it is to be unable to learn anything of what
lies on the other side. Now and then a
botanist, wandering on and on through a pass,
has found himself a prisoner for going beyond
the boundary; and here and there such a man
as the German physician who attended Prince
Waldemar of Prussia, ventures to proceed,
with the most innocent air imaginable, as if
he never dreamed of trespassing, and so
pleases and amuses the people he meets that
they seem sorry to turn him back, and go
some way with him, to see that he comes to
no harm. Then, with what glee he tells in
India, on his return, of the people he has seen
with sheepskins on their backs, and Chinese
caps on their heads, and their hair twisted
into tails; and perhaps of some Lama
dwelllings about a Buddhist temple on some hill
within view! Still, there has ever remained
the mystery—what any country can be like
which is formed in such a way as Thibet.
To ascend the Himalayas is a tremendous
effort. The peaks, rising to twenty-four
thousand feet from the plains of India, are, of
course, out of reach; the passes are quite
formidable enough, some being about half
that height, and some more. Now, the
strange thing is that the traveller, having
climbed these twelve or fifteen thousand feet,
finds Thibet lying just below him—within a
stone's throw, one might almost say, and at
the bottom of a mere slope. It is, in fact, a
high table-land, with a temperature and
productions like those of a cool country. If he
could get leave to cross this table-land, he
would arrive at another range of mountains,
with another high table-land on the other
side. And again, there is a third; so that in
the heart of Asia, between the third range of
mountains and the borders of Siberia, there
is a region of the wildest country, bristling with
glaciers, with frozen torrents in the
ravines, and plains covered with snow for a
considerable part of the year. If ever we
gain access to this centre of Asia, there will
be a new realm for the descriptive traveller,
in this grandest of the cold regions of the
earth.

So, for centuries now, Europeans have
gazed up at this high table-land from the
plains of India, with a stronger desire to
know what was doing there than in the
moon but with little more chance. There
is one circumstance, however, which the
inhabitants of Thibet have contrived to make
known, for the gratification of their national
pride. They are proud of their origin, and
think that it accounts for their being the
cleverest people in the world; of which fact
they entertain no doubt. They say that God
sent down upon their mountains the king of
the monkeys, who was so wise a monkey that
he lived in a cave, and let nobody in, that he
might meditate undisturbed. A female demon,
however, had a mind to live on the earth; and
she assumed a beautiful form, and appeared in
the cave one day, and asked the monkey king
to marry her. He pleaded that he was too
busy with his meditations; but the demon
prevailed at last; and their offspring peopled
Thibet, in the form of men more cunning and
imitative than any others.

It happens, however, that the Roman
Catholic Church has a disrespectful opinion
that even the Thibetians may be capable
of improvement, and formerly, there was a
French mission in China—actually
established at Peking, under sufferance of the
Emperors. One Emperor, however, could not
abide the "Christian infidels," as the Orientals
call Europeans, and killed or drove away all
he could find. This was about half-a-century
ago. Some of the Chinese converts made
their escape beyond the Great Wall, and
settled in the Land of Grass, as Tartary is
called in China. The Tartars allowed them
to cultivate patches of ground: and there they
were found by some French missionaries.
No sooner did these priests become acquainted
with the Tartars, than, as they say, they loved
them—loved their simplicity, their hospitality,
their freedom from trickery and  selfishness.
They longed to make Christians of them; and
they were allowed to try. Orders were
received from head-quarters for two of them—
Messrs. Hue and Gabet—to travel further
into the country wherever they could
penetrate, and see how large a new region
might be annexed to their Church. These gentlemen
have published their adventures, and it is to
their book that our readers are indebted for
this article.

On the receipt of this order, the missionaries
sent a young convert, who had been a Buddhist
priest, to bring up some camels which they
had sent out to graze, while they finished
preparing their catechisms and tracts in the
language of the country—the Mongol.
At best, the season was rather late for such a
journey; but, moreover, the days passed on,
and the camels did not appear. The
missionaries were on the point of starting alone
(for they would not take any Chinese
with them) into the deserts of Tartary, at the
beginning of winter, when their convert and
his camels appeared. Great was the joy, and
noisy the bustle among the Christians of the
place. The blue linen tent was patched; the
copper kettle was tinkered; one man cut
wooden tent-pegs; another put new legs to
the joint-stool; others made ropes, and rolled
up the goat-skins which were to serve as beds.
At length the trio set forth; the two priests
on a camel and a white horse, and their
convert, whose very inconvenient name was
Samdadchiemba, on a black mule. (Having
given his name once at length, we will henceforth
write him down S.) S. led two other
camels, which carried the baggage.

Sometimes the travellers slept in their tent,
which was apt to be very cold; and
sometimes in a house, which was apt to be
extremely hot; in fact, they slept on a
furnace when in a native house. The entire