ments were afterwards sent out to
China, and copies distributed by the missionaries there as opportunities
offered. It was found, however, that the Manchus in China were able to
read Chinese, preferring it to their own language, which indeed had
become almost confined to official use.[108] In the year 1859 editions
of _St. Matthew_ and _St. Mark_ were published in Manchu and Chinese
side by side, the Manchu text being a reprint of that edited by Borrow,
and these books are still in use in Chinese Turkestan. But Borrow had
here to suffer one of the many disappointments of his life. If not
actually a gypsy he had all a gypsy's love of wandering. No impartial
reader of the innumerable letters of this period can possibly claim that
there was in Borrow any of the proselytising zeal or evangelical fervour
which wins for the names of Henry Martyn and of David Livingstone so
much honour and sympathy even among the least zealous. At the best
Borrow's zeal for religion was of the order of Dr. Keate, the famous
headmaster of Eton--'Blessed are the pure in heart ... if you are not
pure in heart, by God, I'll flog you!' Borrow had got his New Testaments
printed, and he wanted to distribute them because he wished to see still
more of the world, and had no lack of courage to carry out any well
defined scheme of the organisation which was employing him. Borrow had
thrown out constant hints in his letters home. People had suggested to
him, he said, that he was printing Testaments for which he would never
find readers. If you wish for readers, they had said to him, 'you must
seek them among the natives of Pekin and the fierce hordes of desert
Tartary.' And it was this last most courageous thing that Borrow
proposed. Let him, he said to Mr. Jowett, fix his headquarters at
Kiachta upon the northern frontier of China. The Society should have an
agent there:

I am a person of few words, and will therefore state without
circumlocution that I am willing to become that agent. I speak
Russ, Manchu, and the Tartar or broken Turkish of the Russian
steppes, and have also some knowledge of Chinese, which I
might easily improve at Kiachta, half of the inhabitants of
which town are Chinamen. I am therefore not altogether
unqualified for such an adventure.[109]

The Bible Committee considered this and other plans through the
intervening months, and it seems clear that at the end they would have
sanctioned some form