HUC, EVARISTE-RÉGIS. - Missionary, traveller, and writer, b. at Caylus (France) on 1 June 1813; he was admitted to the Congregation of the Mission in 1836 and took his vows in 1838. He worked zealously and with a spirit of initiative in the Vincentian family for 17 years (1853). D. in Paris on 25 March 1860. Having gone to China from 1844 to 1846 with his confrère Giuseppe Gabet (1808–53), he made a journey to Tibet in an attempt to establish a mission among the Tartars.
The recollections of this expedition, which became famous and very popular in missionary literature, were set down by him in several volumes: Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Tibet et la Chine (2 vols., Paris 1850; latest editions by J. M. Planchet, Peking 1924, and by H. d'Ardenne de Tizac, Paris 1925); L'empire chinois (a continuation of the preceding work, 2 vols., ibid. 1854), awarded a prize by the Académie française (latest edition by J. Planchet, Peking 1925); Les quarante-deux points d'enseignement profétés par Boudha, translated from Mongolian in collaboration with Gabet and published by the latter in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (Apr., May 1850); Le christianisme au Tibet en Tartarie et en Chine (4 vols., Paris 1857).