2 
NARRATIVE. 
of the Panjab, my qualms of conscience were easily 
overcome, and I at onc6 set to work to get ready for 
the march. 
People in England can have but a faint notion of the 
difficulties one has to encounter, in obtaining a proper 
outfit for such an expedition as ours; starting as we did, 
at short notice, from a remote Indian station. I lost, 
however, no time in writing for instruments, books, 
and so forth, although it was only after I had travelled 
several hundred miles that many of them overtook me. 
I had some difficulty in deciding to what subjects 
I should limit my attention, in addition to my 
medical duties, which would not in all probability 
occupy much of my time. 
Yarkand had seldom been visited by Europeans, 
and little was known regarding the country, beyond 
its geography, its climate, and the manners and 
customs of its inhabitants ; its fauna and flora were 
quite unexplored. 
In 1848 Dr. Thomson had examined the Botany of 
the country through which our route lay, as far as 
the crest of the Karakoram mountains, but he did not 
cross over into Yarkand territory. 
In 1857 Schlagintweit was, I believe, the first 
European who travelled to Yarkand from India ; he 
was murdered, however, shortly after his arrival by 
Wali Khan, who was then in power, and all his notes 
and specimens were lost to science. 
Mr. Johnson, of the Indian Trigonometrical Survey, 
visited Khoten in 1865, and made a plane-table 
survey of the country through which he passed. 
In 1868 Messrs. Shaw and Hayward visited Yar- 
kand and Kashgar, and very fully explored the 
