Nov. 8, 1888] 



NATURE 



ZTi 



•" From Kulja, across the Tian-Shan, to Lob-nor," he 

 I-eft the Russian capital for Zaisan, and began his 

 third journey, the most remarkable of all. He soon 

 reached Barkul and Hami, the two Turkestan oases which 

 were almost less known than some parts of the moon. He 

 <:rossed the Western Gobi, and reached a spot, Dzun-zasak, 

 in South Tsaidam, at the foot of the highlands which 

 separate Mongolia from Tibet. Thence he went south, 

 in order to reach the longed-for Tibetan city of Lhassa. 

 The journey in the highlands which border the great 

 plateau on the north-east was exceedingly difficult. 

 'Ridges, 16,000 feet high in their lowest parts (one of 

 them was named after Marco Polo), separated from one 

 another by deep valleys, the bottoms of which are 13,000 

 and 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, had to be 

 crossed ; and when the expedition reached the upper 

 parts of the Blue River, it was brought by the guide to 

 •quite impracticable highlands, and had to find its way 

 amidst the barren mountains, peopled by Tangutes, 

 whose attacks had to be repulsed by force. Never- 

 theless, Prjevalsky crossed the highlands, and had 

 already reached, under the 32nd degree of latitude, the 

 -,^reat valley of the Tibetan river Khara-usu, whence the 

 route to Lhassa was relatively easy ; but here a new 

 obstacle rose before him. The Dalai-lama had sent 

 officials, who declared to Prjevalsky that the Tibetan 

 nation would not allow Russians to enter the capital 

 of the great chief of the Buddhist religion. The expedi- 

 tion was thus compelled to return ; and so it did, re- 

 . rossing the same highlands in the midst of the winter. 

 Having returned to the Ala-shan town Sinin, Prje- 

 valsky did not like to go back to Russia without 

 having visited the Hoang-ho, which makes a great bend 

 to the north in the neighbourhood of Kuku-nor. He 

 reached, in fact, the great river of China at Guidui, 

 crossed it, and explored it for some 200 miles, and only 

 then returned to Kiakhta, after having travelled about 

 14,700 miles, half of which stretch was surveyed, and 

 bringing in more than 4500 specimens of mammals, 

 birds, and fishes, 6000 insects, and many thousands of 

 plants. The most remarkable " find " was, however, the 

 wild horse — the ancestor of our present horse — which 



t inhabited Russia and Poland some two hundred years 

 ago, and has been described by the late I. Polyakoff under 

 the name oi Equus przewalskii\Izvestia Riiss. Geog. Soc, 

 1 881). It is hardly necessary to say that this remarkable 

 journey produced|the greatest impression on the scientific 

 world. The Russian Geographical Society elected 

 Prjevalsky an honorary member ; the city of St. Peters- 

 burg offered him its honorary citizenship, and many 

 scientific bodies bestowed on him all kinds of distinctions. 

 The general results of this journey were embodied in a 

 Aork entitled " Third Journey to Central Asia," which 

 ilso has been translated into many European languages. 



As soon as the publication of this work was ready, 

 Prjevalsky started again, in November 1883, on a new 

 journey, again proposing to visit Tibet. This time he 

 started from Kiakhta, crossed the Gobi in the winter, and 

 soon reached the spot, Dzun-zasak, whence he intended 

 jj to start for the exploration of the highlands of North- 

 Eastern Tibet. But all kinds of misfortunes attended 

 him. The expedition, freely provided with money, 

 already numbered twenty-one men, and so it could not 

 r move with less than fifty camels and several horses. It 

 was found very difficult to obtain such a number of animals 

 from the poverty-stricken populations of South Tsaidam ; 

 and Prjevalsky, usua^y so mild in his relations with the 

 natives, resorted to violence. The animals he thus 

 secured proved to be quite unfit for journeys across the 

 high ridges which fill up the space in the south of Dzun- 

 zasak ; and it seems most probable that by taking a route 

 due south from that point, instead of proceeding south- 

 westwards as he did during his third journey, Prjevalski 

 committed an error. Not taking into account the north- 



eastern direction of the ridges, he had to cross the 

 numerous ridges of the Upper Hoang-ho, instead of avail- 

 ing himself of the depressions having a south-western 

 direction, which permitted him to reach the Khara-usu in 

 1880 without serious difficulty. 



