Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/367

Rh the Sladen Mission in 1868, had received confirmation in the interim in the shape of a convention contracted with another Mohammedan rebel, on another troublous frontier of the flowery kingdom, the Athalik Ghazi Khan, Yakub Beg, who was playing at empire on his own in the dim distance of Chinese Turkestan. And while it is claimed that the Peking Government had given their sanction to the expedition by signing the passports for both Margary and the party under Colonel Brown, they subsequently denied that they had been given to understand that the passports granted were for any purpose beyond that of mere travel. However this may be, the immediate result of the advance of the mission was, as has been seen, the cold-blooded murder of a gallant English gentleman and the precipitate retreat of the remainder of the party; the subsequent effect, the opening of the ports of Ichang, Wuhu, Wenchow, and Pakhoi to trade, and of a number of villages on the Yang-tsze as ports of call.

Hereafter a number of circumstances conspired to concentrate the attention of European