PREJEVALSKY'S "MONGOLIA AND TANGUT."*
IN his introduction to this interesting book of travel, Colonel Yule points out the immense advances which have been made in our knowledge of Eastern high Asia during the last ten years. But a little while back, as he justly remarks, our map-makers had to rely for the most important positions in Chinese Turkestan on the observations of the Jesuit surveyors of the eighteenth century ; at present, but little more enterprise is needed to do away entirely with that once extensive terra incognita, the limits of which are now so closely circumscribed. Wood, Gordon, Trotter, Strachey, Hue and Gabet, Shaw, Hayward, Forsyth, Johnson, Cooper,, Armand David, Richthofen, Ney Elias, Mont- gomerie, Boyle and Manning, and a host of Russian explorers, have each added an important quota to our knowledge of Paniar, Kashgar, Mongolia, and Thibet, while Prejevalsky has now opened up to -as the Tangut country. And yet all these travel- lers have fallen, as Colonel Yule also remarks, immensely short as to distances traversed and unknown lands explored of the great Venetian, having in fact, for the most part, but followed his footsteps, leaving still unvisited a very large portion of the area that he traversed and described, while their narratives also serve to throw much light upon his pages. But Marco Polo, with his thirteenth-century ideas and scant knowledge even of such science as then existed, gives us but a romantic, misty vision of lands at that time so remote and difficult of access as to be invested with almost a fabulous character, while his successors of the present day have studied not merely their geographical and ethnological aspects, but their climate, geology, flora, and fauna,—presenting us, in fact, with a series of pictures of photographic exactness of the whole interesting and little-known region which it has been their business and pleasure to explore. Colonel Prejevalsky by no means disguises the dangers and hardships which must be en- countered by the traveller in these inhospitable regions :—" On the one hand," he says, "the deserts, with all their accompanying terrors—hurricanes, lack of water, burning heat, and piercing cold —must be encountered ; on the other, a suspicious and barbarous people, either covertly or openly hostile to Europeans ;" and he was unable, owing to the want of money, to penetrate in either of his journeys, which together embraced a period of three years, beyond Lake Koko-nor and the upper course of the Blue River, or Yang-tse-Kiang. This disappointment was naturally felt by him most keenly, and it is extraordinary that the Russian Government should have sent out an expedition so scantily pro- • Mongolia, the Tangut Country, and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet. By Lieutenant-Colonel N. Prejevalsky. of the Russian Staff Corps. Translated from the Russian by E. Delmar Morgan, F.R.G.S., and Annotated by Colonel 1"ule, 0.B. London: Sampson Low and 00. vided with scientific and other necessaries. A miserable 1350 for the first and /500 for each of the other two years of the expedi- tion, including Colonel Prejevalsky's own salary, with an addi- tional £200 as the pay of his companion, M. Pyltseff, for the whole time, seem to have constituted the total of the resources at the command of these enterprising men ; nor -was even this small pittance given in full, but remitted to Pekin in half-yearly instal- ments, so that Colonel Prejevalsky was reduced to borrow from General Vlangali, the Russian envoy at that city, the neces- sary funds for prosecuting his journey ; and notwithstanding this assistance, being only able to afford the pay of two Cossack attendants, the travellers were themselves obliged to load the camels, to pasture them, to collect argols for fuel, and in fact, to do all the drudgery of the expedition ; and what was stall worse, were obliged to forego the services of a Mongol interpreter, who would have been of inestimable service to them; and also suffered more than once from hunger, when no game was to be had, and the extortionate price demanded for a sheep would have been too great a drain upon their slender purse. "On returning to Peking after the first year," says the author, "I could not help smiling on hearing a member of one of the foreign embassies inquire how we managed to carry about with us so large a quantity of silver, gold not being current in Mongolia. What would this gentleman have thought, of us if he had known that on starting from Peking we only took 165 in cash ?" The equipment had, for the most part, to be provided by guess, since the regions to be explored were so unknown to Europeans ; seven pack-camels, two riding- horses, guns and ammunition, commissariat supplies for a twelve- month, with apparatus for drying plants and preparing specimens of natural history, constituted the bulk of his purchases ; but Colonel Prejevalsky, desiring to assume the character of a mer- chant, also took with him about £40 worth of small articles for sale. This latter venture, however, proved to be a mistake, as much time was lost in trafficking, which not only interfered with the pursuit of science, but was useless as a means of concealing the real object of the journey. As the goods sold eventually at a profit of something like cent. per cent., no loss beyond the hinderance to more useful work was, however, caused by them.
