tea might be carried into Tibet, but not sold there.
Tibet has consistently broken all her promises and treaty obligations.
She has placed every obstacle in the way of Indian trade, and insulted
our Commissioners; yet the despatch of the present mission with its
armed escort has been called an act of aggression.

When I asked Kasi if the Tibetans would be angry with him for helping
us, he said they would certainly cut off his head if he remained in the
fort after we had left. There is some foundation in travellers' stories
about the punishment inflicted on the guards of the passes and other
officials who fail to prevent Europeans entering Tibet or pushing on
towards Lhasa.

Some Chumbi traders who were in Lhasa when we entered the valley are
still detained there, as far as I can gather, as hostages for the good
behaviour of their neighbours. In Tibet the punishment does not fit the
crime. The guards of a pass are punished for letting white men through,
quite irrespective of the opposing odds.

The commonest punishment in Tibet is flogging, but the ordeal is so
severe that it often proves fatal. I asked Kasi some questions about the
magisterial powers of the two jongpens, or district officers, who
remained in the fort some days after we occupied it. He told me that
they could not pass capital sentence, but they might flog the prisoners,
and if they died, nothing was said. Several victims have died of
flogging at Phari.

The natives in Darjeeling have a story of Tibetan methods, which have
always seemed to me the refinement of cruelty. At Gyantse, they say, the
criminal is flung into a dark pit, where he cannot tell whether it is
night or day. Cobras and scorpions and reptiles of various degrees of
venom are his companions; these he may hear in the darkness, for it is
still enough, and seek or avoid as he has courage. Food is sometimes
thrown in to tempt any faint-hearted wretch to prolong his agony. I
asked Kasi if there were any truth in the tale. He told me that there
were no venomous snakes in Tibet, but he had heard that there was a dark
prison in Gyantse, where criminals sometimes died of scorpion bites; he
added that only the worst offenders were punished in this way. The
modified version of the story is gruesome enough.

It is usual for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials to receive their pay in
grain, it being understood that their position puts them in the way of
obtaining the other necessaries of life, and per