PREFACE.
I have felt it to be my first duty to extend to the Swedish Diet of 1910 my sincere thanks for the state subvention granted towards the publishing of this work. With special gratitude I remember the efficient way in which the then Minister of State, Admiral Arvid Lindman, was pleased to support to a successful issue my request to have the expenses covered out of public funds. And the favourable reception of my demand was, in no small measure, due to the sympathetic attention given to the question on the part of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.
I have dedicated this work to the Survey of India as a modest sign of the great esteem in which I have always held this high Administration for its brilliant achievements, during a century, in the service of geographical research. Early in the summer 1914, I wrote to the Surveyor General submitting that the dedication might be accepted by the Survey of India. By letter, dated Simla the i 3th July of the same year, this offer was, in very cordial terms, agreed to by Sir S. G. Burrard. No one better than he was in situation to appreciate how much I considered myself in debt to the generations of surveying officers and Pundits who, step by step, had, throughout decades past, under difficulties unheard of, forced the Himalaya with its adjoining tracts of land in the North to yield their secrets. They had made my ways even, and carried our knowledge of Southern Tibet so far that my exploring journey only became a natural consequence of their persistent and undaunted labours. From them I had learnt what remained to be done, and, by the aid of their excellent maps, I was enabled to detect the wants still existing.
The method of treating the subject in »Southern Tibet» is quite an other than in »Scientific Results of a Journey in Central Asia, 1899-1902». In the last mentioned work, I related all the observations, day by day, during the whole course of the voyage, while I withheld from the very time-wasting task of assemb-
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