GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1868. 



303 



we believe, descended the Salwen and Irrawad- 

 dy, and reached British Burmah in safety ; but 

 was satisfied that a railroad in that direction 

 was impracticable. But Mr. F. A. Goodenough, 

 an old resident of British Burmah, thinks dif- 

 ferently, and in a letter to Major-General Sir 

 A. S. "Waugh points out two routes, one from 

 Hookong, the other from Bhamo, through 

 which, by passes in the Sing-phoo country, the 

 route is practicable. 



Mr. Bickmore, as we have already said, spent 

 some time in Japan, and while there found in 

 the island of Yesso a tribe of aborigines, whom 

 he described as the Ainos, or hairy men, and 

 whom he believed the original inhabitants of 

 that island, Saghalien, and the Kurile Islands. 

 He describes them as stout and strong, but 

 only averaging 5 feet 2 inches in height ; but 

 their great peculiarity consists in the extraor- 

 dinary development of their hair, not only on 

 the head and face but on the entire body. 

 Their hair is coarse and jet black, and they 

 wear it long, falling over the shoulders, and 

 the men as long or longer than the women. 

 These people evidently belong to the Aryan 

 race; their eyelids are horizontal and open 

 widely, not oblique and partially closed, as in 

 the Mongolian family, and their cheekbones 

 are not prominent. They are not Buddhists 

 like the Japanese, but fire-worshippers, and all 

 their social, domestic, and religious customs 

 are entirely different from those of the Jap- 

 anese, and their mental characteristics are 

 equally distinct. The Japanese testimony con- 

 cerning them is, that when they conquered 

 Yesso, 660 years B. c., they found the Ainos 

 there and subjugated them. The fact that they 

 have maintained their existence, though a sub- 

 jugated racs, for 2,500 years, is a strong evi- 

 dence of their vitality. Their language is pe- 

 culiar, and unlike that of the Japanese or 

 neighboring nations in the roots of its words, 

 though they have adopted to some extent the 

 Japanese forms of conjugation. It is not im- 

 probable that the ancient Japanese alphabet 

 of fourteen letters, recently discovered by Rev. 

 Mr. Goble, a missionary in Japan, and which is 

 evidently Aryan in its origin, may be the al- 

 phabet of the Ainos. 



The discovery of coal in large quantities and 

 of excellent quality at Ivanei, about 150 miles 

 from Hakodadi, on the island of Yesso, and at 

 a distance of only four miles from the coast 

 and from a good harbor, is an event which will 

 prove of material advantage to the communi- 

 cation by steam between Japan and the ports 

 of India and Western America. 



The last scientific work of the late John 

 Crawfurd, an eminent English geographer, 

 who died May 11, 1868, was the preparation 

 of a paper for the Royal Geographical Society 

 on British Burmah. In this he demonstrated 

 very conclusively the great advantages which 

 had accrued to that country from the substitu- 

 tion of the wise and equable government of it 

 by British officers for the tyrannical and op- 



pressive native rule. The population of the 

 country had risen, in the five years ending in 

 1867, from 1,897,807 to 2,320,453, or more 

 than 23 per cent., and this increase was largely 

 due to the immigration of the Burmese from 

 the native kingdom of Burmah, which the 

 Burmese king sought in vain to prevent. 



The great and small islands which, with the 

 peninsula of Malacca, form the vast East In- 

 dian or Malay Archipelago, have within the 

 past few years been very thoroughly explored 

 in the interests of science. Two works de- 

 voted to the description of these explorations 

 have recently appeared in England, and both 

 have been republished in this country. The 

 first, in point of time of exploration, was "The 

 Malay Archipelago; the Land of the Orang- 

 Utan and the Bird of Paradise," by Alfred 

 Russel Wallace, a well-known English natural- 

 ist, whose previous " Travels on the Amazon 

 and Rio Negro," etc., had won him reputation 

 as a careful and patient observer. His present 

 work, republished here by Harper & Brothers, 

 is a valuable and beautiful addition to our knowl- 

 edge of the fauna and flora of the Malay Archi- 

 pelago, and gives, in connection with these, con- 

 siderable information concerning the geology, 

 physical geography, philology, and ethnology of 

 the different groups of islands. Mr. "Wallace 

 spent eight years (1854-'62) on these islands, 

 mainly engaged in the collection of the birds, 

 insects, and most remarkable mammals of the 

 region, but his general geographical observa- 

 tions are of great value. The other work to 

 which we have referred is "Travels in the 

 East-Indian Archipelago," by Professor Albert 

 S. Bickmore, published here by D. Appleton 

 & Co. Professor Bickmore's expedition, like 

 that of. Mr. Wallace, was specially in the in- 

 terests of natural science, his primary object 

 being to collect the shells figured by Rum- 

 phius (in which he was more than successful), 

 but he gave a large measure of attention also 

 to general zoology, physical geography, and 

 ethnology. His tour was performed in 1865 

 and 1866, and was replete with adventures. 

 He succeeded in obtaining photographs of rep- 

 resentative men of the different races of the 

 islands that he visited, which comprised most 

 of the larger and some of the smaller islands of 

 the Archipelago. He says of his journeyings, 

 very modestly : 



From Batavia I went to Sourabaya, Macassar, the 

 capital of Celebes, thence to Coupang in the Island 

 of Timor, to Dilly and the Banda Islands, and Am- 

 boyna, where I remained two months collecting the 

 shells I had come so far to seek. Fortune favored me 

 in securing the rarest species. The governor of these 

 islands takes much interest in geology. I went with 

 him in his steam-yacht to various interesting places, 

 otherwise inaccessible. From Amboyna I went to 

 Boom and Ternate, thence to the northern end of 

 Celebes, to study the hot springs and volcanoes with 

 which that country abounds, thence by the eastern 

 shore of Celebes to Macassar, and back to Batavia, 

 thence to Padang, making a long journey among the 

 mountains, until I passed some distance into a coun- 

 try inhabited by true cannibals. 



