Huc

Huc, ÉVARISTE RÉGIS, French missionary and traveller, was born at Toulouse, August 1, 1813. Almost immediately after his ordination he joined in 1839 the missionary expedition of his order, the Lazarist Fathers, to China. In 1844 Huc, in company with Père Gabet and a single native convert, set out with the intention of penetrating to the unknown land of Tibet, beyond the terrible desert of Gobi. But it was not until January 1846 that they succeeded in reaching Lhassa, the capital of Tibet, and the residence of the Dalai Lama. And scarcely had they settled in that city and started a mission, when an order for their immediate expulsion from the country was obtained by the Chinese resident in Lhassa. They were conveyed back to Canton. Huc's health having completely broken down, he returned to France in 1852. His Asiatic experiences are recorded in Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet, et la Chine pendant les Années 1844-46 (2 vols. Paris, 1850; Eng. trans. by W. Hazlitt, 1851-52), and L'Empire Chinois (2 vols. 1854; Eng. trans. 1855). He also wrote Le Christianisme en Chine (4 vols. 1857-58; Eng. trans. 1857-58). The strangeness of some of the incidents recorded in the book on Tibet provoked some degree of incredulity; but the testimony of later travellers in the same regions fully corroborates the truth of Huc's narrative. He died at Paris in March 1860.