INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
are several places named prominently by Goes which cannot be identified with any certainty. This is also the case in the second portion of this section of the journey, embracing the ascent through Badakhshan to the Plateau of Pamer, and the descent to Yarkand, where moreover we are in a country still most imperfectly known; for, since Marco Polo, Goes is the only European traveller across it of whose journey any narrative has seen the light.'
1 The following note from a recent work, called The Russians in Central Asia, consisting of various papers, translated from the Russian by Messrs. Michell, shows that valuable matter, in illustration of these regions, does
exist (I believe in the military archives at St. Petersburg) : In a paper
on the Pamir and the upper course of the Oxus, read last year before the Russian Geographical Society by M. Veniukhof, he says : ' The chaos of our geographical knowledge relating to the Pamir table-lands and the Bolor was so great that the celebrated geographer Zimmerman, working under the superintendence of Ritter, was able to produce only a very confused and utterly incomprehensible map of this region. The connecting link was wanting ; it was necessary that some one should carry out the plan conceived by the Russian Government in the beginning of this century, by visiting and describing the country. Fortunately, such an additional source of information has been found,—nay, even two,—which mutually corroborate and amplify each other, although they have nothing further in common between them. I here allude to the ' Travels through Upper Asia, from Kashgar, Tashbalyk, Bolor, Badakhshan, Vakhan, Kokan, Turkestan, to the Kirghiz Steppe, and back to Cashmere, through Samarkand and Yarkand,' and to the Chinese Itinerary, translated by Klaproth in 1821, leading from Kashgar to Yarkend, Northern India, Dairim, Yabtuar, Badakhshan, Bolor, Vakhan, and Kokan, as far as the Karatau mountains. The enumeration alone of these places must, I should imagine, excite the irresistible curiosity of all who have made the geography of Asia their study. These fresh sources of information are truly of the highest importance. As regards the Travels, it is to be inferred from the preface, and from certain observations in the narrative, that the author was a German, an agent of the East India Company, despatched in the beginning of this or the end of the last century, to purchase horses for the British army. The original account forms a magnificent manuscript work in. the German language, accompanied by forty sketches of the country traversed. The text, also, has been translated into French in a separate manuscript, and the maps worked into one itinerary in an admirable style. The christian name of the traveller, George Ludwig
von , appears over the preface, but the surname has been erased.
Klaproth's Itinerary is so far valuable as the physical details are extremely circumstantial ; almost every mountain is laid down, and care taken to indicate whether it is wooded or snow-capped; while equal care
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