Ixxii APPENDIX. 



The new Sources of Information which have been opened to their Inquiries. 



There are four new sources from whence the Committee expect to derive valuable 

 information. The first is Baron Mayendorff ; the second is Baron A. Humboldt ; the 

 third is Monsieur .Jacquemont ; the fourth is Lord Dalhousie and Sir Edward Owen. 

 Baron Mayendorff, who was sent out two years ago by the Russian government on 

 a mission from Ore bourg to Bokhara, is now an active member of the Oriental 

 Committee at St. Petersburg, the principal business of which is to regulate the 

 intercourse which takes place between Russia and Asia. The brother of the Baron 

 is now in England, and has expressed to the Committee the Baron's wish to 

 communicate with it upon every subject relative to Asia on which he can afford 

 it any information. The Committee have availed themselves of this offer, and 

 expect to derive information from the Baron, and from those who accompanied him 

 on his mission to Bokhara, relative to the intercourse which is kept up between the 

 Russians at Kiakhta and the frontiers of China — relative to the different tribes of 

 people, and the different countries with which he became acquainted while on his 

 route from Orenbourg to Bokhara, and also relative to the parts of Asia which were 

 visited by another Russian officer, who was sent by the Emperor to the Khan of 

 Khiva, and who obtained much new and curious information concerning the geology 

 and natural history of the country which is situated between the Aral Lake and the 

 Caspian Sea. Through the Baron, the Committee hope to procure a copy of the 

 collection of the customary laws of the Kalmucks, and of that of the customary laws of 

 the Georgians. Theestablishmentof the free port, called the Redout Koule, to the South 

 of Anapa, at the mouth of the Phasis, affords the Russian government great facilities for 

 procuring an intimate knowledge of Georgia, Circassiaand Armenia ; and the late war 

 with Persia, and the present one with Turkey, have enabled it to obtain some very 

 valuable Persian, Arabic, and Armenian works. By a clause in the treaty of peace which 

 Russia has recently concluded with Persia, the former government is authorized to take 

 out of the libraries in Persia such works as may be deemed objects of literary 

 curiosity. The Committee expect, by the assistance of Prince Lieven, soon to 

 procure a list of these works, and of all those which are in the libraries of Etch- 

 miazin and Ardebil. The former of these libraries has been visited by Col. D'Arcy, 

 who has made drawings of the Armenian convent in which the books are kept, and 

 of Mount Ararat, near the foot of which this convent is situated. Ardebil has been 

 taken by the Russians, who have carefully preserved all the works that were in 

 the library : many of them are valuable, being Arabic translations of the Greek 

 classics, made in the ninth and tenth centuries, by the Nestorian Christians, who 

 were employed by the Caliphs of Bagdad for that purpose. It is believed that there 

 is amongst these works an Arabic translation of some of the books of Aristotle, the 

 Greek original of which has been lost. 



The second new source of information is Baron A. Humboldt, who is about to visit 

 in the first instance the Ural Mountains ; and in the second, the Caucasus. As this 



