Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/29

Rh thrown more light on the physical character of the region, so far as he saw it, than any other traveller.

Our countryman, Mr. Ney Elias, who has shown a remarkable combination of a traveller's best gifts with singular modesty in their display, has carried a new line of observations along the vast diagonal of Mongolia from the Gate at Kalgan to the Russian frontier on the Altai, through Uliassutai and Kobdo, a distance of upwards of 2,000 miles. To him these remarks are often indebted.

Dr. Bushell and Mr. Grosvenor have also passed the Wall at Kalgan to visit Dolon-nor, and Shangtu, the desolate site of the summer-palace of the great Kublaï.

We cannot attempt to recall even the chief names in the history of exploration from the Russian side, though I should be loath to leave unspecified the successful journey of that accomplished couple, Alexis and Olga Fedchenko, to the Alai Steppe, which is in fact a northern analogue of Pamir, separated from the southern plateaux, so called, by the mighty chain to which Fedchenko gave the name of Trans-Alai, the Kizil-yurt of our own Anglo-Indian travellers. But of all modern Russian incursions on the tracts that we have designated as the Unknown, Lieut.-Col. Prejevalsky's has been the boldest, the most persevering, and the most extensive.

The scene of his explorations was that plateau of Mongolia of which we have so often spoken, and that region which rises so far above it, the terraced plains, and lofty deserts of Northern Tibet, which spread out at a level equal to that of the highest summits of the Bernese Oberland, whilst the ranges which buttress the steps of the ascent rise considerably higher.

Captain (now Lieut.-Col.) Prejevalsky was already known as an able explorer, when, in 1870, he was deputed by the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, under the sanction of the War Department, to conduct an exploration into Southern Mongolia. With his companion he left Kiakhta on November 29, 1870, for Peking, where they remained till the spring.