Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/763

 A S I A the town of Darchendo, or Ta Chien Lu, on the high road between Lhasa and Peking, and on the borders of China. Failing to reach India through Upper Assam he returned to the neighbourhood of Lhasa, and crossed the Himalayas by a more westerly route. Both these explorers visited Lhasa. In 1871-73 the great Russian explorer, Prjevalski, crossed the Gobi desert from the north to Kansu in Western China. He first defined the geography of Tsaidam, and mapped the hydrography of that remarkable region,

707

from which emanate the great rivers of China, Siam, and Burma. He penetrated southwards to within a months march of Lhasa. In 1876 he visited the Lob nuss!an Nor and discovered the Altyn Tagh range. In e“piorers^ 1879 he followed up the Urangi river to the Altai mountains, and demonstrated to the world the extraordinary physical changes which have passed over the heart of the Asiatic continent since Chenghiz Khan massed his vast armies in those provinces. He crossed, and named, the Dzungarian extension of the Gobi desert,

Sketch Map of Asia. and then traversed the Gobi itself from Hami to feachu, which became a point of junction between his journeys and those of Kishen Sing. He visited the sources of the Hoang-ho (Yellow river) and the Salween, and then returned to Russia. His fourth journey in 1883-85 was to Sining (the great trade centre of the Chinese borderland), and thence through Northern Tibet (crossing the Altyn Tagh to Lob Nor), and by the Cherchen-Kiria trade route to Kliotan. From Khotan he followed the Tarim to Aksu. Following Prjevalski the Russian explorers, Pevtsoff and Roborovski, in 1889-90 (and again in 1894) have added

greatly to our knowledge of the topography of Western Chinese Turkestan and the northern borders of Tibet; all these Russian expeditions being conducted on scientific principles and yielding results of the highest value. Although the establishment of a lucrative trade between India and Central Asia had been the dream of many successive Indian viceroys, and much had been done other towards improving the approaches to Simla from expiora. the north, very little was really known of the high- tions in lands of the Pamirs, or of the regions of the Central great central depression, before the mission of Sir As,a' Douglas Forsyth to Yarkand in 1870. Shaw and Hay-