It is true that, by taking a southern direction, he 

 reached the two great lakes Jirin and Orin, through 

 which the Upper Hoang-ho flows, and that he thus solved 

 one of the problems of the geography of Asia. But when 

 he went further south, he had to cross such a succession 

 of wild highlands of an Alpine character, that his camels 

 were soon disabled ; and when he reached the Dy-tchu, 

 I or Upper Yang-tse-kiang, some 120 miles to the east of 

 the spot he visited in 1872, he found it impossible either 

 to cross it or to follow the river downwards. He was 

 obliged to return, and on his way back he even could not 

 fully explore the lakes Jirin and Orin, because the 

 Tangutes, gathering in hundreds, violently attacked the 

 caravan, and were repulsed only after having lost a great 

 number of their warriors. 



Having returned to Dzun-zrisak, Prjevalsky went north- 

 westwards along the foot of the ridges which separate 

 Mongolia from Tibet, and, when at the lake Gas, he 

 made a winter excursion into the highlands. This excur- 

 sion enabled him to get a clear idea as to the series of 

 parallel ridges which separate the Tsaidam from the 

 higher terrace of plateaus of North-Eastern Tibet. More- 

 over, instead of returning from Lob-nor by his usual 

 route, he pushed westwards into East Turkestan, as far as 

 Khotan, and returned to Russian Turkestan vid Aksu, 

 thus covering nearly the same ground as that visited at 

 the same time by Mr. Carey, 



Years and years will pass before all the specimens of 

 plants and animals brought in from his four journeys can 

 be fully described. Maximowicz's description of Central 

 Asian plants, now being printed by instalments in the 

 Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Naturahsts, already 

 gives some idea of the richness of Prjevalsky's collections, 

 which represent a total of 700 specimens of mammals, 

 5000 of birds, 1200 of reptiles and amphibia, 800 of 

 fishes, 2000 mollusks, 10,000 insects, and from 15,00010 

 16,000 plants. All the zoological specimens are in the 

 St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, the botanical speci- 

 mens at the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden, the geo- 

 logical collections at the St. Petersburg University, and 

 special funds have been granted by the Government for 

 the publication of the scientific results of these journeys 

 as soon as the necessary work has been done by the 

 specialists. 



The volume embodying the general results of Prje- 

 valsky's fourth journey, and entitled, '' From Kiakhta to 

 the Sources of the Yellow River, Northern Tibet ; and 

 the Journey from Lob-nor through the basin of the Tarim," 

 reached London only a few weeks ago, and the present 

 writer was preparing an account of it when the sad news 

 reached us from Vyernyi. Although less striking than 

 his previous books, so far as geographical discovery is 

 concerned, this work may be even more important for the 

 light it throws on the nature of a wide unknown country. 

 It presents also the clearest view of the traveller himself, 

 and affords a clue to the causes of his success. 



In a chapter devoted tD the ways and means of travel- 

 ling in Central Asia, Prjevalsky gives detailed instructions 

 as to how an expedition ought to be organized, and when 

 speaking of the traveller himself he writes: — "As to the 

 person who will have before him the beautiful task of 

 scientifically exploring new regions, his task will not be 

 easy. The explorer will have to pay for the smallest dis- 

 coveries by plenty of suffering, physical and moral. He 

 must be strong physically and morally. Flourishing 

 health, strong muscles, and still better an athletic com- 

 plexion, on the one side, and strong character, energy, and 

 resoluteness, on the other — such are the features which best 

 guarantee success.' And, after mentioning the necessity 



