Page:Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet (1879).djvu/58

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Intr.]
GRUEBER AND DORVILLE.
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the religious system of the Buddhists. Thence he made his way along a route, by tremendous precipices, into Nepal ; crossing the Kuti pass, which is several times mentioned by Mr. Bogle, the intrepid travellers reached Kathmandu, and eventually arrived at Agra, 214 days after they had left Peking. Dorville died, but Grueber continued his journey on foot through India and Persia, and embarked at Smyrna for Rome. Father Grueber died, in 1665, on his way back to China ; and the only record of his wonderful journey is contained in a few meagre letters which have been preserved in a small volume.[1] An abstract of those addressed to Kircher[2] was originally published by him in the ' China lUustrata,' and all were reproduced in the collection of Thevenot.[3] Indeed, it would appear that Grueber was not

  1. ' Notizie varie dell' Imperio della China' (Florence, 1687), edited by Jacopo Oarlieri, 12mo. This volume contains an account of China gathered from a discourse held with Father Grueber (80 pages), as well as letters in Latin, addressed by Grueber to various fathers, giving accounts of China and Tibet (42 pages). One of the letters is apparently a sort of abstract or compilation, headed " ex Uteris Grueberi Kirchero inscripto," and is written in the third person. The other three are written in the first person, and seem not to have been altered from the manuscripts of Grueber.
  2. Grueber's ' Iter e China in Mogor ' forms the second chapter of the second part of the 'China Illustrata' of P. Kircher. Athanasius Kircher was born at Geysen, a small town near Fulda, in Germany, in 1602. He was a Jesuit, aud was one of the most laborious and learned men that the Company has pro- duced. He studied all branches of learning with ardour, but his chief object was the acquisition of a com- plete kaowledge of the Oriental lan- guages, of which he was professor at Wurtzburg. On the breaking out of the Thirty Years' war he retired to Avignon, and went thence to Rome, where he died in 1680. His erudition was something stupendous, but he was devoid of the critical faculty, and thus much of his indefatigable industry and marvellous power of acquiring know- ledge were wasted. His work relating to Tibet is oae out of about forty that he produced on various subjects. The title is ' China monumentis qua sacris, qua profanis, necnon variis naturae et artis spectaculis illustrata' (Amster- dam, folio, 1667). It was translated into French by d'Alquie in 1670; and partly into English by John Ogilby in 1669, but merely as an appendix to a folio volume containing a translation of an account of a Dutch Embassy to China. The ' China Illustrata ' gives an account of the arrival of the mis- sionaries in China : it is the first work in which the characters of the Devana- gari alphabet were ever engraved, and it contains the account of Grueber's visit to Lhasa.
  3. Melchisedek Thevenot, uncle of Jean Thevenot, the famous traveller, was born in 1620, and died in 1690. He published Grueber's letters in 'Relations de divers Voyages curieux qui