xxii INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



The time was unfavourable for such a journey as 

 was proposed ; for the Mahommedan rebellion in NW. 

 China and the adjoining regions was in full blaze. 

 Singanfu, the capital of Shensi, and famous capital of 

 China in ancient times, had in the spring of 1870 been in- 

 vested, and an invasion of Shansi, perhaps of Pechihli itself, 

 had only just been barred by a timely check of the rebels 

 at Tung-kwan, on the great south-west elbow of the Yel- 

 low River, a point often, and in all ages of Chinese history, 

 the key of important campaigns. About midsummer the 

 strong frontier town of Kuku Khoto (or Kwei-hwa-cheng), 

 in the border-land north of the Great Wall, was entirely 

 blockaded from the side of Mongolia, whilst raids were 

 frequently made into its suburbs. In October Uliassutai 

 had been attacked, and the open part of the town burnt, 

 and so greatly were the Chinese alarmed for Urga itself 

 that they allowed it to be protected by a Russian garrison. 

 Prejevalsky himself does not (in this work at least) state 

 these sufficient reasons for delaying his expedition ; he 

 rather seems to leave us to infer that the delay Avas part of 

 the programme ; but we borrow the details from a notice 

 by Mr. Ney Elias, who was himself in North China and cog- 

 nisant of the circumstances. ^ 



It was impracticable, however, in such a state of things 

 to carry out the journey projected, and in the meantime 

 Colonel Prejevalsky determined on undertaking a pre- 

 liminary and experimental journey to the busy town of 

 Dolon-nor and the salt lake of Dalai-nor in Eastern Mon- 

 golia, Returning to Kalgan, he reorganised his little cara- 

 van, and on May 1 5 again ascended the Mongol table-land, 

 and travelled westward parallel to its southern margin, and 

 through the Tumet country,^ till they struck the western 



' Pro. R. Geog. Soc, vol. xviii. p. 76. 



^ Regarding this country of the Tumet, Mr. Ney Elias affords an 



interesting anecdote : — ' While at Tientsin last spring, one J 



G , a tide-waiter in the Customs service, and formerly a sailor, 



told me that every winter, when the river was closed by ice, he Avas in 

 the habit of going on a shooting excursion into Mongolia, beyond the 

 Kou-pc-Ko pass, " but last winter," he coolly added, " I went to 



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