Page:Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet (1879).djvu/22

OBJECTS OF THE INTRODUCTION. of his brave and successful enterprise, and he was left to perish or to return, as chance would have it.

So completely was the policy of opening commercial inter- course between India and the Trans-Himalayan region abandoned, that the very history of the Hastings negotiations was forgotten, and most of the valuable records of the Tibet and Bhutan missions were lost. Thus the knowledge that was then acquired with so much care, the lessons of experience that were taught, instead of being carefully stored up and made available as a point of departure for future efforts, have been totally disregarded, It is by a series of mere accidents that copies of records long since lost or destroyed, owing to official neglect, have been preserved through the more patriotic and discriminating care of private families.

The account of the important mission of George Bogle to Bhutan and Tibet has been gathered partly from journals, partly from official despatches, and partly from private correspondence; and it is now presented for the first time in a connected form. That of Mr. Manning's extraordinary journey to Lhasa is from a fragmentary series of notes and jottings which alone remain to bear testimony to a feat which still remains unparalleled.

As an introduction to the perusal of these narratives, I propose to give an account of the region to which they refer; to furnish some information respecting what is known of the inhabitants, their history and religion; and to pass in review the several steps by which our existing knowledge has been acquired, and the events, so far as we can learn them, which have formed the more recent history of Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. To perform such a task with any approach to completeness would require a separate volume, and the possession of local knowledge. My aim in this introduction will therefore