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0658 Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4
Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 / Page 658 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000216
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ih 1

474

EXPLORERS' JOURNEYS IN HIGH TIBET.

map his geographical coordinates exhibit an extraordinary agreement with those on my map. This is all the stranger because A— K— did not determine the geographical latitudes, and these could only be calculated from his previous map. One could almost believe, that the itinerary in question represents an eastward transposition, to the extent of 2 to 3 minutes, of the localities the position of which I determined. But under the map we read the following note: »Colonel Prschevalskij's itinerary is taken from the map which was published in Petermann's Mitteilungen in July 1883 !» Now, seeing that the map in Petermann takes in the whole of my third journey, it ought to be added that the British cartographers ignore it and have not incorporated it on their map.»

Then, after some further remarks about the unreliability of the Pundit's topographical determinations, he goes on to say, »From the residence of Barun-sasak in the south-east of Tsajdam I travelled in 1884 by the sources of the Yellow River to Dij-tschu (Jang-tse). The Pundit traversed the same route nearly three years before I did and his mapping of it is very inaccurate, as will be seen from a simple comparison of the details on the English map with the map of my fourth journey.. The following important errors at once arrest attention : (I) the existence of only one lake at the sources of the Hwang-ho instead of two, as we find on the Chinese maps; (2) the geographical position of the lake is incorrectly given; (3) Odon-tala is erroneously represented ; (4) the river Dschagijr-gol, which empties into the western lake, is shown under the name of Dykbulak, and in its upper course as the Jalun-tschan, an important tributary of the upper Jang-tse. In a word the Indian map of the Pundit is but a travesty of the reality.»*

The slips here enumerated as occurring on the Pundit's map are not sufficient to warrant Prschevalskij's general condemnation of its value. That the former only entered one lake at the sources of the Hwang-ho was of course simply due to the fact that he only saw one of the two; and as for giving a wrong name to a river, that is an error into which, as Rockhill has proved, Prschevalskij himself fell several times. Besides, in the matter of the reliability of the Pundit's map we have only to put Rockhill's and Walker's opinions against Prschevalskij's. Taking the purely geographical results, the Pundit's journey yielded at any rate a more valuable output than Prschevalskij's fourth journey, even though his details do have to be corrected in respect of several points.

* At Kjachtij na Istoki Scholtoj Reki, p. 143 if•