LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 372.-5 JULY, 1851.

little to the north of the Great Wall, in Eastern pointed by their spiritual superior to make their Tartary, at the commencement of 1844, were apway as well as they could through Western Tartary to Lhassa, the capital of Thibet, and the holy see of Lamanism. This might look, at first sight, like taking the bull by the horns. The reader will find, however, to his surprise, that all the opposi tion they experienced was not ecclesiastical, but lay-not religious, but political; and that while they received every encouragement and hospitality from the Lama's government, they were baffled, and at length expelled, by the exertions of the Chinese resident, or ambassador, Ke-shen.

In China a Romish bishop or priest is obliged to

ABOUT the end of 1846, Mr. Alexander Johnston, son of the late Sir Alexander, and secretary to her majesty's minister plenipotentiary in China, was fellow-passenger on board the steamer from HongKong to Ceylon with a French Lazarist Missionary, named Joseph Gabet. It appeared that M. Gabet was then on his way from China to Paris, intending, should circumstances be favorable on his arrival, to bring under the notice of the French gov-pass himself off, as well as he can, for a native, in ernment the ill treatment which he himself and a the lay dress of the country; but they were now brother missionary had experienced at Lhassa, going to enter a nation of priests, and therefore from Ke-shen, resident on the part of the Emperor prepared to disguise themselves as Lamas. Off of China at the court of the Grand Lama. Some went the tail, which had been cherished ever since of our readers will recognize in this name that of their departure from France, leaving the head enthe Imperial Commissioner who was opposed to tirely shaven. A long yellow robe was fastened Captain Elliot, in 1839, at Canton; and who, on on the right side by five gilt battons; it was drawn account of the disasters which befell the Chinese round the waist by a red girdle. Over this was arms, was disgraced, plundered, and even con- worn a short red jacket, without sleeves; or, as demned to death by the emperor, but has since, they call it in Chinese, "a back and breast;" havwith marvellous expedition, contrived to regaining a narrow collar of purple velvet. A yellow nearly all his former honors and credit, and even a hat with broad brim, and surmounted by a red silk great portion of his former wealth, which was button, finished off their new costume. Their only colossal, as we shall see. Mr. Johnston found the attendant was a young Mongol neophyte, named narrative of M. Gabet so curious and interesting, as Samdadchiemba, who is thus described:-" Un nez the most recent and authentic account of Thibet in large et insolemment retroussé, une grande bouche its relation to China, that he noted down the prin- fendue en ligne droite, des lèvres épaisses et sailcipal heads at the time, and, on returning to his lantes; un teint fortement bronzé, tout contribuait official post, presented the manuscript to Sir John à donner à sa physionomie un aspect sauvage et Davis, who forwarded a copy in his despatches to dédaigneux.' This Tartar Adonis had charge of Lord Palmerston. two camels and a white horse, which, with a tent and a dog to guard it, completed the equipment of our adventurous missionaries for the desert. They had no other guide for their route than a compass and a map of the Chinese empire, published in. Paris.

Nothing more was heard about the matter, until the appearance of these two volumes, by M. Huc, the companion of M. Gabet in all his adventures. A more interesting as well as diverting book has seldom issued from the French press. The qualifications of a Humboldt are not to be expected in a The apprehensions expressed by the friends. missionary priest. And though it should contribute whom they left behind, regarding what they might nothing to the geographer or savant, we might well suffer in the journey to Lhassa, were fully anbe grateful for its information regarding countries swered in the event. M. Gabet well-nigh sank nearly inaccessible to Europeans; but this in-under the extreme hardships of this savage and formation is conveyed in such an inexhaustible strain of good humor and fun, as amply to repay the perusal of any class of readers. In these points M. Huc bears some resemblance to his English namesake, Theodore, as we may almost call him.

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nomadic life; first across an inhospitable desert,. and then over mountains to which the Alps are trifles. From plunder they escaped tolerably free, though the Mongol robbers would seem to be the civilest in the world. Instead of rudely clapping Some eight years before the late " Papal Ag- a pistol to your breast, they blandly observe, gression," His Holiness of Rome took a rather "Venerable elder brother, I am tired of going smaller liberty with the Emperor of China, by ap-a-foot, please to lend me your horse; I am without pointing a vicar apostolic to Mongol Tartary. The next thing was to ascertain, if possible, the extent and nature of this gigantic vicariat. However dreadful the intolerance and oppression under which Romish priests groan among us, they, are a good deal worse off in the Celestial Empire; and yet there, strange to say, they are as quiet as Lambs, and the government seldom hears of them, except when some stray missionary is detected and packed off to the coast, for foreign shipment. MM. Gabet and Huc, who happened to be residing a

money, do give me the loan of your purse; it is very cold to-day, let me have the use of your coat. If the venerable elder brother has the charity to comply, he is duly thanked; but, if not, the humble appeal is supported by the cudgel; and, should this not do, by something more coercive still. Very little better than the professional robbers were any, bands of Chinese soldiers with whom they might have the bad luck to fall in, and whose neighborhood, therefore, they diligently shunned. During the war with England, on the north-east coast, these

make him drink till he is fuddled. Thus they keep possession of their victim for three or four days, never losing sight of him, making him smoke, drink, and eat; while they sell his live stock, and purchase for him whatever he may want, charging him generally double or triple for everything.

