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| 0269 |
Southern Tibet : vol.1 |
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OCR Text
fore the hydrography of the interior of the continent has to be completely changed,
and a fact which had been known for fifteen hundred years was disbelieved and
destroyed. Here indeed the words of Arrian may be used, when he says that
Alexander, confounding the sources of the Nile with those of the Indus only on
account of the crocodiles, was »forming his conclusions about things so great from
such small and trivial premisses». But we should not judge Mercator too severely, for
even 260 years after his time Klaproth confounded two other great rivers in these
regions, and led the Tsangpo into the Irrawaddi instead of the Brahmaputra. ¹
The Gangetic hydrography of Mercator was uncritically accepted by many able
geographers, amongst them ORTELIUS and HONDIUS.² We have now to examine
three of Ortelius' maps.
The first, Pl. XXI, has the title Tartariæ sive Magni Chami Regni typus
(1570).³ Here the Himalaya, or rather the whole of High Asia is marked as a long
latitudinal range, Imaus mons qui & Caucasus, or Monte Dalanguer and Monte
Vssonte. North of Monte Dalanguer Abiamu fl. occupies a very great space of
Central Asia. North of and parallel with the Amu-darya is the Chesel fl. or Sir-
darya on the upper course of which we find Marco Polo's stations just as on Mer-
cator's map. Oechardes and Bautisus have disappeared. In the heart of the con-
tinent, and north of the mountainous belt are Solitudines vastæ and further north
Desertum Lop, which is indeed correct. N.E. of Monte Vssonte are Camul and
Turfan with a legend: His montibus Rhabarbarum prouenit. East of Monte Vssonte
is the country of Caindu and on the shore of the enormous Lacus salsus is the city
of Caindu. To the east of the same lake is the province Thebet. The city of Thebet
is placed on the river Mecon fl. M. Paul: Quian, which falls into a lake called Minla
lacus. Marco Polo's Kiang has thus, within ten years, and by two famous geo-
graphers, been mistaken for, in one case the Bautisus of Ptolemy bound for the
Glacial Ocean, in the other for the Mekong bound for the southern Sea, while Kin-
sha-chiang, the great Yangtse-chiang bound for the East Chinese Sea, remained un-
known.
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