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

NATIVE AND BRITISH EXPLORERS.

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sent to Shigatse. His object was to make a route survey along the Tsangpo as far as possible. From Shigatse he was allowed to travel to Yamdok-tso, from where he went northwards, and followed the river to Chetang. Further progress was, however, said to be impossible without a strong body of men, and so he had to return to Darjeeling viâ Gyangtse, Phari and the Chumbi valley, a route which had partly been used by Turner in 1783.1

In 1877 Lieutenant HARMAN sent a native explorer N—M—G, to Chetang with instructions to explore the course of the Tsangpo as far downwards as possible. He followed it eastwards about 3o miles. After a necessary détour he again struck the river at Gyatsa-jong. About 3o miles below this place he crossed the river to the right bank. The river was found to reach its most northern point near the intersection of the meridian of 94° with the parallel of 30°. Then it turns due S.E., reaching Gya-la Sindong in 15 miles, beyond which place N—m—g was not able to follow it.2

Sir HENRY YULE says in his historical note on The Tsangpo-Brahmaputra problem: »Though the identity of this river (Brahmaputra) with the great river of Central Tibet, the Yaru Tsangpu, has never yet been continously traced as a fact of experience, every new piece of evidence brings us nearer to assurance of the identity, and one might be justified in saying that no reasonable person now doubts it., Of d'Anville's and Klaproth's views he says : »It seems hardly worth while now to slay this hypothesis, which was moribund before, but must be quite dead since the report of N—m—g's exploration.» 3

A new proof of the Tsangpo's continuation as the Brahmaputra was given by the journey of J. F. NEEDHAM and MOLESWORTH, in December January 1885-86, when they followed the Brahmaputra and the Zayul-chu4 to Rima. As A— K— on his way from Salwen to Sama did not cross any great river flowing southward, and as the two Englishmen, on the Brahmaputra and its tributary, did not see any river flowing southward, it was obvious and beyond doubt that the Tsangpo could not be identical with the Irrawaddi, and that it could not possibly be anything else

I A Memoir on the Indian Surveys 1875-189o; by Charles E. D. Black. London 1891, p. 151. And the Indian Survey Report for 1878-79.

2 Proceedings Royal Geographical Society 1879, p. 593. — Black's Memoir, p. 165, contains the description of an explorer, who was a Sikkim Bhutia, called G-m-n, whose exploration took place in 1878. The Chamkar monastery mentioned by the explorer is said to be d'Anville's Tchamca, beyond which the river makes its acute bend, flowing south past Gyala Sindong, the farthest point reached, and the Gimuchen country into a country which the natives said was »ruled by the British». Black shows that this journey threw considerable light on the further course of the Tsangpo, and reduced the unknown section of the river to about ioo miles, a distance which was still further diminished by the journey of K—p in 1886-87.

3 Introductory Essay (Dec. 1879) in The River of Golden Sand by Capt. William Gill, London 1880, p. 19 and 24.

4 Zayul-chu was the same river as Wilcox's Brahmakund and 'I'. T. Cooper's Brahmaputra. Cooper ascended the river to the village of Prun. A— K— descended it to Sama, about 20 miles from the Assam boundary, and the place where Krick and Boury were murdered in 1854. Black, p. 155.

36-131387 II.