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

ber's accounts is very sharply modelled by Gerbillon. Amongst all travellers in
eastern Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Jesuits are the most
reliable, scientific and successful. And amongst the Jesuits those of Latin race,
especially Frenchmen and Italians, are the best.

So far Great Tartary had been a very vague geographical region, something
like the Scythia of the ancients or Si-fan of the Chinese. Father Gerbillon does not
hesitate to demarcate its boundaries: on the west it has Moscovy, the Caspian Sea,
and a part of Persia; on the south the same part of Persia, the Mogol, Arracan and
Ava, China and Corea, on the east the Oriental Sea and on the north the Glacial
Ocean.¹ Most of this vast country is, he says, either under the Emperor of China
or the Czar of Moscau. Only the country of Yusbek, a part of that of the Calmucs
or Calmaks, Tibet, and some small states in the mountains of Ava and Se tchuen,
are independent.

Gerbillon's memoir is of rather historical content. But in describing different
expeditions and events he shows how well he knows such places as Touroufan or
Tourfan, Yarkian or Yarkan, Hami or Cami, Thibet, Toubet or Tangout, Poutala,
Lassa or Barantola. The Dalai Lama resides in his palace, built on the mountain
Poutala. »At the foot of this mountain one sees a rather great river flowing, which
is called Kaltjou mouren.» It is said to be a very nice place, and in the middle of
the mountain is the pagoda with its seven stories. This is probably the first time
that the Ki-chu of Lhasa has been mentioned by a European.

A Chinese official in Peking told Gerbillon that it was 400 leagues from Sining
to Poutala, and that he had made the journey, during winter, in 46 days. He had
found habitations nearly everywhere. »It took him 20 days to reach a place called
by the Chinese Tsing sou hai. It is a Lake, or rather it is three Lakes, so near
each other that they form only one. It is there that is situated the source of the
Yellow River, called in Chinese Hoang ho, which at this place is only a little river
with very clear water. To begin with it takes its course towards the south, between
the mountains from which it gets the water, and, having grown in volume by the
water from the rivulets and the little rivers that flow from the whole country of
Coconor, it enters China near Ho tcheou. The same mandarin told me that in the
country of Coconor he had passed a river called Altang kol, which means in the
Mongol tongue Gold River; it has hardly more than 3 feet in depth, and it empties
itself into the Lakes of Tsing sou hai.» He describes how the gold is exploited and
says that it forms the principal revenue of the Coconor princes. In many other
rivers of the Grand Lama's states gold is found and sent to China.

Martini, in 1655, had brought the first news of the source of the Yellow
river to Europe, and he had entered the two lakes on his map.² Forty years later