The Dream of Lhasa: The Life of Nikolay Przhevalsky (1839?1888), Explorer of Central Asia

by Donald Rayfield

  Abdul fell ill and had to be left in Cherchen; they now had no interpreter for Turkic. Nevertheless they pressed on westwards, taking a road at 5,000 feet, which promised to be cooler and better watered than the direct sandy route. Their guides were useless. At one stage, horses and sheep near death, the expedition had to halt at noon and wait tensely while two Cossacks and the guide galloped ahead to fetch a barrel of water from a well twelve miles away. Przhevalsky took his men higher up, for at 10,000 feet there was perpetual ice, but the chasms and rocks proved too much for the camels and they had to climb down to the sand and the heat.

  They passed a big goldmine where 500 forced labourers—tax defaulters, it appeared—worked for the Chinese. The Chinese superintendents fled from Przhevalsky’s path, taking with them the newly-mined gold. Goldmining was as strictly controlled by the Chinese as it had been by Yakub Bey, who had established checkpoints in the valleys where women had to jump ditches and men swallow purgatives to reveal any gold they had secreted in their bodies. Men and donkeys still slipped past, however, from Nia and Keria into the gold-bearing mountains.

  The camels were failing, and Przhevalsky left eleven in the care of a friendly Machin aksakal. The guides tried to escape; the Chercheni fell ill and was allowed to go, but the Afghan was kept under close scrutiny. Progress was impeded by rivers which cut canyons often 1,000 feet deep through the foothills. The Altyn Tag, which Przhevalsky named the Russian range at this point, gave little to the naturalist. All he found were three species of bat, which he knocked out of the air with branches at Yulgun well, picking up the bodies which the toads in the well had missed. But the Machins were kindly and often agreed to be photographed, bringing presents of food and drink.

  Przhevalsky went down to the oasis of Nia, rich in mulberries, vines and jujube trees, its inhabitants ravaged by syphilis. Here the expedition stayed for a week, fishing and bathing. Przhevalsky found a new species of gecko, Teratoscincus przewalskii, and feasted on the mulberries that the men of Nia gave him. There was something touching about Nia’s equitable life; everyone shared the limited water through an elaborate system of channels and struggled to maintain their sheep or donkey on handfuls of grain and fallen leaves. News arrived that Abdul was well again and was rejoining the expedition. Przhevalsky moved on, carrying his own water, to the next oasis of Keria. Halfway he stopped for five days to give Abdul time to catch up. He stayed at a little village of eight houses; the Cossacks celebrated their six thousandth versta (about 4,000 miles) from Kyakhta with a harmonica concert. The fame of their music spread all through Turkestan. Every Machin village was to ask after it.

  The Chinese were also interested. Rumours reached Przhevalsky that the Chinese had removed all surplus corn and camels from Keria and had demolished the mountain track to the Tibetan plateau. In any case, the Kerians felt nostalgia for Yakub Bey and the presence of a Russian officer was an inflammatory provocation. The Chinese, it was said, had mined grain stores to deter the people from joining any rebellion that Przhevalsky might encourage.

  Russia had penetrated in a subtler way. The market at Keria was full of cheap Russian textiles and ironmongery, and the traders used Russian currency. Uzbeks came here freely from Russian Turkestan to trade. Despite Chinese edicts, Przhevalsky spent six days buying supplies. Abdul interpreting, he persuaded the Chinese amban to sell him horses. The amban did Przhevalsky the honour of paying him the first visit and he let him establish a base at Keria, put the camels to grass for the two summer months and explore the mountains with hired horses and drivers. The hakim agreed to look after the baggage and the expedition set off for the cool mountains to the south. Five Cossacks stayed with the camels at 9,000 feet. The rest of the expedition moved south and west to look for the pass by which a pandit had come from Ladakh (in British India) to Keria in 1871. Their searches ended only in impasses of granite or argillaceous schists. Over wrecked paths, with unmanageable pack-horses (to which in any case the Cossacks were unused), Przhevalsky probed for passes farther west. The air was at last cleared by rain and he could take bearings. All that year the expedition had so far experienced only ‘dry rain’, when raindrops and the dust coalesced into globules of cement long before they reached the earth.

