No Englishman had hitherto passed beyond the range of lofty mountains which separates the secluded valley of Nepaul from the north-eastern parts of Bengal: and the public curiosity respecting that Terra Incognita" (as it might then be justly called), was still ungratified, except by the vague and unsatisfactory reports of a few missionaries and itinerant traders,+ when, towards the close of the year 1792, an opportunity was unexpectedly presented to the British Government in India, of removing the veil which had so long interposed between the two countries, and of establishing a more intimate and beneficial connection with the Hindoo state of Khatmandu, than had yet been found practicable. Of this opportunity the late Marquis Cornwallis, who then presided over the British Possessions in India, did not neglect to avail himself.
That venerated nobleman had, some time before, form-ed certain arrangements with the existing authorities of Nepaul, which, it is to be regretted, were not followed up, as they would have left nothing more to be wished for by the British Government: since, besides being well calculated to promote and protect the commercial inter-course of the two nations, they had a necessary tendency to extend and improve, by degrees, all the other social relations, to which proximity of situation naturally invites.
Such, however, was not yet the case. The habitual jealousy of the Goorkhas,+ fostered, at least, if it was not inflamed by the insidious representations of individuals desirous of preserving the exclusive influence, and profitable monopoly, which that jealousy had enabled them to acquire, and which they saw endangered by the closer approach of the two governments, either wholly prevented the removal, or soon led to the revival, of many of those impediments to a secure and active trade, which it had been the express purpose of the recent treaty to obviate. Accordingly, little or no progress had been made in effectuating the enlightened views of the framers of that treaty, when the course of events seemed, on a sudden, as already inti-mated, to furnish a peculiarly favourable occasion for accomplishing their complete realization.
The Court of Pekin, resenting certain encroachments which had been made by the Government of Nepaul upon the rights of the Lama of Tibet, whom the Emperor of China had, for some time past, taken under his protection, or, in other words, had subjected to the Chinese yoke, came to the resolution of chastising the aggressor, or the Robber, as the Rajah of Nepaul was contemptuously styled in the Chinese dispatches to Lord Cornwallis on the occasion.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1086)
Archaeology (753)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist