From The Embassies And The Wars Of The British East India Company In
Hindostan, We Have Derived Much Valuable Information
Respecting Persia,
Thibet, Ava, Caubul, &c.; and from their wars, as well as from the
institution of the Asiatic Society,
And the facilities which their
conquests afforded to travellers, the whole of the peninsula of Hindostan,
as well as the country to the north of it, as far as Cashmere and the
Himaleh mountains, may be regarded as fully explored. Perhaps the most
valuable accession to geographical knowledge through the English conquests,
relates to these mountains. They seem to have been known to Pliny under the
name of Imaus: they are described by Plotemy; and they were crossed by some
of the Jesuit missionaries about the beginning of the seventeenth century;
but they were not thoroughly explored till the beginning of the nineteenth.
Mr. Moorcroft was the first European, after the missionaries, who
penetrated into the plains of Tartary through these mountains. The fullest
account, however, of the singular countries which lie among them, is given
by Mr. Frazer, who in 1814 passed in a straight line, in a direction of
this chain, between 60 and 70 miles, and also visited the sources of the
Ganges.
Our commerce with China for tea, and the hope of extending that commerce to
other articles, produced, towards the end of the last century and the
beginning of this, two embassies to China, from both of which, but
especially from the first, much additional information has been gained
respecting this extensive country, and its singular inhabitants; so that,
regarding it and them, from these embassies, and the works of the Jesuit
missionaries, we possess all the knowledge which we can well expect to
derive, so long as the Chinese are so extremely jealous of strangers.
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