For the use of readers who are conversant with the Indian alphabets, and the system popularly known in India as "the Hunterian," the following table, in the order in which the sounds are physiologically produced an order also followed by the Tibetans-will show the system of spelling Sanskritic words, which is here adopted, and which it will be observed, is almost identical with that of the widely used dictionaries of Monier-Williams and Childers. The different forms used in the Tibetan for aspirates and palato-sibilants are placed within brackets:

ABBREVIATIONS.

B. Ac. Ptsbg.

bourg.

BURN. I.

BURN. II. =

= Bulletin de la Classe Hist. Philol. de l'Academie de St. Peters

Burnouf's Introd. au Budd. indien.

O.M. =

Original Mitt. Ethnolog. Königl. Museum fur Völkerkunde Berlin.

PANDER = Pander's Das Pantheon, etc.

IBET, the mystic Land of the Grand Lama, joint God and King of many millions, is still the most impenetrable country in

the world. Behind its icy barriers, reared round it by Nature herself, and almost unsurmountable, its priests guard its passes jealously against foreigners.

Few Europeans have ever entered Tibet; and none for half a century have reached the

B

sacred city. Of the travellers of later times who have dared to enter this dark land, after scaling its frontiers and piercing

its passes, and thrusting themselves into its snow-swept deserts, even the most intrepid have failed to penetrate farther than the outskirts of its central province. And the information, thus perilously gained, has, with the exception of Mr. Rockhill's, been

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1 The few Europeans who have penetrated Central Tibet have mostly been Roman missionaries. The first European to reach Lhasa seems to have been Friar Odoric, of Pordenne, about 1330 A.D. on his return from Cathay (Col. YULE'S Cathay and the Road Thither, i., 149, and C. MARKILAM's Tibet, xlvi.). The capital city of Tibet referred to by him with its "bassi" or Pope is believed to have been Lhasa. In 1661 the Jesuits Albert Dorville and Johann Gruher visited Lhasa on their way from China to India. In 1706 the Capuchine fathers Josepho de Asculi and Francisco Marie de Toun penetrated to Lhasa from Bengal. In 1716 the Jesuit Desideri reached it from Kashmir and Ladak. In 1741 a Capuchine mission under Horacio de la Penna also succeeded in getting there, and the large amount of information collected by them supplied Father A. Giorgi with the material for his Alphabetum Tibetanum, published at Rome in 1762. The friendly reception accorded this party created hopes of Lhasa becoming a centre for Roman missionaries; and a Vicar apostolicus for Lhasa is still nominated and appears in the "Annuario pontificio," though of course he cannot reside within Tibet. In 1811 Lhasa was reached by Manning, a friend of Charles Lamb, and the only Englishman who seems ever to have got there; for most authorities are agreed that Moorcroft, despite the story told to M. Huc, never reached it. But Manning unfortunately left only a whimsical diary, scarcely even descriptive of his fascinating adventures. The subsequent, and the last, Europeans to reach Lhasa were the Lazarist missionaries, Huc and Gabet, in 1845. Huc's entertaining account of his journey is well known. He was soon expelled, and since then China has aided Tibet in opposing foreign ingress by strengthening its political and military barriers, as recent explorers: Prejivalsky, Rockhill, Bonvalot, Bower, Miss Taylor, etc., have found to their cost; though some are sanguine that the Sikhim Trade Convention of this year (1894) is probably the thin edge of the wedge to open up the country, and that at no distant date Tibet will be prevailed on to relax its jealous exclusiveness, so that, 'ere 1900, even Cook's tourists may visit the Lamaist Vatican.