Lamas of the Western Heavens

(London: The Folio Society, 1982). Translated by Charles de Salis with an introduction by John Keay. Engravings taken from the first English edition. 8vo; original blue canvas, ornately blocked in gilt and grey; papered slipcase; tinted top edge; endpaper map; pp. 351; engravings in text. Fine condition, in a slightly rubbed and sunned slipcase. "And so to Fathers Huc and Gabet, the only Europeans apart from Manning who certainly saw Lhasa in the whole of the nineteenth century. In contrast to their immediate European antecedents in Tibet, Huc and Gabet were not interested in trade or politics. They came in search of converts and, to this extent, belong to a much earlier tradition of pioneers. ... Though charged with the same zeal for conversions, Huc and Gabet showed none of the bigotry of their clerical predecessors. They were willing to conform to Tibetan ways, to seek out common ground in matters of doctrine and ritual, and to acknowledge piety in whatever guise. ... But what sets Huc's visit in a class apart, even from these, is the extent of his Tibetan travels. While the others all entered Tibet from the south, Huc and Gabet came from Mongolia in the north. To reach Lhasa they had thus to cross the core of the country, the bleakness and difficulty of which no previous European traveller had so much as suspected. Similarly, when they left, they headed east for Szechwan, across the axis of those most formidable mountain barriers along the upper reaches of the Mekong and Yangtse rivers. Throughout it was winter, the cold so intense on their first journey that men were freezing to death in their saddles, the snow so deep on the second that yaks had to be sent ahead as steam-rollers. Were it simply a story of physical endurance it would stand with the best of polar endeavours." - From John Keay's introduction. .