If Colonel Prejevalsky was obliged to abandon his assumed mercantile character, two others in which he succeeded much better were involuntarily forced upon him, the one being that of a saint and the other that of a doctor. In the latter capacity, his reputation was attained by the wonder-working efficiency of quinine in cases of fever ; but, totally ignorant of medicine, the gallant practitioner was reduced to add to his mild prescriptions of salts, magnesia, tincture of peppermint, and soda-powders, a most useful bit of quackery,—the application of Baurnsteitismus, a process which consists in puncturing the skin of the affected part with a bunch of needles set on a spring, and afterwards rubbing into it some kind of ointment. "This," says Colonel Prejevalsky, "never failed us to the end of the expedition," His promotion to the rank of dead-god arose from a report having spread at Koko-nor that four strangers, one of them a great Saint of the West, had arrived there on their way to Lhassa to see the Dalai-Lama, the great Saint of the East. And as this reputation for sanctity considerably lessened the difficulties of the road, the Colonel made no difficulty about it, but in his character of Kubilgan dispensed benedictions and prophecies unsparingly, and both Mongols and Tangutans came in crowds to pray not only to the strangers, but to their guns, which, from killing animals at unheard-of distances and birds on the wing, were naturally looked upon as nothing short of miraculous. To such lengths, indeed, did this superstition extend, that the Prince of Tsaidam not only gladly took charge for two months of a sack of barley- meal belonging to the holy travellers, in order that it might pro- tect him from marauding Tangatans, but also, on their return journey, presented them with a couple of sheep, in return for the good service done to him.
The route chosen by our traveller was, in the first place, from Kiakhta to Peking, passing through the sacred city of Urga, and across the desert of Gobi to Kalgan. This part of the journey, which occupied forty days, was performed in those most uncomfortable of vehicles, Chinese carts, drawn by camels; and the subsequent portion, that from Kalgan to Peking, in a pleasanter manner, on horseback, for up to this time the impedimenta were trifling, as the preparations for the main journey were only made in the Chinese capital. As some delay was occasioned by the necessity of waiting for two Cossacks who were ordered to join the party, Colonel Prejevalsky despatched the larger portion of his baggage to Kalgan, and pro- ceeded to make a two months' preliminary tour to the vicinity of
Lake Dalai-nor, wishing to make a study of the Lilly region of the plateau and to observe the spring flight of birds of passage ; and these objects accomplished, he descended to Kalgan, and thence almost immediately set out on his main jaurney through Ordos to Alaskan, on this occasion proceeding, however, no farther than Din-yuan-jug, being obliged through straitened circum- stances to return to Peking in quest of further supplies. These obtained, and as good a refit as was practicable having been accomplished, Colonel Prejevalsky started for the second time in March, 1872, and overtaking at Din-yuan-ing a caravan of Mongols bound for the temple of Chobsen in Kansa, five days' journey from Lake Koko-nor, united his party to it, and by this means accomplished one of the great objects of his desires, although, in consequence of the illness of one of his Cossacks, the author was obliged to remain behind the caravan when about forty-seven miles distant from the great lamasery which he sub- quently made his head-quarters, starting from thence upon his various expeditions in Kansa, the limit, as before stated, of his present wanderings. Taking into consideration the limited nature of his resources, the results of Colonel Prejevalsky's expedition may be said to be remarkable, and his perseverance and industry beyond praise. He travelled over more than 7,000 miles, laying down route-surveys checked by eighteen determinations of lati- tude. A meteorological record was kept during the whole journey. 5,000 specimens of plants (of which about one-fifth are new), 1,000 of birds, 3,500 of insects, 80 of reptiles and fish, and 127 of large and small mammals were brought back, and a considerable in- crease made to our knowledge of the physical features of the region traversed, first in point of interest being the discovery of an intensely moist mountain region in Kansa, to the east of Koko-nor, the characteristics of which are extremely remarkable ; and among minor matters of interest, the identification of the rheum palmatum as the true rhubarb of commerce,—a point which has hitherto been warmly disputed. In all these labours Colonel Prejevalsky was ably seconded by his assistant, M. Pyltaeff, to whom he accords a liberal meed of praise for his energy, activity, and persevering zeal. The ordinary reader will peruse with most interest the descriptions of the curious, although by no means agreeable, people with whom the writer came so closely into con- tact,—the dirty, slothful, gluttonous, cowardly, and superstitious, but hospitable Mongols, the over-reaching Chinese, and the braver and more intelligent, but equally dirty and self-seeking Tangntans, many amusing anecdotes being given of all these people in their internal and external relations. Brick-tea, the principal article of commerce, as it is also the standard of value in Mongolia, is a staple article of consumption not merely with all Asiatic nomads, but with the European traveller. To the mode of its preparation by the Mongols we will not farther advert than to characterise itas • simply disgusting. Ten to fifteen large cupfuls is the daily allow- ance for a girl, while full-grown men will take thirty. When a more substantial meal is required, dry roasted millet and kurdiuk (sheep-tail fat) are stirred into the beverage ; but milk, prepared in various ways, is also a common article of diet, mutton being that which is above all things preferred. The zoology of these countries is also extremely well described, the habits of the yaks and camels, both wild and tame, of the various kinds of antelopes, of the ogotono, and other animals, being detailed in an interesting manner, the beauty and variety of the shrubs and flowers in some regions being warmly expatiated upon. But the zeal of the traveller who explores these latitudes must be proof against every kind of discouragement, as well as against the severest sufferings from cold and heat, and upon the whole, after a close study of M. Prejevalsky's narrative, we come to the conclusion that it is much pleasanter to read of than to participate in a journey which is one continuous record of privation and of toil.
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