A factor of determining importance now suddenly thrust itself into the situation. At the very time when the Viceroy was making these fruitless efforts to enter into direct communication with the Dalai Lama came the information that this exclusive personage had been sending an Envoy to the Czar. Our Ambassador at St. Petersburg forwarded to the Foreign Office an announcement in the official column of the _Journal de Saint Petersbourg_ of October 2 (15), 1900, announcing the reception by His Majesty the Emperor of a certain Dorjieff, who was described as first Tsanit Hamba to the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And, some months later, our Consul-General at Odessa forwarded to the Foreign Office an extract from the _Odessa Novosti_ of June 12 (25), 1901, stating that Odessa would welcome that day an Extraordinary Mission from the Dalai Lama of Tibet, which was proceeding to St. Petersburg with diplomatic instructions of importance. At the head of the mission was the Lama, Dorzhievy (Dorjieff), and its chief object was a rapprochement and the strengthening of good relations with Russia. It was said to have been equipped by the Dalai Lama, and despatched with autograph letters and presents from him to His Imperial Majesty. And, among other things, it was to raise the question of the establishment in St. Petersburg of a permanent Tibetan Mission for the maintenance of good relations with Russia.
This Dorjieff, it appeared from an article in the _Novoe Vremya_ of June 18 (July 1), 1901, was a Russian subject, who had grown up and received his education on Russian soil. He was by birth a Buriat of Chovinskaia (in the province of Verchnyudinsk, in Trans-Baikalia, Eastern Siberia), and was brought up in the province of Azochozki. He had settled in Tibet twenty years before his present visit to Russia. “This reappearance of the Tibet Mission in Russia proved,” said the _Novoe Vremya_, “that the favourable impressions carried back by Dorjieff to his home from his previous mission have confirmed the Dalai Lama in his intention of contracting the friendliest relations with Russia.... A rapprochement with Russia must seem to him [the Dalai Lama] the most natural step, as Russia is the only Power able to frustrate the intrigues of Great Britain.”