intended, however, by the donors, that thereminiscence should eventually be reciprocal. For the initial letter ofeach mother-town represented corresponds with that of the Tibetanvillage in which its offspring is now situated. Thus, should I ever,during this present incarnation, succeed in penetrating the fastness ofKINGUSSIE, my imagination will at once jump back the intervening yearsto the cosy hospitality of KHANGMA. Similarly, SEAFORTH shall transportmy spirit once again to sweet SAUGONG, and SEAFORD to SAMODA. The mostwhimsical choice has been that of BARNARD CASTLE for PHARI JONG. Majorand Mrs Bailey, to whom, in all seriousness, gratitude is due for thereal comforts of the bungalows, have introduced a new spice into the artof travel.

After tea, and the facial operations described above, the time comes forrum. Rum is G. and M.'s preference, since their whisky, which hasnecessitated another mule, they find too disgusting to touch. Hot water,richly flavoured with morsels of yak-dung, is added, and also sugar. Wecrouch by the fire, sipping and shivering, heaping the yappets intotheir insatiable hole. Follows dinner, arranged by G.; the bedding isunpacked and made; hot water bottles are placed within. We saygood-night, unwillingly shed our numerous clothes, which are becomingincreasingly smelly and dirty, block the chinks of doors and windows,and leap chattering between the sheets. Next morning, apart from myparticular headache, which fortunately did not recur on the returnjourney, we awake to a sensation of profound nausea. A vapour of breath,yak-dung, and lamp-smoke obscures the room; a blast of freezing airrushes in with the sirdar as he brings the pot of tea, without whichlife must be immediately extinguished. When dressed, we seek thebathroom, where the sponge crackles with ice, and we gingerly wash ourhands and the tops of our eyelids, submitting to other unmentionableoperations entailing laceration and frostbite. And then people say butthe Tibetans are so dirty, aren't they? They may be. But at least theypreserve their faces. There can have been no one in the whole country sofilthy, so utterly repulsive to look at, as ourselves by the time wearrived at Gyantse.

VI. The Pleasures of Gyantse

The joy of life had returned. My headaches were gone. It was the lastmorning of the journey. We were mounted on stocky Chinese ponies,resembling those of Mabel Lucy Attwell, which set out to cover theremaining fifteen miles at a canter.

Some four miles from the bungalow stood a monastery by the roadside, asmall country-house in appearance, flanked by a walled grove of willowsand poplars, outside which boy-novices in tattered red robes werethreshing. The road led on into a broad cultivated valley, over to oneside of which lay the larger Naini monastery, a scattered complex ofbuildings, enclosed by a wall and extending up into the crevices of thehinder hill, a conical mass of golden putty crowned by a ruined fort.From a distance the foremost buildings, a temple of the usual raspberryred, and others of gleaming white, seemed insignificant; but this wasmainly owing to the absence of windows as a standard of magnitude. Onapproach they towered above myself and the attendant groom, disclosing amassive wooden door about fifteen feet high, evidently intended towithstand attack. Inside this we were confronted by a cave containingthree diabolical pot-bellied images, life-sized and ferociouslycoloured. These were protected by a wire netting, presumably against thepigeons, whose ordered postures formed an extra cornice to the adjacenttemple. Beyond this stood three huge chortens surmounted by elaboratefinials of terra-cotta tiles. The rest of the monastery consisted, asfar as I could see, of a wilderness of small houses, adorned withwindow-boxes of marigolds and other flowers. Not a soul was about savefor one decrepit figure carrying a pitcher, who informed us that nothingcould be seen. We therefore returned to the road, where we met a monkwearing above his red robes a tall peaked cap of lemon yellow.

After passing through a defile in the hills we came out on a broadplain, no barren waste, but broken into small fields by an elaboratesystem of irrigation, and scattered with farms and country-houses. Onall sides the rampart of mountains continued. But on the right, and faraway on the left, at the ends of the plain, they seemed to fit into oneanother like the wheels of a cog, thus permitting the routes of Lhassaand Shigatse. In front of us, as the road descended in a westerlydiagonal, a great fort could be seen, springing from a peaked eminence,and behind it a wall of deep pink strung in a wavy line from summit tosummit to summit of the foot-hills. These were the Gyantse Jong andmonastery. Behind again towered a range of heather-coloured mountains,beyond which the top of an occasional snowy peak glittered in the blue.

The road was now alive with traffic, and I felt like a medieval notableas I cantered round the bends and over the little bridges, with my groombehind me. Drivers of pack-animals hastened to remove them from thecourse; male riders dismounted in respect; female reined in to one side.The farms and small country-houses, of white composition ornamented withdark cornice-bands, bore an unexpected resemblance, save for theircorner turrets and prayer-flags, to their European counterparts, beingset in plantations of osiers and poplars, and approached by drives, andsometimes by pretentious gateways. At length we came to a river-bedfifty yards in width, in which a fair volume of clear blueish water wasswirling along, and which was crossed by a broad, unrailed bridge,supported at close intervals on massive, diamond-shaped piers of loosestones about twelve feet high. Beyond this lay the town, a scene ofstriking beauty: in the foreground, clumps and rows of poplars andwillows, each one a shower of bright golden leaves, an exquisite colour,like that employed in mosaics; the Jong, built out of its hill, atwisted, squat cone of putty-coloured rock whose lines of black shadowwere gathered to a climax by great faces and tiers of masonry,converging one above another to a single flat cupola; behind, the redmonastery wall, looped from hill to hill like a scenic railway, andfastened at each apex by a squat white tower; beneath it the hugecomplex of monastic buildings, walled again in front and centring on acrimson temple and a vast white chorten, the latter being surmountedby a pointed golden tower that flashed in the sunlight and carried onthe colour of the trees; behind again, the hills, a back-cloth of flatpurple; the flat blue sky; and last of all, immediately above the Jong,a single cloud, a puffy Chinese thing with a black shadow to its belly.

The rest-house, I judged, lay to the left towards the Jong, andevidently some way out of the town, which was half hidden by thelatter's hill. The groom, however, guided me to the right down half amile of road neatly gravelled in grey, and enclosed by an avenue ofincipient poplars. At the end of this lay a mud fort and mud barracks inthe Beau Geste style of architecture, the headquarters of the BritishTrade Agent, when in residence, and his escort. I galloped up with aflourish, entered a courtyard, and, ascending to an outside balcony,found G. and M., who had refused to visit the Naini monastery, seatedwith Captain Blood in a room with an incredibly ugly wallpaper, butcomfortably furnished. The first book that caught my eye was one ofregulations for court dress. This interesting work, if not whollyessential to life in Gyantse, was probably connected with one of thoseperiodic examinations which now afflict the life of soldiers and drivethem to an early dotage. Blood gave us tea; then conducted us back pastthe bridge to the rest-house, an enlarged version of all the others,where there was a separate bedroom for each of us. Its dining-room ledout on to a verandah and a garden of grass, enclosed by poplars and awall.

Our first concern was to shave--a sickening process, with only fourskins instead of seven, and ten days' growth to remove. We also bathed,seated in front of our respective fires. When we met for tea, we struckone another as quite good-looking, and sleek as suburban knuts.

That evening we went to the fort, drank up Blood's remaining bottle ofgin, and dined with him off soup, salmon, mutton, apricots, and a kidneysavoury. Afterwards, Little, a functionary known as the 'conductor', andresponsible for the troops' stores, and Martin, who came up with the1904 expedition as telegraphist and has stayed here ever since, came in,the only other Europeans in the place. Martin, a twinkling cockney, fellto reminiscences of his youth. His innate tendency to sin had allowedhim success neither as an errand-boy, a race-card seller, nor abookstall keeper; so that he had been obliged to enlist. 'Oh themusic-'alls,' he said sentimentally, 'they used to 'ave some lovelytunes. Did you ever 'ear this one?--

'Lottie Collins 'as lorst 'er drores,
Will you kindly lend 'er yours?'

'Why,' I asked Blood, 'is there a trade agent here at all? It seems agreat expense for no apparent reason.'

'I can't imagine,' was the reply. 'He doesn't seem to do anything--nordo we, except meet him at the fourth milestone when he arrives.'

'Obviously the usual process of "peaceful penetration",' snapped G., whohad lately assumed a veneer of liberalism. 'We shall soon be ruling theentire country, when the proper "incidents" have been manufactured.'

'We're far from it now,' said Blood. 'We're not at all top dogs here byany means. The Kenchung--that's the Tibetan Trade Agent and the man withthe real power here--keeps a very firm hand on things.'

It is in fact somewhat surprising to learn that there are Indian troopsin Tibet at all. But it is plain, on second thoughts, that a politicalrepresentative could not be left absolutely alone in the heart of apotentially hostile country--as Tibet was in 1904 when the agencies wereestablished--and a country lacking the normal means of communication.

Next morning M. and I went again to the fort to send letters andtelegrams from the post-office there. Blood, who had been drilling hisseventy-five men, was in uniform. He said that they amused themselveswith hockey and polo; that the town was forbidden them for fear ofvenereal disease; and that their winter supply of buried turnips hadjust gone bad, which was a great blow. During the rest of the morning Isketched the Jong from just over the wall of the rest-house garden,basking in the sun. We were now at 12,000 feet. After lunch, joined byBlood and a stout and intelligent youth in a Tibetan robe and buffHomburg hat, named Pemba, who was educated in Darjeeling and now doesmost of Martin's work in the Trade Agency, we proceeded across theintervening fields, stubble and plough, to the Jong. The ascent was bymeans of a precipitous path of loose stones. Above us, the hugeconvergent perpendiculars produced that unique architectural effectwhich photographs of Tibetan buildings had always conveyed, and which Ihad always wanted to see. Creeping along a ledge towards a kind oflanding where we halted, shuffled a convict, heavily ironed about thelegs, who put out his tongue at us, the extreme gesture of supplication.It appeared that he had been suborned by a woman to destroy her husband;and that having been discovered, both he and she had received a hundredlashes, face downwards, from the heels to the neck, and would receive ahundred more, after which they would probably be condemned to spendtheir lives in perpetual slavery. The severity of this lashing dependson how far the relations of the prisoner can, or care to, bribe itsexecutioners. At present the convict was being looked after by twolittle girls.

We were now about 500 feet above the plain. Immediately below appeared aline of more or less substantial houses, piles of yak-dung on their flatroofs, fodder drying in their courtyards, and all round them the busythreshing-floors, from which an unceasing chorus of shouts and songsrang through the air, as the men and women drove their teams of fourbullocks, cross between yak and cow, in circular courses through theflying corn. Beyond, the country was dotted with larger farms andcountry-houses, each with its surround of golden trees. Then the fieldsstretched away in a series of small, irregular squares, bounded each oneby high embanked ditches which are opened in winter to flood them andfreeze. Passing to the other side of the battlements, we looked down onto the main street of the town, long and straight, which led to themonastery entrance. Within the walls, houses, temples, and chortens,red and white, with brass finials flashing, stretched up the hill to thered wall at the back. The mountains behind, only a mile or two away,reared slopes of gilded purple into the deepening sky. From the walls ofthe Jong on this side, the cliff fell sheer, casting a deep black shadowof stupendous acreage over the hog's-back and the houses below it.

As we stood looking, the Jongpen came on the scene, a very differenttype from the deputy castellans at Phari, a man of breeding and comfort,who had preserved his teeth. His hair, instead of hanging in a pigtail,was scraped up into a small sausage on top, knotted in red and adornedat the centre with a gold-and-turquoise brooch of excellent design, acircle of flat segments supported on two bars. This he wore not asJongpen but as the son of his father, who was an official of the fourthrank. His brother, Pemba informed us, was now Prime Minister. He wasdressed in a grey robe of once magnificent brocade, now discoloured anddirty, beneath which he wore canoe-shaped shoes of black velvetembroidered with yellow. A curly moustache descended from his nostrilsto frame a perpetual smile. His head was usually thrown back to displaya rippling throat. As Jongpen he was said to be much respected, unlikethe officials at Phari. His magisterial jurisdiction, unhampered by thecunning of lawyers or the imbecilities of juries, extends from Gyantseto the Tang-La, the pass we had crossed on the first morning out fromPhari. He had been here eight years, he said, and had at first found itvery windy after the comparative shelter of Lhassa. It was over thatcliff there that prisoners such as the convict we had just seen wereformerly thrown to their deaths. But capital punishment was nowabolished.

He invited us to take some chang with him in his house, to which heled the way down a precipitous path with surprising agility for one ofhis age and deportment. In the rear came his body-servant, a youth withan ill-grown pigtail, who bandied words with his master and showedlittle respect for him. Having walked over the roof of his house andpeered down his chimneys, we descended by a hole and ladder into acourtyard and thence into a darkish room, where we sat on draped seatsabout a foot high. The large windows along one side were glazed. Thefurniture consisted of various chests, the larger being panelled andpainted with floral designs of red, orange, and green. From the usualcrutch-pillar of carved and painted wood hung two official hats. Againstthe wall was a pile of hide trunks, and one hat-box, shaped as though tofit a top-hat, of white skin. Over these were fixed a number of swordsin worked silver scabbards, and also several umbrellas and a rifle, thelatter to give dignity to the Jongpen's progresses. A joss-stick emitteda delicious smell.

