since the days of Warren Hastings there have been none at all. In 1772, that governor-general sent an envoy — Mr. George Bogle — to the Teshu Lama, and his mission gave rise to some very instructive interchanges of opinion, for an account of which we are indebted to Mr. Clements Markham; but the result of this diplomatic action was very transitory. Captain Turner, Warren Hastings's second ambassador, despatched a few years later on, for the purpose of complimenting a new Teshu on his accession to the dignity, was not more successful; and then for many years official business was transacted by our Tibetan agent, the widely travelled Purungir Gosain. In 1792 there occurred that war between Nepaul and China which resulted in the ignominious defeat of the former, and which the intercession of Lord Cornwallis alone prevented from closing with the sack of Khatmandoo, but which is chiefly of importance to us as marking the turning-point in our intercourse with Tibet. Up to this, our diplomatic overtures had not indeed been crowned by any very brilliant success, but they had not been complete failures. The passes through the Himalaya were at all events open, if any one cared to make use of them; and so long as the fair at Rangpur was maintained, so long did Tibetan goods find their way into Bengal, and our Indian fabrics into Tibet. But the Chinese government and generals resented our intervention in favor of the Ghoorkas, who, in the eyes both of Tibetans and Chinese, were merely a set of troublesome marauders; and after the year 1792, the Chinese, in consequence of Lord Cornwallis's well-intentioned mediation, closed the passes of the Himalaya, erected blockhouses at their northern entrances, and put a stop to all intercourse whatsoever. Since that time, more than eighty years ago, only one Englishman has succeeded in breaking through that unyielding barrier, and it must be long before the same astonishing energy and rare acquaintance with Chinese manners will be united again in the same person as they were in Thomas Manning. That gentleman, in the disguise of a Chinaman, did in the year 1811 penetrate from Bhutan into Tibet, and his triumph was rendered more perfect by a residence of many months in its capital. Whatever information we possess we owe to these three gentlemen, and to the French missionaries Huc and Gabet, who went to Lhasa from China in 1845. Since their time, we have indeed learnt much from the explorations of the pundit Nain Sing, but our historical knowledge has not kept pace with our geographical. The tidings that another child exercises the power of Dalai Lama will serve to remind us that whenever we seek to enforce our treaty rights, it will be solely with the Chinese Ambans that we shall have to deal. The same difficulties will have to be encountered and to be overcome as those which beset a visit to any other unknown and secluded province of the Chinese empire. Whatever virtues the Tibetans themselves possess—and if all is true that we are told of them, they possess more than a fair share of them—it is not they who will decide how our ambassador shall be received, but the Chinese governors, who will act in accordance with the instructions remitted from Pekin. From one aspect, seeing that it is the Chinese themselves who have conceded the point, this should argue favorably for the result of an English mission to Tibet; but from another, seeing that the Chinese, and not the Tibetans, have at all times been hostile to intercourse of any kind with ourselves in India, the prospect is scarcely so pleasing. In the mean while, the intrepid Russian traveller, Prjevalsky, nothing daunted by illness or by the obstacles placed in his path by the Chinese, is slowly wending his way along the outskirts of the great Desert of Gobi towards the country of the lamas. In the search for geographical information he is emulating the achievements of his most distinguished predecessors, and should he be successful in this case, which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful, he will most probably, now that so many more entrancing questions are agitating the bosoms of the Indian Council, have the double satisfaction of having been the first representative of his country to visit Lhasa, and of having anticipated the English embassy, which Sir Thomas Wade foreshadowed in his treaty of Chefoo.
