north of the Great Wall, one day’s journey from Suen-hoa-Fou.  The prelate sent us instructions for an extended voyage we were to undertake for the purpose of studying the character and manners of the Tartars, and of ascertaining as nearly as possible the extent and limits of the Vicariat.  This journey, then, which we had so long meditated, was now determined upon; and we sent a young Lama convert in search of some camels which we had put to pasture in the kingdom of Naiman.  Pending his absence, we hastened the completion of several Mongol works, the translation of which had occupied us for a considerable time.  Our little books of prayer and doctrine were ready, still our young Lama had not returned; but thinking he could not delay much longer, we quitted the valley of Black Waters (Hé-Chuy), and proceeded on to await his arrival at the Contiguous Defiles (Pié-lié-Keou) which seemed more favourable for the completion of our preparations.  The days passed away in futile expectation; the coolness of the autumn was becoming somewhat biting, and we feared that we should have to begin our journey across the deserts of Tartary during the frosts of winter.  We determined, therefore, to dispatch some one in quest of our camels and our Lama.  A friendly

catechist, a good walker and a man of expedition, proceeded on this mission.  On the day fixed for that purpose he returned; his researches had been wholly without result.  All he had ascertained at the place which he had visited was, that our Lama had started several days before with our camels.  The surprise of our courier was extreme when he found that the Lama had not reached us before himself.  “What!” exclaimed he, “are my legs quicker than a camel’s!  They left Naiman before me, and here I am arrived before them!  My spiritual fathers, have patience for another day.  I’ll answer that both Lama and camels will be here in that time.”  Several days, however, passed away, and we were still in the same position.  We once more dispatched the courier in search of the Lama, enjoining him to proceed to the very place where the camels had been put to pasture, to examine things with his own eyes, and not to trust to any statement that other people might make.

During this interval of painful suspense, we continued to inhabit the Contiguous Defiles, a Tartar district dependent on the kingdom of Ouniot. [11]  These regions appear to have been affected by great revolutions.  The present inhabitants state that, in the olden time, the country was occupied by Corean tribes, who, expelled thence in the course of various wars, took refuge in the peninsula which they still possess, between the Yellow Sea and the sea of Japan.  You often, in these parts of Tartary, meet with the remains of great towns, and the ruins of fortresses, very nearly resembling those of the middle ages in Europe, and, upon turning up the soil in these places, it is not unusual to find lances, arrows, portions of farming implements, and urns filled with Corean money.

Towards the middle of the 17th century, the Chinese began to penetrate into this district.  At that period, the whole landscape was still one of rude grandeur; the mountains were covered with fine forests, and the Mongol tents whitened the valleys, amid rich pasturages.  For a very moderate sum the Chinese obtained permission to cultivate the desert, and as cultivation advanced, the Mongols were obliged to retreat, conducting their flocks and herds elsewhere.

From that time forth, the aspect of the country became entirely changed.  All the trees were grubbed up, the forests disappeared from the hills, the prairies were cleared by means of fire, and the new cultivators set busily to work in exhausting the fecundity of the soil.  Almost the entire region is now in the hands of the Chinese, and it is probably to their system of devastation that we must

attribute the extreme irregularity of the seasons which now desolate this unhappy land.  Droughts are of almost annual occurrence; the spring winds setting in, dry up the soil; the heavens assume a sinister aspect, and the unfortunate population await, in utter terror, the manifestation of some terrible calamity; the winds by degrees redouble their violence, and sometimes continue to blow far into the summer months.  Then the dust rises in clouds, the atmosphere becomes thick and dark; and often, at mid-day, you are environed with the terrors of night, or rather, with an intense and almost palpable blackness, a thousand times more fearful than the most sombre night.  Next after these hurricanes comes the rain: but so comes, that instead of being an object of desire, it is an object of dread, for it pours down in furious raging torrents.  Sometimes the heavens suddenly opening, pour forth in, as it were, an immense cascade, all the water with which they are charged in that quarter; and immediately the fields and their crops disappear under a sea of mud, whose enormous waves follow the course of the valleys, and carry everything before them.  The torrent rushes on, and in a few hours the earth reappears; but the crops are gone, and worse even than that, the arable soil also has gone with them.  Nothing remains but a ramification of deep ruts, filled with gravel, and thenceforth incapable of being ploughed.

Hail is of frequent occurrence in these unhappy districts, and the dimensions of the hailstones are generally enormous.  We have ourselves seen some that weighed twelve pounds.  One moment sometimes suffices to exterminate whole flocks.  In 1843, during one of these storms, there was heard in the air a sound as of a rushing wind, and therewith fell, in a field near a house, a mass of ice larger than an ordinary millstone.  It was broken to pieces with hatchets, yet, though the sun burned fiercely, three days elapsed before these pieces entirely melted.

The droughts and the inundations together, sometimes occasion famines which well nigh exterminate the inhabitants.  That of 1832, in the twelfth year of the reign of Tao-Kouang, [12] is the most terrible of these on record.  The Chinese report that it was everywhere announced by a general presentiment, the exact nature of which no one could explain or comprehend.  During the winter of 1831, a dark rumour grew into circulation.  Next year, it was said, there will be neither rich nor poor; blood will cover the mountains; bones will fill the valleys (Ou fou, ou kioung; hue man chan, kou man tchouan.)  These words were in every one’s mouth; the children repeated them in their sports; all were under the

domination of these sinister apprehensions when the year 1832 commenced.  Spring and summer passed away without rain, and the frosts of autumn set in while the crops were yet green; these crops of course perished, and there was absolutely no harvest.  The population was soon reduced to the most entire destitution.  Houses, fields, cattle, everything was exchanged for grain, the price of which attained its weight in gold.  When the grass on the mountain sides was devoured by the starving creatures, the depths of the earth were dug into for roots.  The fearful prognostic, that had been so often repeated, became accomplished.  Thousands died upon the hills, whither they had crawled in search of grass; dead bodies filled the roads and houses; whole villages were depopulated to the last man.  There was,