OLIPHANT, LAURENCE, b. England, 1829; son of sir Anthony, chief justice of Ceylon. He went to India when quite young, and visited the Nepaulese court. He pub lished in 1852 a description of this visit, under the title of A Join- ney to Ka tmandhu, or the .Yepaulese Ambassador at Home. He read laW at the university of Edinburgh, and was admitted to the Scotch, and afterwards to the English bar. In 1852 he traveled through Russia and the Crimea, an account of which tour appeared in 1853 as The Russian Shores if the Black Sea. He was appointed private secretary to the earl of Elgin, gov.gen. of Canada. and was for a time superintendent of Indian affairs in Canada. In 1855 he lie published an account of his travels in the United States and Canada, called Minnesota and the Far West; and soon afterwards it pamphlet ou the Crimean war, called The Coin ing Campaign. In 1856 appeared his trctnscaucasian Campaign under Omer Pasha. He
went to China in 1857, as private secretary and historiographer to lord Elgin. In 1860 he published A Karratiee of the Emil of Elgin's ,fission to China and Japan; and Patriots and Fidiusfers; Incidents of ?ravel. In 1861 he was chargé (raj:Tains in Japan, where he was dangerously wounded by assassins. He was returned to parliament in 1865, but resigned in 1858. when, with his mother, lady Oliphant, he joined the community of the " brother hood of the new life" at Portland, Chautauqua co., N. Y., where he remained for about two years. In 1870 he was at Paris, a correspondent of the London 'Times, and he was the American manager of the direct cable company, 1873-75. He published in 1870 Piccadilly; a Fragment of Contemporaneous Biography, and in 1881, Tice Land of Gilead.
The latter work contains an account of his travels in Palestine for the purposeof finding a site for a proposed colony.