X INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



such imperfect criticism of fragmentary sources as we have 

 indicated. Almost the only scientific inroad on this im- 

 mense territory, and that but trifling in its extent though high 

 indeed in interest, was the excursion of Lieut. John Wood 

 of the Indian Navy to the Great Pamir, in the winter of 

 1838. The scientific exploration and surveys of the Rus- 

 sians were indeed slowly though surely advancing the 

 march of accurate knowledge from the north ; but it was 

 confined within the limits, vast indeed, of their own terri- 

 tory, and touched the Thian Shan only near the western 

 extremity of that mountain region. 



With ourselves, exploration, in any extensive sense, 

 beyond our Indian frontier had almost ceased for a great 

 many years after the calamities of Kabul ; the only 

 notable exceptions that I can call to mind being the 

 advance of that accomplished botanist Dr. T. Thomson to 

 the Karakorum Pass, and the journey of his colleague 

 Capt, Henry Strachey, of the Bengal Army, across the 

 western angle of Tibet Proper, from Ladak to Kumaon, 

 in 1846. But like the Russians on their side, our survey 

 officers had been gradually mastering the ground up to the 

 limits of the states actually held by our feudatory the 

 Maharaja of Jamu and Kashmir, and to those of the small 

 Tibetan provinces near the Sutlej which fell to us as part 

 of the Sikh dominions at the end of the first Punjab war. 

 And so on both sides a base was secured for ulterior raids 

 upon the Terra Incognita. 



This Incognita was not indeed unknown in the sense in 

 which Southern Central Africa was unknown before David 

 Livingstone's first journey ; such sources as those to which 

 we have referred above gave some general idea of what 

 the region contained. But even where the Jesuit surveyors 

 left maps, they had left, so far as we know, no narrative or 

 description of the regions in question. And of Tibet in 

 particular we had so little accurate knowledge that the 

 latitude of its capital, the ' Paternal Sanctuary,' the Vatican 

 and holy city of half Asia, was uncertain almost to the 

 extent of sixty minutes. 



