Full Excerpt

This gave me the opportunity of crossing the Jelep La into Tibet and visiting Miss Taylor at her shop in Yatung. The moment this trip was undertaken, I wanted to know a hundred things of which I was ignorant about the country and the missions besetting its borders. The subject grew with inquiry, and I felt keenly the need of a bright, readable book1 which should give a picture of the land as a whole, and photograph the present position of the investing forces.

Material for such a work began to come in, and with it a great “ find,” the original diary of Miss Taylor’s astonishing journey in 1892-93. To publish this as part of the first scheme would have been to

1 It is only right to say that I had Dot then seen “The Great Closed Land ” by Miss Marston. The present volume is cast in a different mould. 4

PREFACE

spoil the symmetry of the whole. Not to publish it would have been to omit something of the very essence of the story. For the journey stands apart as one of the great deeds of the time, and it has had a unique influence over ...