Let us turn now, however, to other information, extremely discrepant from that which was given us in the capital of Thibet. According to the “Universal Geography” of Charles Ritter, {203a} Moorcroft made first a journey in 1812, which lasted two months; he was afterwards directed by the Company to procure horses from Turkestan, wherewith to improve the breed of horses in India. For this purpose he undertook a second journey in November, 1819; he got as far as Ladak, where he remained two years. In the month of October, 1822, he left that town for Cashmere, and on the 25th of August, 1825, died at Andkou, on the way from Herat to Balk. The death of Moorcroft, at the date and place stated by Charles Ritter, was announced by his fellow-traveller, M. Tribeck, in a letter dated Balk, 6th September, 1825, and addressed to Captain Wade, the resident at Loudiana. {203b} We confess that we cannot possibly reconcile such opposite statements. If Moorcroft was really not at Lha-Ssa, how is it that he was so well known there, and that the people there speak of his residence among them in terms so precise? What interest could the Thibetians have in forging such a tale? On the other hand, if Moorcroft was at Lha-Ssa, how can we explain that letter of M. Tribeck, which announces that his fellow-traveller died in 1825, exactly at the time, when, according to the other hypothesis, he was on his way to the capital of Thibet? Without pretending to reconcile these contradictions, we will cite a fact which concerns ourselves, and which will, perhaps, seem to bear some relation to the affair of Moorcroft. Some time after our arrival at Macao, we read the following article in the “Bengal Catholic Herald,” {203c} a journal printed at Calcutta. “Canton the 12th September. The French missionaries of our city have lately received the news of the deplorable death of two fathers of their mission in Mongol-Tartary.” After a cursory sketch of the Mongol-Chinese territory, the writer of the article proceeds thus:—“A French Lazarist called Huc, arrived, about three years ago, amongst some Chinese families, who were established in the valley of Black Waters, about two hundred leagues journey from the Great Wall. Another Lazarist, whose name is unknown to me, {203d} joined him in the plan of forming a mission among the Mongol Buddhists. They studied the Mongol language with the Lamas of the neighbouring Lamaseries. It seems that they were taken for foreign Lamas, and were treated in a friendly manner, particularly by the Buddhists, who are very ignorant, and who mistook the Latin of their breviaries for Sanscrit, which they do not understand, but for which they have a secret veneration, because the rites of their religious books, in Mongol, translated from the Sanscrit, are printed in red ink.