June i i, i 896 J 



NA TURE 



Society, will prepare the reader for consideririif the 

 opinions he was led to form on some important questions 

 regarding men and things. In 1884, at the age of twenty- 

 one, Vounghusband was invited by Mr. James to accom- 

 pany him into Manchuria. Never «as invitation more 

 eagerly accepted, and once released of his military duties 

 in India, he threw his whole being into travel. Starting 

 from Newchwang on the Yellow Sea, they pushed north- 

 ward, visiting the Ever-white Mountain, and describing for 

 the first time the wonderful crater lake on its summit, 

 8000 feet above the sea, whence flows the river Sungari. 

 Thence the journey contmued down the Sungari to Kirin, 

 and north-westward into Mongolia, eastward again, 

 and southward through thriving colonies of strong, self- 

 reliant, diligent Chinamen, to the Russian fort of Nova- 

 Kievsk, south of \'ladivostok. Thence they went back 

 to Newchwang and Peking, experiencing all the severity 

 of a Siberian winter, and observing amongst many objects 

 of interest the curious phenomenon of a frn/cn mi'st, the 



hot lower air. Thence the route lay along the edge of the 

 Tian-Shan Mountains to Kashgar, where the glory of the 

 vegetation and the comforts of the Oriental city-life were 

 fully appreciated after the weary crossing of the desert. 

 From Kashgar he proceeded to Yarkand, and thence, with 

 Haiti guides, plunged into the sea of mountains with the 

 object of reaching India by a new route. Few enterprises 

 in modern mountaineering have been more daring or 

 more successful than Younghusband's rediscovery and 

 crossing of the Mustagh Pass, inexperienced as he was in 

 the ice-craft of alpine climbers, and solely dependent on 

 native guides, who had themselves never passed that way 

 before. To an experienced and well-equipped alpinist 

 the danger would perhaps be inconsiderable, but the high 

 specialist's point of view is not that from which to judge 

 the work of a traveller, unused to mountains, arriving 

 worn from the desert with no mountaineering outfit. 



The next journey recorded is one of remarkable interest, 

 bearing as it does on the political condition of the Indian 



particles of ice being so small that the whole air glittered 

 in the sunlight. At Peking, Captain Younghusband was 

 fortunate enough to get permission to return to India over- 

 land ; and in the spring of 1887 he set out alone with a 

 small party of Chinamen to find his way across the Gobi 

 Desert to Kashgar (Fig. i), and thence over the Karakoram 

 Mountains into India by a route ne\ er previously taken by 

 Europeans. The journey was full of incident, if not of 

 adventure, as far as Hami, 2000 miles from Peking, w^hich 

 was reached in three months, at the end of July. The 

 scener)- of the Gobi Desert is powerfully described, and 

 the singular character of the gra\ el-covered valleys, the 

 cliffs, and the sand-dunes very clearly explained. It is a 

 region of ;eolian formations where erosion by the alter- 

 nation of heat and cold and the furious blasts of the pre- 

 vailing winds has its full course unchecked and unassisted 

 by water or ice. Several instances are recorded of heavy 

 showers of rain, not one drop of which reached the 

 parched ground, so rapidly did evaporation proceed in the 



NO. 1389, VOL. 54J 



-Kashgar. 



frontier. It was a reconnaissance of the passes across 

 the great mountain barrier from the north, and a visit to 

 the almost-unknown valley of Hunza in 1889. On this 

 occasion Captain Younghusband was accompanied by a 

 small detachment of Gurkhas, the native Indian troops, 

 whose praises as mountaineers and good companions 

 have been sounded by e\ery European who has had 

 occasion to do difficult work in their company. The de- 

 scription of the primitive little State is so attractive, that 

 the reader feels relieved when he is assured that since its 

 subjection to the Indian Government local autonomy has 

 been maintained, and only the raids of the mountaineers 

 on their lowland neighbours have been checked. 



In iSgo commenced a longer and more important 

 journey, which led Captain Younghusband back to 

 Yarkand and Kashgar, where he spent a winter studying 

 the curious cosmopolitan population of the capital of 

 Chinese Turkestan, and doubtless collecting information 

 which, not concerning the general public, is not 



