| | | CHAPTER XXXIII. A MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER. We should not quite forget an extraordinary story about a journey which seemed to have crossed our ground between the Himalayas and Kwen-lun, and which gave rise to a lively polemic in 1866 and the following years. It was published and discussed by M. VENIUKOFF in the Journal of the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg in 1861, and translated into English in two articles: The Pamir and the Sources of the Amu-Dacia and The Belors and their Country. VENIUKOFF says that just at a time when Bolor and the Highland of the Pamir were unknown, the connecting-link had fortunately been discovered, and that two new sources of information which mutually corroborated and amplified each other, although they had nothing in common in regard to their compilation, had appeared. He alluded to the Travels through Utter Asia from Kashgar, Tashhalyk, Bolor, Badakhshan, Vokhan, Kokan, Turkestan to the Kirghiz SteHe, and back to Cashmere, through Samarcand and Yarkand; and to the Chinese itinerary translated by KLAPROTH in 182 I, leading from Kashgar to Yarkand, Northern India, Dairim, Yabtuar, Badakhshan, Bolor, Vokhan, and Kokan, as far as Karatau Mountains. Veniukoff correctly supposed that the enumeration alone of such names would excite the curiosity of geographers, and he regarded the new sources as being of the highest importance. The author of the Travels was obviously a German, in the service of the East India Company, despatched in the end of the I 8th or beginning of the I 9th century to purchase horses for the British Army. The original account was a magnificent manuscript in German, accompanied by 4o sketch-maps. The name of the mysterious traveller was Georg Ludwig von — the surname had been erased. Regarding Klaproth's itinerary, Veniukoff finds it valuable so far as the physical details are extremely circumstantial, but the Travels he finds especially deserving of wide publicity. And then he proceeds to give extracts about the Bolor and the surrounding region. It would be a waste of time and space to give a short résumé | |
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