Polygamy, abolished by the gospel, and contrary in itself to the happiness and peace of families, should, perhaps, be considered as a good for the Tartars. In the actual state of their society, it acts as a barrier to the libertinage and corruption of manners. Celibacy being imposed upon the Lamas, and the class which shaves the head, and lives in the lamaseries, being sa numerous, if the daughters could not place themselves in families in the rank of secondary wives, it is easy to imagine the disorders which would arise from this multiplicity of young women left to themselves without support.

term. The husband can send back the lady to her parents without even assigning a reason. He is quits by the oxen, the sheep, and the horses which he was obliged to give as the marriage present; and the parents, it seems, can sell the same merchandise over again to a second bidder!

M. Huc puts in a strong light that appropriation to themselves of Manchow, or Eastern Tartary, (the country of their last conquerors,) which has been effected by the Chinese within something more than a century, and to which we have already alluded. In a map of this country, constructed by The married state, however, is anything but the the Jesuits, Père Duhalde states his reason for in-conjugal, in the literal and derivative sense of the serting the Tartar names, and not the Chinese. "Of what use," says he, "would it be to a traveller in Manchouria to know that the river Saghalien is called by the Chinese Hé-loung-Keang, (river of the Black Dragon,) since he has no business with them, and the Tartars, with whom he has to deal, know nothing of this name?""This observation might be true in the time of Kanghy," says M. Huc,when it was made, but the very opposite is the fact at present; for the traveller in Manchouria now finds that he has to deal with China, and it is of the Hé-loung-Keang that he hears, and not of the Saghalien." In our own colonies, the rapidly increasing numbers and wealth of the Chinese, where they exist, are apt to give them a degree of presumption which, with the aid of their vices, might make them troublesome, were it not for the wholesome dread they entertain of European power, wherever they happen to be really acquainted

with it.

Our travellers, in their progress westward, had to cross the Yellow River more than once where it makes a bend northwards through the Great Wall and back again, enclosing in this curve an area of some three degrees square, the miserably waste and sandy country of the Ortous. Unhappily for the poor missionaries, this ruthless and ungainly stream (which a late emperor justly called "China's sorrow") was in its frequent condition of overflow, and we have a pitiable description of the miseries endured by themselves and their camels, of all beasts the least adapted to deal with floods. The waters of the Yellow River, pure and clear at their source among the Thibet mountains, do not assume M. Huc explains how Thibet, and even Mongol their muddy tinge until they reach the alluvial tracts Tartary, to a considerable extent, is a nation of of the Ortous, where they spread over thousands Lamas. He says he may venture to assert that in of acres during the inundations, altogether concealMongolia they form at least a third of the whole ing the bed of the stream. Being from this point population. In almost every family, with the ex- always nearly on a level with the country through ception of the eldest son, who remains "homme which they flow, this defect of encaissement is the noir," all the rest of the males are destined to be cause of disastrous accidents, when the rapid stream Lamas. Nothing can be more obvious than the is swollen by melting snows near its source. fact that, in China Proper, Buddhism and its same velocity, which charges the river thickly with temples are in ruins, and the priests left in a starv-comminuted soil, prevents its deposition on the ing condition; while, on the other hand, the government gives every encouragement to Lamanism in Tartary. The double object is said to be thus to impose a check on the growth of the population, and at the same time render that population as little warlike as possible. The remembrance of the ancient power of the Mongols haunts the court of Peking. They were once masters of the empire, and, to diminish the chances of a new invasion, the study is now to weaken them by all possible means. With this large proportion of the male population condemned to celibacy, M. Huc gives us the following reasons for his thinking that polygamy, under all the circumstances, is the best thing for the Mongol Tartars. It seems generally to have existed in the pastoral and nomadic state.

*This is a distinguishing term for the Laity, who

wear their black hair, while the Lamas shave the whole head.

