Lhasa and Its Mysteries. With a Record of the Expedition of 1903-1904.

London: John Murray, 1905. First edition Octavo. xxii, 530, [2, printer's slug and blank] pp. plus 8 maps (three of which are folding), and 114 full page illustrations (almost entirely photographic). Complete. Publisher's light tan cloth with gilt spine lettering, front with lettering in red plus 2 Tibetan symbols and the word Lhasa in Sanskrit in gilt, top edges gilt, yellow endpapers. Spine a bit dulled but an excellent copy overall.Waddell's densely illustrated account of the British Mission to Lhasa of 1904-1905. Led by the legendary British explorer/soldier, Col. Younghusband and his army of 2800 Indian soldiers. Conceived of as a Peace Mission it soon became the very opposite as the the Tibetans took up arms against this invading foreign force. The fight fell heavily on the Indian soldiers as they were up against the entire Tibetan army. The British government had gotten wind of a political agreement between the Dalai Lama and the Tsar of Russia. Naturally, this was dire news to the British as they held the entire subcontinent of India and were anxious to have the buffer of Nepal and Tibet between the two countries. The party reached Lhasa and nearly the entire second half of the book is filled with Waddell's observations of the city, its people and practices. This invasion of Tibet was also viewed as a way of gaining knowledge of Tibet. The most desirable materials in relation to Tibet were Buddhist books and manuscripts, as prior to 1904 the libraries in Britain were the poorest in Europe in this respect. Soon afterr the fall of the Tibetan government, Francis Youngblood's forces were breaking into monasteries and temples and piling up stolen material to be send to London. Golden, gilt and brass Buddha and other images, models of chortens, painted scrolls, books with their carved covers, thankas, thigh bone trumpets and aprons, decorative brass bowls, butter lamps and stands, dorje's (thunderbolts), bells, prayer wheels, lamas robes,brass trays, copper tea pots and valuable Ming porcelain were all packed away for the trip back to England. By today's standards Waddell was a bigot and a racist but it is unfair to judge people from a hundred years in the future. In Waddell's defense, here he has presented the most in-depth view of Lhasa available at the time. Lhasa was viewed as perhaps the most mysterious city of earth and this book was very useful in showing the reader the real life of this imagined Shangri-la.