Volume 1

Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet : being a narrative of three years' travel in eastern high Asia / by Lieut.-Colonel N. Prejevalsky .. ; translated by E. Delmar Morgan ... with introduction and notes by Colonel Henry Yule.

  • Przhevalʹskiĭ, Nikolaĭ Mikhaĭlovich, 1839-1888.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet : being a narrative of three years' travel in eastern high Asia / by Lieut.-Colonel N. Prejevalsky .. ; translated by E. Delmar Morgan ... with introduction and notes by Colonel Henry Yule. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    letters or papers by Hue, and this finishes the series. The Souvenirs were published in 1851. Gabct had then apparently already been sent to the Brazils, where he died ;1 and I have no doubt the Souve- nirs were, as they purport to be, the work of Hue himself, based on the papers by both, of which extracts had been published in the Annales. I doubt whether even any extraneous aid of Parisian litterateurs was called in ; Hue himself was an adept in that vein, as his letters show. Colonel Prejcvalsky several times finds fault with Hue’s inaccuracy in details, a subject which will be briefly noticed presently. And in one of the letters which was sent to Rus- sia during his journey, he even seems to imply a doubt of the genuine character of the narrative.2 Of this he has probably thought better, as the expression of suspicion is not repeated in the present work. Indeed, Colonel Preje- valsky’s own plain tale is the best refutation of such suspi- cions. For it is wonderful, to the extent of the coincidence 1 Hue’s manner of mentioning the fact is vague, and names no date. It is in the Preface to his second work, The Chinese Empire, which is itself dated in May 1854. 2 ‘ In Koko-nor and Tsaidam the great caravan which Hue pro- fesses to have accompanied to Lhassa is perfectly well remembered, and it is somewhat astonishing that nobody has any recollection of the presence of foreigners among its members. Hue further asserts that he passed eight months at Gumburn [Kounboum of Hue ; properly sKit-bum, v. p. xxxiv. infra] ; but I saw many lamas who had resided in that temple for thirty or forty years, and all solemnly assured me that there had never been a foreigner amongst them. On the other hand, in the Ala-shan country, the presence of two Frenchmen at Ninghia twenty-five years ago was distinctly remembered.’ (In Pr. R. G. S., xviii. 83.) It is to be recollected that Hue and Gabet were disguised as lamas, and probably their real character was known to few. And on the other hand, Prejevalsky himself (i. p. 135) mentions hav- ing seen, at one of the R. C. missions in Mongolia, Samdadchiemba, the servant of Hue and Gabet, whom their readers remember as well as we remember Sancho or Sam Weller. ‘ He is of mixed Mongol and Tangutan race. He is fifty-five years of age, and enjoys excellent health ; he related some of his adventures to us, and described the different places on the road.’ Here there is no insinuation that Sam- dadchiemba’s stories were inconsistent with Hue’s. Mr. Ney Elias was also acquainted with Samdadchiemba.