654 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



desolation, Siberia, he gives us a lake and a river, which in Taimur Land are 

 known to-day as Taimur Lake and Chatanga River, where he also locates the 

 places of habitation of several Siberian hordes. Eastward of Taimur we see a 

 large river beyond what he calls Chiorsa, or the Karakorum Desert. This river 

 begins in the Altai Mountains, and probably was meant for the River Lena, but 

 its mouth is located in about latitude 56 , while southward, but up the river, ap- 

 pear the cities of Cambalu, Tenduch and Xinguer, so much celebrated by Marco 

 Polo. But, as their location is given north of the Altai Mountains, and as these 

 cities were Mongolian, or .Chinese, this, with the erroneous latitudes given, makes 

 it plain that our mediaeval geographer was much mixed in his authorities. This 

 is still more evident as the Karakorum pass and desert lie immediately north of 

 the vast Himalaya Mountains, and is one of the avenues into central Tartary. 



Among the various facts (?) that we find given by our author in his descrip- 

 tion of Tartary beyond the Jmaus (Himalaya) Mountains, which he calls Cathay, 

 Tangut, Tendu, Tebet, Koondo, etc., as its several provinces or kingdoms are 

 called which are under the empire of the Grand Cham of Tartary, whom he de- 

 scribes as a descendant of the great Ghengis Khan. Then he naively tells us that 

 "it is quite evident that his (the Great Cham's) money is not made of any metal, 

 but is made of mulberry bark, reduced to pulp and held together by some glutin- 

 ous substance, upon which, indeed, is printed the royal seal ; so that, by means of 

 this manufactured money (factitia moneta), he has accumulated an enormous 

 amount of gold, silver and precious stones." A regular Greenbacker was the 

 Grand Cham, who has many to-day that are emulous of his questionable money 

 fallacies. 



We will now leave our old worthy professor and his many whimsical con- 

 ceits, and give him the credit for showing us that even at that time the fact was 

 known that Asia and America were separated by a strait, and its discovery can 

 not be claimed by the Russians as an original discovery by Behring,but that, long 

 before him, one Staduclein, a Russian traveler, had sailed from the Lena and Judi- 

 ghirka, around the Screlagakoi Noss, or North Cape, and had reached Behring's 

 Straits, just as, in 1879, Professor Nordenskjold has demonstrated can be done by 

 his wonderful trip from Cape North, in Norway, to Behring's Straits — all the way 

 around Taimur Land, New Siberia, Baranow Island and North Cape to Behring's 

 Straits and Japan. By him the mysteries of the " Scythicum Promontorium " and 

 Cape Tabin are solved. 



