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0365 Southern Tibet : vol.1
Southern Tibet : vol.1 / Page 365 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000263
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i

LANGE'S JOURNEYS TO CHINA.   229

kestan originates from the Swedish officers, though Strahlenberg's map of 173o is in many respects much more correct than Pl. XLIII and XLIV.

I cannot help finishing this chapter with a name which will be unknown to many readers, that of the Swede LORENZ LANGE who from 1715 to 1737 made four journeys from Russia to Peking, and played such an important part in the foundation of Russio-Chinese Trade. As he travelled through Siberia and Mongolia, — generally viâ Tobolsk, Tomsk, Kiakhta, and Kalgan we have nothing to do with his experiences here. The impulse to his journey was that Emperor Kang Hi had written to the Governor of Siberia and asked for a physician, an opportunity that Tsar Peter the ; Great used, not only for sending the English surgeon Garwin, but also to arrange a whole embassy, the chief of which was Lange, who had entered the Russian Service.' So far as Lange's diaries have been published they do not contain much geography, but interminable negotiations with the Chinese officials, and very sympathetic descriptions of Emperor Kang Hi. In 172I—I722 Lange stayed in Peking as a resident.2 Here he seems only occasionally to have heard a word or two about Tibet. Once when he received some Mandarins one of them told him that he had just been ordered by the Emperor to go as an Ambassador to the Dalaï-Lama. A note tells us, from the Histoire Généalogique des Tatars, that this potentate lives in a monastery near the city of Potala in the Kingdom of Tangut, on a high mountain south of the desert of Xamo. At another place he says that China has hardly any trade with India, and a note adds that it is so on account of sand deserts absolutely impracticable for merchants.

To the diary is added a map, of which Pl. XLV shows a part. The hydrography and orography are nearly the same as on Pl. XLIII and XLIV, But the lake in the eastern part of Bucharia Minor, which obviously is the Lop-nor, is here cut off from every connection with the Ilac river of Jerkeen. The Ganges comes from two lakes, and its source branch, Kocktebe, is situated in Tibet.

A special curiosity of the map is that Chaparangue, the first really known amongst Tibetan towns, and famous for a hundred years, has been removed from its old home in the west, and changed into a close neighbour to Lassa. And more interesting still: the city is placed on a river coming from a lake, as is indeed the case with Chaparangue or Tsaparang, though on this map the river goes the wrong way. The lake may be Andrade's pool, from which rose a river watering Tibet. But then one cannot explain why the Ganges does not take its rise from the same lake, as in Andrade's narrative.

East by Tibet and the Desarts of Goby; on the South by the Dominions of the Great Mogul, from which it is separated by the high Mountains of Imaus, which the Tatars call Mus Tag (of which Imaus seems to be a Corruption), that is the Mountains of Snow; and on the West by Great Bucharia.'

I Die ersten hundert Jahre russisch-chinesischer Politik, von Dr. Bogdan Krieger. Berlin 1904, p. 29 et seq.

2 His diary from these years has been published in full: Journal du Sieur Lange, Contenant ses Négociations à la Cour de la Chine, Recueil de Voiages au Nord. Tome VIII. Amsterdam MDCCXXVII, p. 221 et seq.