INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xix 



cure me. But this dam is a poisonous air, and rises out of 

 the ground everywhere. If you walk ten paces it makes 

 you sick, and if you picket your horse on it, it spurts from 

 the hole you drive your peg into, and knocks you senseless 

 at his heels.' 



Hue, whatever his cleverness as a painter of striking 

 scenes, was not only Avithout science, but without that geo- 

 graphical sense which sometimes enables a traveller to 

 bring back valuable contributions to geographical know- 

 ledge, even when without the means of making instrumen- 

 tal observations. 



A succession of political events during the last twenty 

 years has greatly changed the state of things in Upper 

 Asia, and has tended to the rapid widening of geographical 

 knowledge. The chief of these events have been the revolt 

 of the Mahommedan subjects of China in Eastern Turkes- 

 tan and Dzungaria, followed by the advance of Russian 

 authority into the basin of Hi, and by our own communi- 

 cations with the new authorities in the Kashgar Basin ; the 

 results of war with China in the establishment of Euro- 

 peans at Peking, and the gradual abatement of the barriers 

 that excluded them from the exploration of the interior 

 provinces of China Proper ; and, lastly, the rapid spread of 

 Russian power over Western Turkestan. 



The journey of the unfortunate Adolphus Schlagintweit 

 to Kashgar, where he was barbarously murdered in 1857, 

 was the first achieved from the Indian side. 



In the last twelve years Col. Montgomerie has been 

 indefatigable in his organisation of expeditions into the 

 Unknown region by trained Pundits. First Yarkand 

 was reached ; then Lhassa ; and a variety of other geo- 

 graphic raids were made upon Tibetan territory by this 

 kind of scientific light-horse. But much as they have done 

 to fill up blanks upon our maps, and to amend their accu- 

 racy, it is impossible for us to regard these vicarious 

 achievements with the same satisfaction that Ave derive 

 from geography conquered by the daring and toil of Euro- 



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