CHINA***


This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

                  [Picture: Tartar and Chinese customes]

                          [Picture: Title page]





                                 TRAVELS
                                    IN
                       TARTARY, THIBET, AND CHINA,
                        DURING THE YEARS 1844-5-6.


                                BY M. HUC.

                TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY W. HAZLITT.

                                 VOL. I.

                                * * * * *

                ILLUSTRATED WITH FIFTY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.

                                * * * * *

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
               OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
                               227 STRAND.

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                                 LONDON:
              VIZETELLY AND COMPANY, PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS,
                    PETERBOROUGH COURT, FLEET STREET.




PREFACE.


The Pope having, about the year 1844, been pleased to establish an
Apostolic Vicariat of Mongolia, it was considered expedient, with a view
to further operations, to ascertain the nature and extent of the diocese
thus created, and MM. Gabet and Huc, two Lazarists attached to the petty
mission of Si-Wang, were accordingly deputed to collect the necessary
information. They made their way through difficulties which nothing but
religious enthusiasm in combination with French elasticity could have
overcome, to Lha-Ssa, the capital of Thibet, and in this seat of Lamanism
were becoming comfortably settled, with lively hopes and expectations of
converting the Tale-Lama into a branch-Pope, when the Chinese Minister,
the noted Ke-Shen, interposed on political grounds, and had them deported
to China.  M. Gabet was directed by his superiors to proceed to France,
and lay a complaint before his Government, of the arbitrary treatment
which he and his fellow Missionary had experienced.  In the steamer which
conveyed him from Hong Kong to Ceylon, he found Mr. Alexander Johnstone,
secretary to Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in China; and this gentleman
perceived so much, not merely of entertainment, but of important
information in the conversations he had with M. Gabet, that he committed
to paper the leading features of the Reverend Missionary's statements,
and on his return to his official post, gave his manuscripts to Sir John
Davis, who, in his turn, considered their contents so interesting, that
he embodied a copy of them in a dispatch to Lord Palmerston.
Subsequently the two volumes, here translated, were prepared by M. Huc,
and published in Paris.  Thus it is, that to Papal aggression in the
East, the Western World is indebted for a work exhibiting, for the first
time, a complete representation of countries previously almost unknown to
Europeans, and indeed considered practically inaccessible; and of a
religion which, followed by no fewer than 170,000,000 persons, presents
the most singular analogies in its leading features with the Catholicism
of Rome.




CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

                                                                  PAGE
PREFACE
CONTENTS                                                           iii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS                                              vii
                              CHAPTER I.
French Mission of Peking--Glance at the Kingdom of                   9
Ouniot--Preparations for Departure--Tartar-Chinese
Inn--Change of Costume--Portrait and Character of
Samdadchiemba--Sain-Oula (the Good Mountain)--The Frosts
on Sain-Oula, and its Robbers--First Encampment in the
Desert--Great Imperial Forest--Buddhist Monuments on the
summit of the Mountains--Topography of the Kingdom of
Gechekten--Character of its Inhabitants--Tragical working
of a Mine--Two Mongols desire to have their horoscope
taken--Adventure of Samdadchiemba--Environs of the town of
Tolon-Noor
                             CHAPTER II.
Inn at Tolon-Noor--Aspect of the City--Great Foundries of           33
Bells and Idols--Conversation with the Lamas of
Tolon-Noor--Encampment--Tea Bricks--Meeting with Queen
Mourguevan--Taste of the Mongols for Pilgrimages--Violent
Storm--Account from a Mongol Chief of the War of the
English against China--Topography of the Eight Banners of
the Tchakar--The Imperial Herds--Form and Interior of the
Tents--Tartar Manners and Customs--Encampment at the Three
Lakes--Nocturnal Apparitions--Samdadchiemba relates the
Adventures of his Youth--Grey Squirrels of
Tartary--Arrival at Chaborte
                             CHAPTER III.
Festival of the Loaves of the Moon--Entertainment in a              61
Mongol Tent--Toolholos, or Rhapsodists of
Tartary--Invocation to Timour--Tartar Education--Industry
of the Women--Mongols in quest of missing Animals--Remains
of an abandoned City--Road from Peking to
Kiaktha--Commerce between China and Russia--Russian
Convent at Peking--A Tartar solicits us to cure his Mother
from a dangerous Illness--Tartar Physicians--The
Intermittent Fever Devil--Various forms of Sepulture in
use among the Mongols--Lamasery of the Five
Towers--Obsequies of the Tartar Kings--Origin of the
kingdom of Efe--Gymnastic Exercises of the
Tartars--Encounter with three Wolves--Mongol Carts
                             CHAPTER IV.
Young Lama converted to Christianity--Lamasery of                   85
Tchortchi--Alms for the Construction of Religious
Houses--Aspect of the Buddhist Temples--Recitation of Lama
Prayers--Decorations, Paintings, and Sculptures of the
Buddhist Temples--Topography of the Great Kouren in the
country of the Khalkhas--Journey of the Guison-Tamba to
Peking--The Kouren of the Thousand Lamas--Suit between the
Lama-King and his Ministers--Purchase of a Kid--Eagles of
Tartary--Western Toumet--Agricultural Tartars--Arrival at
the Blue Town--Glance at the Mantchou Nation--Mantchou
Literature--State of Christianity in
Mantchouria