Above this latter hung several banners representing Buddha and the Wheelof Life. These paintings, widely used in both ecclesiastical anddomestic decoration, like the Orthodox icon, are executed on an oblongof coarse, parchment-like paper, whose length varies from four feet tonine inches, and which is itself mounted on a rectangle of dark andboldly patterned Chinese silk, broadening towards the bottom. This isfurnished with a brass-headed roller. The painting, half Indian, halfChinese in character, is extremely delicate and can best be comparedwith the art of the illuminator. There is a definite iconography for thedepiction of the Buddhist pantheon, which produces designs of greatbeauty. In colour the artists display a sense of conventional harmonies.Gold, as in Greek and Russian icons, is much used for outlining and theindication of auras. Those banners which have been toned with age areusually the more decorative; though the Jongpen possessed one, speciallyexecuted for him in Shigatse, which excited our envy. We eventuallybought several from other sources, despite our fears that their genuineartistic merits would be obscured by prejudice against the returnedAnglo-Indian's trophies.

Chang, a pale-green drink distilled from barley the day before, wasdispensed from a blue enamel kettle into little porcelain bowlssupported on silver saucers, themselves on stems. After every sip thesewere immediately refilled. Manners demanded at least three sips. But thetaste, sour and refreshing, was not unpleasant, and we felt nodifficulties. Over a chest behind the Jongpen peered various servants,and his small son, dressed in the red serge of a monk, who was reluctantto come forward.

On emerging, we observed a number of figures standing on the roof of ahouse 300 feet below. Blood said that there was a wedding-feast inprogress, of which this was the fourth day, and which would continue foranother six. Our desire was to attend it. Pemba said we should assuredlybe welcome. Remounting our ponies, we descended, a groom going on ahead.I had reached the gateway of the house when a sudden clatter in the rearmade me turn: to behold a cavalcade at a smart trot, mules and poniesgaily caparisoned, in whose midst rode a stout figure in purple-and-buffsilk, wearing high boots of soft natural-coloured leather, dark glasses,and a small Homburg hat. This was the Kenchung, the Tibetan Trade Agent,monk official of the fourth rank and the preponderant figure in Gyantse,to whom we had brought letters from Laden-La and Macdonald. According toPemba, while the internal administrative duties fall to the Jongpen, theKenchung's work is mainly diplomatic, though he has a finger in mostpies. Dismounting, he shook hands with us all and invited us to lunchthe day after to-morrow.

The wedding-feast was being held by Tuksa, one of the Kenchung's clerks:a rich man; for, in Pemba's opinion, he was more feared by the commonpeople, owing to his contact with them as a subordinate, than theKenchung himself. Crossing a courtyard, whose stables harboured a row ofsaddled mules and ponies, we mounted a short double ladder, to bereceived by our host, an old man with the prominent nose, whitemoustache, receding chin, and benevolent twinkle of a Victorian general.His grey hair, too short for the process, was scraped back to form anuntidy queue, like that of a Hogarth perruque in the tying. He wore along robe of patterned sapphire silk. Surrounded by a multitude of thecurious, he conducted us to the apartment of honour, lately constructedas a testimony to his wealth.

This apartment was without exception the oddest I have ever enteredsocially. About thirty feet by twenty, its inner portion, denoted by arailed dais and a drop in the ceiling, was approached through a sort ofvestibule. This was lighted, at the back, by a long 'studio' window,against which two ghoulish ragged figures, perched on an invisible roof,were pressing their noses. Above the door, which was at the side, andopposite, hung two enormous banners, splashes of scarlet on a light-blueground. At the approach to the dais the lower ceiling was supported bytwo crutch-pillars, having brilliantly painted capitals, and stemsdraped in multi-coloured flounces of different silks.

Beyond the dais the entire end wall was fashioned into a plaster idolry.In tiers of niches, framed in blue, sea-green, and white clouds, onwhich reposed groups of gazelle and other imperceptible fauna, sat themonsters and philosophers of the Tibetan pantheon. In the centre was alarger niche, containing a huge Buddha, which was draped in a voluminouswhite scarf and flanked by a pair of tall Chinese vases, red and greenon white. At the foot of this deity, opposite the opening in the railingof the dais, the wedding presents were ranged in a pile, bricks ofcoarse-leaved tea, jars of butter, dried mutton, fine cloths, of thetype that tailors call 'Angola', and bales of silk, white and gold, redand purple. To augment these, on returning to the rest-house, wedespatched a tin each of ginger-nuts, sardines, and smoked salmon.Meanwhile, seating ourselves on low seats in a corner of the dais, weawaited the advent of chang. Our host sat with us, and also an officerof the disbanded Tibetan army, robed in light-blue silk and wearing akhaki hat turned up on one side like a New Zealander's.

A host of spectators crowded behind the railings, from which emergedservants bearing enormous beakers of silver ornamented with brass.These, two feet high and round in body, deserved their name, for fromthe neck of each protruded a great shovel-like lip. Bowls of galloncapacity, also of silver and brass, were filled from them. From theseagain, women-servants, armed with silver ladles studded with smallturquoises, filled and kept filling our cups of jade or blue-and-whiteporcelain.

The costumes of the servants were more extraordinary than any picturesof the Celestial Empire have ever told. Each of the women wore theGyantse head-dress--a stiffened arc of red serge, eighteen inches acrossand fourteen high, heavily studded with corals and speckled turquoises,and bound, from a centre strut, with ribbons of seed-pearls three incheswide. The blouses and skirts, of an indefinite reddish purple, gave anupholstered, Mrs Noah effect, the former being full-sleeved and thelatter partially covered by an apron horizontally striped in green andmauve and finished at the upper corners with triangles of floralembroidery set in gold. Round the waist hung a row of large knobs,possibly of wood, strung on thick cord. At the neck appeared theinevitable charm-box, a silver square studded with turquoises and hungcornerwise. Across the breast stretched, as it were, an order ofseed-pearls, to the centre of which was attached a circular plaquebeautifully jewelled with differently coloured stones. One wrist wasencircled by a most curious ornament, a huge sea-shell, partially cutaway and somewhat resembling a nurse's starched cuff. This wholecostume, though varying in details, is more or less that of all Tibetanwomen of all classes on state occasions, with the exception of thehead-dress, which is peculiar to Gyantse. That of Lhassa consists of twocoral and turquoise horns, from which the hair descends in a blackshower on either side. It is curious that these particular ornamentsshould have become conventional, since the seed-pearls, turquoises, andshell-cuffs all come from India, while some of the coral is evenimported from Italy.

The hats of the men-servants were scarcely less astonishing. There weretwo kinds: one a circular plate, a foot and a half across, balanced ontop of a close-fitting cap, which was hidden by a thick red fringedescending from the rim of the plate; the other a buttercup-yellowhot-cross-bun, nine inches in diameter, whose connection with the headwas maintained by no visible means; and which, when the head was shaven,as in one case, produced an appearance of fantastic oddity inconjunction with a single blue-and-pearl earring four inches long.

A dessert dish of silver and copper was brought, containing preservedoranges, candy sugar, dried apples, and biscuits from Reading. Wenibbled, while the women with their ladles loomed over us like angrynurses persuading babies to their milk. M., learning from somemysterious source that eight was a lucky number, resolved to drink eightcups. I was more diffident. And my apple-cheeked servitor, passably snuband good-looking, complained bitterly to the host of my obduracy. It wasan astounding scene: the rows of ladling dolls, beneath their swayingjewelled arcs; the scarlet parasols and yellow buns nodding, as the menpoured the beakers into the bowls; the straining crowd below the dais;the reredos of clouds and images; the painted pillars and banners; andthe great window framing its ghoulish silhouettes.

Taut, we rose. The host led us through other rooms, smaller but richlyfurnished: in one, a segregation of women; in another, men at games ofdominoes, among whom was the bridegroom, a handsome youth in ahigh-collared robe of rich brown brocade tied at the waist with a greensash. Already an official at Lhassa, he was now on leave for hismarriage. This room contained a cabinet, somewhat in the manner of aChippendale combination of bureau and bookcase, save that there was noactual bureau. This was wholly covered in wrought brass. In the cornicemoved a dragon.

That evening Blood, Martin, and Little dined with us at the rest-house.Unfortunately the chang had rendered us inert, and our spirits lagged.The consumption of whisky more than justified G. and M.'s hopes. Martinsang:

'She's only a bird in a gilded caige,
Such a bewtiful sight to see!
You may think that she's 'appy and free from care;
She's not--though she seems to be.
It's sad when you think of 'er waisted life,
For youth cannot maite with aige.
'Er bewtee was sold for an old man's gold.
She's--a--bird--in--a--gilded--caige!'

His thoughts then turned to rosy dreams of old age and retirement in acottage by the sea, as they might, after spending a quarter of a centuryin Tibet, burying two Tibetan wives, visiting Darjeeling once, andfinally winning a substantial sweepstake, whose proceeds were nestlingin the bank.

'The south coast I favour,' he mused. 'What's this 'ere Peace'aiven theytalk so much about?'

'I think you'd find the south coast rather different from what it waswhen you left England,' said M., throwing off the lethargy of his eightcups.

'Per-raps I should,' replied Martin slowly, and paused to think. 'But Isaiy, Lord Oojah, what about a nice little lodge, where a man could end'is daiys in peace? I'm serious, mind you--a reformed character and allthat.'

Gyantse not so long ago was the scene of doings which reflected sadly onthe impeccable reputation of our countrymen. Captain A., now dead, wasthen in command; and the military treasury, since transferred to thecustody of Indian bankers, was his to dispose of. The post-office at thefort was the nucleus of a gambling society, which included the thenJongpen, and whose orgies used to continue for days on end, regardlessof meals. Mistresses were freely kept. Upon this happy scene came B., asuperior, who proceeded to reforms. A., however, discovered that B. alsohad his failings, though of a different type, and proceeded to suggest acompromise of laissez-faire on both sides, which might have beenarrived at had not C., a detached observer, also acquired knowledge ofB.'s misdemeanours and officially reported them. B. fled, followed byA., who believed that he was about to murder the then Trade Agent atYatung, on account of his misfortunes. Finally B. left the service, andA. continued his gambling in peace till, in the natural course ofthings, he was relieved. The treasury was then found to be 150,000rupees short. A. was arrested, escaped, and fled down to India in histurn, where he was recaptured and cashiered. His successor was an Indianofficer, who being no arithmetician, handed over the treasury andaccounts to some of A.'s old confrères. Two years passed. The time forthe Indian's relief had arrived, when, early one morning, he wasdiscovered in a dying condition. Martin and Little assumed the rôle ofdetectives. But their surmises are better not repeated.

* * * * *

At a quarter to ten on the following morning Pemba arrived to herald avisit from the Kenchung, to whom we had despatched our letters ofrecommendation the day before. First, however, there was time to visitthe bazaar. We walked across the fields, rounded the base of the Jong,and came to a long narrow street, as much a gutter as a road, from whosewalls of sombre grey stucco an occasional head protruded through a tinywindow. Behind us now, the Jong assumed a new shape, a fantastic steppedapex like a Rhineland castle, only plainer and untroubled by pepper-boxroofs. The booths of the bazaar, which shuts at midday, were containedin a narrow lane, exhibiting beads and mirror-topped boxes from India,the rejected Homburg hats of the whole world, piles of loose turquoises,rows of Gyantse head-dresses, unstiffened and neatly folded, and apeculiar species of scissors whose blades resembled batteredtable-knives. Tempted by nothing, we returned to the rest-house in astate of exhaustion after walking three miles at this height.

The Kenchung's advent was announced by the naked carcase of a sheep anda dish of eggs. We hurried out to meet him. On entering, he inclinedand, stretching out both his arms, presented us with a broad white scarfof closely woven silk. His general dress was the same as yesterday's:short jacket of buff velvet, woven with a bold pattern of bamboos, thatvile pattern of lodging-house fire-screens, now redeemed and madebeautiful by its context; a skirt of flowered purple; and the boots ofnatural leather. But his hat, instead of Homburg, was now official: ashallow dome of brilliant yellow silk, rising from a stiff round brim,richly embroidered in bright colours, and surmounted by a large knob ofcoral. It was an exquisite adornment, tilted sideways from the very topof his head over his bland brown face, with its huge smile andglittering denture. He lay back in a chair, drinking tea.

Did he, we inquired through Pemba, ever telephone to the Dalai Lama? Hedid, frequently. There was a telephone in his room.

Had he ever visited Pekin? He had: first as a boy of eighteen, when hewent to learn Chinese, which he can now speak but not write; again asinterpreter to the Dalai Lama, when the latter fled from the British in1904.

After half an hour he asked permission to take leave, as the custom is,hoping to sec us to-morrow.

In the afternoon we received another call, from the two sons of RajahTehring. Of the history of this dignitary I shall tell later. Jigmed,the elder, a handsome boy of about nineteen years, spoke English and hadhis hair short. His brother did not, and sported a pigtail. Both weredressed in the usual purple robes, fastened by small gold buttons. Wedelivered Perry's wedding present to Jigmed, and showed him Sir CharlesBell's People of Tibet. The frontispiece of this book depicts a familygroup in which are seated two living Buddhas, small children, and theirmothers. 'Why, that's my sister!' he exclaimed, pointing to one of them.

When they had gone I went for a solitary ride, rounding the Jong andstriking out into the country through a subsidiary village. My aim wasTsechen, a conical hill spattered with buildings, about five miles away.But I overshot the necessary bridge, and, seeing another village high upin a mountain cleft above my head, turned towards it. The ground wasthickly covered with stones the size and shape of biscuit tins, andintersected by deep gullies. The farther I rode, the farther the villagereceded. The sun was setting, and eventually I was obliged to turn back.The scene confronting me was one of superlative grandeur. In theforeground rose the gentle range on whose other side lay the monastery,and along whose top the red hinder wall was suspended from summit tosummit, a chain half a mile long, pinned to the rock by embattledtowers. In the farther distance the Jong reared aloft on its pinnacle, atwisted silhouette, save where the falling sun swathed the sides of thereceding topmost blocks in sheets of gold. Below stretched the plain,whence the shouts and chants of the threshers still echoed from eachtrampled floor. And all round stood the purple mountains, with theirclefts and valleys bathed in a sharp glinting sapphire. The land sweptaway, curveted into the foot-hills, fell hesitantly, leapt and fellagain to the plain, bounded up like a tidal wave into the nearermountains, spouted out the Jong, and ran twinkling into the distance,slowed, compressed itself, assumed the darkness, disappeared, and cameto light in a farther range, in time to hide the fallen nebula of firewhose last tongues still persisted above the horizon in their appeal tothe awakening stars. The red wall darkened to crimson, suspended frompeak to peak, a work of giants.

