GEOGRAPHICAL RESULTS OF THE TIBET MISSION." 



By Sir Frank Younghusband, K. C. I. E. 



Though I shall tell to-night of a journey to the " Forbidden City," 

 there is, I fear, little, strictly speaking, new that I shall have to say. 

 My companions and myself were, indeed, the first Europeans to enter 

 Lassa for many years. Still, we can not claim credit for having been 

 the first of all, and all I can do is to corroborate and emphasize the 

 work of former travelers, and especially of those hardy Indian ex- 

 plorers A-K, Sarat Chandra Das, and others, who had made such 

 careful surveys and interesting notes that some at least of our ob- 

 stacles were removed. 



Such corroboration is, however, very necessary, for an impression 

 had of recent years grown up in Europe that Tibet was a wretched, 

 poor, inhospitable country; and this is not what those few travelers, 

 European and Indian, who had been to Lhasa before had described, 

 nor is it actually the case. The northern part of Tibet, which is all 

 that recent European travelers have seen, is indeed barren, micvdti- 

 vated, and worthless, and this forms quite two-thirds of the whole. 

 But Tibet is a large country — as large as the provinces of Bombay, 

 Madras, and the Punjab put together, and there is a third part still 

 remaining which is remarkably well cultivated, which is dotted over 

 with thriving villages and the well-built and comfortable residences 

 of the Tibet gentry. Taking it as a whole, then, and excluding the 

 worthless desert portion, Tibet is probably fully as rich as Kashmir 

 or Xepal. The valleys in which Lassa, Gyantse, and Shigatse are 

 situated, and the valley of the Brahmaputra, are neither barren 

 plateaus nor yet narrow V-shaped gorges. They are flat valleys 

 from i or 5 to as much as 10 miles broad, covered with good soil, well 

 irrigated, and richly cultivated. This is the most important geo- 

 graphical fact which, though mentioned casually by former travelers, 

 we are able to reestablish and confirm. 



And with this fact clearly impressed upon your minds, let me now 

 ask you to follow in the footsteps of the Tibet mission in its journey 



a Read at the Royal Geographical Society, February 13, 1905. Reprinted, by 

 l)ermission from The Geographical Journal, London. Vol. XXV, No. 5. May, 



1005. 



SM 1905 21 265 



