Whoever has chanced to reside in the valleys of the Himalaya--Mr. Shaw is the authority--must experience a desire to know of the countries beyond that range. The desire is natural, but the obstacles of nature are stupendous. To enter Tibet has been the object of numerous Englishmen, from the time of Warren Hastings, yet that object has been only attained by three of our countrymen, the latest sixty-six years ago. There are forty or fifty passes of various degrees of practicability leading into Tibet from Nepaul, Sikhim, and Bhutan; and to act as a spur to the explorer there is a highly civilized and peaceable race just beyond our border of whom we know scarcely anything. Yet the vision of Warren Hastings and of Thomas Manning remains unfulfilled. North of the Karakoram there were no similar incentives. Mr. Moorcroft who, fifty years ago, resided in Ladakh, does not appear to have manifested any desire to pierce the iron barrier to the north, although towards Ruduk and Tibet he turned as if irresistibly fascinated. The character which the brothers Michell gave Little Bokhara, or Eastern Turkestan, expressed a fact, which long deterred any traveller from attempting to explore it. "Little Bokhara," they said, "was a country where every man carried his life in his hand, and there were indubitable excuses for each successive traveller who recoiled before the hardships and dangers of a journey through that country." But although no Englishman traversed the dizzy passes of the Karakoram and the Kuen Lun, now and then the people from Sanju, Khoten, and the neighbourhood came to Ladakh, where they brought intelligence of the political events that were taking place further north. Their intelligence was often completely false, it was always vague and exaggerated, but it, at all events, told us whether peace or war, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, was the existing circumstance in Eastern Turkestan. It was known in a general sense that China was the nominal ruler of this vast region; but the exact relations China held there, how she conquered the country and when, and by what means she retained her conquest, all these were unascertained. There had, indeed, been one break in this state of darkness when the learned traveller, Adolph Schlagintweit, in 1857, penetrated, with a few native followers, into Kashgar. The initial difficulties were successfully overcome, and fortune seemed at first disposed to smile upon his enterprise. Herr Schlagintweit had come, however, at a singularly inopportune moment. The Khoja Wali Khan had just invaded Kashgar, and his forces had spread as far south as Yarkand, when the traveller approached that city. He appears to have been able to report himself to the Aksakal, representing Cashmere at Yarkand, who, in turn, communicated with the Chinese Amban, for permission for him to enter the city; but while detained outside the walls he was captured by a roving party of Wali Khan's army. He was at once hurried off to Wali