  Fortunately, the mountain Machins, freer of Chinese supervision, were friendlier still. They repaired the tracks, helped the expedition over rope bridges and offered to rebel against the Chinese if Przhevalsky would lead them and arm them. On the Kurab gorge Przhevalsky came to the village of Polu where the natives, after hiding in fear, grew in a few days to love the Russians’ dancing and music so much that the women wept when they moved on. The fifty families of Polu were bitter; after Yakub Bey’s death the Chinese had come to shoot and drown their horses and break the points of their knives. They were reduced to peasantry. Though Moslem-and Uighur-speaking, the Poluans claimed descent from a Tibetan tribe that had fled north with its chieftain to avoid ritual murder after his appointed ten-year rule. They helped Przhevalsky penetrate the Kurab gorge which led up to Tibet. A track had existed; the pandit had come by it in 1871 and Niyaz Bek of Keria had repaired it in 1877, lest Yakub Bey’s defeat force him to flee to Tibet. But the Chinese, Przhevalsky found, had blocked the ravine with boulders. He explored another seven miles, where the river was known by its Tibetan name, the Tam Chu. He found a bridge demolished by the Chinese.

  Staring at the camps where the domolition workers had pulled down the last beams and cornices, Przhevalsky gave up his last chance of breaking through to Tibet. He turned back to Polu and studied the villagers’ lives. He liked them: ‘They wash often and do not fear water.’ They lived and kept their cattle in cool caves, excavated in the soft, easily-cemented loess; they were simple, unmercenary and extroverted. Only their frequent divorce and remarriage incurred Przhevalsky’s disapproval. They were free of the syphilis and hashish that demoralized the Machins of the oases below. Przhevalsky was sorry to leave them, but he wanted to explore the mountains farther west in the vain hope of finding another pass to the south.

  He moved at 11,000 feet over rain-sodden shepherds’ tracks. The streams were deep, the gorges slippery and the pack-horses, now that the native drivers had returned to Keria and left them to the Cossacks, were restive. It took a month to cover eighty miles. Rain imperilled the expedition: swollen streams swept great boulders down, and horses plunged, one to its death, over the gorges. One thousand feet below, two Chinese officials on donkeys were following a parallel route, warning the Machins off the Russians. Przhevalsky could not get new drivers, though the Machin still brought him wood for his camp fires. With the onset of August, the rain could turn to snow at this height. It rained for twenty-five days continuously. Przhevalsky had enough of the gorges and went north to the plains and the great oases of Chira and Khotan. He rested in Chira’s warm apricot groves and brought his diaries up to date. The horses were paid off, and the expedition waited for the camels to come across the desert from Keria, There was nowhere to bathe, but they had fruit: a few pennies bought 200 peaches or twenty pounds of grapes. In a week Roborovsky and Kozlov returned with the camels and a survey of the Keria road.

  Strange fodder and insects, the bane of the Bactrian camel, had whittled Przhevalsky’s caravan down to thirty-nine very poor animals. He could not hope to cross the Tien Shan with them. He wrote to the Russian consul at Kashgar asking for forty new camels to be sent from Russia to the Chinese town of Aksu. For the time being be was in no hurry, for the Takla Makan was too hot to cross until autumn. He headed in a leisurely way for Khotan.

  At Sampula, only twelve miles from Khotan, a series of incidents began. The Sampula hakim gave Przhevalsky a guide who led the caravan through cornfields. When the camels had wrecked three cornfields, Przhevalsky’s suspicions hardened and he questioned the guide. He had been ordered to cause the maximum damage to the fields in order to discredit the Russians in the farmers’ eyes. Przhevalsky pitched camp at the first suitable site and summoned the hakim, who appeared with h
is aide. Przhevalsky tied them to two trees and put an armed guard over them. Then he sent Abdul to find the owners of the corn and compensate them. The farmers were invited to come and see their humiliated hakim, who was released when he begged to be forgiven. Russian credit restored, Przhevalsky relaxed.

