37G 
Memorandum on the countries between 
[No. 4, 
may hope, continue so much longer.* Meanwhile it is startling to 
receive a contribution to the Society’s proceedings from this unknown 
corner of the world ; hut these brave Roman Catholic priests penetrate 
everywhere. 
Grateful as we ought to be for this contribution, we must not 
accept all its geographical indications for facts. To appraise them 
properly it would be necessary to determine what the worthy Vicar 
Apostolic has derived from actual observation and information received 
in the country, and what are merely preconceptions derived from the 
maps in his possession. 
The map which he names, that of Andriveau Goujon, Paris, 1841, 
we have not been able to find in Calcutta. But there can be- little 
doubt, from the missionary’s references, that it is substantially the 
same in its peculiarities with the map constructed by Klaproth for his 
Treatise on the Irawadi. Nearly the same is Berghaus’s map of 
Further India 1843, which I also produce. These maps show the 
country of the Khana Deba, Tsatsorken, and other places named 
by the Vicar Apostolic. 
Now this map of Klaproth’s, which I take to be the basis of the 
missionary’s general ideas of the geography of the country in which 
he lives, was compiled from Chinese sources for a specific purpose, 
viz. that of demonstrating that the great Tsanpo river of Thibet was 
identical with the Irawadi, and not with the Brahmaputra as we 
believe. 
I do not know whether anybody on the continent still maintains 
this view. Thirty years ago it was the subject of earnest controversy, 
and seems to have become almost a national dispute, Englishmen for 
* We see that intelligence has been received of the English travellers now 
advancing towards Lassa, from Chung-king upon the great Yangtse Kiang on the 
28th April, and that they were about to proceed towards Ching-tu the capital of 
the province of Sechuen. This town is on one of the branches of the great 
river in bat. 30° 50' and Long. 104°. Hence we see that they will pass far to the 
north of the country of which the Yicar apostolic speaks in this letter, their 
route probably lying by the great military road through Bathang and l’samdo 
(the latter at least as high as 31° 30') of which the route is given in great detail 
in Klaproth’s description of Thibet. If, as we trust, they accomplish their great 
journey, they will be the first European travellers who ever have done so. About 
1660 the journey through Lassa from Pekin to India was accomplished by the 
Jesuit Fathers Grueber and Dorville. But they followed to Lassa the same 
route that was taken by the missionaries Hue and Gabet in their wellltnown 
journey, passing from the neighbourhood of the Wall of China to the great lake the 
ICoko-noor, far to the northward. [I need scarcely add that since this was written 
Col. Sarel has been obliged to abandon his journey.] 
