The Romish missionaries of later times made repeated attempts to establish themselves in the Trans-Himalayan regions. The first who appears to have succeeded in penetrating them was Antonio d'Andrada, a Portuguese Jesuit, with three companions of his order. In 1624 they ascended the Ganges by Hurdwar and Srinuggur to Budrinath, a celebrated place of Hindoo pilgrimage on the eastern branch of the sacred river. Apprehending hindrances to their advance, they made a desperate attempt to cross the pass into Tibet, (probably the Niti, or one of those nearer Lake Manusaráwur,) whilst it was still deep in snow, and without a guide. They succeeded, after frightful suffering, in surmounting the pass, but, finding the country at their feet a trackless sheet of snow, were compelled to return. Waiting for the usual convoy after the melting of the winter snow, they again effected the passage, and proceeded to what they call Rudac, the capital of Tibet. There is a fort so called (Radokh or Rohtuk) beyond the Indus, near the head of the Pangkung Lake; but Ladakh or Le is more likely to have been the place intended.
Though it seems scarcely credible that four strangers should have found their way twice across the Himalayan passes unguided, and before the regular season of transit, and yet survive to tell the tale, it must be said that Andrada's description of their Himalayan travels, in other respects, bears every mark of truth. The precipitous paths along the Ganges, the files of pilgrims shouting as they trudged to Budrinath, the demon-like Jogees whom they encountered, the straight and lofty pines and cypresses, the large rose-bushes, and forests of flowering trees, (rhododendron,) the rope bridges, the sufferings in the snow and from the attenuated air, are all plainly drawn from actual experience.
The next visitors to Tibet, and the first Europeans, so far as we know, who reached Lhassa, were the Fathers Albert Dorville and J. Grueber of the Chinese mission. They started from Pekin in June 1661, and travelled through China to Sining-fu, on the north-west frontier. From this place their route probably coincided with that of Huc and Gabet, who reached the same place from Eastern Mongolia. Their journey thence to Lhassa, Grueber describes as extending for three months through the deserts of Kalmuk Tartary, alternately sandy and mountainous. After some stay at Lhassa, they proceeded over the mountain range of "Langur, the highest existing, so that on its summit travellers can scarcely breathe on account of the subtlety of the air; nor can it be passed in summer, on account of the virulent exhalations of certain herbs, without manifest danger to life." Descending into the kingdom of Necbal, (Nepaul,) they passed some time at the capital, Cudmendou (Katmandoo). Quitting Nepaul, they entered the kingdom of Maranga (the Morung, or forest tract below the hills.) Proceeding by Mutgari (Mooteeharee probably, in Tirhoot) to Battana (Patna) on the Ganges, and thence to Benares, they reached Agra after 214 days' travelling from Pekin, exclusive of stoppages. Dorville died of fatigue shortly after the accomplishment of this heroic journey. The narrative, as abstracted in Kircher's China Illustrata, is adorned with some rather good cuts, most of which appear to have been derived from genuine sketches.
In the fifteenth volume of Lettres Edifiantes is an epistle dated from Lhassa, 10th April 1716, by Father Hipolito Desideri, a Jesuit. It relates his journey from Goa to Delhi, where he was joined by a brother missionary; thence by Lahore over the Pir Punjál to Kashmeer, and, after a residence of six months there, across the passes of the Himalayas, to Le or Ladakh, which he describes as the royal fortress of the kingdom of Great Tibet, or Buton. Whilst making arrangements to settle at Ladakh, and commencing the study of the language, the fathers heard for the first time of a third Tibet, (viz. the Lhassa country, in addition to Little Tibet or Balti, and Great Tibet, or Ladakh,) and thought it necessary to proceed to explore it. The journey occupied them from August 1715 to March 1716. Desideri and his comrade are the only Europeans who have ever travelled from Ladakh to Lhassa; but, unfortunately, they give no particulars of their route except these dates, and even the great delay which they indicate is not accounted for.
Previous to this, a Capuchin mission had visited Lhassa via Nepaul in 1707, and a few years later, a dozen brethren of that order were established there under Father Horace della Penna. They sent home flourishing accounts of their success; but their additions to our knowledge of the country were very meagre. About 1754 this mission appears to have been expelled, and found refuge for a time in Nepaul. Some fifty volumes, the relics of the mission library, were, in 1847, recovered from Lhassa by Mr Hodgson, through the courtesy of the Grand Lama himself, and were transmitted to Europe to be presented to Pio Nono, whose reputation was then fresh and fragrant. Some itineraries and other curious particulars, derived from the correspondence of the Lhassa mission, are buried, among a mass of crude learning and rubbish, in a quarto published at Rome in 1762, under the name of Alphabetum Tibetanum, by Antonio Giorgi, an Augustin friar.
Of the missions of Bogle and Turner we have already spoken. In 1811, a Mr Manning succeeded in reaching Lhassa by their route, but was arrested and sent back by the Chinese. He died soon after without publishing any particulars of his journey. The sacred lakes of Ngari have been visited by Moorcroft, Captains Henry and Richard Strachey, and one or two more. Ladakh and the adjoining districts have been explored by the two former travellers, the Cunninghams, and others. But within this century, save Manning, no European, till Huc and Gabet, had penetrated to Tibet Proper. The enthusiastic Hungarian scholar, who would have gone with advantages possessed by none else, was cut off just as he deemed this object of his cherished hopes attainable.
A few words remain to be said more particularly of the work which suggested this paper. These need be few, because a translation of the whole work has been announced since we commenced writing.
The book which the missionaries have produced is not altogether satisfactory. It too well justifies its title of Souvenirs by the lamentable paucity of dates, of which there are not half-a-dozen in the whole narrative of their two years' pilgrimage. Even the period of their starting is not stated at the time, and is only to be distinctly gathered from some retrospective calculations. Their geographical starting-point, too, is as obscure as the chronological one. Our maps help us little in following the details of their travels; and that which is inserted in their book is of as little aid as any other, being, in fact, dated five years previous to their journey. Nor, we fear, will they be found to have added much to the materials of future geographers; their work contains no indication of a single bearing or altitude, nor indeed had they the necessary instruments. The possession, indeed, of MS. maps would have endangered their lives in any collision with Chinese authority, such as actually befel them at Lhassa; but many valuable data might have been recorded without graphical embodiment. The worthy men, however, make no pretensions to science; they record of the Ko-ko-noor or Blue Lake on the north-east frontier of Tibet, that it has a flux and reflux of tide, without any further particulars of so marvellous a phenomenon, though they were some time encamped on its banks: they ascribe unquestioningly their sufferings, in passing certain lofty mountains, to poisonous exhalations from the soil; and they quit Tibet without a word as to the vexed question regarding the course of the Sanpoo. But they have given us a most readable and interesting personal narrative of a life of continued hardships, and of frequent suffering and danger in remote regions, the routes through which were partly never before recorded in detail, and partly never before trodden by any European.