Trespassers on the Roof of the World by Peter Hopkirk

Author:Peter Hopkirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder

9. The Nightmare of Susie Rijnhart

But one heartrending tale still remains to be told – that of Charles Rijnhart, the youngest of all Tibetan travellers. He was only eleven months old when his missionary parents set out for Lhasa in the spring of 1898. Of all the attempts by westerners to reach the holy capital, theirs was perhaps the most foolhardy. Certainly it was the most heroic.

When Dutch-born Petrus Rijnhart and his Canadian wife Susie set their hearts on getting there it seems likely that they were unaware of the mishandling which Savage Landor had suffered only a few months earlier. Otherwise they might have thought twice, particularly as they had a young baby who obviously could not be left behind. For at that time they were living in a remote area of the Chinese-Tibetan borderlands, cut off from all news of the outside world. This newly-wed couple, not sent by any missionary society but financed by the donations of friends and from their own savings, had left home in the autumn of 1894. Their first goal was the remote but famous monastery of Kumbum where, six years earlier, William Rockhill had spent a month, disguised as a pilgrim, before making his unsuccessful attempt to reach Lhasa.

Their arrival in the region had coincided with the Moslem uprising of 1895. Susie Rijnhart was a doctor, and she and her husband had endeared themselves to the local people by treating the wounded as well as victims of smallpox and diptheria. The abbot of Kumbum monastery, fearing for their safety, had invited them to move into the lamasery. Here the Rijnharts had set up a small medical centre, sharing months of terror with the inhabitants whose friendship and confidence they thus managed to win. But Lhasa was really their goal, and before long they felt the call to move on. They transferred their base to the village of Tankar, some twenty-five miles to the north-west and astride the great caravan route to Lhasa. Here, in addition to the Chinese and Tibetan they already spoke, they learned Mongolian. Here, too, their only child Charles was born.

The Rijnharts’ plan was to move once more, this time as near as possible to Lhasa, settle there for a year of medical and evangelical work, and only then try to reach the holy city. Their Tibetan friends had warned them that although they might safely venture to within a day’s march of the capital, they must not try to enter it because, as Europeans, they would defile it. But the Rijnharts were determined to reach Lhasa, though they confided this to no one. ‘We knew,’ wrote Susie Rijnhart in her remarkable account of their experiences, With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple, ‘that if ever the gospel were proclaimed in Lhasa, someone would have to be the first to undertake the journey, to meet the difficulties, to preach the first sermon, and perhaps never return to tell the tale. …’ The message of Christ, she added, could hardly

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