1850.
Travels of M. Huc.
653
the mighty Ghengis Khan, is situated; and few have lived to tell the tale of their visit to H'lassa, "the Land of Spirits," the Mone-Duh, or "Eternal Sanctuary," of the Mongols. We have a so-called journey of an Englishman, in the suite of the Dalai or Tala Lama, printed in the Minerva for the year 1792; and an account of the beginning and present states of the mission to Tibet was published at Rome in 1742. Mr. Turner published his well-known account of his ambassy to the court of the Grand Lama in 1800-without comparison the most valuable work that has yet appeared on Tibet; but still so little is known, that Bell, in his valuable "System of Geography," appeals to his readers upon the impossibility of giving anything beyond a very general account of a country so little known, and so inaccurately repre- sented in the very best of modern maps.
The last journey of the Lazarist missionaries, who have in our times succeeded to the Jesuits, was more successful than any of its predeces- sor. Starting from a small Christian establishment, situate in a re- mote district beyond the Great Wall of China, it assumed to itself the extravagant and ambitious objects of determining the unexplored limits of a nominal Mongolian vicar-generalship; and it records in a style which, as before remarked, more than reminds one of the works of the Jesuits of old, the experience, the observations, and the occurrences of actual times. This is truly the romance of olden travel and olden pilgrimages, revived for the especial amusement of a generation greedy of novelty and adventure.
Far away as the Lazarist settlement may be, it does not appear to be altogether destitute; for previous to the departure of the mission, camels had to be sent for, the property of the mission, but at that time pasturing amidst the Mongol tribe (or kingdom, as M. Huc calls it, from the chief of the tribe being designated as wáng, or king) of Naiman. The missionaries awaited the camels at the pass called Pia-lia Kau, in the territory of the tribe Ouniot
This is a country, according to M. Huc, once inhabited by the Coreans, and amidst which ruins of great cities, and of castles, resembling those of the middle ages, are still to be met with. It is a very stormy district; and the reverend father declares that he saw hailstones weighing twelve pounds! Such storms destroy a whole flock of sheep in a few moments. In 1843, a piece of ice is said to have fallen as large as a millstone. The first day's journey introduces us to a Tartar hostelry, which, to avoid repetition, had better be described at once :—
A Tartar inn comprises an immense square space, inclosed by long poles inter- Inced with wicker-work. In the midst of the square is a mud hut, never more than ten feet high. With the exception of one or two miserable chambers to the