VII. Lunching Out

We awoke to the morning of Thursday, 12 October, with a sense ofimpending adventure: lunch with the Kenchung. At half-past eleven Pembaarrived, and we all rode out to the foot of the Jong, round it, and upthe main street of the town to the monastery entrance. The threshold,flanked by massive portals, revealed another town, more various andpolychrome than its civil counterpart, whose temples and dwellings,amounting to some hundreds, lay scattered over a rocky slope. Thisformation, which rose eventually to something like a precipice, wastopped by the chain of pink wall whose rear I had admired on theprevious evening. I asked Pemba how a community of five or six hundredmonks could find use for such a vast agglomeration of buildings. Therewere temples, he replied, common to the whole community, which were usedat festivals; and there were also, as I understood him, parish temples,each parish consisting of about fifty monks drawn from the samedistrict. Then, in addition, the monks must have somewhere to live. Thelower ranks shared their dwellings. Hierarchs and officials, such as theKenchung, had separate houses, and these again were furnished withstables and servants' quarters.

The scene, though almost deserted of human beings, offered a peculiaranimation such as inspires the abstract compositions of modernistpainters--save that here it took shape in three dimensions and occupiedabout twenty acres instead of as many square inches. Nowhere but inlands that have inherited the culture of the Celestial Empire isarchitecture infused with quite this same radiant activity. The secretof it lies partly in its use of colour on an unparalleled scale, butmore fundamentally in its universal convention of the batter, whichmakes every wall of every building, no matter how small its height,slope inwards in a straight line from the ground-level. Whatever theorigin of this convention--whether it be utilitarian, emotional, ormerely the legacy of extinct tradition--its ability to produce harmonyamong buildings and to reinforce the genius of the architectural groupis unsurpassed. Architecturally speaking, nothing could have been morehaphazard than the medley that confronted us, perched at all levels,jostling together at one place, leaving large unoccupied areas atanother. Furthermore, it became evident, on closer inspection, that thebuildings were in fact of no great size, while the construction of most,if not actually shoddy, had an air of impermanence which derived, likethat of colonial exhibitions, from their coatings of stucco andcolour-wash. Yet viewed as a whole, the enormous complex gave animpression not only of movement, but of unity and organic strength. Eachcrimson temple and pastel dwelling, clear-washed and richly shadowed bythe morning sun to distinguish it from the putty-coloured rock of thehill face, thrust its perpendiculars aloft to converge on the longswinging wall that topped the enclosing ridge. Between the pallid rockand the blazing azure sky, with its flotilla of bursting, light-filledclouds, this wall of crushed strawberry, adorned with towers andcrenellation of creamy white, formed a line of demarcation in terms ofpure colour whose intensity was something strange to architecture as Ihad hitherto conceived it. Only in two places was the line interrupted:on the right, by a huge stone pylon, grey and serious amidst thesurrounding festivity, on which, at sacred occasions, is hung astupendous painted banner of Buddha, some sixty feet in height; and inthe centre, by a smaller building, of flaming golden orange, which leaptinto the sky above the wall like the cry of an advancing multitude.

There was still some time before lunch and, accompanied by a band ofmonks in robes of worn red serge, we set out to explore the individualmonuments. Most prominent of these, being situated almost immediately infront of the main entrance, was the chief temple, a severe building oficed-cake pink encircled at the top by a narrow white band, above whichran a deeper band, as it were, of crimson plush, to emphasize itsmeeting with the sky. Such cornices are a convention of Tibetan sacredarchitecture, and their richness of texture, as much as their colour,was a puzzle to me until, during our journey back, I came on a temple inthe building. Groups of women were at work binding together bunches ofsome stout, heather-like plant, then cutting off the roots so as to forma neat circular end, and dipping these ends in a clotted crimson dye.When dry, the bunches were placed one on top of the other, with the dyedends outwards, to make the decoration of the cornice. The effectproduced, when seen from below, is that of a rich velvet ribbon, whichruns right round each temple, binding the convergent activity of itswalls and wings into a coherent design.

Upon the cornice of the chief temple in the Gyantse monastery, above theentrance, were applied two neat golden ciphers, while, as is also usual,a row of tall brass pinnacles of twisted bulbous form flashed from theroof-line above. The entrance was contained in a square arch, whichcontrasted actively with the pyramidical outlines beside it. This wasdivided across the middle by a balcony, supported on fourcrutch-pillars, and itself supporting another four, less in height,which upheld a kind of projecting carved screen immediately below thevelvet cornice. Between the lower pillars we now proceeded, to view theinterior. This again was supported on crutch-pillars painted red, whichcut sharply across the intermittent beams of light that came from smallwindows. The floor was occupied with rows of padded cushions, which wewere careful not to step on, or even to step over, in accordance withthe instructions given us by Laden-La. At the back were various shrinesand altars, each presided over by a large gold image, whose generalarrangement resembled that of any Roman Catholic church. The images weredraped in scarves; before them stood vases of artificial flowers andinnumerable butter lamps, big and small. Behind the main altars was asort of ambulatory, lined with further images, whose over-naturaldimensions and close juxtaposition filled the stranger withuncomfortable awe. The whole interior was pervaded with the smell ofrancid butter--a hideous, overpowering odour, reminiscent of a dairywhere one's fears as to the cleanliness of all dairies have at last cometrue.

Adjoining the temple was a library, where all the books, printed offwooden blocks on long strips of paper and tied between heavy woodenboards, in lieu of binding and cover, were kept in rows of woodenpigeon-holes. In addition there was a museum, and this indeed was one ofthe strangest apartments I have ever set foot in. Jumbled together inwhat was ordinarily complete darkness, and covered with a thicksubstantial dust that one could gather in handfuls and pinch between thefingers, we distinguished such objects as a captured Chinese banner,suits of medieval chain armour, bows and arrows, metal helmets, andstuffed scaly animals resembling armadillos. From this cavern of pastand perhaps glorious history we progressed by devious passages and manyladders to other temples, where the statues of celebrated lamas,coloured realistically and robed in their proper vestments, gazed uponus from their ceremonial chairs. Finally we emerged blinking into thesunlight to visit the great chorten of the monastery, a babel ofpolygonal galleries, whose innumerable projecting embrasures, eachreproducing in miniature those of the gallery below, and each furnishedwith its own window, produced an intricate yet apprehensible pattern ofshadow and ornament. Atop the five tiers of this huge whiteant-heap--for that is what, in general shape, it most resembled--rose ashallow white drum, pierced by four doorways elaborately carved andcoloured. This supported a square structure, decorated on the cornicewith pairs of eyes, above which glittered the final cone, a fabulouserection of ribbed brass, upholding a fretted double cog-wheel, fromtwenty to thirty feet in diameter, below its last finial.

It was now one o'clock and time for the anticipated meal. The Kenchung'shouse was visible up a narrow passageway, whose cobbled slope and highdilapidated walls reminded us of Nuremberg. This gave access to awell-like courtyard, overlooked by three storeys. On the ground floor,sheltered by a cloister on wooden supports, stood the Kenchung's mulesand ambling ponies at their feed. The upper storeys were approached by asuccession of steep, metal-treaded ladders. Our host received us on thetop floor and led us into a long low room divided in the middle by apartition. The windows, looking on to the courtyard, were open, proppedinward and upward like those of a skylight. Though glazed on theoutside, they still retained the original paper within. Beneath them asquare of divans was arranged round a low table covered with Americancloth. We sat facing the light, with the Kenchung opposite us. He haddivested himself of his buff jacket and now appeared all in purple silk.On his broad brown face and shaven head reposed a pair of goldspectacles. As usual, the unlighted wall of the room was stacked withtrunks, which were covered in white skin or black fur, the coveringsbeing separate. In India, he assured us, these trunks would rot andstink.

A cheap kitchen clock hung in one corner. On a chest stood another of alate Empire design, mahogany and ormolu. From his pocket the Kenchungproduced a fat silver watch, to whose chain was attached a goldtoothpick, later to be freely used. In addition to these, a servant camein bearing an alarm-clock still wrapped in cotton-wool and cardboard. Bydint of consulting all four timepieces, our host informed us that wewere late. We admitted to five minutes, but he said half an hour. We sawin this stricture no discourtesy, but rather a desire to convince us ofa life regulated on business lines.

At first English tea was brought, with sugar, milk, and teaspoons. TheKenchung then asked us if we would care for Tibetan tea instead. Wewould. This was served to us in bowls of blue-and-white porcelain onsilver stands, while he drank his out of a bowl of that very rare jadewhich is flecked with pale gold. This had a silver lid, finished with ablob of coral. Noticing our admiration of it, he showed us another bowlof whiter jade. But this had been spoilt by a poor carving of trees. Thetea itself, made with flour, butter, soda, and salt, might have tastednot unpleasant but for its association with the smell of the temple. Icould not touch mine. The others drank two cups each.

At length the first course was brought--a series of small cold dishescontaining slices of hard-boiled egg, seaweed, pease gelatine andmutton, cabbage and chile, yak beef, turnip, and other unknownvegetables. Each guest was given a pair of polished bone chopsticks,delicately squared, which had to be manipulated like tongs, the secondfinger being used as a pivot on which to hinge them. I found myselffairly proficient. But G. and M. were so messy that they were providedwith short-handled porcelain spoons in which to catch the drips. After afew minutes my manners were discredited also by my inadvertentlyswallowing a large piece of chile and being obliged to call hurriedlyfor a glass of chang. Ordinarily, it is not the custom to drink withmeals.

These preliminary delicacies were followed by others more pretentious,which were served in larger bowls: sea-slugs mixed with mutton, liver,force-balls, and a kind of flat spaghetti mixed with vegetables. Thelatter was accompanied by the most delicious Chinese vinegar, made outof barley and poured from an English lodging-house cruet. A silence fellupon us all, as we jabbed and grabbed and munched and sucked. Fromoutside came the tinkle of mule-bells and the incessant thud-rumble of astrangely melodious drum, denoting a prayer session in the vicinity. Theportentous dignity of our host, together with his servants andsurroundings, reminded me of similar occasions on Mount Athos thoughTibetan food is preferable to any that is found in Greece--and thereminiscence was strengthened by two white doves in skin-bottomed wickercages which hung outside the window. There had once, said the Kenchung,been a monkey, but it had bitten visitors. Now only a Saluki puppyprowled about the room, conveniently gobbling up those adamant morselswhich from time to time we found it necessary to remove from our mouthswhen no one was looking, and secrete under the table.

We asked our host if he had a library. He replied that he read a greatdeal. A book was brought, printed at Shigatse, and consisting of pageseighteen inches by four, with text on both sides and numbered in themargin. The boards containing it, when opened, were held by a ribbon atright angles, so that they formed a sort of reading-desk. The theme wasthe sanctity of a certain lama who had lived about eight hundred yearsearlier and whose life had been compiled by his disciples. Once more wewere back in the Middle Ages, when the only literature was sacred. Iwondered if there were lighter figures among the immortals of theTibetan Church, such as Susannah or Joseph and Balaam.

When the meal was finished, we asked permission to examine the innerroom behind the partition. Here was the telephone, of an antiquewooden-box type, on which, our host again assured us, he often spoke tothe Dalai Lama. A photograph of a temple at Katmandu, the capital ofNepal, hung diagonally from the beam. In a corner, a prayer-wheel in theshape of a hollow paper cylinder was revolving of its own accord, thanksto the mysterious action of a lamp beneath it, which heated the air insuch a way as to produce this uncanny rotation. There were variousbanners and images. But the pride of the room was a pair of magnificentcloisonné vases, about twenty inches high and a foot in diameter, whichhad been sent as a present from Lhassa.

By the time we rose it was three o'clock. As we crossed the landing todescend, we noticed that the noise of the drum had come from anadjoining room, where a monk could be observed through an open doorreciting his prayers beneath a composite portrait of the Chinese royalfamily. When we were outside, I asked Pemba if I could go up the hill tothe foot of the pink wall, in order to sketch and photograph. It wasimpossible, he said; there was no path. I therefore waited till he andthe others had left, when I made my way up the hill of my owninitiative, leaving my groom, who seemed rather worried, to hold my ponynear the entrance. I had not gone far when I was joined by a young monk,who stank of butter, but insisted forcibly on carrying my things andhelping me over the loose stones. Remembering Laden-La's advice never toremain alone in a monastery, I was glad of his company. While Isketched, he followed every movement of the pencil. Whenever I blew, toremove the shreds of india-rubber, he blew too, asphyxiating me with hisrancid breath. But this friendly, almost proprietary, interest in mydoings filled the afternoon with soothing and content, as the shadowsdrew out and I sat on the heights absorbing the remote and gorgeousbeauty unfolded at my feet.

