Page:Narratives of the mission of George Bogle to Tibet.djvu/160

Rh PROJECTS FOR PUBLICATION. [Intr. great a liberty, I should request to be favoured with your opinion upon the propriety of this intention."

In 1777, Mr. Stewart, F.E.S., returned from India, and in a letter to Sir John Pringle, dated March 20, 1777, he gave an interesting account of Bogle's mission to Tibet, saying that he had reason to believe that the Envoy would himself give a relation of his journey to the world, but that in the meanwhile he presented a few particulars such as his recollection of Mr. Bogle's letters and papers enabled him to draw up. Mr. Stewart's letter was read at a meeting of the Royal Society, on the 17th of April, 1777. This is the first and, until now, the only account of Bogle's mission that has seen the light.

The untimely death of George Bogle, the weighty affairs which fully occupied the time of the Governor-General during the next four years, and the long persecution to which he was subjected after his return home, prevented the project of publishing the narrative of the Tibet mission from being carried into effect. But copies of the documents relating to it remained in the possession of Warren Hastings until his death. Mr. William Markham, the eldest son of the Arch- bishop of York, arrived in India in 1778, and was Private Secretary to Warren Hastings during the time that the measures connected with an intended second mission to Tibet were under consideration, in 1779. He took great pains to collect information on the subject, and preserved copies of