THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 



455 



The main glacier was most beautiful, 

 looking like a curious broad staircase of 

 snowy whiteness, leading from where we 

 stood heavenward. There were several 

 fine waterfalls gushing out from holes in 

 the cliffs high above us and disappearing 

 before they reached the path, the rivulets 

 of water oozing out again from the banks 

 of the main stream, showing that the wa- 

 ter had resumed a subterranean course. 

 A curious feature about the falls was that 

 as the power of the sun increased so did 

 the waterfalls visibly increase in size. 

 Our camp that night was a cheery one 

 and we relieved the time by learning, to 

 the great amusement of the bystanders, 

 to play Bhutanese backgammon, our im- 

 plements being two wooden dice, a col- 

 lection of little wooden sticks of varying 

 length, and a handful of beans. 



A short march brought us to the Phew- 

 la, or Ling-shi-La, over which pass we 

 crossed into Tibet. 



By this time the different kinds of 

 transport I had used during my tours had 

 included, I should think, about every 



known sort. I had made use of coolies, 

 elephants, mules, ponies, donkeys, yaks, 

 oxen, carts, pony-traps, rail, and steamer, 

 and the only available animal I had not 

 employed was the Tibetan pack-sheep. 



I hope I may have interested my read- 

 ers by my account of this hitherto-un- 

 known country, one so little known that 

 as recently as 1890 a high Indian official 

 wrote most undeservedly, as my explora- 

 tions proved : "No one wishes to explore 

 that tangle of jungle-clad and fever- 

 stricken hills, infested with leeches and 

 the pipsa-fly ; and offering no compensat- 

 ing advantages to the most enterprising 

 pioneer. Adventure looks beyond Bhu- 

 tan. Science passes it by as a region not 

 sufficiently characteristic to merit special 

 exploration." 



And with this quotation I must close 

 for the present, though later I hope to 

 give the readers of the National Geo- 

 graphic Magazine some of my impres- 

 sions of Tibet itself, in which country I 

 have also done a certain amount of trav- 

 eling. 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY AND 



ITS NEW BUILDING 



BUILT with the solidity of a gov- 

 ernment building, planned as a 

 model of what a building may be 

 as the home of a great society and as the 

 quarters of a large orifice force, the new 

 building of the National Geographic So- 

 ciety combines every feature that mod- 

 ern architecture and sanitary engineer- 

 ing had to suggest toward making it the 

 architectural representation of the ideals 

 of the Society. 



Its splendid proportions are typical of 

 the wonderful growth of a great move- 

 ment for the increase and diffusion of 

 geographic knowledge. That movement 

 began with the founding of the National 

 Geographic Society, "for the increase 

 and diffusion of geographic knowledge," 

 January 27, 1888, by a small band of 

 explorers and scientists. 



For some ten years the Society fol- 

 lowed the usual course of scientific so- 



cieties, being a small institution with 

 many ambitions, which the limitations of 

 its funds prevented being fulfilled except 

 in an imperfect way. Then, in 1899, 

 came a new idea. Why not popularize 

 the science of geography and take it into 

 the homes of the people? Why not trans- 

 form the Society's Magazine from one of 

 cold geographic fact, expressed in hiero- 

 glyphic terms which the layman could 

 not understand, into a vehicle for carry- 

 ing the living, breathing, human-interest 

 facts about this great world of ours to 

 the people ? Would not that be the great- 

 est agency of all for the diffusion of 

 geographic knowledge? 



A GEOGRAPHIC AWAKENING 



With an affirmative answer, a new era 

 in geographic education dawned. The 

 National Geographic Society found the 

 whole world ready to enrich the pages of 