* * * * *

On the estate of Tehring, about six miles from Gyantse, there resides amagnate known as Rajah Tehring, whose title is an Indian honour and whowas once heir to the throne of Sikkim. At the end of the last centuryhis father, the then Maharajah of that State, had fled to Tibet from theEnglish, and though he himself, as the Maharajah's eldest son, had beeninvited by the Government of India to return, the Tibetans had prevailedon him to refuse, endowing him with compensatory estates in theneighbourhood both of Gyantse and of Kampa Jong, near Everest.Eventually he had married a Tibetan wife. Among the children she hadborne him were the two sons who had already called on us at therest-house some days earlier. The eldest of these, Kumar Jigmed Namgyal,had been educated in Darjeeling, since the present Maharajah of Sikkim,on his first accession, was childless, and it appeared that Jigmed mustsucceed him. Since then, however, the Maharajah has had children. BothJigmed and his brother had recently married daughters of the great houseof Tsarong, whose male line was extinguished in a bloody passage bytheir adopted father, the most remarkable figure, after the Dalai Lama,in modern Tibetan history. This gentleman, a person of no family--andfamily counts for much in Tibet--had then assumed the name of Tsarongand had risen to be commander-in-chief of the Tibetan forces. It was hewho fought the rearguard action at the Tsang Po which saved the DalaiLama from the pursuing Chinese in 1910. According to Tibetan custom, hisduty towards his 'daughters' had been expressed, on their reachingmaturity, in a fashion more intimate than paternal. But as leader of theWesternizing party in the country, he had been at pains to have one ofthem educated in Darjeeling also, and it was this girl who had marriedJigmed. The English had called her Mary, because her real name, whichwas Tromsa, or something like it, denoted a corresponding divinity inthe Tibetan pantheon. It was as Mary that we came to know her. Hersister we never saw, for she was seriously ill. The poor girl died whenJigmed and Mary were away in India, about six weeks after we had leftTibet.

In the bosom of this family, on the day following our lunch with theKenchung, we had been invited to take lunch once more and spend theafternoon. Blood, thank God, mounted us on his stocky Lhassa ponies, andabout eleven o'clock we rode out of the fort in a cavalcade on our wayto Tehring. At first we went straight across country--a country ofintense cultivation, where a field was never more than fifty yardssquare and was invariably surrounded on all four sides with irrigationditches. Since these latter varied considerably in width, and we weregoing at a fast canter, the ride had an element of the unexpected.Sometimes the pony would jump, sometimes stop dead to step acrosssedately, and sometimes, at the apparition of a main canal, wade in upto its belly. But there was never a sign of reluctance, and neitherstones, banks, nor the hard-baked furrows in the autumn stubble, causedthe pace to slacken. By degrees, as we took it in turns to lead theprocession, our progress became a race, a literal point-to-point, sinceits direction was decided by Blood's waving at the horizon from time totime and saying, 'We pass that house next, and afterwards the trees onthe left.' At length a row of wooden telegraph-poles no higher thanclothes-props came in sight and we joined the Lhassa road. This highwayconsisted of a number of separate mule-tracks, about a foot wide each,which twisted their various courses over the pebbles and between theboulders.

An imperceptible pass, marked by the usual pair of cairns, brought us toanother plain. Being in front at the time, I ventured an inquiry of twopedestrians as to the whereabouts of Tehring. In reply they pointed to agroup of trees three miles off. To the north the weather had broken, thehills loomed blue, and threatening clouds had settled on their tops.When we drew level with the trees, a short drive indicated the mansionof the estate, which reminded me of those unpretentious houses occupiedby the Hungarian squirearchy. A long, whitewashed façade confronted us,adorned with the usual cornice-band at the top and constructed with theusual batter. Three lines of windows denoted three storeys. Servantswere waiting at the top of the drive, who led us round to the other sideof the house, where the main entrance was enclosed by a broad courtyardused partly for stabling and partly for the storing of wood andyak-dung. Here Jigmed met us, and we passed through a doorway withrichly carved and coloured lintel-brackets on to an earthen floor and upa double ladder. On the landing above, others of the family wereassembled: Rajah Tehring, his wife, and his daughter-in-law Mary. Therajah was a small man, with a brown complexion and wispish turned-downmoustache, beneath which a twinkling smile lightened his gravecountenance. He was dressed in a robe of purple-flowered silk with ahigh collar, and wore the inevitable single ear-ring. Jigmed wore a robeof maroon silk, beneath which showed an undergarment of amber brocade.This magnificence was marred by a tweed hat, which he now removed. Theranee sported a superlative Gyantse head-dress, whose diameter exceededanything we had seen. Her charm-box was in proportion. She lowered hereyes to the ground with old-fashioned modesty as she shook hands withus. Mary wore a blouse of thick purple silk and the usual apron ofhorizontal stripes, which was finished at the hips with triangularpanels of gold and silk embroidery. Her hair hung down in thick plaits.She was entitled to wear the Lhassa head-dress, but found it too heavyfor all but the most ceremonious occasions.

They ushered us into a low oblong room, whose windows were open. Iremarked to Blood that Tibetan rooms never seemed stuffy, as one wouldhave expected in so inhospitable a climate. He replied that they neverwere, but were consequently very cold in winter. We sat on divans,richly draped, and partook of cakes and dried fruits. English tea wasbrought, and a new kind of chang with a fizz in it. The rajah had hisown jade cup of Tibetan tea. Jigmed and Mary fetched two musicalinstruments--a Tibetan banjo and a Chinese fiddle. They played Tibetanand Nepali tunes, which were quite intelligible to our ears and remindedus of Scottish folk-songs. Then a servant came in and did a shufflingdance.

After lunch, whose thirty or so dishes confirmed our faith in theexcellence of Tibetan cooking, the rajah produced three Europeanbottles, whose contents--port, martini, and anisette--warmed ourinquisitiveness. Since it was a holy day, he had not eaten meat duringthe meal. Would he now be obliged, we asked, to attend a religiousservice? No, this was not necessary; for lamas had been called in to dohis duties for him. We could see them, if we wanted. So we troopedacross the landing outside to the chapel, where four monks weresquatting in yellow cloaks, intoning their prayers--and presumably therajah's--to the note of a hanging drum, which one of them struck with along curved stick. From time to time another made passes in the air withbell and thunderbolt, and curious motions with his fingers. But of thesignificance of these rites Jigmed could not inform us. He excusedhimself by saying that none of the family ever took any part inreligious observances, since they were all conducted by proxy. This wasan excellent principle, we thought. Nevertheless, I was later to seeJigmed, at Buddh Gaya, conducting his devotions in person.

Another room on the same landing was occupied by the manufacture ofcarpets, on big looms, from which depended balls of different colouredwool. A daughter of the house was hanging about to catch a glimpse ofus, a pretty girl with a delicate rosy complexion, whose head had beenshaved prior to her becoming a nun. Then we went out to see the garden apatch of coarse grass within a stone wall and sheltered by a plantationof poplars, whose golden leaves showed bright against the threateningsky and fell to the ground in showers before the gusts of an evil wind.Here joined us the Benjamin of the family, an impish creature of fouryears old, with ears like flails, and a perpetual laugh. His best cap,embroidered with flowers, was fetched that I might photograph him in it.His game was to frighten the servants by peering at them through aforbidding papier-mâché mask.

On the outskirts of the garden was a smaller house, in whose upperstorey, approached by an outside stair, lived Jigmed and Mary. Theirrooms were in a confusion of packing, as they were starting to-morrow tovisit their estate at Kampa Jong, with the intention of proceeding toIndia and making a pilgrimage to Buddh Gaya. We planned to meet inCalcutta. The house boasted some pieces of European furniture, aportrait of the King-Emperor, and a photograph of Jigmed in a schoolgroup. He had been forced, when in Darjeeling, to learn Latin, and nowdeclined the singular of mensa to our astonished ears. At length, whenall the household had assembled in farewell, some in the courtyard andsome on the roof, we cantered off to Gyantse again, in an effort toreach home before the approaching storm could overtake us.

* * * * *

Next morning, by permission of the Kenchung, we had arranged to visitDongtse, twelve and a half miles away. Blood again mounted us, and weset off at half-past nine, rounded the town, and made for Tsechen, thevillage on the conical hill that had been the objective of my solitaryride some afternoons ago. Opposite this place the river was crossed by asubstantial bridge carried on stone piles. At this point it started torain, and G. and M. began to question the wisdom of continuing ourexpedition. On hearing this I dug my heels into my pony and set off atfull gallop in the direction of Dongtse, before they could reach anadverse decision. My groom followed, and eventually Blood caught me upwith another groom. We then discovered that while we had the plates,knives, and forks, the others were carrying the food. Blood's groom wastherefore sent back to effect an exchange, in case they had reallydecided not to come on.

The road passed at first over unfenced grazing-ground, somewhatresembling an English common, then contracted to a mere footpath hemmedin by cultivated fields. All round the hills looked black, and snow wasfalling on their tops. Blood pointed out the pass to Shigatse, and Ifelt that only his presence prevented me from setting my pony in thatdirection. At one point we passed a huge prayer-wheel worked by a streamand striking a bell every ten seconds. Farther on appeared four monkshuddled in a garden beneath hats like red hearth-rugs and chanting theiroffice to the cold wind. A Jong stood up from the horizon, perched on arock, the centre of a small administrative district. A prayer waswritten in white stones on a bare hill-side, like the name of an Englishrailway-station in its garden. Eventually the path disappearedaltogether. We cantered over a grass slope, through the main street ofDongtse, and up a precipice to the monastery. As we did so, G. and M.appeared in the plain beneath. The rain, for the moment, had stopped.

Before the usual complex of buildings, with their cornices of crimsonvelvet and flashing brass pinnacles, monks stood waiting to welcome us,robed in serge the colour of dried blood. From below came the inevitableshouts and songs of threshers as they drove the bullocks through theflying corn. In the distance over the plain we could see the GyantseJong. The monks conducted us into the temple, where others were seatedin rows on the long cushions, each enveloped in a yellow cope. Twotables were set with lidded cups and seats of honour made ready. But thesmell of butter was overpowering, and, after showing our appreciation ofthe honour done us, we begged that the tables might be removed to anadjoining balcony where we could eat our picnic at greater leisure. Thecold was fearful, despite the shelter of a yak-hair curtain; but it waspreferable to the odour of butter. After lunch we were taken upstairs tosee a small room painted with the incarnations of the various abbots ofthe monastery. The last of those thus commemorated had been executed byorder from Lhassa, for having sheltered one of the Indian surveyors whotraversed Tibet in disguise at the end of the last century.

Sir Charles Bell, in one of his books on Tibet, has illustrated thecountry-house of the Palha family, which stands at Dongtse. The picturehaving aroused my interest, I wished to see this house. As alwayshappens on such occasions, my innocent desire roused a chorus ofopposition. Pemba asserted that the house did not exist. G. said that,judging by its picture, he would much rather not see it. I then insistedthat Pemba should ask the monks where it was. Just below the monastery,was the answer. So eventually we did find it, and very interesting, tome at least, it proved. The courtyard was surrounded on three sides by adouble cloister supported on old gnarled timbers, whose upper gallerywas entirely filled with row upon row of prayer-wheels resemblingenormous empty cotton-reels. The fourth side, which lay close beneaththe hill, was occupied by the house, an upstanding construction of fivestoreys, whose windows and galleries reminded me of a London inn in thetime of Dickens. These features made little appeal to G., who asksBlenheim or nothing of every house. I therefore climbed on to the roofof the cloister, out of earshot of his grumblings, and took photographs.

It rained all the way back. The ponies were out of patience, and therewas no holding them. We felt tired and stiff when we dismounted at therest-house just before dark. Poor Pemba could hardly walk. Blood came todinner, bringing a bottle of crème de menthe to celebrate our lastevening. We talked of the British in India, and he displayed thattolerance and understanding which is always found among the officers ofIndian regiments and never among the merchant communities of Calcuttaand Bombay. I wished I could have stayed on to keep him company. We hadbeen very happy in Gyantse. But the weather of the last two days hadshown that the winter was upon us, and we had no desire for a moreuncomfortable passage of the Himalayas than was necessary.

We awoke to our last morning with feelings of acute depression. It wasSunday, we remembered, and felt like it, even here. But there was notime to grieve. For further social duties awaited us. M. and I had notyet finished breakfast when Pemba, who had been keeping a lookout,rushed in to say that Rajah Tehring was at the gates. The beds were notmade; we had run out of tea. But by a hint of Providence--or possibly ofPemba--he sensed our predicament and went off to visit his second sonnear-by, with whom he reappeared an hour later. He wore a purple silkrobe, a sleeveless purple velvet jacket over it, and a hat of thefamiliar mandarin pattern having an upturned brim of mole-colouredvelvet, through which, at the back, fell a scarlet tassel. This was hisofficial hat, denoting the rank accorded him in Lhassa.

He drank tea, ate with some difficulty a biscuit covered with butter andmarmalade, and presented us with a very large and honourable white scarfand a pretty carpet from his own looms. We talked of Lhassa. He saidthat owing to his British connection--for his title of Rajah had beengranted him officially by the Indian Government--he was never entrustedwith administrative work. But he had to go every year to Lhassa to payhis respects to the Dalai Lama, and he enjoyed himself during thesevisits. He always stayed with his married daughter. The food was of thebest, there were lots of festivals and theatricals, and frequentlyprivate parties took place which lasted all night. It was evident fromthis account, and from much else we heard, that the amenities of Tibetanlife can only be fully savoured in the capital.

