SKETCH OF NICHOLAS PREJEVALSKI. 407 



6and five hundred feet ! To the difficulties afforded hy the elevation 

 were added attacks from predatory tribes, the Jegrais, which had to he 

 repelled by fighting. He was not allowed to visit Lassa, although he 

 was granted an interview with a deputation from the Holy City, who 

 came to his camp at the foot of the Bumsa Mountain, sixteen thou- 

 sand four hundred feet above the sea. "Again," he sorrowfully 

 writes, " was my effort to penetrate to the capital of Thibet baffled by 

 barbarian prejudices and the fanaticism of a stupid people. Now, 

 when the greatest obstacles had been overcome, when evei'ything had 

 been smoothed away, when I had the object of my desires so near to 

 my eye, I had again to turn back without accomplishing my purpose. 

 It was a severe trial to give it up." He returned, through a moder- 

 ately high spur of the Kuen-Lun range — which he named the Marco 

 Polo Mountains, after the old Venetian traveler — and another unknown 

 range, to Zaidam. On the 31st of January, 1880, after four and a 

 half months of wandering in Thibet, he entered the station of Dsun- 

 Lassak. This ended the second period of his expedition. The third 

 period was passed in Zaidam, and partly in the Kuku-Nor, whence he 

 undertook a journey of exploration to the sources of the Cbuan-Chi, 

 or Yellow River, which he followed from the Kuku-Nor southward 

 into the northeastern spurs of the Thibetan foot-hills. He wanted to 

 solve what had always been a riddle even to the Chinese. He returned 

 to the Kuku-Nor, and struck from it upon the old road from Ala-Shan 

 to Urga, which he had traversed in 1873. The fullest and most accu- 

 rate information which geography has gained of the regions through 

 which he traveled is what he has given it. 



This journey was characterized by Dr. Petermann as the crown of 

 Central Asiatic exploration, and as equal in importance to Stanley's 

 journey down the Congo, or even to the attainment of the pole. Of 

 its results, " Nature " said, in a summary of them, that the traveler's 

 observations would be " of special value to the ethnologist, as contain- 

 ing important details concerning the various peoples he met with. The 

 zoologist and botanist will also find much to interest him." In its 

 notice of the book, the same journal referred to the part of the narra- 

 tive describing what the author observed during his stay at Lob-Nor 

 concerning the migrations of birds as being of exceptional value. The 

 Royal Geographical Society, in April, 1879, awarded a gold medal to 

 Colonel Prejevalski, "for the great additions he has made to our 

 knowledge of Central and Eastern High Asia, by his successive ex- 

 peditions into the unexplored parts of the great plateau of Mongolia 

 and the lofty deserts of Western Thibet, and for the admirable way 

 in which he has described the regions traversed by him in the pub- 

 lished narratives of his journeys." 



No amount of adventure satisfies a traveler, and Prejevalski 

 was not satisfied with the excursions he had already made. At the 

 close of his book, describing his third expedition, he says : " The joy 



