Abstract
AT the meetieg of the Royal Geographical Societ on Monday Mr. W. W oodville Rockhill gave an interesting account of a journey in Mongolia and Central Tibet. Leaving Peking on December 1, 1891, Mr. Rockhill travelled to the frontier town of Kalgan, then, entering Mongolia, he passed through the pasture-lands of the Ch'ahar Mongols. After a few days spent at Kuei-hua Ch'eng, the traveller continued westward, and crossing the Yellow River on the ice at Ho-k' on, he crossed the Ordos Mongols country, and afterwards Alashan. Again entering China proper the route led through Ning-hsia, Lanchou, and Hsi-ning, the westernmost town in China, on the high road to Tibet. On March 14 Mr. Rockhill left for Tibet by an unexplored route, passing south of the Koko nor and along the foot of the mountains to the south side of the Ts'aidam, making several excursions on the way, one of special importance from the Mongol village of Shang to Tosu Nor to determine by astronomical observations the position of this sheet of water discovered by him in 1889. Mr. Rockhill's party consisted originally of five Chinese, but one had to be invalided home a few days after leaving Kumbum, and two others deserted him at Shang. He was able to hire at this place an old Chinese trader, and with these three men, assisted for a while by a Mongol and then by a Tibetan guide, he travelled till he reached China again in October, 1892. On May 27 the final start for Tibet was made from the Naichi gol in western Ts'aidam, and a general south-westerly direction was followed until July 7, when a point some 30 miles from the north-west corner of the great central Tibetan lake, called Tengri nor by the Mongols, was reached. Between the Naichi gol and the Ts'aidam the party had to endure great hardships, the great altitude ranging from 14,000 to 17,000 feet above sea-level, terrible daily snow and hail-storms, fierce winds and frequent absence of fuel, and towards the end starvation. The route, moreover, led them through vast salt marshes, bogs, and across numerous rivers, in which quicksands were frequently found. The geographical results of this portion of the journey were important. (1) The determination of the limits of the basin of the Murus (the great Yang-Tzu Kiang of China) and the discovery of the sources of the main branch of this river in the snow-covered flanks of the great central Tibetan range of mountains known as the Dangla. (2) The discovery of the eastern limit of the lake-covered Central Asian plateau which becomes some 600 miles west of the route Mr. Rockhill followed the Pamir, but is in the section he crossed of it called Naktsang, and sometimes, though apparently erroneously, Chang T'ang or “Nor-them Seppe.”
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Mongolia and Central Tibet. Nature 47, 426–427 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/047426b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047426b0