•';^. •^(?Aaviiai]i^^ ' ^i A\^-i.iBR/\RY6'/ \EUNIVERS/. ,tLf,r.> '^\\ % a3MNil3WV^ dAlNl!i\\> |-^- NJl ' ril' / TRAVELS IN EASTERN HIGH ASIA VOL. I. LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND TARLIAMENT STREET LT Col. Nicholas Michailovitch Prejevalsky. MONGOL ^, A, THE TANGUT COUNTRY, 5 AND THE SOLITUDES OF NORTHERN TIBET BEING A "g^ttntibz of Hoars' in piglj ^sia. LIEUT.-COLONEL N. 1PREJEVALSKY, OF RUSSIAN STAFF CORPS : . OF THE IMP. RUSS. GEOG. SOC. TRANSLATED BY E. DELMAR MORGAN, F.R.G.S. WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY COLONEL HENRY YULE, C.B. LATE OF THE ROVAL ENGINEERS (beNGAl). /.V TWO VOLUMES— VOL. L Paps ixxxH llksiraibits. LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, Mz\RSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, iSS FLEET STREET. r^ 1876. JCfd TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. vs^ It was at one of the meetings of the Russian ?^ Geographical Society in the winter of 1873-74 that V Colonel Prejevalsky, then recently returned from ^ his travels, first gave an account of his adventures and experiences in the heart of Asia. ^ Being personally acquainted with him, and hear- ing that he was seeking a publisher for an English itself to t version of his work, the idea suggested me ^. of becoming the means of making known to English S readers these Russian explorations in countries of ^ daily growing interest. The task, however, would have been a difficult one had I not succeeded in ^ securing the all-valuable co-operation of Colonel > - Yule, who from beginning to end has assisted me '^^^ by his ready advice, suggestions, and amendments. "^ To Dr. Hooker, President of the Royal Society, kindness \ my warmest thanks are also due for his S in revising the names of plants. ^ Most of the illustrations are from photographs *^ lent by Baron Fr. Osten Sacken, late President of the physical section of the Imp. Geog. Soc, and well known in Europe as geographer, explorer, and botanist. He has also furnished the plates ' Ovis 4250'?'7 vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Poll' and ' Gyps Nivicola ' from his copy of Severt- soff's work on the Fauna of Turkestan. Of the remaining illustrations I am indebted for that of the Rhubarb Plant to Professor Maximovitch, of the Imperial Botanical Gardens of St. Petersburg ; three are from photographs by Mr. J. Thomson, whose splendid photographic albums of China and its people are deservedly admired, and the remainder are borrowed from the ' Tour du Monde.' In the following translation, Avhile preserving the Author's meaning, I have endeavoured to re- move from the path of the reader those stumbling- blocks which might arise from following too closely the original idiom ; in this way Russian versts are rendered into English miles, Russian fathoms into feet or yards, degrees of Centigrade into Fahrenheit, old style dates into new style, &c. I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to Mr. Clements Markham, C.B., Hon. Sec. R.G.S., for an introduction to the publishers of this work ; to Mr. Henry Dresser, F.Z.S. ; to Dr. Glinther, of the British Museum ; to Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London Library ; to Mr. Edward Weller, for the care and pains he has bestowed on the accompanying map ; and to Mr. Cooper, who has executed the engravings. It only remains to say a few words about the Author. Lieut. -Col. Prejevalsky was born in the govern- ment of Smolensk of parents belonging to the class of landed gentry. He received his education at the gym- TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. \n nasiiim or public school of Smolensk, finishing his studies at the Academy of the Staff Corps. From early life he displayed a strong love for natural science, and it was to gratify these tastes that he applied for and obtained permission to serve in Eastern Siberia. Thither he proceeded in 1867, and there he remained two years, occupying all the time he could spare from his official duties in hunt- ing, shooting, and collecting objects of natural history. On his return to St. Petersburg in 1S69 he published his ' Notes on the Ussuri,' containing a great deal of information on the eastern boundaries of Russia in Asia. Soon after its appearance in 1870 Lieut.-Col. Prejevalsky prepared for his second greater expedition, for which his previous travels and studies had served as a preparation. His companion and helpmate throughout this arduous undertaking was Lieut. Pyltseff. I have only to add that, from a letter recently received from him, I learn that he is preparing for a third expedition, and that he hopes this time to penetrate to Lob-nor, and possibly from that quarter into Tibet. E. DELMAR MORGAN. i, London : Jam/aiy 1876. