National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

XIV

panoramas, reproduced a great part of the features of the country in most of them. At his death, my experienced friend Colonel H. Byström took up this work, and the map material could scarcely have fallen into better hands. Colonel Byström has at present completed the drawing and topographical arrangement of all the remaining

17 sheets.

In my previous work, »Scientific Results», Vol. IV, pages 542 and 547, I speak of my intention to publish a general map of Tibet in the scale of 1 : 1,000,000. Preparations for this work were then, in 1905, already made. On page 534 of the same volume was, during my absence, inserted an explanation of the reasons why the promised million scale map could not then be published. The volume in question was published in 1907, and my cartographers quite correctly realized that a general map, which did not contain my discoveries made in 1906 and 1907, should have been out of date already at my return. The completing of this map was in consequence

postponed.

The time for its publication has now arrived. The net of coordinates had already been constructed by Kjellström, who had also inserted the route of my journey of 1899-1902. The remaining part, still under preparation, is the work of Colonel Byström. The forming of this map has taken several years of diligent labour, and entailed so great expenses that the state subvention was not sufficient to cover more than half the costs of the entire work.' The million scale map is intended td give a general, clear and uniform view of Eastern Turkestan and Tibet, and to contain the main features of all that we know at present of the geography of these countries. It will fill an essential blank in Penck's international world map in the scale of I : 1,000,000. It contains all known travelling routes of which we possess reliable surveys. The collection and combination of the existing material has been very arduous and difficult, and often has a small part of the map, as for instance the region around Selling-tso, required weeks of discussion, of shifting and adjustment. At times it has been nigh to impossible to make the routes of different travellers agree. Occasionally a route has proved too short or too long between

I Not even a gilt, placed at my disposal from a private source, has been sufficient to cover the expenses. In addition to this, my budget has to support the cost of a work concerning my journey through Eastern Persia, for which a map of 9 sheets is already completed, and of Professor Dr A. Conrady's edition of the collection of manuscripts on paper and wood, composing about 150 numbers, which I found during my diggings at Lou-lan. The work of Prof. Conrady was to a large extent ready in the spring of 1914, but its publication was prevented by the outbreak of the war. Lastly, it is my hope that the sale of »Southern Tibet» will make it possible for me also to publish in

a fitting manner the detailed survey of 1,040 km. of the middle course of the Euphrates which I prepared in the spring of 1916.