国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

KAWAGUCHI AND THE SOURCE OF THE SATLEJ.

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natives simply and truly told him the Langchen-kamba came from the i\'Ianasarovar or rather that the river had its source in the great rocks east of the monastery of Chugo-gompa. And so it is in reality, for here they must have meant Tugu-gompa as there is no Chugo-gompa on the north-eastern side of Kailas, nor any other gomj5a at all. I never heard the Tibetans ever suggest that the Satlej should come from Kailas and I think the Japanese priest has misunderstood his informants. They are much too simple and natural for such extraordinary fantasies. He goes so far as to tell the Tibetans their lake has no outlet at all. But, as I said before, if his map is correct, he has never even touched the neck of land between the lakes. He only »discovered» that the western lake was higher than the eastern.'

I In the popular account of my last journey in Tibet I did not even mention the name of A. H. Savage Landor, for reasons easy to be understood by every serious geographer. I am not going to enter into any details here either, but, for completeness' sake I will touch upon some geographical points of his book.

An article by the same author: »Les sources principales du Brahmapoutre et du Sutledje», in L'Asie Française, December 191o, p. 507 et seq. is addressed directly to me. There the author makes an attempt to prove that he has discovered the sources of the Satlej and the Brahmaputra and established for ever that there is no visible communication between the two lakes. — In L'Asie Française, March 1911, p. 112 etc. M. JACQUES BACOT, a very able and scientifically trained explorer of Eastern Tibet, has word by word criticised and annihilated the above article, in an article under the title; >.Quelques réflexions sur des voyages au Tibet», which I recommend to everybody interested in the question.

In the Preface to his book (In the Forbidden Land, London 1898), Landor says: »The map is made entirely from my surveys of an area of twelve thousand five hundred square miles in Tibet proper.» To which Sir THOMAS HOLDICH adds the modification: The maps which he has brought back do not differ materially in topographical detail from those with which he was supplied on his outward journey, and the record of observations consists mainly of a traverse which, when projected, can only be reconciled to the maps with difficulty.» Geographical Journal, Vol. XII, Dec. 1898, p. 588. In Nature, November 3, 1898, Sir Thomas Holdich says of his map that it »differs in no essential particular from that of the Indian Survey, except that he shows an error in longitude». In Geographisches Jahrbuch, XXII, 1899, p. 359, Dr. E. TIESSEN says: »Die Reise ... hat so gut wie keine geographische Ergebnisse gehabt», and refers to criticisms in Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, XXVI, p. 113; Ost. Monatsschrift für d. Orient, XXIV, 12, p. 135; Petermann's Mitteil. 43, p. 295; A travers le Mond, III, p. 364; and Globus, LXXIV, p. 323.

It is impossible to follow him day by day from camp to camp, for so far as Tibet is concerned there is not one date related in the book and the records of temperature he gives are therefore without interest and value. In the preface he calls his book »the record of a journey in Tibet undertaken during the spring, summer and autumn of 1897», which should give at least 200 days for the journey in Tibet. Thanks to a certain Mr. Larkin we know that he entered Tibet on July 13 by the Lumpia pass, and thanks to another gentleman on the frontier, Mr. Wilson, we are told that he returned to Taklakot on September 8. This makes 58 days in all for Tibet. From Mr. Wilson it is also clear that the return journey from Tuksum to Taklakot took him 15 days. Thus his way out, to a place called Namj Laccé took hire 43 days. This last camp to the east has N:o 57, so his camp N:o r must necessarily be situated at Bombay or somewhere else in British India. On the map the precaution is taken only to enter the numbers of camps 51, 54 and 57. Otherwise. as he has been only 58 days in Tibet, and has 57 camps to the east only, he must have done the return journey in one day. It may be that he sometimes has two camps in one day. This seems the more likely, for Mr. Larkin again kindly comes to our assistance (Vol. II, p. 217): YOn the 9th of August 1897 they went to a place called Toxem». As they entered Tibet on July 13th the same year the journey to Toxern cannot have taken more than 37 days. As calculated above it took 43 days to camp N:o 57, which was 21 miles farther east. But the six days between the two last camps were spent with »torture». In the text the camp numbers are missing altogether. Reckoning in the book, from the Lumpiya pass to