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. By Colonel H. Yule. Within the last ten years the exploration of High Asia which, on our side at least, had long been languid, has re- vived and advanced with ample strides. So rapid, indeed, has been the aggression upon the limits of the Unknown that in the contemplation of a future historian of geogra- phical discovery it may easily seem that the contraction of those limits in our age might fitly be compared to the rapid evaporation of the cloud Avith which the breath has tinged a plate of polished steel. It is hardly a dozen years since our mapmakers had to rely for the most important positions in Chinese Turkes- tan on the observations of the Jesuit surveyors of the eighteenth century; and as late as the publication of that well-known work of the Messrs. Michell, ' The Russians in Central Asia,' the issuC; in the appendix to that book, of a new and corrected transcript of those data, was regarded as of some geographical moment. The incidental notices contained in fragmentary extracts or translations from medieval Persian writers, and the details given in Chinese geographical works, often hard to understand, often them- selves (like Ptolemy's Tables) only a conversion into writ- ten statement of the graphic representations of loose and inaccurate maps, were painfully studied by those who desired to enlarge or recompile the geography of the great Central basin which lies between the Himalya and the Thian Shan. Indeed, from Samarkand eastward to the caravan-track which leads from the Russian frontier at Kiakhta to the gate of the Great Wall at Kalgan, a space of 47 degrees of longitude, we were entirely dependent on X INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. such imperfect criticism of fragmentary sources as we have indicated. Almost the only scientific inroad on this im- mense territory, and that but trifling in its extent though high indeed in interest, was the excursion of Lieut. John Wood of the Indian Navy to the Great Pamir, in the winter of 1838. The scientific exploration and surveys of the Rus- sians were indeed slowly though surely advancing the march of accurate knowledge from the north ; but it was confined within the limits, vast indeed, of their own terri- tory, and touched the Thian Shan only near the western extremity of that mountain region. With ourselves, exploration, in any extensive sense, beyond our Indian frontier had almost ceased for a great many years after the calamities of Kabul ; the only notable exceptions that I can call to mind being the advance of that accomplished botanist Dr. T. Thomson to the Karakorum Pass, and the journey of his colleague Capt, Henry Strachey, of the Bengal Army, across the western angle of Tibet Proper, from Ladak to Kumaon, in 1846. But like the Russians on their side, our survey officers had been gradually mastering the ground up to the limits of the states actually held by our feudatory the Maharaja of Jamu and Kashmir, and to those of the small Tibetan provinces near the Sutlej which fell to us as part of the Sikh dominions at the end of the first Punjab war. And so on both sides a base was secured for ulterior raids upon the Terra Incognita. This Incognita was not indeed unknown in the sense in which Southern Central Africa was unknown before David Livingstone's first journey ; such sources as those to which we have referred above gave some general idea of what the region contained. But even where the Jesuit surveyors left maps, they had left, so far as we know, no narrative or description of the regions in question. And of Tibet in particular we had so little accurate knowledge that the latitude of its capital, the ' Paternal Sanctuary,' the Vatican and holy city of half Asia, was uncertain almost to the extent of sixty minutes. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. xi The first memorable incursion into the territoiy in question was the journey of Hue and Gabet in 1845-46. The later writings of Hue, pieces of pretentious and un- trustworthy book-making, have thrown some shadow upon of his own countrymen have the original narrative ; some fiction and been disposed to look on his work as half a ; stories have even reached me from Russian sources which professed to recount confessions made by Hue of his having invented his own share in the narrative, and of his having received from Gabet on his deathbed, ' on board a boat in the Canton river,' or taken from his luggage after his death, the true journals on which the popular story of the Journey to Lhassa was founded. These stories are imaginative fabri- cations, as will be seen from the facts we are about to recapi- tulate. I confess, however, that, judging from the rubbish of Hue's later writings, my own impression long was that Gabet had been the chief author of the Souvenirs, and this was confirmed to me by a conversation with which the lamented M.