I don't suppose his theory of the Divides, the Salween and the Himalayan
extension, will ever be solved in our lifetime – and when it is, it will be by aeroplane,
and vertical photographs. After all, it's nearly 50 years since A.K. put on paper any
reliable facts about the ranges, and the very fringes of the detailed survey have
hardly yet been touched. K.W. estimates the triangle Sadiya, Fort Shers, Shinden
Gompa, to cover 25,000 square miles flat, and many more when those miles are
upended. And if you were to put in a fourth point, say Lhasa, or even TSARI, to
these three – as would inevitably be necessary if one had to blanket the whole area
under discussion, think of what a colossal job that once would be for survey.
Personally, I don't think it will ever be done. Much of the geography of Inner Asia
depended for its interest, and for the enterprise of explorers like yourself, on the fact
that we held India: and when, well within our lifetimes, India ceases to be of any
interest to any of us (as, indeed, Ireland has for the past 12 years ceased to be of
interest to Englishman – and for the same reasons) I think you will find that all
geographical, geological, and geophysical problems hanging on the countries
adjoining it will drop out of the picture. In which case, you and Kingdon Ward and
men like you may well find yourselves the last of the great explorers of great
problems, and “the glory will have departed”. It’s rather hell to think of it. If only our
politicians knew what, in the name of an unworthy and unmanly sentimentality, they
are destroying, when they ask us to abdicate.
I have another reason for being glad that you will be within reach, here, before
long, and in England till December 27th. For months past I've had under my hand the
roughed-out words of that series of incidents covering my association with
“BARCLAY” for Maga, and though I shall have to embroider and work up bare
IMG 0367
facts with a picturesque story, I must get you to look it over first and tell me that
however great an ornamental liar you may think me, you haven't any actual objection
to this thing going in. Naturally I'll say nothing offensive, and, remembering what you
told me of the long arm of the Soviets who pursue till today anyone they can
recognise as having been with you that time in Tashkent etc, I shall gloss over that
period with nothing but sketch matter and let you come to life, in detail, from Quetta
1920 onwards. But of course you must read the whole – for one thing, G.W.B. would
want to be sure that you wouldn't consider yourself libelled, before he printed it. And
as there wouldn't be a smell of a chance of you giving it even 5 minutes after you got
back to India and the turmoil of your new job, I must make some shift to get it done
before you leave.
It is only the other day that I was able to unload onto the Oxford University Press
(Humphrey Mitford's) the infernal grind which has kept me from my original writing
these fifteen months past, and now, naturally, I find that the wheels of composition
grind slowly, and the stuff they turn out is exceeding small.! But, with renewed life
injected into the mechanism by all this intensive reading about the places you and I
were so fond of, there seems a chance that things will go more quickly, and that
possibly the result may be even worth finishing.
I've kept to the end my hearty congratulations on what is really your main piece of
news. Nepal. I'm very, very glad, Bailey, and I wish you every luck in what bids fair to
