228 



NATURE 



\Ju7ie 27, 1878 



niedal of the Geographical Society of Paris, of Avhich he 

 was made a corresponding member. He -was knighted 

 in 1839, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1847. 



In the latter part of January and in February last Mr. 

 G. J. Morrison, of Shanghai, made an interesting journey 

 overland from Hankow to Canton. The distance in a 

 straight line is about 525 miles, and he estimates that an 

 ordinary route would be less than 700 miles, though by 

 the route he took it was 860 miles. On the Avhole, Mr. 

 Morrison does not appear to have experienced any very 

 grave difficulty with the natives during his journey ; the 

 people in the southern part of the province of Hupei were 

 very civil, and not very inquisitive ; but as he got into 

 Himan, the population of which is notoriously turbulent, 

 he remarked a great difference. The main portion of his 

 land journey was through a district which had not been 

 visited by a foreigner "within the memoiy of the oldest 

 inhabitant," and the natives — as is always the case in 

 out-of-the-way parts of China — were most anxious to see 

 the stranger. Mr. Morrison's great trouble appears to 

 have been with his maps, and this was especially the 

 the case where the provinces of Hunan and Kwangtung 

 meet. "The Chinese maps of this district," he says, 

 "are very incorrect, and some foreign maps are worse. 

 The fact that along the north of Kwangtung there is a range 

 of mountains, but that this range does not form the water- 

 shed, has been puzzling to geographers. Ichang, which 

 is on the south side of the pass, is still in Hunan, and is 

 situated on the head waters of an affluent of the North 

 River of Kwangtung. This affluent runs in a narrow 

 gorge through the range above referred to." The 

 country through which Mr. Morrison passed on his 

 journey presented many points of interest. Near 

 Wuchang, on the right bank of the Yang-tsze, the land 

 is low and subject to floods, but a short distance to the 

 south it becomes undulating. A little to the west of 

 Puki, on the borders of the great tea-districts, as else- 

 where in Hunan, a large quantity of tea-oil is made ; the 

 plants from which the seeds are obtained grow about 

 eight or nine feet high, and are more straggling than 

 the tea-shrub. The Siang River, which flows through 

 Hunan, Mr. Morrison found to be in some places nearly 

 a mile broad ; but its usual width, when the water is low, 

 is about one-third of a mile. At certain seasons vessels 

 of considerable size are able to ascend as far as Changsha, 

 the capital of the province of Hunan, which is a large and 

 apparently prosperous place. Siangtan, a great trading- 

 place further on, though only a third-class city, is larger 

 than Changsha, and its population is estimated by the 

 Chinese at one million, which, no doubt, is an exaggera- 

 tion. In the neighbourhood of the borders of Kwangtung 

 the country is bleak and uninteresting. The road over 

 the Che Ling Pass, which is by no means steep, is 

 crowded with traffic, tea-oil, tobacco, &c., going south, 

 and salt and Canton goods going north. The absence 

 of trees is very noticeable both in Hunan and Kwang- 

 tung ; in the latter the traveller sees the hills for miles 

 detiuded of every tree, but in Hunan some attempts are 

 being made at replanting. The part of Mr. Morrison's 

 journey which interested and astonished him most, was 

 the examination of the coal-fields of Hunan and Kwang- 

 tung ; but it was with very great difficulty that he obtained 

 permission to visit one mine. He noticed that there, as 

 in all Chinese mines, the great want was a good road, 

 which seriously interferes with the output of coal. 



Amid all the disasters from flood and drought which 

 have fallen upon China of late, the North China Herald 

 says it is pleasant to learn that the great river which 

 has earned the epithet of ** China's Sorrow," has not this 

 year justified its name. The Governor-General of the 

 Yellow River reports that the unprecedented cold of the 

 winter caused the upper waters to freeze, and that for 



more than a month all traffic was suspended, letters 

 having to be forwarded overland by circuitous routes, a 

 necessity which has not arisen for many years, while the 

 pressure of ice in the upper waters caused a rise of one 

 or two feet lower down. 



We have already referred to the fact that relics of the 

 Franklin Expedition have been heard of as in possession 

 of the Nechelli Eskimo away to the west of Hudson Bay. 

 The schooner Eothen has left New York under Capt. 

 T. F. Barry — who was in communication with these 

 Eskimo last year — with a party to search for and bring 

 back the relics — among which are said to be written 

 records. The Eothen goes to Repuhe Bay, whence a 

 party will sledge west about 600 miles to a point near 

 Cape Englefield, whei'e the relics are said ^to be. The 

 expedition is expected to be away two years and a half. 



We have before us a number of German geographical 

 journals, the nature of whose contents we can only briefly 

 refer to. Indeed the number of these journals in Ger- 

 many, and the high quality and variety of their contents, 

 are remarkable ; they forcibly illustrate the often-repeated 

 saying that geography has become the meeting-place of 

 all the sciences. First, we have advanced sheets of 

 the July number of Petermann's ever-welcome Mit- 

 theilungen. The first article is by Dr. van Bebber, on 

 the distribution of rain in Germany during the four 

 quarters of the year, and is illustrated by four maps, 

 A remarkably picturesque preliminary, but lengthy, 

 account of his travels in the Caucasus in 1876, is con- 

 tributed by Dr. Gustav Radde, whose observations on 

 the botany of the region are valuable. Dr. Wojeikoff 

 has an important article on the results of the recent 

 Siberian Surveying Expedition, and Dr. Brehm con- 

 tributes his usual admirable monthly summary. From 

 the Berlin Geographical Society we have Nos. 3 and 4 

 of the Verhandltmgen zxid Nos. 74 and 75 of the Zeit- 

 schtift. In the former the principal paper is an ac- 

 count of Thielmann's recent ascent of Cotopaxi, and a 

 long and learned paper by Baron von Richthofen on 

 Prjwalsky's recent journey to Lob-nor. In the Zeitschrift 

 (No. 74) is a paper (with map) on the distribution of 

 rain in Europe, by Dr. Otto Krilmmel, and a paper of 

 great interest, also with a map, by Dr. Theobald Fischer, 

 on the changes in level of the Mediterranean Coast j 

 the map shows at a glance what parts of the coast are 

 rising and what parts are sinking. No. 75, apropos of 

 the recent jubilee of the Society, has a long and inte- 

 resting account of the progress of geography during the 

 past fifty years, especially in connection with the work 

 done by the Society. This is followed by a paper, with 

 map, on the ethnography of Epirus, by Dr. Kiepert. 

 In the Mittheihtngen of the Vienna Society the two- 

 principal papers also relate to the East ; one (a continua- 

 tion) being on the Turkish Vilayet of the Islands, by A. 

 Ritter von Samo, and the other being an important con- 

 tribution to Turkish ethnology by Herr Carl Sax, Austrian 

 Consul at Adrianople. The paper and map of the latter 

 show both the race and religion and language of the 

 various divisions of the country, three items which are 

 often confounded. 



The Japanese are certainly making great strides in the 

 way of harbour improvement and the extension of means 

 of inland communication, affording thereby a direct con- 

 trast to the exclusiveness and obstructiveness of the 

 Chinese. The Doboku-Kioku (Bureau of Construction) 

 now propose to construct a harbour at Samusawa in 

 Miyagi, at a cost of 350,000 yen. It is also said that the 

 Japanese Government desire to raise a home loan of 

 10,000,000 yen for the purpose of connecting Lake Biwa, 

 in the province of Omi, by a canal with the river Uji, to 

 bring the waste lands in the province of O-u under culti- 

 vation, and in order to connect Kioto with the Bay of 

 Tsuga by railway. 