When the Rajah had taken his leave we busied ourselves with packing,before going out to a last lunch-party, for which we were engaged withTuksa, the host of the wedding-feast that had enlivened our first day inthe town. The old man and his son met us, not at the door as formerly,but outside the courtyard, thereby doing us great honour. The party wasassembled in the room containing the brass cabinet previously described.It consisted of about twenty people, all men, the cream of localsociety. Beneath the window, occupying the place of honour, was theKenchung dressed in orange brocade. On his right sat the Jongpen,wearing a jacket of sapphire blue over a robe of greenish yellow. Facingthe Kenchung was the postmaster, a pot-bellied, pigtailed personage indingy maroon. On the Kenchung's left sat a rich trader, whose top-knot,tied with red, meant that he was ripe for promotion to officialdom.These persons, who formed the main group, were playing a variant ofmah-jong which seemed to resemble bridge, though there were sixteenpieces to a suit. Loud shouts greeted the trumping of an opponent, andheaps of Tibetan money, in the form of coarse copper coins andbank-notes imprinted with a woodcut lion, passed between the players.The Jongpen, I noticed, had wrapped his legs in a purple rug. TheKenchung, on the other hand, had discarded a coat of maroon silk wovenwith gold roundels and lined with red hearth-mat.

The splendour of such garments, which was reflected in greater or lessdegree by all those present except ourselves, gave the party an air ofceremonious gaiety. Our host was dressed in woollen cloth of the veryfinest texture, deep green in colour, and tied with a scarlet sash. Hisson, whose hair was also twisted with red ribbon, wore a robe of buffbrocade tied with a yellow sash. Beneath this showed high soft boots ofuntanned leather, heavily tooled in a darker pattern. The two of themled us up to the principal guests, with whom we shook hands, then placedus at a separate table at the end of the room. The remaining members ofthe party were ranged at other tables along the wall opposite thewindow, and were also gambling.

Chang was served immediately on our arrival by the same serving-women,from whom detached herself the same frowning hussy that had stood overme before and was now more determined than ever that I should drink myfill. We slipped away, and nibbled at dried fruits, until a stir in thedoorway announced the beginning of the largest meal I have ever beenprivileged to eat.

The art of eating, as perfected by the Chinese and adopted by theTibetans, differs radically from the same art as practised in Europe.With us the dimensions and contents of the meal are carefully worked outbeforehand; the guest is treated to a finished masterpiece, in whosecomposition he himself plays little or no part. According to Celestialcustom it is the guest who makes the design, out of the materials laidbefore him. There are no pauses; when one series of bowls is removed,not ten seconds elapse before the next is on the table. There are nodrinks either. Consequently eating is incessant and is impelled, apartfrom pure greed, by the curiosity attaching to so many varieties offood. The chopsticks fly from one to another in endless change, andsuddenly, at the end of the meal, some of the earlier courses arerepeated, so that one may taste again what was most excellent at thebeginning. In the present instance we sat for more than two hours,during which the process of mastication did not cease for one minute.The menu, as far as our joint memory could afterwards recall it, was asfollows: monkey-nuts and other nuts, sardines which we ourselves hadbrought as a present, a chopped vegetable, like celery, with bits ofmeat, Chinese shrimps, meat balls, meat mixed with walnut that tastedlike marrons glacés, mutton, curried meat, sweet rice and sultanas,sultanas and candy sugar, doughnuts containing a sweet brown syrup,dough-balls, seaweed too delicious to describe, various other vegetablesof hard consistency, bamboo roots, meat with sauerkraut, cabbage,mushrooms, small sea-slugs with mushrooms, large sea-slugs without, fourkinds of fish tripe, of which one was unpleasantly spongy, shark'sstomach, pease gelatine, and liver or kidney. Then followed, to wash itall down, the usual two kinds of tea and glasses of crème de menthe.

Throughout this gargantuan repast we were accompanied at our table bythe son of the house and also by a person of enormous proportions with aHindenburg moustache, named Nishup, who was reputed to be the richestman in Gyantse. This reputation he enhanced by wearing on one hand aruby, and on the other a sapphire, each more than half an inch across.Though light in colour and full of flaws, they gave him a magnificentair. Just as we were about to ask the same question of him, he asked ushow much we thought they were worth.

Nishup did not eat much, and G. would fain know why. He said he couldnot bear to feel his stomach growing. G., whose knowledge of Buddhistlore is no less than his knowledge of everything else, replied that hehad always understood the stomach to be the seat of all wisdom. Thisremark, when translated, sent the whole room into a roar of laughter.Nishup, incorrigibly material, repeated that a big stomach wasuncomfortable, and that was enough for him. Pemba, through whom thisconversation was conducted, then informed us that, when alone, allTibetans eat six times as much as they do at parties. We could only besurprised that any of them should be able to move at all.

At three o'clock the women reappeared with chang, and we rememberedthat we had to reach Saugong, fifteen miles away, before dusk. Theluggage had gone on. Blood's ponies were to carry us once more on thisour first stage of the journey down to India. After sad good-byes to himand Pemba, whose joint sponsorship had enabled us to see far more ofTibetan life than would otherwise have been possible, we set off at asharp canter. Twilight fell quickly. For the last four miles we went atfull gallop. By half-past five, when we reached the rest-house, it wasactually dark, and the servants were waiting with lanterns to guide usindoors.

Looking back on Gyantse now, I realize what a precious glimpse that weekgave us of a way of life which the world has nowhere else preserved. InEuropean parlance it is a medieval way of life, a stage through which weourselves have passed long ago, but from which, nevertheless, the rootsof our tradition still draw much of their strength. How soon Westernmaterialism will penetrate the barriers so far successfully maintained,no one can tell. From Nepal on the south and China on the west themenace of forcible invasion is ever alive, and has twice since our visitreached such a point of danger that British mediation has been calledfor. Except by an army trained and munitioned on Western lines, to whichthe ruling hierarchy is bitterly opposed, it is difficult to see howthis menace can be permanently warded off. To a country, moreover, wherejustice is cruel and secret, disease rife, and independent thoughtimpossible, Western ideas might bring some benefits. But could thebenefits outweigh the disadvantages? In the present state of Westerncivilization, whose spiritual emptiness in relation to Asia is masked bya brutal assumption of moral superiority, it seems to me that they couldnot. I prefer to hope that the life we saw at Gyantse will endure, andwish Tibet luck in her isolation, until such time as the West itself isreformed and can commend its ideas with greater reason to those who havehitherto escaped them.

VIII. Winter Comes Early

Everyone had prophesied snow for us, and we had left Gyantse expectingto ride into it, since the clouds were lying thick over the SaugongValley and the hill-tops were already white. As for the passes intoIndia, the Jelep and the Nathu, Pemba had heard rumours of a fall of sixfeet on them. For the moment, however, we awoke to a cloudless sky andbright sunshine. But the wind was bitter cold, and as a precautionagainst it we each assumed a green silk mask with worked eye-holes thathad been purchased in the bazaar at Gyantse. The precaution was probablyunnecessary at this stage of the journey, since it was the coincidenceof snow on the ground with wind and sun that was really to be feared.But after the miseries of the journey up we were taking no risks; and wecertainly met Tibetans similarly masked. Besides these ghoulishprotections, we had also furnished ourselves with whips, which nowenabled us to cover the stage between Saugong and Khangma, a distance offifteen miles, in two and a half hours. Even so, an unreasoningdepression, which seems inseparable from travel in Tibet, began tosettle on us. After a walk up the Khangma valley, where I watched atoddling infant sending stones from a knitted sling as far as a drive atgolf, my head began to feel peculiar again. I therefore retired to bedat a quarter past two.

A couple of empirin tablets had put me right by the next morning, and Ienjoyed a leisurely ride to Samoda. On the way I stopped at the Dekzümonastery, which was in course of reconstruction. It was here that Iobserved the process of cornice-making by means of dyed twigs. Acourteous gentleman with a fine ear-ring appeared on the scene and,though somewhat astonished at my mask and goggles, showed me over thetemple. There were no monks about. He alone seemed to be superintendingthe work in hand. I rode by myself that day, and on reaching therest-house at Samoda I plucked up my Tibetan to ask for a shön ya--inother words, a riding yak. A brute was fetched from a near-by field, onwhich I perched myself in miraculous discomfort, flinging the yak-hairrein attached to its nostrils from horn to horn in an unsuccessfuleffort to steer it where I wished to go. Its home, I learned afterwards,was in the opposite direction, on the farther side of a mountain range;and when eventually I let it go in that direction, it set off at alumbering trot. After a time I tried to turn it, on which it showedresentment by twisting its head and butting my boots. I managed toregain the rest-house in the end, just as the others arrived, whodisplayed some surprise at seeing me thus gratuitously sampling yetanother exigency of Tibetan travel.

From Samoda we had planned a double stage to Dochen, twenty-six miles.Again I rode alone, rising gently through seven miles of rocky valleys,till I emerged on to the Kala plain which stretched another seven milesbefore me. Across this immense solitude, silent and awesome within itsrampart of snow-girdled peaks, was proceeding a herd of seven wild ass,tawny-coloured, with white legs that moved in step like the tights of achorus in musical comedy. My pony, after its rest in Gyantse, was infine form and chased the absurd troupe. Then, seeing that the wholeplain contained but one single stone, it galloped three miles like anarrow from the bow in order to annoy me by tripping over it. At middaywe lunched in the Kala rest-house, and immediately afterwards enteredthe Kala gorge. As this continued, to bring us out on the shores of LakeDochen, the whole range of Chomolhari came gradually into view, peakafter peak, glassy bright under new snow, in contrast with the leadenwaters of the lake, whose sullen, wind-ruffled surface was threateningto freeze as we looked. Flocks of duck were still swimming, in the vainhope of averting this contingency, and two pairs of black-backed cranewere pacing anxiously to and fro in the shallows at the margin. Ifollowed one of them. At first the birds marched one after the other inrigid step, separated by a distance of twenty yards. Then, as my pacequickened, theirs quickened also, till suddenly one wheeled about andthey continued to march in different directions, still in step, likesentries changing guard.

Being now well over 14,000 feet, we had reached the snow at last, whichlay from eight inches to a foot deep, and, being freshly fallen,necessitated our finding the path for ourselves. G. acted as pioneer andled us unerringly to the Dochen rest-house. The sun was setting as werode. Over the lake the sky became suffused with a luminous greenishblue, a marvel of colour, distant and unearthly, such as one couldimagine of inter-planetary space. In front of this the frigid peaksstood out in greater relief than before, with cold, pure blue shadows ontheir eastern faces and their western bathed in a light of soft yellow.Between each hung clouds in delicate suspense, impalpable as tulle gauzeand radiant with the same yellow glow. Below spread the lake, dark,deep, and sinister, though its leaden frown was bluer now. From its edgeto the rest-house the virgin snow was interrupted only by a squat cabinand some nearer mounds of yak-dung. Over to the left appeared a lowerrange, where the snow had not lain, and which now stood out the colourof a faded rose-petal against the green behind. The wind had dropped andsilence reigned over the scene, so tense, so inviolable, that it struckthe ear like a message from the stars.

With a jangle of bells the mules arrived as dusk merged into darkness.The servants had got it into their heads that we were making for Phari,thirty-six miles away, next day, and were determined to prevent any suchthing. The wire was tapped here, and Ah-Chung rushed to the telephone,on which he learned that, though the mail from the north had got throughto Phari that day, from Phari to Gautsa in the Chumbi Valley the roadwas completely blocked. M. was depressed by this news; he suggestedsummoning 150 yaks to clear the road before our arrival. But a glass ortwo of hot rum made the prospect of being marooned in Tibet for thewinter seem more romantic than tragic. There was still some of Blood'scrème de menthe left for dinner, and the rest-house contained threevolumes of Punch. In fact the evening finished in a happier mood thanmost.

There were no blue skies when we looked out next morning, no mountainseven--they had vanished behind an iron curtain of cloud whose downwardstreaks proclaimed a snowstorm on the other side of the lake. A fearfulcold hung in the air. I put on seven thicknesses of clothes. We tried totelephone to Phari again, but by now the line was out of order. Then, asby a miracle, the sun fought its way through and the clouds began todisperse. One by one the satellites of Chomolhari reappeared, gleamingblue and brown and white, till the fantastic cone of their chief wasvisible and the whole range was reflected in the glacial tranquillity ofthe lake beneath. To the right, against the sun, flashed a crumpledsheaf of blue crystals, which we took to be Kanchenjunga. In front of usthe untraversed plain shone white as a new-laid tablecloth and dazzlingeven through a pair of smelter's glasses. To the naked eye it wasimpossible, painful, even for a minute. There had been a wind in thenight, so that the snow varied in depth from two feet to two inches. Anymound of eminence was almost bare; some of the lower hills were stripedwith drifts like huge giraffes. We had not far to go to Tuna, butprogress under such conditions was slow. As the sun rose to its fullheight we could feel the snow-glare burning through our masks. Anotherherd of wild ass appeared on the horizon; this time there was no chasingthem. By the time we reached the rest-house the afternoon was welladvanced. Chomolhari was nearer now, and the sunset more spectaculareven than that of the previous day.

We left Tuna at eight o'clock in the morning. The snow was thicker, andwe had to go on top of it, following a path nine inches wide which hadbeen made by yaks in single file. This had frozen in the night and washard enough to prevent us sinking through. But the gait of the yakdiffers widely from that of the pony, so that the feet of the lattercannot, and did not, coincide with the footmarks left by the former.Since the path consisted entirely of these footmarks in all theirseparate inconvenience, our mounts had to feel their every step, andeven then threatened to collapse with legs crossed at one in every four.We thus made an average pace of one and a half miles an hour. On ourleft Chomolhari grew eternally more imminent, till its furiousescarpments seemed to threaten our destruction. At the rest-house belowthe Tang La I waited for the mules to come up, and fished anothersweater from my luggage. The sun had gone in again, and a wind had gotup which cut through my seven coverings like a razor.

