The reinforcements have not yet reached Gyangtse, and Colonel Younghusband
obviously awaits their arrival with some anxiety.. It is impossible for him to move upon Lhasa until he has taken the great fort, which grows stronger every day, the Tibetans putting up endless stone walls at every point they consider weak. Captives, moreover, affirm—and one of them is a Lama—that the Pass of Kayo-la will be strongly defended ; that there are eight thousand soldiers in Lhasa, including six hundred riflemen; and that everything is prepared for the flight of the Dalai Lama into China. That last statement requires confirmation, as flight might destroy his mystical authority; but if it is true, the Mission, once arrived at Lhasa, will find itself in the air, there being no one with whom to conclude an effective treaty. The situation is a most embarrassing one, all the more because the immediate course to be pursued is so peremptory. We must go to Lhasa whatever the consequences.
