156 NAIN SING'S JOURNEY IN 1873-74, — AND OTIIER EXPLORATIONS.
lies west of mine and as both routes may touch each other only in the pass, I prefer to regard both as two different crossings, although situated quite close to
each other.
In the east, speaking only of the parts of the range near Tengri-nor, only two Europeans have crossed the Transhimalaya, LITTLEDALE in Goring-la and DE LESDAIN in Khalamba-la. They have not added any new information about the system, whether they did not understand the importance of the problem or because both had their wives with them I do not know. Littledale, at least, took a new pass, which is always something to be grateful for.
At the distance of 485 miles between Surnge-la and Khalamba-la nobody has ever crossed the system before 1907. So, considering as a whole the results of the Pundits' journeys in connection with the Transhimalaya and admitting the great importance of their work, which occupies an epoch in the history of exploration in Tibet, we must say that they left the whole central part of the mountain system unknown, when their work was finished. They had crossed it at its extreme ends in four passes; otherwise they had only travelled along its borders and entered on their maps some of its peripheric peaks. The rest, that is to say, the whole central bulky massive, the orographical building, the geological structure, the hydrographical systems, the nature, the distribution of nomads and shepherds, the existence of villages, monasteries, roads, everything was quite unknown. Although Montgomerie says that he never took his attention from the country north of the Tsang-po, he does not seem to have realized the importance of this field of exploration. His Pundits were sent to the uppermost Indus, to the gold-fields of western Tibet, to Shigatse, Lhasa, and Tengri-nor, up and down the Tsangpo valley, across and along the Nepalese frontier and so forth, but never across the mountains north of the Tsangpo, upon a line of 485 miles. Did he regard this system as sufficiently well known from Chinese sources and Hodgson's map ? I have shown above that this was not the case. At any rate the Central Transhimalaya was left alone and when, some 40 years later a European expedition entered these parts of the mysterious country, it was, by circumstances, forced to follow Nain Sing's road and to improve his rough reconnaissance into a mathematically correct survey. But it did not approach the interior any nearer than Nain Sing had done.
The British method of using intelligent Pundits as surveyers of unknown Tibet has only to a very small extent been followed by the Russians. Thus ZYBIKOFF was sent to Lhasa not very long ago, and returned with a description and a collection of photographs of the sacred city. Although he crossed Transhimalaya he has, of course, nothing to tell us of this mountain system. The Russians, however, have tried to draw some information from journeys undertaken by natives. In the Isvestiya of the Irnj5. Russ. Geogr. Society' J. P. SHISHMAREV and Baron FR. VON DER
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