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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902 : vol.4 |
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Citation Information
THE ENGLISH EXPEDITION TO LHASA.
531
as matters turned out it cannot claim any place at all in the history of geographical discovery. That old and well-proved explorer of the Himalayas, Freshfield, has indeed attempted to make the best of the geographical results obtained, but the attempt is at the best feeble.* Candler in his sincere and outspoken way is also right when he says : »In European scientific circles much was expected of the Tibetan Expedition. But it has added very little to science. The surveys that were made have done little more than modify the previous investigations of native surveyors.»**
Candler dwells upon the fact that the only exploring plan that was carried through was of subordinate importance as compared with the projected excursions towards the Tengri-nor and the Brahmaputra. And in this again he is right. The members of that expedition were Captains Ryder, Wood, and Rawling and Lieut. Bailey. They travelled westwards up the course of the Tsangpo, and crossing over the Schipki pass reached Simla in the beginning of the year 1905, having in three months covered a distance of 1300 km. The telegraph announced that they brought back with them a rich geographical harvest. Unfortunately the route which they traversed is one of the few in Tibet which had been already mapped. It was in the year 1865-66 that the incomparable Nain Singh performed the famous journey an account of which was admirably published by his instructor, the then Captain T. G. Montgomerie of the Great Triogonometrical Survey, in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society under the title Report of a Route Survey made by Pundit* — from Nepal to Lhasa, and thence through the Upper Valley of the Brahmaputra to its Source.*** The paper is accompanied by an excellent map. The work that was accomplished by the Pundit is divided by Montgomerie into four sections: (1) Thirty-one determinations of latitude with the sextant; (2) mapping of a distance of 1200 miles through absolutely unknown country; (3) temperature observations and fixing the absolute altitude of 33 stations by means of the boiling-point thermometer; (4) the keeping of a diary, with descriptions of the new year's festival at Lhasa, etc.
Wonderful men those Pundits! The English have made extraordinarily clever use of their intelligence and fidelity, and in many cases the pupil has excelled the teacher. They work with the accuracy of selfregistering instruments, and wherever their labours have admitted of control their trustworthiness has been fully demonstrated. In making practical use of the natives in this way the Russians have not advanced very far. How easily they could long, long ago have shed light upon the geography of East Turkestan, Mongolia, and Tibet with the help of the Buriats, who in respect of intelligence leave nothing to be desired. Previous to Nain Singh's journey, and it is now 4o years since that took place, East Turkestan and the whole of Tibet were perfectly unknown. Over the interior of the vast Asiatic continent there hovered a pale reflection, faint and shadowy, of the journeys of Marco Polo and the old Jesuits; but that was all.
* On the r9th January Freshfield delivered an address on the expedition before the Indian section of the Society of Arts. His hope, that some means may be hit upon of converting the temporary occupation of the Tschumbi valley into a permanent occupation, was not very happy in the light of the repudiation of Younghusband's action in making that temporary occupation.
** Op. cit., p. 237.
*** Vol. XXXVIII. (1868), pp. 129 ff.
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