+ M. Huc is here treating of the Mongol Tartars; not of the Thibetians. Father Regis, in his memoir annexed to Duhalde, speaking of the polyandry of Thibet, states expressly that the Tartars admit of no such irregularity." Turner, Moorcroft, and Skinner, found a plurality of husbands common at Teshoo Loomboo, Ladak, and on the Himalayas. We found it too in Ceylon, as Cæsar had found it in Britain. Barbarous as the custom seems to us, and inexplicable by any supposed disproportion of the sexes, we perceive no more satisfactory explanation of its existence among the Thibetians, than among the Nairs in Malabar. There is no incompatibility, it is true, between polyga

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passage until it reaches the provinces of Honan and Keangnan, where the actual bed of the river is now higher than a great portion of the immense plain through which it runs. This evil being continually aggravated by further depositions of mud, a fearful catastrophe seems to overhang that unfortunate region at the same time that the constant repair of the dikes taxes the ingenuity, while it exhausts the treasury, of the Chinese government. Sir John Davis offered to the minister Keying, a relation of the emperor, the aid of English engineers in an emergency where science could scarcely fail of beneficial results; but he shook his head, and said he dared not even mention the subject.

The personal observations of M. Huc settle the question as to the real nature and amount of what is called the "Great Wall" towards the west :

We had occasion (he says) to cross it at more than fifteen different points, and several times we travelled for whole days in the line of its direction, and kept it constantly in view. Often, in lieu of those double turreted walls, which exist near Peking, we met with my and polyandry. The Nair, we suspect, does not limit himself to his coparcenary wife; and in the Mahabarat, although Draupadi is the wife of the Five Pándus brothers, some of them-if not all-and Arjuna especially, have several other wives. But, in case M. Huc found polyandry at Lhassa, in either form, the omission is unaccountable. It must have been as great a novelty to a European, as the rumor of Mr. Hodgson's "live unicorn."

nothing more than a simple piece of masonry, and sometimes a modest rampart of earth. We even occasionally saw their famous wall reduced to its most simple expression, and composed solely of some heaped stones.*

to give us a proof of his sagacity, called upon us to say without hesitation whether we were not English: and, to leave no doubt of the meaning of his question, he added, that by Ing-kie-li, he meant the "seadevils" who had made war on Canton.-" No, we It may be observed, with reference to the land are not English; and not devils of any kind, whether frontiers of the Chinese empire on the west, that of the sea or of the earth." An idler came up, very the authority of the emperor, instead of abruptly tempestuous examination: "You," said he to the innluckily, just in time to remove the ill effect of this encountering the hard outline of an entirely inde-keeper, " do not know how to look at the human form. pendent authority, is shadowed off by something of a blended jurisdiction. "There exists in the Kansou, and upon the frontiers of the province of SseTchouan, many tribes who thus govern themselves, under special laws. All bear the denomination of Tou-sse, to which is added the family name of their chief or sovereign." (P. 36.) We find in another place that this prevails to the south-west, on the borders of Ava. "On the outskirts of the empire, towards the west, are a number of towns or stations, called Too-sse, or native jurisdictions,' where the aborigines are more or less independent, and where there is, in fact, a kind of divided authority, each party being immediately subject to its own chiefs. This is particularly true of the Lolos."-The Chinese, vol. i.

How dare you pretend that these people are Yangkouei-tse? Don't you know that they have all blue eyes and red hair?"" You are right," said the innkeeper, "I had not considered it well."—" No, certainly," added we, "you have not. Do you think that marine monsters could live upon land as we do, and ride on horseback?"-"Oh, that's right, it is just so; the Ing-kie-li, they say, never dare to quit the sea; as soon as they get on land they tremble and die, like fish taken out of water."-They talked much of the manners and character of sea-devils, and after all was said, it was settled that we were not at all of the same race.]

These volumes contain the most detailed and complete account of Lamanism that we remember ever to have met with; and they confirm, on the authority of these Romish priests themselves, the astonishing resemblance that exists between the external rites and institutions of Buddhism and those of the Church of Rome. Besides celibacy, fasting, and prayers for the dead, there are enshrined relics, holy water, incense, candles in broad day, rosaries of beads counted in praying, worship of saints, processions, and a monastic habit resembling that of the mendicant orders. Although our worthy missionaries call the images of Lamanism

It is an odd result of our war with China, that something of the same principle should have been established by treaty at the Five Ports of trade on the opposite side of the empire. British subjects are there entirely independent of the Chinese law, and governed by their own consuls, who act under ordinances framed by the governor and legislative council of Hong-kong, confirmed by her majesty in council. The inference from the frequency of these "native jurisdictions" is, that Chinese law, as administered towards foreigners, becomes intoler-idols, and the Romish idols images, we do not think able; so at least it proved at Canton.