  There was another confrontation in Khotan. Two Chinese soldiers tried to search the expedition’s baggage. Przhevalsky drove them off and sent Abdul with two Khotan aksakals to the Chinese residency to complain. On their way back they were attacked and beaten by Chinese soldiers. Przhevalsky was furious. He moved his camp to a defensive site on the river bank and demanded that the soldiers be punished in his sight. There was no answer. He then ordered Roborovsky, Kozlov and ten Cossacks to put on full dress uniform and to march with bayonets fixed and 100 rounds on their belts through the town to the residency. They were to fire on anyone who attacked them. It was market day: many Khotanis openly approved and sold the Cossacks watermelons which they took to the Chinese fortress and ate on the ramparts. Przhevalsky got a response. Two Chinese officials came to apologize, but this was not enough. Roborovsky and ten Cossacks marched back to the residency and demanded to see the amban. There was a ceremonious apology and two days later the amban paid Przhevalsky a formal visit. When the expedition departed the amban honoured Przhevalsky by personally seeing him out of the town and having a farewell salute fired.

  The sky had completely cleared for the first time in eight months. Przhevalsky took his first accurate longitudinal bearings, thus mapping Khotan definitively. He then set off north along the left bank of the Khotan River, past the demolished forts built by Yakub Bey.

  Sixty glaciers in the Kun Lun fed the Khotan Darya, but a few days out of Khotan its chief characteristic was its waterlessness. Each summer the flood from the mountains cut a new channel north to join the Tarim. The track followed the banks of the river and when the water dried up, the sandy bed. A belt of relatively green land followed the river course; an occasional shepherd grazed his flocks, tigers still prowled and gerbils burrowed treacherously under the banks. Ancient cities lay long buried. Only a few hunters ventured far from the river, in search of treasure or to snare hawks and eagles for falconry. Przhevalsky travelled without much incident; but Roborovsky was thrown from his horse and bled so badly that a cart had to be bought to carry him for a week. When the expedition moved to the dried watercourse, they discovered a tiger’s footprints, but although it prowled around camp it evaded their ambushes. One boar and a few pheasants were all that Przhevalsky bagged.

  Near the Tarim, which is fed by the Yarkand and Khotan rivers, two Kirghiz and an aksakal from Aksu rode to meet the expedition, announcing that fresh camels were waiting for them. They helped the caravan ford the Tarim with a flat-bottomed boat. Two days up the Aksu River brought them to the oasis and town of Aksu. Przhevalsky sold his exhausted camels and loaded up the forty fresh Kirghiz animals. His surveying was ended; a Russian captain had mapped the route from Aksu to Karakol in Russia eight years before.

  The expedition moved briskly on to Üch Turfan; then they turned off the highway to Kashgar into the mountains towards the Bedel Pass across the Tien Shan into Russia. At one point a clay fortress jutted over the track, blocking the heavily-laden camels. The natives enthusiastically helped Przhevalsky demolish it. Sheep and horses were coming down the trail to be sold in China. On 29 October/10 November 1885 the caravan reached the Bedel Pass. Each camel had to be held by ropes on the slippery ice that covered the snow. One plunged sixty feet down the mountainside and had to be gingerly hauled back. Then they came down towards Karakol on the Issyk-Kul’, jubilant with excitement. The Cossacks grabbed the first Russian settler they saw and hurled the mystified man into the air with joy. Przhevalsky read out a final order to his men thanking them ‘in the name of science and of the motherland’ for the honourable and glorious feats of the last two years.

  But he sadly wrote in his diary:

  … the years are piling up and of course there will come a time when it will no longer be possible to endure all the work and deprivations of such journeys. Should it be my lot not to go to the depths of Asia again … let the living images of those unforgettable days resurrect in my imagination …

  Once again the storms have passed,

  Again the sailor’s back unharmed …

  Once again he’s not been told

  That the storms have now been calmed.

  A few days later he was on his way to Petersburg.

  9

  Dreams and Fulfilment

  At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes.

  SHELLEY

  As soon as Przhevalsky arrived in Petersburg in January 1886, the Tsar promoted him to major-general and gave him an audience. Gold medals came from half the geographical societies of Europe. Przhevalsky and Teleshov, whom the explorer kept by his side as long as he could, were mobbed by admirers. Lieutenant Roborovsky was accepted for the Academy of the General Staff; Pyotr Kozlov was enrolled in the Junker college; Cossacks and soldiers were showered with pensions and gratuities; Abdul was made a sergeant in the militia.

