National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 |
Kashgar 45
us up on the strong arms of his soldiers, who caught us in breathless fall, as rubber balls are caught ; he had reviewed military history in masterly order, and in the two languages we used ; he had declared, in good-humoured banter, that might is right, that his people had the might to take what they wished, and that they wished much of Asia. His manner was nervous with surcharge of energy ; his spirit was vexed by inaction. He was impatient Aggression. The young Chinese aristocrat was patient Resistance, and between them Colonel Miles was interested Peacemaker. A fourth characteristic personality in the international good-bye assemblage was Father Hendricks, Hollander by birth, Christian priest by profession, Mongolian citizen by love of his heart, dweller in Kashgar by love of change, I suppose. A good man, a polyglot, a missionary without followers, a priest without a bishop, reporting only to the great one in Rome, and to him only as moved by the spirit ; a European plunged deep into Asia for thirty years ; a lone man dreaming new sciences out of multitudinous but inaccurate data; hated by Petrovsky because he represented something other than Russia ; liked by Miles for the same reason, and because of his goodness, his versatility, and his loneliness ; loved by some of the natives, who consumed his medicines; celebrating mass on a table whose untidiness measured the loss of one Dutch
trait by a lifetime in Asia. Such was Father
Hendricks.
If his heart harboured any malice, 't was something impersonal in the way of Russophobia—justified, he believed, by biblical condemnation. "They
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