Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/22

 of their routes, how the representations of the glib French priest and the Russian soldier agree. Only Prejevalsky's picture of the scene before him is a photograph, careful in accuracy, but not displaying much power of selection as to light or point of view; Huc's is the painting of a clever, perhaps too clever, artist, but still coloured from nature. Artist he is indeed, and as far as may be from science, but, after reading Prejevalsky's narrative, I have felt, more than ever before, the charm of Huc's vivacious touches; more than ever, because the perusal of the Russian work convinced me that his pictures (I do not refer to the braggadocio, probably imaginary, of his conduct before Chinese officials) are true as well as clever. Who that has read the book,—though probably the generations that have risen since 1851, and that have had so much else to read may not have read them,—who can forget that inimitable picture of the yaks of the caravan, after fording the freezing waters of the Pouhain-gol, staggering under the load of icicles that depended from their shaggy flanks? or that other of the wild company of the same species, nipt by the frost in swimming across the head-waters of the mighty Yangtse, and there frozen hard in cold death, the whole hairy herd of them?