166 EEPORT 1871. 



by violent perversions of ascertained geo<?rapliy, and obtained great currency both 

 in France and Germany. It is now, I believe, abandoned by every body, with the 

 exception (and the exception seems at first a serious one) of the French mis- 

 sionary priests dwelling nearest to that great burst of rivers. But the fact is, that 

 the elder of these laborious men were taught this doctrine in their youth, and sent 

 out fm-nished with maps on which this heresy was laid down as positive know- 

 ledo-e. And instead of correcting their maps by the facts that reached them in the 

 country, they seem to have felt bound to bend' the facts to this condition of their 



maps. . 1 ,. • 1 i 



But whilst we can reject with confidence the idea of any connexion between 



the Sanpu and the Irawadi, the uncertainty remains whether the Irawadi does 

 or does not derive its chief source from within the Tibetan plateau. _ The positive 

 evidence is much perplexed ; and though a dissertation on the subject appears in 

 the last Geographical Journal, I do not find that this adds materially to our light on 

 the matter. Doubts are expressed in the same paper whether the rivers Salwen 

 and Mekong come down from much beyond the 27th degree of latitude. But here 

 there is really no room for such doubt. The Mekong has been crossed as a lar^e 

 river by that adventurous traveller, Mr. Cooper, above the line of 29°. He did 

 not see the Salwen, but he was vdthin a few miles of it in the same latitude, and 

 knew it well by report. And the French missionaries, who for many years had an 

 establishment upon its banks above lat. 28°, speak of it as a great aiver. These 

 facts are in entire accordance with the Maps compiled by D'Anville from the 

 Jesuit surveys, and with the Chinese hydrogi-aphies translated in the Jesuit collec- 

 tions. The approximate delineation of these rivers, however, all the way from 

 our Asam frontier to the banks of the Kinsha or Upper Yang-tse, is one of the 

 most interesting problems remaining in this part of Asia, and is connected with 

 that other most interesting practical problem, the opening of direct commimication 

 between China and India. 



Besides the rivers of which we have been speaking there are others of a high 

 class, such as the rivers of Siam and Tongking, which rise far within the Indo- 

 Chinese region itself. Indeed nowhere, I believe, in the world can so many great 

 rivers be found flowing parallel to the sea within so narrow a span. And we shall 

 see how these rivers and the intervening mountain-ranges have affected the occu- 

 pation of the country. 



And here I would digress for a moment. 



We heard yesterday, in the General Committee of this Association, an ardent 

 protest against the deogi-aphical and other Sections for appropriating papers of 

 JEthnological character. I should be far from presuming to maintain, in the face of 

 the importance, interest, and bulk that ethnology has so rapidly assumed of late 

 years, that it shoidd not have a field in the Association as independent as its 

 votaries may desire. But I do protest against the proposition that a Geographical 

 Section should be precluded from entertaining papers that deal with ethnology, 

 or any other subject that the forty volumes of the 'Journal of the Geographical 

 Society ' embrace. The fields of the different sciences, even the purest, are not, like 

 the " marks " of our Saxon ancestors, patches cleared in a forest that encompasses 

 each and makes a broad separation between one and another. Their circles inter- 

 sect ; and the branch of knowledge which we call geography is deeply intersected 

 by those of other sciences, or rather is made up of appropriations from other sciences 

 applied to its own purpcses. We object to have it partitioned, like Poland, among 

 the adjoining empires. The ethnology of a coimtry is intimately bound up with its 

 geography. We shall not gi-udge that the ethnologist, in his own Section, should 

 deal with geographical considerations ; neither let him grudge that any man who 

 prefers to stand upon the old ways, and deal vnth the ethnology of any country as 

 a part of its geography, should be allowed to do so. 



The nations who inhabit this great region are, as you know well, entirely diverse 

 in race from the genuine Hindu, and all or nearly aU belong to the Mongoloid tj'pe, 

 and are supposed on fair gTounds, not unsupported in some cases by tradition, to 

 have descended from the high tracts of the Transhimalyan countries. Exceptions 

 exist, on the one hand, in some fragmentary Negi-ito tribes ; on the other hand we 

 see it alleged in one of the preliminary notices that have alone yet appeared of 



