The first memorable incursion into the territory in question was the journey of Huc and Gabet in 1845-46.
The later writings of Huc, pieces of pretentious and untrustworthy bookmaking, have thrown some shadow upon the original narrative; some of his own countrymen have been disposed to look on his work as half a fiction; and stories have even reached me from Russian sources which professed to recount confessions made by Huc of his having invented his own share in the narrative, and of his having received from Gabet on his deathbed, 'on board a boat in the Canton river,' or taken from his luggage after his death, the true journals on which the popular story of the Journey to Lhassa was founded. These stories are imaginative fabrications, as will be seen from the facts we are about to recapitulate. I confess, however, that, judging from the rubbish of Huc's later writings, my own impression long was that Gabet had been the chief author of the Souvenirs, and this was confirmed to me by a conversation with which the lamented M. Jules Mohl honoured me during his last visit to England.[1] But his recollection, I now feel satisfied, had deceived him.
In the end of 1846, as Sir John Davis tells us, Mr. A. Johnston, his own secretary as Plenipotentiary in China, in proceeding from Hong Kong to Ceylon, found Père Joseph Gabet, then on his way to France, a fellow-passenger with him, and heard from him many particulars of the journey. Mr. Johnston found these so curious and interesting that he noted down the principal circumstances, and on rejoining his chief presented him with the MS., and Sir John sent it on to Lord Palmerston. 'Nothing more,' adds Sir John Davies, 'was heard of the matter till the appearance of Huc's two volumes' (i.e. in 1851). This is, however, a mistake, as I find by an examination, as careful as my time
- ↑ M. Mohl told me an anecdote of his visiting, about the time of Huc's publication, one of the vicars apostolic from the Eastern Missions,—I think Monseigneur Pallegoix from Siam. The new book was lying on the table, and the bishop apologised, saying he ought to have left it in his bedroom; 'a bishop ought not to be caught reading romances.'
