62 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[March 1, 1897. 



must be looked on as the culmination of Arctic travel in 

 the Victorian era. 



Whether the Antarctic regions are to yield their secrets 

 in this century or in this reign is extremely doubtful. Sir 

 James Clarke Ross led his great expedition round the 

 southern ice in 1841, and left the names of his ships, 

 Erebus and Terror, on the lonely volcanoes that no human 

 eye has since looked upon. The Challenger, in the course 

 of her voyage thirty years later, just crossed the border 

 of the Antarctic area, and but for the visits of whalers from 

 Scotland and Norway during the last four years, there 

 has been no farther advance. At this moment several 

 Antarctic expeditions are talked of, and one is announced 

 as ready to sail from Belgium in July, 1897. The field 

 before it is wide. 



Next to the Polar areas Africa is the region in which 

 the explorations of the last sixty years have led to the 

 most striking advances of knowledge. In 1837 this truly 

 deserved its name of the " Dark Continent," for nothing 

 was known save the coast-line, the Lower Nile and 

 Abyssinia, a few tracks across the Sahara, the River 

 Niger, a portion of the Zambesi, and a small area 

 north of the Cape of Good Hope. The fanciful detail 

 of interlacing lake and river systems had been cleared 

 away by D'AnvUle a century before, and the map 

 stood swept almost bare, garnished only with the 

 newly-traced Niger, and the hypothetical chain of the 

 Mountains of the Moon stretching across from Guinea to 

 the Indian Ocean. The trade of centuries on the West 

 Coast had led to no explorations worthy of the name, and 

 it was not until the missionary travels of Dr. David 

 Livingstone in the fifties that any real interest was 

 evinced in the continent as a whole. As a pioneer of 

 African discovery Livingstone may be looked upon as the 

 initiator of the modern period, and in his methods of 

 work and his treatment of natives he remains a model for 

 all time. His discovery of Lake Nyassa in 18.59, Burton's 

 discovery of Tanganyika in 1858, Speke's of the Victoria 

 Nyanza in 1859, and Baker's of the Albert Nyanza in 

 1802, threw open the great lake region of East Africa 

 along its whole length; and the main lines of the geography 

 of the eastern strip of Africa under the rule of the Sultan 

 of Zanzibar were quickly laid down by an increasing 

 number of explorers. The sources of the Nile have exercised 

 a fascination for travellers in Africa like that of the search 

 for the North-West Passage or the North Pole for Arctic 

 voyagers ; and in pursuit of these sources Livingstone 

 was tracing the great river Lualaba, which flowed north- 

 ward west of Lake Tanganyika, to its source in Lake 

 Bangweolo, when death overtook him in 1873. Believing 

 that his great river was the Nile, he could not yet resist 

 the suspicion that it might after all turn out to be the 

 Congo. This supposition was turned into certainty by 

 Mr. H. M. Stanley's magnificent journey of 1877, when 

 he traced the Lualaba round its great Equatorial bend, 

 and opened up the vast waterway from Stanley Falls to 

 Stanley Pool on his way to the sea. Cameron had before 

 made a crossing of Tropical Africa farther south, but no 

 journey in Africa has been so fateful as that of Stanley 

 down the Congo. It led to the foundation of the Congo 

 Free State and the opening up of the whole great river to 

 steamer traffic, affording a base from which the northern 

 and southern tributaries could be explored to their sources. 

 In 1884 commenced the "scramble" of the European 

 Powers for African possessions, and the resulting partition 

 of the coast into spheres of influence, whence the explorers 

 of each nationality pushed inland in the eifort to secure the 

 Hinterland and command the sources of internal trade. The 

 remotest deserts of the Sahara, isolated parts of the 



Equatorial forests, and a portion of Somaliland, are the 

 only regions now remaining entirely unknown. 



Turning to the vast continent of Asia, we see a region 

 in which the motives for exploration are in some ways 

 different. As in Africa, the encroachment of European 

 Powers has pressed heavily upon the native states from 

 several sides ; but alteration of frontiers now proceeds 

 slowly by treaty, and the attention of explorers is directed 

 mainly to the completion of the long-delayed rough surveys 

 of routes and physical features. 



W. Giflford Palgrave and Burton have made known some 

 of the least accessible pai-ts of Arabia, much of which still 

 remains unknown. 



The operations of the Survey of India are perhaps the 

 most remarkable of the geographical advances in Asia 

 during the last sixty years, leading as they have done to 

 the exploration of the border lands of that empire. Much 

 remains to do before the noble range of the Himalayas is 

 fully known even on its southern face, for the political 

 system of the Indian Empire respects the independence 

 and exclusiveness of the border tribes, and practically pro- 

 hibits exploration by Europeans in many places. Trained 

 natives of India, employed on the initiative of Colonel 

 Montgomery, have, however, solved many problems of geo- 

 graphy in the forbidden lands, traversing the Himalayan 

 passes, residing in the sacred city of Lhasa itself, and prov- 

 ing the true course of the Brahmaputra River. Expeditions 

 of Survey oiScers have linked the Indian triangulation with 

 that of Russia through Baluchistan and Persia, and across 

 the passes of the Hindu Kush. The study of Kafiristan 

 by Sir Cieorge Robertson in 1890 was a remarkable 

 instance of the way in which such dangerous and little 

 known valleys as those of the Kafirs can be entered safely 

 by prudent and tactful explorers. Long journeys in the 

 interior of Asia, made largely by British officials on 

 political expeditions or on holiday excursions, have enabled 

 the outline of the mountain system surrounding the vast 

 plateau of Tibet to be filled in. The names of only a few 

 can be mentioned as types of the many. Hay ward, who 

 in 1868 crossed the Kuen-lun to Kashgar and Yarkand, 

 perished in Central Asia ; but the route he opened is now 

 frequently traversed. Wood, who explored the source 

 region of the Oxus in 1840, first gave correct views regard- 

 ing the Pamirs, which, thanks to the visits of innumerable 

 sporting expeditions, and the Russian and Indian Delimita- 

 tion Commission, is now thoroughly^well known. Mr. St. 

 George Littledale, whose great journey across Tibet from 

 north to south compares. with that of Captain Bower from 

 west to east, is an example of a sportsman who has trained 

 himself to become an efficient geographer. Mr. Ney 

 Elias, in 1871, and Lieut. Younghusband, in 1889, have 

 made themselves famous by their jom'neys from China 

 through the desert belt which intervenes between the 

 Tibetan plateau and the Siberian plain. In the same 

 regions the great Russian traveller Przhevalski and his 

 successors have set in order the physical map, and 

 discovered many curious features of river, lake, and valley. 

 The French, since the time of Abbe Hue, have been to the 

 front in the exploration of Eastern Asia. Garnier's pioneer 

 journey by the Mekong from Cambodia to China, Prince 

 Henry of Orleans' crossing of Tibet, and his journey from 

 French Indo-China to India, are important instances. The 

 American Rockhill did much to elucidate Tibet and 

 Mongolia ; while the labours of the Swedish explorer Sven 

 Hedin, during the last lew years, have resulted in a 

 thorough scientific study of Eastern Turkestan and its 

 bordering mountains on the west. The work on China by 

 Baron von Richthofen is as perfect an example of the late 

 Victorian methods of geographical research as the descrip- 