  The Tsar and his ministers were interested not just in honouring the returning hero, they needed his intelligence. Once more Russia’s imperial policies had brought her to the brink of war. Russian troops had opened fire on the Afghans at Panjdeh, and the British government had printed a declaration of war in readiness. Russian commercial enterprise in Korea, as well as in Turkestan, had roused Chinese resentment and Japanese antagonism. Przhevalsky was summoned to a military conference; he was asked to advise on the logistics of war in Kashgaria. Przhevalsky’s advice, though applauded, was not implemented; Chinese and British feeling was appeased.

  Then news came of British involvement in Tibet. In 1885 the explorer and political agent Ney Elias had deplored the India Office’s failure to match Russian exploration with its own expeditions; two explorers, Carey and Dalgleish, were now on their way over the Karakoram to follow up Przhevalsky’s search for a way from Turkestan to Tibet. Early in 1886, a Tibetan force suddenly invaded part of the Himalayan state of Sikkim, thus for the first time encroaching on the British empire. It took the British two years to decide to repel the Tibetans, but from 1886, Tibet, like Afghanistan, became a zone of contention between Britain and Russia. When the Russian Geographical Society took the step of renaming the Mysterious Range ‘Przhevalsky’s Range’, it was tantamount to staking an interest, if not a claim, in Tibet.

  Przhevalsky was perhaps more occupied with thoughts of his estate at Sloboda. He sent melon seeds from Khotan for Denisov, his manager, to sow. He gave him instructions: ‘If there are any drunkards among the workmen and their year’s contract is up, dismiss them, including Antip, who not only drinks, but is disorderly when drunk.’ But he was not free to leave for the country until March. He complained to his Kyakhta friend, Lushnikov:

  I am still residing in Petersburg and in unspeakable torment; lectures and official ceremonies apart, I can’t even walk a hundred yards down the street—I’m immediately recognized…. Thank you for your letter and the congratulations. Only, what you said about a general’s lady will probably not come true, I’m too old [46] and my profession isn’t right for marriage. It’s in Central Asia that my posterity lies … in the figurative sense of course: Lob Nor, Kuku Nor, Tibet etc.—these are my children.

  At last he took Teleshov and two grenadiers, Nefedov and Bessonov, to Sloboda. No sooner had he arrived than he was writing to Roborovsky and Kozlov, full of paternal cares and pathos: ‘Swot up from morn till night or you won’t be ready in time … I can imagine how sad fine weather makes you feel. But you must submit to necessity …’ ‘Your spring,’ he wrote to Kozlov in words that haunted him for the rest of his life, ‘is still ahead, while my autumn is approaching.’ He enjoyed six weeks of peace, planting apple trees, pushing on with the building of the new house, working a little in his ‘hut’, refusing invitations. Charles
Black of the India Office, with a remarkably friendly note in view of the international situation, sent him a map of recent journeys made by a pandit across Tibet, and asked for information in return. The British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Scottish Geographical Society pestered him, sometimes peevishly, to come or just to reply to their letters. The Russian Academy of Sciences persuaded him to drive to Smolensk and have his portrait taken for a gold medal. In mid-May, Przhevalsky’s shooting was interrupted by a summons to Petersburg, He had to read a report to a military committee on the possibilities of war with China. Opposition on the committee was silenced. In his triumph Przhevalsky expanded his report into a brochure, which in his book on the fourth Central Asian journey was to become the final chapter, ‘An Outline of the Present Situation in Central Asia.’

  The ‘Outline’ is so ardent in its chauvinism and imperialism that it is no wonder that the Soviet edition of Przhevalsky’s book omits it. It dismisses the eight million inhabitants of Mongolia, Tibet and Turkestan as laggards in the evolutionary process. Przhevalsky doubts that nomads can be civilized or regenerated. He blames European diplomacy for holding up the disintegration of China and advocates detaching the Moslem and Buddhist peoples of Central Asia from the Chinese empire. Przhevalsky then stresses the prestige of Russian arms and Russian administration in Turkestan; a leader and a small expeditionary force are all that is needed to overthrow the Chinese in Kashgaria. Russia, in his opinion, has wasted two centuries ingratiating herself with China. ‘International law does not apply to savages’, force is the only sensible policy. After accusing the missionaries of preaching the gospels only so as to cover up their trade in opium, Przhevalsky concludes by recommending that the Chinese be provoked into declaring war, regardless of the consequences in Europe. ‘However bad war may be in itself, a bad peace is a bitter thing as all Europe is now experiencing.’