SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
as formerly with free carriage, &c. If it was the intention of Government to eventually restore the Chumbi Valley to the Tibetans (in reality to the Chinese) and to abandon them, the villagers, what would their ultimate fate be? Could I give them any guarantee that the Government of India would protect them and ensure their safety? With the fate of the late Sinchen Rimpochi, forced to throw himself from a cliff into the river, the Pala family disgraced, in consequence of assistance rendered to Surat Chundra Das, the Shape Lhalu banished, the threatened punishment of the Phodong Lama and Kangsa Dewan because they expressed friendly feelings towards the British, to say nothing of the more recent catastrophes which befell the late Shapes, banished on account of supposed friendliness to the Mission at Lhasa, and my two Lachung villagers carried off and imprisoned in Lhasa as spies and only released on the Mission’s arrival, before their eyes, it was only natural that the people should be inspired with a dread of severe retribution should they again find themselves in the power of the Tibetans. I did my best to reassure them and to point out that matters would be satisfactorily arranged, but it was neither a pleasant nor an easy task to have to deliberately deceive people who trusted you, as I had to do, for I was only too well aware that at the first opportunity Government would throw them over and leave them in the hands of the Chinese (nominally the Tibetans), than whom there are no more cruel or revengeful people. And subsequent events prove my forecast to have been only too true, for two years later, on January 1, 1908, under the orders of a Liberal Government, the Chumbi Valley was handed back to the Tibetans, our troops and civil officer withdrawn, and the people left to the mercy of the Chinese, who are now the actual rulers in Tibet, since by our recognition of China as the paramount Power we have placed Tibet completely under her sway. With the evacuation of the Chumbi the curtain was finally rung down on the Mission to Lhasa in 1904, and
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