Since 1904 both China and Russia have crumbled into anarchy. There is no peril to India through the eastern Himalayan passes, and the strategic importance of Tibet has dwindled. It is still a forbidden country, but it is no longer a secret one. Posts run regularly to Lhasa, and a telegraph line has been laid to that mysterious capital. But it is mysterious only by a literary convention. The true mystery is gone; the secret, such as it was, has been revealed, and the human mind can no longer play with the unknown. Childe Roland had reached the dark tower and found it not so marvellous after all. It is hard not to sympathize with Mr. Candler's plaint: "There are no more forbidden cities which men have not mapped and photographed. Our children will laugh at modern travellers' tales. They will have to turn again to Gulliver and Haroun al Raschid. And they will soon tire of these. For now that there are no real mysteries, no unknown land of dreams, where there may still be genii and mahatmas and bottle-imps, that kind of literature will be tolerated no longer. Children will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned, and there will be no sale for fairy stories any more. But we ourselves are children. Why could we not have left at least one city out of bounds?" These reflections do not detract from the romance of the expedition itself and the privilege of the fortunate men who shared in it. For them it was assuredly a great adventure--one which could never be repeated. It may be summed up, as Mr. Landon has summed it up, in certain famous lines from the _Odyssey_ which have not only a curious local application, but embody the true spirit of the adventure:-- "Over the tides of Ocean on they pressed, On past the great White Rock beside the stream, On, till, through God's high bastions east and west, They reached the plains with pale-starred iris dressed, And found at last the folk of whom men dream." II THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA (_Map_, p. 48.) Fifty years ago one of the questions most debated among geographers was the origin of the Brahmaputra. The great river, navigable for 800 miles from its mouth, was familiar enough in its course through the plains of India; but it flowed from the wild Abor country, and no part of the Indian borders was less known than those north-eastern foothills. Meantime in Tibet, north of the main chain of the Himalayas, there was a large river, the Tsangpo, flowing from west to east. Did the Tsangpo ultimately become the Brahmaputra, or did it flow into the Irrawadi, or even into the Yang-tse Kiang? All three views were held, but there was no evidence to decide between them.