John Grueber And Albert D’orville

Abstract

If a journey from Pekin to the Koko Nor and thence through Lhasa and the territory of Nepal to Agra in India would be a considerable feat even at the present day, and secure for the traveller a place of honour in the annals of Tibetan exploration, this claim would become the more urgent if the journey were made 250 years ago. Yet this was done by two missionaries, and what Ritter wrote in 1833 still remains true that, as Grueber and d’Orville certainly were the first, so perhaps they still are the only Europeans of modern times who have traversed this route ¹). Consequently their names do, indeed, find a place in every work of importance on Tibet ²), but the remark made in the preceding chapters again applies here, that the details of their journey as given in those works are either exceedingly scanty or on several points incorrect. It was this neglect that led Richard Tronnier to publish an excellent article intended to set the two travellers in their rightful place and to draw attention to the scientific value of their expedition ³). But however grateful one must be for the results obtained, more and in part unpublished documents enable us to give a still fuller and truer picture both of the men and of their work. How little they are known outside the small circle of specialists is sufficiently borne out by the fact that Grueber’s name will be looked for in vain in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie and that his companion d’Orville has not been able to secure a place in the Biographie Nationale de Belgique.