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.