HOW SAUNDERS CONSTRUCTED IIIS RANGES. 189
In spite of the 500 miles unknown, Saunders has drawn on his map one range north of the Tsangpo. This was an easy task, which had been tried before, and indeed it seemed very likely that the mountains north of the Tsangpo must be parallel with the Himalayas and with the valley of the river. But when Saunders leaves this ground where he has every probability on his side, and proceeds to the north-east, he is completely lost. Here it is impossible to follow him. For he says that Huc and Gabet crossed the Gangri range, which they called Tant-la. Comparing this statement with Dufour's map of Hue's journey, one arrives at the conclusion that the missionaries must either have crossed the range twice or not at all; or, their route must have followed it parallelly for a very long distance from Mur-ussu to the place where they finally crossed it, an explanation which cannot be gathered from Hue's book. Here Saunders has fallen into the same error as so many others who, with insufficient material, have tried to explain the orography, and instead confounded the systems and joined two different systems into one.
Remembering Saunders' own words that the Gangri Range is only known at its extremities, one feels surprised to read a few lines lower down : »Parallel with the Gangri Range, but at a distance generally of 7o miles, the plateau itself has been recently explored along a route between the Pangong Lakes and Lhasa.» For how could he know that it was 7o miles when the »range» was unknown between its extremities.
Saunders reminds us of the fact that the Kwen-lun Mountains are known to be situated between the Tibetan plateau and the Gobi Desert at the western extremity of the plateau and as far east as 81°3o', and that the range which was crossed by Hue and Prshevalskiy south of Koko-nor was »said to be a continuation of Kuen lun by various authorities». This »appeared to be more probable than any other theory». Saunders has drawn it as one continuous range on his map. At 90° E. long. the Kwen-lun consists of at least five different ranges. When these were discovered and partly explored by Prshevalskiy, who would have been so tactless as to say that Prshevalskiy made no discoveries here, as the whole length of the Kwen-lun was already marked on Saunders' map ! A map of a country where nobody has ever been has of course no value at all.
Finally Saunders alludes to the way in which he has arrived at the construction of the different ranges on his map. He even reproduces Brian Hodgson's map of 1857 on the same scale as his own, to show the difference of the representation of Himalaya in both cases, and, as he says, »thus the comparison of the two is facilitated as much as possible». The same can be said of the Nien-chen-tang-la and Gangri Mountains. These have been improved very much indeed from the material brought back by the Pundits.
East of Lhasa and stretching to the N.E. he has entered on his map a range, which from beginning to end is an invention of his own, for not a suspicion of it exists in reality. It is pierced by some considerable rivers. He says of its creation:
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