Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/28

xx travellers of the old stamp. These, however, have not been lacking either on the Russian side or on our own, nor, as we shall see, have France and Germany failed to contribute to the series of modern explorations in High Asia. Shaw and Hayward and Johnson were the pioneers of British exploration in Eastern Turkestan; and these have been followed by the less perilous journeys of Sir D. Forsyth and his companions, by the ride of the latter across Pamir, and by their success in connecting, at least by preliminary survey, our own scientific frontier with that of Russia. Cooper's two daring attempts to traverse the formidable barriers which man, even more than nature, has set between India and China, are hardly within the field that we are contemplating.

Since 1865-66 Armand David, like Huc and Gabet a Lazarist priest, but very unlike them in his zeal for natural science, has made a variety of adventurous journeys within the eastern borders of this little-known region. On one of these expeditions (1866) he devoted ten months to the study of the natural history of the Mongolian plateau in the vicinity and to the westward of Kwei-hwa-cheng or Kuku Khoto. In 1868 he visited the province of Szechwan, and advanced into the independent and hitherto entirely unknown Tibetan highlands on its NW. frontier, and thence into the eastern part of the Koko-nor territory. On this and previous journeys he claims to have discovered forty new species of mammals, and more than fifty of birds. Among the former are two new monkeys, living in very cold forest regions of the hill country just mentioned, and a new white bear. There has as yet been no publication in extenso of the journeys of this ardent and meritorious traveller.

Baron Richthofen, whose explorations of China have been at once the most extensive and the most scientific of our age, has traversed only a small part of the Mongolian plateau; but from his remarkable power of apprehending, and of indicating in a few words, the most characteristic features of structure and geography, he has