INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xxiii 



extremity of the Inshan mountains on the northern bank 

 of the Hoang-ho. Thence they descended to Bautu, on 

 the left bank of the river, and crossed into the dreary 

 plains of the Ordos. 



Their course lay now for nearly 300 miles Avestward, 

 and parallel to the southern bank of the river, where it 

 forms that great northern bend, familiar to all who have 

 been in the habit of consulting maps of China. In all our 

 maps the river is here represented as forming a variety of 

 branches, but the main stream as constituting the most 

 northerly of these. This bed still remains, but the river 

 now flows in the most southerly of the channels, some 

 thirty or forty miles farther south than it did in former 

 times. 



At the town of Ding-hu (called on former maps by the 

 Mongol name Chaghan-subar-khan), the travellers crossed 

 to the left bank of the Yellow River, and here they were in 

 the province of Ala-shan, of which we have from Prejevalsky 

 for the first time some distinct account. It forms a part of 



Tibet." This assertion somewhat surprised me, and led to a cross- 

 examination, by means of which I elicited, among other matters re- 

 lating to his excursion, the following : — He had passed the Great Wall 

 at Kalgan, and had ridden a seven or eight days' journey towards 

 the west, when he arrived in a mountainous country, w^here there 

 were yaks. He had " read in books " that yaks were found in Tibet. 

 The natives called the country Tibet, and so did his Chinese cox- 

 swain, who accompanied him. The people were " something like the 

 Mongols," but spoke differently. Thinkmg he was mixing up his 

 reading and experience for my special benefit and instruction, I left 

 him, and thought no more of his story until some two months after- 

 wards, at Kwei-hwa-cheng, 1 remarked that the Chinese pronounced 

 the name of the Mongol tribe in that district Ti'miet or Timet, instead 



of Toumet, and the truth of G 's story at once flashed across my 



mind . . . and that he saw yaks there I have not the slightest 

 doubt, for I have seen them in the same neighbourhood .... 

 though of course not indigenous, as he apparently supposed. 



' Having read of Tibet, and never having either read or heard of the 

 Toumet Mongols, he easily picked up the Chinese pronunciation of the 

 latter, and confusing the m and the b, told a story that would have 

 earned for a preaching friar of the fourteenth century some very hard 

 names.' — {Letter dated Sept. 29, 1873.) 



