ytiiy 14, 1887] 



NATURE 



259 



Two more journeys across the continent have been brought to 

 a successful conclusion during the past year. One by M. 

 Cleerup, a Swedish officer, formerly in the service of the Congo 

 Slate, who crossed from Stanley Falls to Zanzibar, and the other 

 by the experienced traveller and geologist, Dr. Oscar Lenz, who 

 undertook, in 1885, an expedition for the purpose of reaching 

 Dr. Junker and Emin Pasha via the Congo. Reaching Stanley 

 Falls in February 1886, Dr. Lenz was unable to obtain men 

 from the Arab traders there to accompany him on the march 

 through the unknown country between that point and the Upper 

 Nile, and proceeded to Ujiji in the hope of meeting with better 

 success there, and advancing northwards along the eastern side 

 of Lake Tanganyika. The disturbed state of the country and 

 the excitement in Uganda made this impossible, and he took 

 the Tanganyika and Nyassa route to the Indian Ocean, emerging 

 at the Portuguese settlement of Quillimane. 



Further south, Dr. Hans Schinz, a learned botanist and 

 ethnologist, has l^een exploring with fruitful results the region 

 between the Kunene and Lake Ngami. 



On the eastern side of the continent our Society is especially 

 interested in the expedition of Mr. J. T. Last, who was com- 

 missioned by us in the summer of 1885 to proceed to the region 

 between the Rovuma and the Zambesi, and follow up the work 

 ■of Mr. O'Neill by exploring the Namuli Hills and the Lukugu 

 Valley. We hear by recent telegram of his safe arrival at 

 Zanzibar, and may shortly expect him home to give us in person 

 an account of hi-; journey. The letters which we have received 

 from him from time to time have informed us that he has carried 

 out his programme, though he found the summit of the Namuli 

 Hills inaccessible, and, in addition, traversed the whole region 

 a second time, striking into the interior from Quillimane, and 

 emerging at Ibo on the Mozambique coast. 



Count Pfeil, one of the most active of the pioneers in the 

 newly-acquired German Protectorate of Eastern Tropical Africa, 

 published last year an account of his two journeys in Khutu and 

 in the neighbouring region, a country previously known to us 

 only through Thomson's expedition to the Central African 

 Lakes. Some additions to our knowledge of the geography of 

 this part of the Africa.i interior have resulted from Count Pfeil's 

 labours, the most interesting of which is the discovery of the 

 main stream of the Ulanga, or upper course of the Rufigi, a 

 river which this explorer claims to be of some importance, and 

 which he navigated in a boat for upwards of 150 miles. 



The unsuccessful attempt of the experienced African traveller 

 Dr. Fischer to carry succour to Dr. Junker in 1S85-86, a mission 

 with which he was charged by that traveller's family, would have 

 excited great interest in the earlier days — not long past — of 

 Central African travel. The route he took led for several 

 hundred miles through a totally unexplored country, namely, 

 from the Pangani westward across the region which still remains 

 a great blank on our maps to the caravan route between Unyan- 

 yembe and Victoria Nyanza. He reached the southern shores of 

 the Victoria in January 1886, but found it impossible to obtain 

 leave to pass through the territory of the fanatical king of 

 Uganda. Turning backward he made a valiant attempt to reach 

 the Upper Nile by the eastern side of the great lake, but his 

 supplies failed him by the time he arrived at Lake Bahringo, 

 and he returned with a sorrowful heart to the coast. He did 

 not long survive the fatigues of this arduous journey, but died 

 soon after his return to Europe, in November last. 



In the continent of Asia the most important addition to our 

 accui-ate geographical knowledge of the interior is no doubt 

 that gained by the joint Russian and British Commission, 

 which has been engaged on the survey of the northern 

 frontier of Afghanistan from the borders of Persia to the Upper 

 Oxus, but pending the diplomatic settlement of disputed points 

 this information has n^t been made public, though it will doubt- 

 less soon become available. A brief note of a portion of this 

 work, describing surveys made by Capt^. Maitland and Talbot, 

 between the Hari-rud and Bamian, connecting Herat with the 

 last-named place, and also with points north of the Oxus, and 

 the neighbourhood of Kunduz, has appeared in our Proceedings. 

 The total area surveyed amounts to about 120,000 square miles, 

 mapped on the scale of \ inch to the mile, in 60 sheets. These 

 brilliant results are believed to be unique in the annals of sur- 

 veying. The chief of the British topographical stafif, by whom 

 these surveys were undertaken, was Colonel Holditch, to whom 

 one of the Gold Medals has now been awarded, in recognition 

 of the valuable services to geography rendered by him in this and 

 other similar expeditions. 



