Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/411

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
TIBET
333

joint visit of the Teshu Lama (vice-Pope of Tibet), the Tongsa Penlop (real ruler of Bhutan), and the Maharajah of Sikhim to Calcutta to meet the Prince of Wales during his Indian tour. Mr. Mackenzie met the Teshu Lama's company of some four hundred in Sikhim, and travelled with them stage by stage to Calcutta, serving them in many ways and receiving from several officials warm invitations to visit them in Tibet and Bhutan.


Miss Annie Taylor, when a member of the China Inland Mission, made a bold and adventurous journey across Tibet in 1892. Leaving Taochow in Kansu in September 1892, she crossed the Yellow River and passed through the Robber Golck country, and entered the Lhasa territory on December 31. On January 7, 1893, she was met by a civil officer and forced to return to China. After enduring great privations from cold, want of food, and robbers, etc., she reached Tachienlu in April 1893.

Since 1898 Miss Taylor has been living at the little trading port of Yatung, just over the border, in the narrow wedge between Sikhim and Bhutan. Here she has dispensed medicine, sold Gospels and tracts, and preached the Gospel to the Tibetans, who are constantly passing backwards and forwards from Tibet to Kalimpong and India.


The Assam Frontier Pioneer Mission since 1891 has, through their agents Messrs. Lorrain and Savidge, been labouring between Bhutan and the north-east of Assam, among a number of the wild tribes bordering on Tibet. During a part of that time they have worked amongst a tribe called the Lushais, who occupy the forest-covered mountainous country between India and Upper Burmah. This latter work was in 1899 taken over by the Welsh Presbyterian Mission, and recently a revival in the Khassia Hills has just begun to touch this tribe.

Messrs. Lorrain and Savidge in 1900 commenced work from Sadiya as their base among the wild Abor tribes, among whom they laboured until 1903. They then