320 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the latitude and longtitude of places never before visited by a 

 geographer, whilst Mr. Shaw, dona ferens, gratified the Ataligh 

 Ghazee, not only by his mariners and address, but particularly by 

 his packages of tea. 



'* After a year's sojourn at Kashgar and Yarkand, in Eastern 

 Turkistan, Mr. Shaw returned to British India, and the Viceroy, 

 the Earl of Mayo, seeing the prospect of establishing a profitable 

 alliance with this new sovereign, his Excellency not only received 

 an envoy sent by the Ataligh Ghazee to his Excellency and the 

 Queen, but has recently sent a special British mission to that great 

 chief, and for this important mission he has wisely selected Mr. 

 Douglas Forsyth and Mr. Shaw as negotiators in the establishment 

 of a treaty of commerce between the respective countries. 



" A letter from Mr. Forsyth to myself, written on the eve of his 

 departure from Ladak, on the 2d of July last, and containing 

 matter of great geographical interest, will be read in the course 

 of this meeting. It will be seen by this letter that, grand as are 

 the geographical discoveries made by Captain Montgomerie and 

 his pundits, a grander and richer field than any yet described 

 seems now to invite exploration. I may add that I have received 

 a letter from the Earl of Mayo, dated the 18th July last, in which 

 he speaks hopefully of this important mission. On our part, we 

 have thus opened out a market for our Indian teas, and also for 

 many articles of British manufacture, in exchange for which w r e 

 shall receive not only specie, but also the fine silks and wools of 

 Turkistan, and many mineral products of those mountains, some 

 of the peaks of which rise to upwards of 24,000 feet, and many of 

 whose level tracts and plateaus are 14,000 to 17,000 feet above the 

 sea. 



"To obtain a full insight into the nature of this hitherto un- 

 known region and its remarkable ruler, I refer you to an admi- 

 rably clear and telling memoir by Mr. Shaw, published in the 

 * Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,' June 7, 1870. 

 In making these observations, I would invite some of the enter- 

 prising merchants of Liverpool, Manchester, and other places 

 in this flourishing County of Lancaster, to transmit to Yarkand, 

 via, Bombay and the Punjaub, some of their gayest but stoutest 

 cloths and cottons ; and I venture to prophesy that the Turkistan 

 people will rejoice in the arrival at the remote Yarkand of such 

 British goods/for which they will gladly exchange the products 

 of their own country or pay in specie. 



" But to return to geography : Mr. Hay ward, nothing daunted 

 by his first failure, is now endeavoring to explore the mysterious 

 Pamir Land, which no European has ever yet traversed, though 

 Lieutenant Wood, of the Indian navy, did, many years ago, 

 reach one extremity of it, in an endeavor to determine the source 

 of the Oxus, as recorded in the tenth volume of the ' Journal 

 of the Royal Geographical Society.' I earnestly hope that Mr. 

 Hayward will be the first geographer who will have described 

 this lofty region which the natives term, in their Eastern style, 

 ' The Upper Floor of the World.' If he should traverse the 

 Pamir Land, I have learned, by correspondence with the Rus- 



