1890.] Geography and Travel. 655 
Kowm, 18,500 feet ; Sasir, 17,800 feet; Karawal Dawin, 14,100 feet, 
Kharching, 17,700 feet above sea. A considerable number of Hin- 
doos have penetrated into Chinese Turkestan and are engaged in 
commerce. 
Polar Regions.—The Geographical Society of Australasia has 
offered £5000 towards defraying the expenses of an Antarctic Expe- 
dition, and to this sum Oscar Dickson has added another £5000. 
Baron Nordenskjold has lectured upon the desirability of such an ex- 
pedition before the Swedish Academy, but he will not himself take the 
command of it. 
Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, who has justly achieved celebrity by his suc- 
cess in crossing South Greenland, has recently expounded his views 
respecting an expedition to the North Pole before the Geographical 
Society of Norway, at Christiana. Dr. Nansen stated that he believed 
De Long was quite correct in his idea of endeavoring to penetrate to 
the pole by means of the warm current that flows up Behring Strait. 
Three years after De Long’s expedition articles belonging to the 
Jeannette were picked up on the west coast of Greenland. These 
must have drifted across by Spitzbergen, down the coast of Greenland 
and up the west. A piece of wood, identical in kind with that used 
by the natives of Alaska to make their bows, had been found on the 
coast of Greenland. The Esquimaux of Greenland fish up drift tim- 
ber belonging to the Siberian larch, and to the red and white pines of 
the west coast of North America. He believed that the warm current 
flowed up Behring Strait, past the New Siberian Isles, across the pole, 
between the pole and Franz Josef’s Land, and then between Spitzber- 
gen and Greenland. The thing needed to reach the pole was to 
have a vessel built extraordinarily strong, and with sloping sides, so 
that she could not be crushed in the ice, but would be simply lifted 
upward by it. In such a vessel he proposed to go through Behring’s 
Strait, then to the New Siberian Islands, and then to plow onward 
northward through the ice, going with the current, packed up safe, not 
caring for being frozen up. With few men and good, and plenty of 
provisions, such a course did not offer extraordinary risks. Even 
should the vessel be crushed, many experiences have shown that a crew 
can safely take to the ice. Dr. Nansen then dwelt on the scientific re- 
sults, geographical, meteorological, etc., that would flow from the suc- 
cessful accomplishment of such a journey. 
Australasia and Polynesia.—According to a convention between 
England and Germany, the latter power not only has possession of the 
northern half of the eastern part of New Guinea, but has the right to 
