GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 323 



trip already to his credit. — conceived and successfully carried out a plan 

 for exploration so strikingly novel and ambitious that his name and 

 fame hail spread throughout the thinking world even before his book 

 was put on the press. Whatever his future, Hedin has already earned 

 a place among the great explorers of history ; and " Through Asia" is 

 the jiopnlar account of exploratory work hardly surpassable in inter- 

 est. Dr Hedin's journeys began with his departure from Stock- 

 holm, October 10, 1893 ; they practically ended with his arrival at Peking 

 in the middle of February, 1897 — for the return by post across Siberia was 

 over trodden paths, and gave no opportunity for new observation. The 

 serious work began with a winter journey over the Pamir — the Roof of the 

 World, — where weeks of wintry weather were spent in tedious mapping 

 at altitudes averaging about that of the highest crests of Rockies and 

 Sierra ; thence it extended eastward, attaining especial value in the desert 

 of Gobi (Takla-makan), and on the bleak and cloud- swept heights of 

 northern Thibet ; the original work ended with the passage through the 

 country of the Tangut robbers (whose heads bear the blood of earlier 

 explorers), near the headwaters of the great Hwang-hoand west of myth- 

 shrouded Koko-nor, the great saline lake of western China. Route-maps 

 were carried forward constantly; most were drawn on the scale of 1 : 95,000 ; 

 on the flat deserts the scale was reduced to 1 : 200,000, and in regions of 

 complex morphology it was increased to 1 : 50,000. The length of the 

 route covered by the mapping was 6,520 miles, of which 2,020 were pre- 

 viously untrodden by Europeans; and there were over 8,000 miles of in- 

 cidental travel to and from the field of work. Most of the geographic 

 details are necessarily omitted from the itinerary, though two main and 

 several minor maps elucidate the text satisfactorily; the more technical 

 results, geographic, anthropologic, geologic, phytologic, and meteorologic, 

 are reserved for special publications. Ample illustrative material was col- 

 lected, photographs in the earlier part of the work, pencil or ink sketches 

 after the photographic outfit was lost in the desert; and an abundance of 

 these, with a few artistic pictures, executed in Sweden under the author's 

 direction, enliven and embellish the itinerary. The first winter's 

 work in the Pamir derives interest from the great altitude at which it 

 was conducted, with the attendant climatic peculiarities. There are five 

 principal passes from the Siberian plains over the northernmost range of 

 this stupendous protuberance of the earthcrust, averaging 13,250 feet in 

 altitude; then comes Alai valley, a singular trough 75 miles long and 

 from 8,200 to 10,500 feet (i. e., from a mile and a half to two miles) in 

 altitude ; next begins the Pamir proper in the Trans-Alai mountains, cul- 

 minating in Kaufmann peak, 23,000 feet high. Thence southward toward 

 the Himalayan front stretches a plateau, corrugated in east-west ranges 

 and divided by a labyrinth of valleys among which gather the waters of 

 several of the great rivers of the earth, flowing northward to the Arctic, 

 southward to the Indian ocean, and westward to inland seas. The air 

 is wrung dry in ascending the mighty slopes, so that the summer rainfall 

 is limited and the winter snowfall meager; but the light atmosphere is 

 capricious and unstable, so that storms, sudden and severe, lurk always 

 about the passes and harass the valleys. The more tolerable part of the 