The ascent to the Tang-La is gentler than can be expected of a pass over15,000 feet above sea-level. But it seemed like an arctic hell as Iplodded in the wake of G. and M., two tiny black specks above me in aworld of white. The snow grew deeper and deeper. Traffic was comingthrough from Phari now, and if one left the path the pony would flounderup to its belly and soon become immovable. There was nothing for it butto take a whip to the oncoming beasts and drive them, and their ownerswith them, out of the road. On in front, M. was unhorsed by two yakssimultaneously. Behind me our caravan was in difficulties, and the mulesbegan to lie down. But I rode oblivious of these incidents,concentrating only on my own progress. A flock of sheep, going the sameway as myself, proved almost impassable. When I reached the top, mymask, wet with breathing, froze into a sheet of green silk ice. Deadanimals were frequent. A trail of blood led to a mangled donkey, atwhich a black mastiff was already busy. At last the Phari Jong could beseen on the horizon, a small blue silhouette against the white outlineof the Himalayas. I passed through a village, whose natural filth wasmade more evident by its white mantle stained with blood and urine. Thestreets of Phari, when I reached them, were equally disgusting. At therest-house I found that M. had developed a pain in his inside. He darednot take a pill, he said, owing to the long journey on the morrow.To-day we had come twenty-one miles and were as tired as we could be.

Two moths, a clump of Michaelmas daisies, and a pat of yak-dung fell outof the jug with my washing-water. We had planned to be called at six,but did not get off till eight, and even then the mules had not started.As the plain sloped downward to the head of the Chumbi Valley the snowgrew steadily deeper. It was only yesterday that the first animals hadcome through, after a week's blockade. Out of the mist loomed blackherds of yak, some of them laden, while from the backs of one or twofluttered pennants mounted on poles--presumably prayer-flags. Themarmots had come up through the snow and squatted in hundreds at theircircular entrances.

At last the sides of hills were visible and the slope between thembecame a descent. The Chumbi Valley was beginning. The mountains closedin and the path became once more a twisting narrow ledge, which recalledvivid memories of the journey up and the anxious uncertainty that hadattended this stage of it. Giant slopes obliterated the sky, beneathwhich the human being suffered incredible diminution. It is not my habitto moralize on the smallness of man. But the Himalayas do induce a senseof it. They are out of scale to a degree which evokes something likefear--the sort of feeling, I imagine, that might beset one in the depthsof the ocean, however safe the submarine. Then a tree came to comfortus, the first for a week, a friendly little rhododendron bush, threefeet high. Conifers followed, gaunt and rugged like a veteran army,whose black, snow-spattered silhouettes maintained their precariousfooting up the white towers of rock. Below rushed the river intremendous volume, making the best of its last freedom before thespring. Already the intervening boulders were fringed all round withicicles, and being covered on top with snow as well, resembled setteesupholstered in a ruched white chintz. Vast avalanches had left theirdirty smears on the opposing slopes, damming the waters in the bottomand filling our path, if they had crossed it, with mounds of loosecannon balls over which the ponies picked their way with sagedeliberation. It was no wonder that the soldier who was carried back tohospital the week before had been unable to get through to Phari.

Rounding a corner, I met a party of monks whose red robes, tall yellowhats, and goggled yellow masks seemed the natural uniform for thisoutlandish world. The leader of them swung a prayer-wheel as he walked.Farther on I espied two men busy on their knees at the river-bank. Acouple of mules stood tethered beside them, and a number of ravens werehopping about. I was wondering what they were up to, when suddenly oneof them brandished a bloody limb at me. They were cutting up a body,which I took to be a human one, since it seemed an inconvenient spot forthe butchery of an animal, and the dead are always thus disposed of inTibet. Then Gautsa came in sight, where we met our acquaintances of thejourney up, the doctor and McLeod. They told us that the recent snowfallhad been one of the heaviest on record.

Here we lunched hurriedly, for it was growing late. Thereafter the treesstood about the path in thick woods, which seemed hospitable after thearid wastes of the plateau. Tibet was already remote; the excursion ofthe last three weeks had become detached as an experience outside thenormal course. The larches were still gold. But for them the autumncolours had been sogged away. Cataclysms of earth and stones had alteredthe very landscape. In one place a whole clump of trees had come rushingdown the mountain-side to land upright on the path, so at first, notrealizing what had happened and remembering the spot as it had been, Iwas at a loss to understand why my path should suddenly vanish in asmall wood. My pony was less tired than the others, and I rode ahead,for the sun was setting and we still had ten miles to go. As twilightdeepened I quickened my pace, cantering helter-skelter down the unevenpath, over the boulders and down the beds of streams, past the ruinedChinese barracks, till at half-past five, when it was actually quitedark, I reached the outskirts of Yatung and begged the first man I metto direct me to the rest-house. At first he did not understand. Ibellowed the word dunkang in every key my voice could devise.Eventually comprehension dawned, and he sent me over the bridge and upthe opposite hill, where I found the caretaker waiting on the threshold.To him, by signs, I explained that the others were coming, and persuadedhim to send out a lantern to meet them. He rose to the occasion, andwhen the others did arrive, half an hour later, cooked us an excellentdinner out of his own resources, which consisted of an omelette and someroast yak. Another lantern was despatched to meet the mules, which didnot get in till half-past eight, after a march of twelve hours without astop.

It had been a tiring day, altogether a tiring week. We were glad tospend the next morning in idleness, browsing over the various batches ofletters that had been waiting for us here. I was glad to see that, ifsize of type were any criterion, the Daily Express had considered myarticles on the flight to India of some value. Later we visited Smith,the Trade Agent, at his official residence on the other side of thevalley, the usual Anglo-Himalayan chalet, roofed in red corrugated ironand sporting a tenuous Union Jack. The place was not without amenities.A few roses were still flowering in the garden, and there had beensweet-peas till the snow came. The servants wore purple skirts, in theChinese fashion, and short scarlet jackets in the English. Smith wasjust setting off for Gangtok, like ourselves. We promised to catch himup that evening.

A band, whose members wore spangled masks adorned with aigrettes,greeted us on our return to the rest-house. Just as we were leaving,having enjoyed a protracted and soporific lunch, another musicianarrived by himself, bearing a magnificent green and gold banjo, which Ipurchased on the spot for ten rupees. This object my unfortunate groomwas obliged to carry for the rest of the journey. But I felt lesscompunction at thus burdening him than might have been expected, sinceseveral of the other servants had bought themselves Lhassa terriers inGyantse, which they intended to sell in India, and to carry which acrossthe snow-covered plains they had even been able to afford servants oftheir own.

To reach Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, and also for the pleasure oftaking a different route, we had decided to cross the Himalayas by theNathu instead of the Jelep La. After a few miles along the ChumbiValley, we turned up the hills to the right, leaving the telegraph-postsfor the first time since our journey had begun. The path climbed steeplyand was disconcertingly narrow, winding its way along a terrificsemicircular precipice over which a mule had fallen only a few momentsbefore our advent. We could see the poor brute in the bottom, as thevultures came wheeling down like baroque aeroplanes; its ribs werealready bare. Then we rode into a cloud, and the forked valley, with itssilver thread of river twisting away on its passage to Bhutan, wasblotted out. Suddenly a small monastery loomed out of the mist, perchedon an isolated ledge. Its roof, but for a gold cupola, was made offlattened kerosene tins painted red. Yet so neatly was this done thatthe effect was not incongruous. As we passed the entrance, a monk ranout, beckoning to us to stop. But we had no time. The phantom buildingreceded below us. Then, suddenly, a trumpet rang out, one of thosetwenty-foot instruments of lamaic ritual. Vainly it called, echoing overhidden valleys and rebounding from peak to peak, as though to inform us,in our cloud-swathed blindness, of heights unsealed and recessesunimagined. Another blast, fainter now, caught up the long-drawn phrase;and then a third, hard on the second, so that the echoes crossed andrecrossed and the very mist was alive with distant sound. The trumpetrang no more. With infinite reluctance, seeking a last survival infarther and farther ranges, the sound died away. We climbed onwardthrough the trees, knowing, each in his own mind, that Tibet had spokenher farewell.

We were now in the snow again. The going was the worst we hadencountered, and the fact that we could not see them in no way mitigatedthe depths of the precipice below us. Landslides and fallen treesblocked the path at every turn. At the best it was scarcely a yard wide.Occasionally there were bridges, grotesque structures like heaps oftumbled spelicans, through which the ponies' legs might slip and dangleabove unfathomable glissades. Cascades of snow fell from the trees,finding their way down our necks and into our boots. A lugubriousmoisture, half sleet, half rain, oozed from the impenetrable cloud. Thecold was intense. The approach of night added to the gloom of the blackand dripping trees. It was with some relief that we reached the tinyrest-house of Champithang, to find Smith installed, with the lamps litand a wood fire roaring in the grate.

Next morning we made an early start. Smith, a man of generous physique,was mounted on a sleek black mule. My pony, I felt, was graduallyturning into a mule with all this mountaineering. Its ears began tolengthen at every obstacle. There had been a fresh fall of snow in thenight. But for the moment the sun was shining and the battered,flat-topped silver firs, festooned with long trailers of lichen liketinsel on a Christmas-tree, glittered brightly against the black depthsof wooded valleys. At length we passed the tree-line and were faced by awhite wall of mountain--the approach to the pass. Simultaneously theclouds descended. A blizzard enveloped us. It became impossible to seemore than a few yards. There was nothing to indicate the path. We couldonly continue upwards and trust that the invisible abysses now lurkingin our imagination did not exist.

In the midst of this blind progress my pony lurched forward, tipping meheadlong into a drift as high as my chest. M.'s pony, just behind,lurched backward into another, and he slid off over the tail. We draggedthe ponies out, remounted, and waited for it to happen again, which itdid immediately. There was nothing for it but to walk. Normal kindnesswould have prompted such a course, it may be thought; but it is none tooeasy to struggle up a steep slope in the rarefied air of 14,000 feet atthe best of times; and when, in addition, one had to contend with snowup to the thighs and sometimes the waist, a vast weight of clothing, afrozen mask which impeded respiration already difficult enough, andcomplete loss of all direction, there were moments when it seemed asthough we might have to postpone our return to India to another day.After every three or four steps it was necessary to stop and rest; onwhich the ponies would sink in up to the saddle again, and a furthereffort would be needed to pull them out before bracing oneself foranother spurt. At one moment a gleam of hope materialized in the form ofsome footsteps ahead of us. I followed them as quickly as I could, andthe going had just begun to seem a little easier, as though their makerknew where the path was, when I came on him seated behind a rock--asolitary mumbling idiot, whom no gestures of mine could induce to moveanother step. By this time the slope had become almost perpendicular,and we judged it best to wait for Smith, in case he, by instinct orexperience, should know the way. But he did not; neither did his chiefTibetan clerk, whose usual calm was sadly deranged by our predicament.This personage, whose single ear-ring and jacket of piebald fur stilllent him an air of authority, hazarded the suggestion that we werewithin four hundred yards of the top. Whether without further assistancewe should ever have completed that four hundred yards is a doubtfulpoint. But, as though by a miracle, assistance came. Smith was for goingback, M. was undecided, and I was for making a last try, when out of theblizzard far above us came a shout. Our men answered. The shouts wererepeated from above. And by dint of this unison a junction was effectedbetween our servants and the drivers of an equally bewildered caravanfrom the south. Even the idiot was stirred to activity and took my pony,as we hoisted ourselves up the last rock-face, so steep that little snowcould lie on it, and at length stood upright again on the narrow edge ofthe pass. I was glad of his help, for my groom, laden with the banjo,had got left behind.

Thus we crossed the frontier of Tibet and, stepping into the tracks ofthe mule-train, descended into India.

The path was now a proper path, decently cobbled and graded. Afterwalking about a mile the snow decreased and we were able to remount. Theride was enlivened by various game--a covey of ptarmigan, another ofsnow-partridges, said to be rare, and a single deer. A couple of martenswere playing on a rock. Also we saw a monal pheasant, most magnificentof the Himalayan birds, which got up at our feet and sailed away intothe mist across a bottomless valley, a vision of purple and copper. Wereached the rest-house of Changu early in the afternoon, and thereparted from Smith, who was due to make another stage before dusk. Ourown mules were still tired after the long journey from Phari to Yatung,and we thought it best to spare them as much as possible.

Changu lies by a lake which hangs precariously among the mountain-tops,with a slender dam at one end, whence pours a waterfall. The Maharajahof Sikkim has a boat-house here. I rode out before breakfast, afterbeing nearly overwhelmed by an avalanche of snow from the roof of therest-house, and discovered the pods of a poppy which I hoped might be ablue one; but it was not. The day, we had decided, should be devoted tobotanizing, in the interests of M. Our next stage would take us downfrom 12,000 to 9,000 feet. It began with conifers, interspersed withinnumerable kinds of rhododendron and azalea whose leaves varied inlength from a foot to half an inch. Then bamboos intervened, hugefeathery clumps of light green, and maples, brilliant yellow andbrilliant red. Already, despite the yawning cloud-filled valleys thatunfolded at every turn, there was a feeling of luxuriance, such as theChumbi Valley does not possess, an oppressive feeling, as though themoisture were too abundant and the soil too rich for a rational plantlife.

