THE THIBET EXPEDITION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1675, 6 April 1904, Page 15

THE THIBET EXPEDITION.

LONDON, March 29. News received regarding the advance into Thibet states that Colonel Younghusband’s escort is in excellent spirits. They are advancing through Tangla Pass at an altitude of 15.500 feet. They are expected to reach Taira to-day and Gyamtso ' (140 miles from Lhassa, the Thibetan capital) on April 11th.

The war correspondent of the “Times of India” gives an interesting description of the great road which the Government engineers have constructed for the purpose of Colonel Young-husband’s expedition. It is now possible for a man io ride from the base of operations at Siliguri across the mighty chain of the Himalayas into Thibet in three days. During the past ten or eleven months sappers have been busily employed in turning what was formerly merely a track into a magnificent highway. In places, however, it is still dangerous. Portions have had to be hewn out of the solid rock, and in other places it passes over piles driven horizontally into the hillside. Elsewhere 1 it consists merely of a wall built up from the river bed to the requisite height. There are no protecting buttressas. Torrents are crossed by unrailed bridges, ike advantage of the Chumbi Valley as a sanatorium has been one of the reasons alleged for the present advance, and a ?e----cent traveller described it as “a. Himalayan Engadine”; but the '‘‘Times of In- *

dia ” correspondent states that the.beauties of the valley have been greatly exaggerated, that it is not a broad smiling valley full of homesteads, orchards, .nd grazing cattle, but is a narrow place with a torrent rushing down from the hills on either side. It is a dim. and cheerless spot, to which the sun does not penetrate till nearly ten o’clock, and the hills are clothed with ‘sombre fir trees. This writer, who is well acquainted with India, jays that hundreds of similar valleys are to be found on the opposite side of the Himalayas among the Punjab and Kashmir ranges.