It would be a pity to spoil the following passage by a translation :

Notre aubergiste, un Chinois pur-sang, pour nous donner une preuve de sa sagacité, nous demanda sans tergiverser si nous n'étions pas Anglais; et pour ne laisser aucun doute à sa question, il ajouta qu'il entendait par Ing-kie-li les diables marins," qui faisaient la guerre à Canton. Non, nous ne sommes pas Anglais; nous autres, nous ne sommes diables d'aucune façon, ni de mer, ni de terre. Un désœuvré vint fort à propos détruire le mauvais effet de cette interpellation intempestive.-Toi, dit-il à l'aubergiste, tu ne sais pas regarder les figures des hommes. Comment oses-tu prétendre que ces gens là sont des Yangkouei-tse ? Est-ce que tu ne sais pas que ceux-ci ont les yeux tout bleus, et les cheveux tout rouges?-C'est juste, dit. l'aubergiste, je n'avais pas bien réfléchi.Non, certainement, ajoutàmes-nous, tu n'avais pas bien réfléchi. Crois-tu que des monstres marins pourraient, commes nous, vivre sur terre, et seraient capables d'aller à cheval?-Oh, c'est juste, c'est bien cela; les Ing-kie-li, dit-on, n'osent jamais quitter la mer; aussitôt qu'ils montent à terre, ils tremblent et meurent comme les poissons qu'on met hors de l'eau. On parla beaucoup des mœurs et du caractère des diables marins, et d'après tout ce qui en fut dit, il demeura demontré que nous n'étions pas du tout de la même race.

the distinction is worth much, and therefore may throw in this item with the rest; the more especially as, on the summary principle of "inveniam viam, aut faciam," the commandment against idol worship has been thrust bodily out of their Decalogue by the Romanists, as may be seen from any copy of the Missal. It is remarkable that these very missionaries had an image made for their own adoration, from a European model, at a place on their journey where a huge image of Buddha had just been cast, and sent off to Lhassa. (Vol. i., p. 41.) Thus the object of their worship was a molten image, the work, not only of men's, but pagan hands, employed indifferently for either Buddhism or Romanism.

It is at once curious, and an instructive lesson to unprejudiced minds, to observe that M. Huc, while Buddhists, entirely forgets how applicable his he indulges in pleasantries at the expense of the sarcasms are to his own side of the question. After describing an assembly in a college of Lamas, where the explanations given by the priests or professors on certain points of their religion proved as vague and incomprehensible as the thing to be explained, he adds, "On est, du reste, convaincu que la sublimité d'une doctrine est en raison directe de son obscurité et de son impénétrabilité.” [Our inn-keeper, a full-blooded Chinese, in order Let us only suppose M. Huc expounding to those * Père Gerbillon informs us, that beyond the Yellow Lamas the dogma of Transubstantiation, and addRiver, to its western extremity, (or for full one half ing, in testimony of its truth, that St. Ignatius of its total length,) the wall is chiefly a mound of Loyola, with eyesight sharpened by faith, declared earth or gravel, about fifteen feet in height, with only he actually saw the farinaceous substance changoccasional towers of brick. Marco Polo's silence con- ing itself into flesh. "Les hommes," observes our cerning it may therefore be accounted for on the suppo-author in another place, "sont partout les mêmes!" sition that, having seen only this imperfect portion, he did not deem it an object of sufficient curiosity to deserve particular notice, without the necessity of imagining that he entered China to the south of the great barrier.-The Chinese, vol. i.

the devotees and recluses of Buddhism, are similar The jokes in which M. Huc indulges, against to what have been repeated a thousand times with reference to those of Romanism :

This young Lama of eighty years old was a large well made fellow, whose lumbering and stout figure seemed to prove a great consumption of butter, in his strict seclusion. We could never see him put his nose out of his house door, without thinking of La Fontaine's rat, who, out of devotion, had retired into a Dutch cheese.

To instance a higher department of art-as the old The monasteries of the Lamas, resembling as bined" each look that charm'd him in the fair of artist, in painting his Venus, is said to have comthey do in so many respects those of the Romanists, Greece," so the Italian painters have sometimes differ from them on some few points. The mem-immortalized the features of their own mistresses bers are all subject to the same rule and the same in pictures, of saints and martyrs, intended to adorn discipline; but they do not seem to live to the same churches. extent in community; and exclusive rights of property prevail among them. Our missionaries passed some months in these establishments. Besides his holiness, the Supreme Lama at Lhassa, there are Grand Lamas, who derive their investiture from him, and descend from past ages in uninterrupted succession. With reference to one of these, it is observed :