Volume 1

Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot.

  • Évariste Régis Huc
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846 / translated by William Hazlitt; now edited with an introduction by Professor Paul Pelliot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Contiguous Defiles Besides, this is confirmed by a passage from Gabet’s letter to his brother. “ Peter and Paul [the two lamas whom Gabet had converted and baptized] are not with me ; the fir ft is teaching Mongol to M. Hue, a colleague who has come to join us1; the other is at Macao, where he is ftudying. I am going to try to get hold of another of them.” On the other hand, the likeness between Gabet’s letter and Hue’s text is so clear, that fresh ftorms at exactly a year’s space, where every incident was repeated so closely, are hardly to be thought of. I am more inclined to think that Hue has narrated as if he had seen it himself what really he had only heard from Gabet. B. The second example is even more to the point. In his Souvenirs (I, 134-137)* Hue speaks of the Living Buddha of Urga, or, as he calls him, the Living Buddha of “ Great Kuren ”, which is really the native name. He prefixes these words to his description of the lamasery : “ As we had an opportunity of visiting this edifice in one of our journeys into Northern Tartary, we will here give some details respedling it.” And, further on, talking of the Chinese merchants’ poffc some half-league away from the lamasery, he says : “ A watch and some ingots of silver, ftolen during the night from M. Gabet, left us no doubt as to the want of probity in the Holy One’s disciples.” Every reader of these pages would naturally conclude that Hue had accompanied Gabet at lea ft once on a trip to Urga ; and some have, as it happens, not failed to do so— 1 That is to say he had come to join the Mongolian mission, the head-quarter of which were at Hsi-wan-tzu. 2 Below, Vol. I, pp. 108-112.