Noteworthy in the progress of this knowledge was the work of
Fathers Huc and Gabet. In 1839 the former of these, a French
Lazarist priest, set out on a mission to China. Having prepared
himself at Macao by eighteen months of hard study, and having
arrayed himself like a native, even to the wearing of the queue and
the staining of his skin, he visited Peking and penetrated
Mongolia. Five years later, taking Gabet with him, both disguised
as Lamas, he began his long and toilsome journey to the chief seats
of Buddhism in Thibet, and, after two years of fearful dangers and
sufferings, accomplished it. Driven out finally by the Chinese, Huc
returned to Europe in 1852, having made one of the most heroic,
self-denying, and, as it turned out, one of the most valuable
efforts in all the noble annals of Christian missions. His accounts
of these journevs, written in a style simple, clear, and
interesting, at once attracted attention throughout the world. But
far more important than any services he had rendered to the Church
he served was the influence of his book upon the general opinions
of thinking men; for he completed a series of revelations made by
earlier, less gifted, and less devoted travellers, and brought to
the notice of the world the amazing similarity of the ideas,
institutions, observances, ceremonies, and ritual, and even the
ecclesiastical costumes of the Buddhists to those of his own Church.
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