Page:Lhasa (Landon) Vol. I.djvu/398

310 once was there the slightest attempt to interfere with it on the part of the enemy. In this connection an incident may be noticed which reflects no small credit upon Mr. Truninger. He, so the story was told to me, with his second in command, was engaged in setting up posts and laying the wires along one portion of the road to the undisguised interest and curiosity of one or two innocent-looking lamas. These men persistently asked what was the use of the wire. It will be seen that this was, under the circumstances, an inquiry the true answer to which might prove disastrous to our communications. We had not the men to defend even ten miles of this long line, and without the slightest question the wire would have been cut in twenty places a day if the Tibetans had had the least idea of the enormous value it was to us. But the answer came simply and earnestly. "We English," said Truninger, "are in a strange land, a land of which no foreigner has ever known anything; our maps are no good, and every day we go forward we are like children lost in a great wood. Therefore we lay this wire behind us in order that when we have done our business with your Dalai Lama we may find the road by which we came and, as quickly as possible, get hence to England." Needless to say, nothing could more effectually have secured the wire from damage, as the single ambition of the Tibetans from the first was to be rid of us as quickly as possible.

The result of this forbearance on the part of the enemy was that we often received the news in the first editions of the evening papers in London before we sat down to dinner the same evening. In point of actual time we received such news within three hours of its publication, while the news which we sent westwards