In Peking began the most tedious period of the whole course of the expedition, in the form of five and a half months of negotiations with the Government and with the leading men in the scientific world. The Swedish Minister, OSCAR EwERI,öF, was at that time still in Tokyo, while Baron CARL, LEIJoNHUFVUD was acting as chargé d'a f f aires in Peking. The expedition stood, as has already been mentioned, under their protection. Dr Bovi , the German Minister, who also met us with the greatest good-will, was more in the background.
Only a few days before my arrival in Peking, after his journey in North China, H. R. H the Crown Prince of Sweden had left Shanghai. He had taken up the cudgels for the expedition with great good-will in conversations with Dr WELLINGTON Koo and the vice-minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr WANG YIN-T'AI.
After the Crown Prince's departure Professor J. G. ANDERSSON returned to Peking, and I cannot sufficiently thank him for the indefatigable way in which he gave his time and energies to help our expedition and give it as happy and advantageous a start as possible. To give the broad lines of my recollections and impressions of this period may be of historical interest, for not only was my expedition begun during the memorable and exciting period when fresh winds bearing nationalistic ideas came sweeping over China prom the south, but it was also one of the last — if not the very last — to be carried out undisturbed before the Japanese invasion, in 1937, swept like a storm over large parts of China, changing all the old order of things, laying a heavy hand on the scientific world, and introducing what the Japanese themselves have called »the new order in East Asia ». Only 15 years had elapsed since the fall of the Manchu dynasty and the inception of the republic. Unrest and dissensions were still rife between South and North China. How different is everything now, as compared with prevailing conditions then, and how impossible it would now be to carry out such an expedition as ours! Absolutely unthinkable! The position of the whites is already quite other than it was in the years immediately preceding the war in 1937. Without Japanese permission it would be impossible to set off for the interior. Moreover, how far could one proceed in inmost Asia? The whole of Sinkiang, where we moved freely right up to
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