Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/152

130 travellers; but he felt himself strong in perseverance and courage. The natural history of India was but little known, and the northern portions of the country wholly unknown to men of science. A few travellers had indeed penetrated in different directions towards the north of the English possessions, but these expeditions had been without any scientific results, from the want of the proper qualifications in the travellers, and particularly from the brief and rapid manner in which they had traversed those regions. The mountains of the Himalaya, which divide Thibet and Tartary from India, and which extend to the Punjab, were inhabited by barbarous hordes in a state of perpetual warfare with their neighbours. Here every enterprising individual who was able to collect around him a hundred bandits acknowledged no master, and became a terror to the country around. It was the geological structure and the natural productions of these mountains, hitherto considered inaccessible, that Jacquemont undertook to examine.

Arrived in Calcutta, he remained in that city until he had made himself master of the Persian and Hindostanee languages, without which it would have been impossible to hope for any useful result from the expedition; and he also acquired there all the information necessary as to the manners and customs of the country he was about to visit. He then set out for Delhi, from whence he directed his course towards the Upper Himalaya and Thibet. Friendly advisers had assured him that it was easy to travel with heavy baggage in any part of Asia by simply joining a caravan of the merchants; but Jacquemont had too good a knowledge