Much valuable geographical work has also been accomplished 

 by Mr. Ney Elias, the Gold Medallist in 1873, who was de- 

 spatched from Ladakh on a mission to Chinese Turkistan, and 

 diverging westward at YengiHissar, traversed the Pamir 

 Plateau for a distance of 360 miles, to the Khanat of Shignan. 

 The details of this j ^urney have not yet been made known by 

 the Indian authorities, but Sir Henry Rawlinson has communi- 

 cated to our Proceedings a note in which he points out that his 

 former suggestion that this route, first Vjrought to notice by Major 

 Trotter, was probably that by which caravans of Rome passed 

 from Bactria, and had been used as a military road in compara- 

 tively modern times, is confirmed by the additional light now 

 thrown on the subject ; and he identifies the lake Rang-Kul, 

 visited and described by Mr. Elias, as the famous Dragon Lake 

 of Buddhist cosmogony, and as answering very closely to the 

 description given by the Chinese traveller Hwang-tsang in the 

 seventh century. 



Mr. A. D. Carey, a gentleman in the Indian Civil Service, 

 has in a most enterprising manner devoted a period of leave of 

 absence to a very remarkable journey in Eastern Turkistan 

 and Tibet, and has traversed a large part of those central 

 regions which have lately been made known by General 

 Prejevalsky, and of which a brief resume was given in the last 

 Presidential Address. Accompanied by Mr. Dalgleish, an enter- 

 prising trader, who had previously visited Eastern Turkistan, he 

 started from Ladakh in the summer of 1885, taking a route 

 which had never before been trodden by a European, from Leh 

 eastward across the high Tibetan plateau, and descending to 

 Kiria by an extremely difficult and rugged defile vid Polu. After 

 a short stay here, he traversed the desert northward, along the 

 course of the Khotan River, and arriving at the Tarim, crossed 

 that river to Shah-yar and Kuchar. At the end of the year he 

 tracked the Tarim to Lake Lob, and proceeded thence in a south- 

 ward direction to the foot of the great escarpment which in this 

 meridian forms the northern limit of the Tibetan highlands, 

 where he wintered, and made a fresh start across the Altyn Tagh 

 in the spring of 1886. No news having been received of him for 

 many months, his friends had begun to fear for his safety, but all 

 anxiety has been set at rest by recent telegrams from India 

 announcing his safe arrival at Ladakh at the end of the winter. 

 Considering that Mr. Carey travelled without escort and 

 unarmed, and that his journey has been performed on slender 

 means through vast unknown tracts peopled by tribes supposed 

 to be of hostile and fanatical temper, his exploit is one of the 

 most remarkable in the recent annals of adventurous travel. 



Northwards of Khatmandu, the capital of Nepal, about 400 

 miles of entirely new traverse in Nepal and Tibet has been 

 contributed by a native explorer, surnamed M — H., besides a 

 confirmation of the details of a hundred miles of ground pre- 

 viously travelled over. It is regretted that the explorer brought 

 back no determinations of heights, which would have been most 

 interesting, for he crossed the main ridge of the Himalayas by 

 one of the highest passes (the Pangu-la), and approached within 

 1 5 miles of Mount Everest. Another native surveyor, R — N. , who 

 accompanied Colonel Tanner in his explorations on the Tibetan 

 border in the autumn of 1884, was despatched across Bhutan 

 and the mountains to the east to reach Gyala Sindong, the 

 lowest point yet reached on the Sanpo, and, starting from the 

 left bank of the river, to find his way back to India by at^y 

 practicable route, without recrossing the river. The object was 

 to set at rest the vexed question of the connexion between the 

 Brahmaputra and the Sanpo on the one hand, and the Irawadi 

 on the other. The explorer met with bad luck at the outset, 

 from the fact of there being hostility between Tibet and Bhutan, 

 a state of things which had closed all the passes into Tibet. 

 He therefore had to find his way back to India down the Hachhu 

 and Wongchu Rivers to Baxa, having been detained and kept 

 under surveillance for ten days by the jongpon of Chukhajong. 

 His next attempt was made from Dewangiri, whence he pro- 

 ceeded by a pretty direct route to the Monlakachung Pass, and 

 thence to the vicinity of Seh, a very large monastery on the 

 Lhobra River, the position of which had been previously ob- 

 tained from the north by Lama U — G.'s traverse of 1883. 

 Here, in consequence of the rumours regarding the advance of 

 the Tibet Mission from the south, and of a party of Russians 

 from the north, the officials absolutely stopped his further pro- 

 gress, and kept him in custody for nine days, and then conveyed 

 his party under escort to Seh. From here he escaped with his 

 party by night, and, keeping away from the beaten tracks, 

 found his way to Menchuna (lat. 28° N., long. 92° E.), and 



