The Amulet
by Katherine Treat Blackledge (9781458859938)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter I. Planning an Expedition into a Strange Country In the Spring of 19? there was gathered in the reception room of one of the large hotels of Calcutta, India, a party of a dozen persons considering a somewhat unusual expedition. There is nothing unusual, it is true, in a cosmopolitan set of people making a trip to China or Japan, or even to Timbuctoo, provided they take with them a first rate Cook's tourist conductor. But to start to a country hitherto almost unexplored or rarely visited by Europeans was a rather extraordinary and venturesome undertaking. The thing which had inspired these seasoned travelers, for such they were, the majority of them, was a glowing and thrilling report which had been brought back by a party of English officials who a year or two before this had been sent out by their government from India to make investigations as to the feasibility of building a great highway into the now nearly inaccessible country of Tibet, a province or, at that time, a dependency of China, but bordering on India, also, to which the lofty Himalayas' frozen peaks formed an almost insurmountable barrier. The project had not, as yet, been carried out, but the commissioned expedition, notwithstanding somewarlike demonstrations from the inhabitants, had so far succeeded as to convince the common people of their good will, and had received civility, at least, from the religious and political officers of the great capital city of L'hasa, or Lassa, as it is more generally called. The priests and subordinates of the Grand Lama, who is the ruling religious authority, have a jealous suspicion, not easily overcome, of all foreigners. This was owing, in a measure, to several attempts in previous years by English and other foreigners to establish Christian missions in ...

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