Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/38

 adjoining mountain region; and then started on a journey never before attempted by any European, the direct route from Ala-shan across the Gobi to Urga.

This arduous journey had to be accomplished in the height of summer, and occupied from July 26 to September 17. 'This desert,' the author says, speaking of the depressed basin on their route called the Galpin Gobi (3,200 feet), 'is so terrible that in comparison with it the deserts of Northern Tibet may be called fruitful. There, at all events, you may often find water and good pasture-land in the valleys; here there is neither the one nor the other, not even a single oasis; everywhere the silence of the Valley of Death.' Finally, after a week's repose at Urga, the travellers re-entered their country's frontier at Kiakhta, on October 1, 1873.

Their toil had extended over three years, during which they had travelled upwards of 7,000 miles, of which they had laid down about half in routes surveyed for the first time, and accompanied by very numerous observations for altitude by the aneroid first, and afterwards by boiling point. The route surveys were checked by eighteen determinations of latitude; and a meteorological record was kept throughout the journey. The plants collected amounted to 5,000 specimens, representing upwards of 500 species, of which a fifth are new. But especially important vas the booty in zoology, which is Prejevalsky's own specialty, for this included 37 large and 90 smaller mammals, 1,000 specimens of birds, embracing 300 species, 80 specimens of reptiles and fish, and 3,500 of insects. The journey and its acquisitions form a remarkable example of resolution and persistence amid long-continued toil, hardship, and difficulty of every kind, of which Russia may well be proud.

A defect in the constitution of the expedition which forces itself on the observation of a reader was evidently the want, not only of any sufficient knowledge of the languages in use, but of any competent interpreter,—indeed, on a large part of the journey, it would seem, of anyone