JOURNAL 



OF 



THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. 



No. 48. —December, 1835. 



I. — Memoir on Chinese Tartary and Khoten. By W. H. Wathen, 

 Esq., Persian Secretary to the Bombay Government. 



{Extract of a letter to the Sec. As. Soc. read at the Meeting of the 2nd inst.~] 



Having had opportunities of conversing with many natives of Chinese Tartary, 

 several of whom were intelligent and well-informed men, I have drawn up a 

 description of the country, from the information I obtained from them ; and, as 

 in the absence of any more correct accounts of a region which has not been 

 visited since the time of Genghiz Kha'n and his successors, this may prove 

 interesting, T transmit the memoir to you, to be laid before the Society. 



I am well aware of the great caution with which oral information on such 

 points should be received. The accounts I obtained were not elicited by any 

 formal queries, or by giving the persons addressed any idea of the object in 

 view ; but in the course of daily interviews, and by friendly intercourse with 

 them ; and all my questions were casually introduced in the course of de«ultory 

 conversation. 



I have been on friendly terms with at least ten of these persons, who were 

 on their way to perform pilgrimage at Mecca ; and where I had any doubts 

 regarding the authenticity of information received from one, I took advantage, 

 on a different occasion, to address myself, on the same subject, to another, and 

 thus an opportunity was afforded to rectify any thing which might have been 

 incorrectly stated. 



My sole object has been to add, in any degree, however trifling, to our know- 

 ledge of a country so near our own frontier, and of which, at present, so little 

 is known ; and I trust I shall be excused, at least, in my humble attempt to 

 imitate those great men MM. Humboldt and Klaproth, who have been 

 gaining information, in precisely the same manner, from natives of Chinese 

 Tartary, who have resorted to Orenburg, or Orsk, on commercial pursuits, the 

 result of which they have lately published at Paris, — W. H. W. 

 4 p 