I was riding in meditative mood, when up the path came Ward, a soldierfriend from Calcutta, with a friend of his behind him. Theircomparatively clean appearance made me conscious of our own unkemptness.They were going up to Changu in the hopes of getting a shot at a monalpheasant, and were interested to hear we had seen one. On reachingKarponang, where the new-built rest-house seemed like a palace, we allshaved, and, like Samson at the loss of his locks, I was filled of asudden with tragic lassitude. Our journey was nearly over. Next morningM. and I went on ahead. Some of the orchids were in flower, single mauveones in the clefts of trees, and clusters of small coffee-colouredblooms pendant from the higher branches. From four miles away a squaretemple roof on a wooded spur proclaimed the imminence of Gangtok. Wecantered down the well-made path, and at the entrance to the town founda chuprassi awaiting us to lead us to the Residency. He wore a Lepchauniform, a scarlet coat, a skirt, and a straw top-hat of Directoireshape with a peacock's feather in it. In the garden, as we ambled up thedrive, Mrs Weir was picking flowers. Colonel Weir was on the doorstep,with Smith behind him. Glasses of beer were handed on a tray, and wefound ourselves, after what seemed like an eternity of the unfamiliar,in a normal house.

I cannot speak fondly enough of Colonel and Mrs Weir's hospitality tous. By them, accustomed to travel in Tibet, our little excursion washardly to be taken as a serious journey. Yet Mrs Weir had anticipatedthe pleasure we should feel at our return to civilization, and noamenity she could provide was lacking for our comfort and entertainment.That year they had been invited to visit Lhassa and had arrived withinabout eighty miles of the place when, to their great disappointment, theinvitation was cancelled. They were now wondering whether theopportunity would come again. I am glad to say that it did come, notonce but twice. Diplomacy moves slowly in the Tibetan capital.Altogether they must have spent more than a year there. Mrs Weir is notonly an observer but an artist of considerable attainment. If and whenthe time comes for them to make public the fruits of their two missions,our knowledge of the least-known city in the world will be considerablyincreased.

That evening Sir Abdul Karim Ghuznavi, a member of the Governor'sCouncil of Bengal, came to stay, having done eighteen miles by car at anaverage pace of three miles an hour. On the following morning we alltrooped down to the Palace to pay our respects to the Maharajah. ThePalace, which had just been newly pointed, resembled a dolls'-house ofthe seaside villa pattern. The private secretary, dressed in green silk,met us in the drive. The Maharajah, dressed in sky-blue brocade, waswaiting on the threshold, a charming little man in smoked spectacles,with a gentle musical voice. His drawing-room, thanks to the taste ofMrs Weir and of Mrs Bailey her predecessor, contained none of thosemonstrous objects with which Oriental potentates in general seek tocreate a European ensemble for the delectation of their guests. Apartfrom some carved and gilt tables of local make, the furniture andatmosphere might have belonged to some pleasant English country-house.The Maharajah complained of his wireless set, which could only getCalcutta. He had ordered a bigger. He also complained of the difficultyhe experienced in leaving his front gate, owing to an adverse spiritwhich lived in a tree beside it. We gave him a message of regard fromRajah Tehring, at which--or was it our imagination?--he seemed ratherdispleased. At length he took us out to see the temple on the point ofthe spur. In front of it lay an open space which had been levelled forthe erection of a new palace. I had a side-conversation with the privatesecretary, who promised to procure me a couple of dancer's masks. SirAbdul Karim played the heavy politician, exhorting the Maharajah todevelop his mineral resources.

In the afternoon the royal party came to tea, headed by the Rimpoché, atwinkling monk wearing a yellow hat like a pagoda, whose holiness wassuch that the servants fell on their knees at his white clogs. TheMaharanee came also. They arrived on richly caparisoned ponies. Despitetheir affability, it was a difficult meal. Dinner I found still moredifficult. For my stomach, which had been uttering certain warnings forthe past day or two, now refused to assimilate any more food whatsoever,and I was obliged to rush from the room. The following morning, after Ihad been dosed with castor oil, we took leave of the Weirs, whom we werelater to see again both in Calcutta and London, and rode down toPakyang. And on the day after, which was 2 November, reached Rungpo,where a car was waiting for us. Here we lunched among sweet-smellingshrubs, bathed in the river, and said good-bye to the servants, thanwhom none could have been more dutiful and efficient. A year or twolater I saw Ah-Chung's photograph in The Times. He had been acting ascook to the Kamet Expedition.

A good road took us to Siliguri. Once more the Bengal plain spread outbefore us. There were three hours to wait for the train. We ordered abottle of burgundy in the station restaurant. This, on being opened,emitted a light orange liquid. We sent for the manager. It was burgundyfor all he knew; but there was no need for us to pay for it if wethought differently. We then ordered claret, port, and kümmel instead.After a comfortable night in the train we reached Calcutta forbreakfast. It was a luxurious meal. Central Asia had become a dream.

IX. A Tibetan Pilgrimage

Jigmed and Mary, who had left Tehring the day we went to Dongtse, had adifficult journey to India. They had intended to cross into Sikkimdirect from Kampa Jong. But the pass of their choice, which is over17,000 feet high, was completely blocked by the same snowfall as had sohindered ourselves. And after a very unpleasant night in the crudest ofshelters they were forced to turn back, eventually rejoining the traderoute at Tuna. At Kalimpong they spent a few days with their old friendMr Macdonald, and thence came down to Calcutta, where with somedifficulty I found them, occupying a balcony at the top of that Chinesecaravanserai which had previously supplied us with ceremonial scarves.The ostensible reason for their trip was a pilgrimage to Buddh Gaya. Butfor the moment they were employed in tasting the pleasure of a Westerncity. In this I could be of some help; after which, perhaps, I might askthem to allow me to come on the pilgrimage too.

The following night, therefore, we dined at Firpo's, where the entry ofa Tibetan couple in full regalia caused a stir of surprise and--as faras I was concerned--of disapproval. To consort with Indians was badenough; for these outlandish folk, celestially brocaded, there could beno excuse. I gave them champagne, whose flavour, to my mortification,reminded them of chang. Thus primed, we went to the theatre. It was agala performance, the first night of Journey's End. The Governor wasin his box and everyone else in the stalls. I was interested to see thisplay; but its significance, in my mind, was disproportionatelyexaggerated by the company of two people who knew no more of the warthan we do of famines in China. The dialogue proved unintelligible tothem, and they were further mystified by the bursting shells. Yet bysome abstruse instinct they appreciated the humour of the cockney cook.On the whole the evening was a success.

The next thing was to get them to lunch at Government House. This Iaccomplished, after taking them to write their names in the book,through the offices of a friendly ADC. 'I think,' said the ADC to theMilitary Secretary, 'it is politically important to have them.' 'Ithink,' said the Military Secretary to the Governor, 'it is politicallyimportant to have them.' So had they were, and enjoyed it. They alsolunched with me at the flat I had been lent, and complimented me on thebanjo I had bought at Yatung. It was of an old Lhassa type, they said,very uncommon, and the price I had paid was small, even by Tibetanstandards.

Besides pleasure, they had certain business to transact. Two servantsfrom Lhassa had been sent down with them, one of whom could not stoplaughing, owing to the fact, apparently, that he had once been a richman and had gambled away his inheritance. These were to be sent by shipto China in order to buy silks and brocades requisite for the strictlyprescribed Tibetan uniforms and dresses of ladies of rank. Owing to theanarchy of the interior the overland trade routes were closed and thiswas the only means of obtaining such stuffs. Then, when the passages ofthe servants had been arranged, there were purchases to be made. AlreadyJigmed had bought a typewriter. Now he was contemplating a gramophone.One evening, however, we all met at the station, Jigmed and his servant,Mary and her maid, myself and my servant, and took the train to Gaya.

Mary had visited Gaya before, in company with her 'father', thecommander-in-chief. On our emerging from the train at a quarter to sevenin the morning an old station official shuffled up, of whom, to hisgreat astonishment, she asked, 'Haven't you got a goat with long ears?'He then recalled the visit of the commander-in-chief in 1925, and thelittle girl who had accompanied him and had played with the goat.Meanwhile, another Tibetan had appeared--a lama, also on pilgrimage--andattached himself to us. We heaped ourselves into two cars. During thedrive Jigmed and Mary, who had thought that India was always hot and hadbrought no overcoats, shivered in the foggy dawn. The Tibetan servants,unused to this form of locomotion, were sick over their chauffeur. Onreaching Buddh Gaya we found a new but very small dak bungalow awaitingus, to which we were the first visitors. Outside it the chowkidar hadmade a little formal garden, whose rows of neatly bedded flowers heshowed us with pride.

Two or three hundred yards away, from a depression which represents thelevel of the spot two thousand years ago, rose the tower of the greatMahabodhi temple, a square cone, slightly truncated and surmounted by apinnacle which brings its total height to 170 feet. To the base of thisimmense structure, whose shape resembles that of only one other templein India, we proceeded after a short breakfast, threading our way amongflowering trees and groves of ancient stone monuments--stupas, pillars,Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas--till we came to the main entrance. Iaccompanied the pilgrims inside--and then, as they pressed theirforeheads to the knees of a Buddha, stopped short. My intrusion, of asudden, seemed vulgar and inquisitive, the more so since Jigmed, havingbeen at school in Darjeeling, had evidently acquired that self-consciousembarrassment in religious matters which is inseparable from Englisheducation. So I left them and, wandering off among the precincts of thetemple, consoled myself that, even if Buddhism were not of myinheritance, I could still do homage to its founder as the philosopherhe was, instead of as the god he has been made.

A wisdom whose conception of space and time was forecast of our own, andwhose canon of individual self-reliance is as high a compliment as anyever paid by man to man, must always command respect, even among theignorant. But it was a warmer, an historical emotion that held me now,which celebrated not the wisdom itself, but the event of its coming, onthis hallowed site. For it was here that Buddha, arrived at last on thecentre of the Universe, seated himself beneath the pipal-tree andreceived the Illumination that illumined the earth. In the hard stilllight of the Indian morning, when the sun enforces peace and nothingmoves or sounds but the wafted scent of a flower or the call of somequick melodious bell, I sought the genius loci. During sixteencenturies, between the reign of King Asoka in the third century B.C. andthe Mohammedan conquest of the thirteenth century A.D., the Mahabodhitemple was the focus of unremitting devotions, whence the genius of theplace has descended, through a period of ruin and desuetude, to benefitfrom English guardianship and welcome pilgrims in motor-cars. Jigmed andMary had their ritual. To me, the interloper, remained the figment ofhuman aspirations which had centred on this spot, and to which Jigmedand Mary now were adding.

An earlier temple than that which now exists was built by Asoka, or soonafter his time; stone railings belonging to it have survived, adornedwith bosses at the intersection of laterals with uprights, in the styleof other early Buddhist monuments. These were eventually rearranged toenclose the present and larger structure, whose date cannot be laterthan the sixth century A.D. and may well be earlier. Fa-Hian, theChinese pilgrim who visited the place in the first decade of the fifthcentury, saw a temple of sorts, but gives no description of it.Huien-Thsang, who arrived in the thirties of the seventh, is moreexplicit; his dimensions correspond exactly with those of the buildingas it still stands. The tower, he said, was made of bluish bricks facedwith plaster. Each niche in each tier of the design contained a gildedimage of Buddha.

In the eleventh century the Burmese did repairs. Thereafter the templefell into a state of increasing ruin, until in 1880 a thoroughrestoration was undertaken at the instance of the Government of Bengal.Almost the whole of the outer surface of the tower was renewed, thoughwith strict regard for the existing pattern of niches and mouldings; thepinnacle was repaired; and the four corner pavilions, of which no traceremained, were reconstructed from the somewhat uncertain authority of amodel found near by. Altogether two lakhs of rupees (£15,000) wereexpended. The English have left their mark, as they do, in a peculiarfond manner, when engaged in archaeological reparation; I doubt if thetemple, in all its long life, has ever worn such a tidy, solid air as itdoes to-day. Yet the genius of the place, instead of being expelled, hasbeen rejuvenated. The Mahabodhi temple is once more a living shrine, andthe prayers of its pilgrims, from all parts of Buddhist Asia, bringpoetry more vivid than the picturesque futility of negligence and decay.

The pipal-tree, whose shade induced so momentous a consequence, stillexists by courtesy, though its position has altered and it is probablyfifteenth or twentieth in descent from its original ancestor. An actualchild of the latter has survived elsewhere, at Anaradjpura in Ceylon,where I saw it, now but a fragment of arboreal senility. This wasplanted about 240 B.C., and its guardianship at the hands of Buddhistmonks has suffered no recorded interruption. The trees of Buddh Gaya, onthe other hand, have endured much violence. The original was cut down byAsoka of all people, when he was still an unbeliever. Next day, havingsprung miraculously to life, his queen cut it down again, and the rootshad to be revived with perfumed milk. So tells Huien-Thsang. When he sawthe tree its height was no more than forty or fifty feet. For in theyear 600 the Rajah Sasangka had cut it down again, and had further dugup the roots and burnt them. Twenty years later came the RajahPurnavarma, who revived the roots once more with the milk of a thousandcows. The next mention of the tree is by Doctor Buchanan in 1811, whodescribed it as in full vigour and not exceeding one hundred years inage. When, in 1876, this tree had decayed and was blown down, there wereseedlings ready to replace it. A few years later, remains of apipal-tree were found which could not have been less than twelve hundredyears old, owing to a buttress which had stood that time on top of them.These were in the proper place, the vicinity of the Vajrasan throne, thediamond meridian, centre of the Universe, a sandstone seat which stillsurvives and which marks the actual point of the great Illumination.

As I looked now, the shiny dark green leaves of the tree were hung withthe prayer-flags of many different races; while from the dark shadebelow glowed the tiny flames of countless little lamps. I sat myselfbeneath a fig-tree and gazed up at the tower through the glinting,steely fronds of a palm. Through the courtyard moved the custodians ofthe temple, Hindu monks--for there are no Buddhists in Indianow--dressed in long robes of pale strawberry faintly tinged withorange. Occasionally a brighter stuff flashed past, rich golden yellow,the vesture of a monk from Burma or Ceylon, occupant of the elaboratehostel of red brick and white marble which subscribers in those twocountries have caused to be erected in the neighbourhood. At lengthJigmed and Mary emerged from their initial rites, and we walked backtogether to the rest-house for lunch.

Mary, having made the pilgrimage before, was the leader in their variousobservances; and she now announced that this afternoon we must visit acertain cave where Buddha had lodged prior to his Illumination. As partof the pilgrimage it was a very essential visit, and they would beinterrogated in Lhassa as to whether it had been performed. To reach thecave we should borrow an elephant: so she remarked in a casual voice, asthough about to ask the loan of a neighbour's bicycle. An elephant? Isaid. She replied, yes, an elephant. They had been on one before, andthat was how you did visit the cave. Meanwhile two babus, as though inanswer to the need for an elephant, had conjured themselves on to theverandah. An elephant? they said; of course we must have an elephant.Ponies could be provided; but an elephant was indispensable. It shouldbe arranged. After lunch, therefore, we all trooped down the villagestreet, to the portals of the Hindu monastery, where the elephant was toawait us.

After crossing a large court filled with evidences of monastic husbandryand surrounded by whitewashed buildings of irregular height and shape,we were conducted on to the topmost roof, where sat the mahut or abbotof the sect, cross-legged beneath a rush canopy. He wore a palestrawberry shirt and gold spectacles. His head was bald. His features,in shape and immobility, resembled those of an American Indian. Hepuffed without cease at the tube of a hubble-bubble. Three chairs werebrought for us, and we seated ourselves opposite him. He continued topuff. Being unable to address him myself, I begged Jigmed and Mary tobreak the silence with their few words of Hindustani. They refused.Still he puffed, vouchsafing neither glance nor word. After ten minutesmy self-control began to ebb. I rose. The others rose. We all threebowed, hoping thus to convey our gratitude for the loan of the elephant.He inclined his head a quarter of an inch. So we took our leave.

Downstairs in the court the brute was in readiness, kneeling down with aladder against its ribs. In place of the expected howdah was a red mat,corded under the belly. The elephant is not an animal which persons ofnormal stature can bestride. We seated ourselves sideways, Mary clingingto the mahout between the ears, Jigmed clinging to Mary, myselfclinging to Jigmed, and Mary's maid clinging to me. Then the elephantrose, straightening first its forelegs, when we all but slid off overits tail, and then its hind-legs, when only the mahout saved us frombeing precipitated over its forehead. A pause having enabled us toresettle, the word was given to proceed. On which the animal hurried upa flight of steps, through a gateway, and down another flight into theopen country. At each motion the grip of Mary's maid on my waist hadgrown tighter and tighter. The steps were too much for her. Thevoluminous creature flung her arms round my neck with an expression ofalarm that boded the continuance of such intimacy for the rest of thejourney. The weight I could have borne; but not the smell--the effluviumof rancid butter that issued from her parted lips. Firmly I disengagedmyself. She lurched backwards, saved herself by a miracle from theprecipice of the animal's hindquarters, and broke into a volume ofprotest. On this Jigmed and Mary decided not to go at all. To leave herbehind did not occur to them. Then, after further discussion, theydecided to try again. Meanwhile the elephant had stopped and knelt down.Seeing that ponies had been provided as well, I took the opportunity ofexchanging mounts. The elephant rose, Jigmed comforted his henchwoman,and we set off once more for the cave.

After crossing several fields we came to a broad river, whose surfacerefreshed my feet as we forded our way among the evil-horned waterbuffalo that inhabited it. There was no colour, no distance to thelandscape. Only a line of hills gave feature to the horizon, marking ourobjective. A sandy waste, covered with tall pampas grasses such asshelter tigers in pictures, brought us to another river. The banks weresteep, but the elephant negotiated them without ado, floundering in thesoft sand to the distress of its passengers. My pony was of a friskydisposition. When it cantered, the elephant did likewise. All throughthe hot afternoon we rode, through the insipid blue-green plain with itseternal park-like trees, till at length the ridge was above us, and wedismounted at a spot where some ancient arrangement of stones gaveevidence of human activity. Hence led a steep path, overhung with bushesand admitting only one person at a time, which brought us eventually toa tall mimosa-tree. Beneath this appeared the entrance to the cave, asmall hole guarded by a grill. Jigmed and Mary took off their shoesbefore entering. I peeped in, and seeing the place to be empty, remainedoutside under the tree.

Of the cave's tradition, of the antiquity of this lesser pilgrimage, Iwas completely ignorant; and so remained until several years afterward,when the account of Huien-Thsang, thirteen centuries old, following onthat of Fa-Hian, two centuries older, recalled me from the prosaicsurroundings of an English garden to my seat under the mimosa-tree,while my two Tibetan friends were engulfed in the bowels of that lonelyhill and the elephant waited below.

As he [Buddha] went to the north-east he saw this mountain that it was secluded and dark, whereupon he desired to seek enlightenment thereon. Ascending the north-east slope and coming to the top, the earth shook and the mountain quaked, whilst the mountain Deva in terror spake thus to Bodhisattva: 'This mountain is not the fortunate spot for attaining supreme wisdom. If here you stop and engage in "Samadhi of the diamond", the earth will quake and gape and the mountain be overthrown upon you.'

Then Bodhisattva descended, and half-way down the south-west slope he halted. There, backed by the crag and facing a torrent, is a great stone chamber. Here he sat down cross-legged. Again the earth quaked and the mountain quaked. Then a Deva of the pure abode cried out in space, 'This is not the place for a Tathagata to perfect supreme wisdom. From this south-west fourteen or fifteen li, not far from the place of penance, there is a Pi-po-lo tree under which is a "diamond throne". All the past Buddhas seated on this throne have obtained true enlightenment, and so will those yet to come. Pray, then, proceed to that spot.'

Then Bodhisattva rising up, the dragon dwelling in the cave said, 'This cave is pure and excellent. Here you may accomplish the holy aim. Would that of your exceeding love you would not leave me.'

Then Bodhisattva, having discovered that this was not the place for accomplishing his aim, to appease the dragon, he left him his shadow and departed. The Devas going before, led the way, and accompanied him to the Bodhi-tree.

Fa-Hian, two centuries earlier, had actually seen the shadow. In lengthit was 'somewhat about three feet'. Perhaps Jigmed and Mary saw it too.I would have asked them had I known of it. Such shadows do remain. Thereis one like it in Ceylon, though I could not see it, even when pointedout to me. I climbed up Adam's Peak and saw the footmark instead. Butthese relics are not historical. Whereas the topography of the Gayadistrict is as authentic as that of Jerusalem. Many of its more reveredassociations, particularly in the neighbourhood of the temple, eludedme. I have given some attention to the cave, as few Europeans have beenthere and fewer still in such company as was mine.

On descending the hill again the Tibetans admitted that even they foundphysical effort at sea-level considerably easier than at 12,000 feet. Aswe reached the elephant, Mary pointed to the antique stones, which shesaid were the remnant of a burning ghat where Tibetan visitors, oncompleting their pilgrimage, were wont to sacrifice a part of theirhair. Neither she nor Jigmed, however, showed any sign of complying withthis custom. Already the sun was low on the horizon. During the longride back it sank behind the inevitable line of trees, leaving the spikeof the temple tower silhouetted against a line of red fire. On reachingthe river I dismounted to paddle, while waiting for the elephant to comeup with me. The water buffalo had gone. There was a shiver in the airand the mists were rising. By the time we returned to the village,darkness was complete.

The village street was lit, and the elephant, discerning as it thoughtthe end of its journey, turned in towards the gateway of the monastery.Its mahout intended otherwise, for the rest-house was still somedistance and the passengers had no wish to walk. Raising the gaff-likeweapon which mahouts carry, he struck the animal's forehead to divertit. The result proved unexpected. For the elephant, frankly, wasincensed at such treatment. Pirouetting like a ballet-dancer on two ofits immense feet, it swung back into the street and broke into aninfuriated gallop. Round the corner came a cart. The two collided with acrash. But what was the fate of the cart I never saw, for by this time Itoo was galloping, determined not to miss the fun. On up the hill spedthe enormous brute, with its passengers bumping about on their mat liketennis-balls in a basket. At the rest-house compound it swerved like adirt-track rider, dashed up to the verandah, and came to a sudden halt.The chowkidar, hearing the noise, emerged from the door with alantern. Simultaneously the elephant, in a last spasm of revenge,proceeded to commit an act of nature. An appalling cataclysm hit theground. Seconds grew into a minute; there was no abatement. Suddenly,above the noise, rose a cry of rage and despair. It was the chowkidar.His garden--I looked: it had gone. Uprooted by the inexorable spate,each precious flower was floating away into the night. When the floodsubsided, in place of those loving beds there remained but a confuseddepression. Then the elephant, satisfied at last, gathered itselftogether, discharged its human burden, and walked sedately off. Thechowkidar was left speechless at the catastrophe, invoking curses ofheaven with uplifted arms.

The next day we spent quietly. Seated beneath a fig-tree, I drew thetemple. When the drawing was finished, Jigmed said he thought it almostas good as a photograph. Most of the day they were busy in the temple.But the labours of pilgrimage had been lightened for them by theopportune presence of the lama we had picked up at the station, whoprepared and lit no less than a thousand lamps for them.

I grew to admire Mary. She assumed responsibility for our comfort. Inall her movements, no matter how commonplace their purpose, there weregrace, breeding, and authority. Her whole person was the outcome of aconfident tradition. At meals she talked of life in Lhassa in tones ofeffortless esteem, such as a duke's daughter might use in talking ofLondon.

Her adopted father, she said, was now a shapeh, one of the four greatministers who are next in importance to the Dalai Lama himself in theadministration of the country. As such he wears, on state occasions, arobe which is woven so stiff with gold that it stands up by itself, andwhich needs two servants to bend it round him. This alone costs £750,while the winter hat of the uniform, made of black fox fur, costs asmuch again. Lately, however, he had obtained a similar fur from Americaat a more reasonable price. He had, in fact, instituted a system ofbarter with certain Americans. In return for curios they were to sendhim chiefly flower seeds. He maintains large flower and vegetablegardens in Lhassa, the former containing snapdragons and sweet-williams.

In the old days he had been commander-in-chief, had accompanied theDalai Lama to China in 1904 and had saved his life, as already recorded,in 1910. As a good soldier he had become imbued with Western ideas, andhad eventually raised the Tibetan army to a decent level of efficiency.But during his tour of India in 1925 the Dalai Lama had listened toother councils, and when the commander-in-chief reached Gyantse on hisway back to Lhassa, he learned that his officers had been degraded andhis work undone. The office of commander-in-chief was abolished, and hebecame a shapeh instead. Not that he minded; it meant less work, andhe liked being at home and enjoying himself. Perhaps he is unpopularwith the monks. But the common people adore him for his benevolence.

Her eldest brother, Mary added, was not so promising. In the last twoyears he had gambled away £1,000, had pawned his wife's jewels in theprocess, and had even misappropriated State funds, for which he had beendismissed the Government service. The hope of the family was her youngerbrother, who was very serious and was now in a Government school beingtrained for the administration. The Dalai Lama approved of him andsometimes even sent for him.

When Jigmed and she returned to Tibet, they would stay in Gyantse for amonth and then go up to Lhassa with the whole family for the New Yeargames. Each of the shapehs on this occasion has to provide anentertainment, and her father's is always the best. The Dalai Lama givesaway the prizes. There would be many evening parties, to attend whichelectric torches were necessary, since the streets are unlighted. Jigmedsaid they entertained a great deal at Tehring also. In the summer, forlarge parties, they erect a marquee in the garden. He and Mary wereplanning to build themselves a house in the English style. I thought ofthe English style as they knew it, and my face betrayed regret. It wasuseless to try and explain. They could not understand.

And then said Mary: 'I love Tibet. If only it had trains or motors, Ithink it would be the nicest country in the world.'

'But,' I answered, 'the monks don't like that sort of thing.'

'No,' she sighed. 'Some people don't seem to want to be civilized.'

I tried to sympathize with that sigh. The hardships of travel in Tibetcan hardly be expected to appeal to those whose lifelong fate they are.But I could not. For once trains or motors have been introduced, theTibet that Mary loves will be Tibet no longer.

That evening, after Jigmed and Mary have paid their last visit to thetemple and have come back from it with scented garlands round theirnecks, we all three walk down the road together. The mist is rising. Westop by a well, to watch the oxen treading out their immemorial circuitand the water coming up in a chain of buckets. I ask them if they willever come to England. They ask me if I shall ever return to Tibet. Weask each other if we shall ever meet again. Perhaps we shall, even if weshall have grown old before the time comes. For I always, as though bysome hidden law, go back to places. Then Jigmed gives me two rings, formy two sisters, one mounting a ruby, the other a turquoise, in richLhassa gold-work. And so we retrace the road to the rest-house, wherethe cars wait to take us to the station. I think once more of the bluesky and clear air of the plateau, of the wind and sun, of the sweepingranges, and the chant of ploughman and thresher. Once more I see Tibetimmune from Western ideas, and once more I wonder how long that immunitywill last. I look at Jigmed and Mary. They have met Western ideas. Yettheir poise, especially in Mary's case, has not suffered. Beyond them,the future is concealed. Beyond me--what is the future of my owncountry? The dusk thickens. The luggage is packed, the servants are onthe threshold. At Gaya station we buy a box of fancy chocolates beforethe train comes in.

[End of First Russia, Then Tibet, by Robert Byron]