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NOVEMBER, 1917)
A THIRD JOURNEY OF EXPLORATION IN CENTRAL ASIA
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who for the sake of geographical knowledge and archæology would linger among them deserves a double meed of thanks. The results are extremely interesting, because we find that these desert-places once maintained a great population. This fact opens up many subjects of inquiry, historical, meteorological, changes of climate, migrations of peoples. We also find this charm in these particular trade-routes, that they were the old trade-routes between Greeks and Romans and the farthest East. Sir Aurel Stein tells me that in those days the trade caravans must have gone, not over the easiest routes but over hundreds of miles of desert, in order to avoid the marauding tribes who were living where there was some possibility of human beings living happily. We have followed, perhaps with some difficulty owing to its very complexity and richness, the account of his labours put forward by Sir Aurel Stein. We shall all read it with the deepest interest when published in the Geographical Journal, and we may hope that it will not be published without specimens of the appropriate illustrations which we have admired to-night. The perseverance with which Sir Aurel Stein photographed as he went along is, even in these days of photography, deserving of the highest praise. I will say no more, but offer to him the very hearty thanks of this meeting and all geographers in this country and the rest of Europeexcept perhaps in Berlin, where they may grudge him some of his Buddhist frescoes I am sure his reputation over Europe as one of the greatest travellers of modern times is now firmly established. Three times we have seen him here and each time he comes back with a richer harvest than he did the time before.
Additional Note by Sir Henry Trotter. I at one time took considerable interest in the geography of the Oxus below Kila Wamar In the spring of 1874, when leaving Wakhan to return to India, I despatched the Munshi Abdul's Subhan (an employe of the Survey of India, to follow the course of the river from Kila Panjah to Roshan and Shighnan. The account of his journey was published in the R. G. S. Journal, vol. 48, pp. 210-217. He followed the course of the river for 60 miles from Kila Panjah to Ishkashim, where turning northwards he followed the Oxus for nearly 100 miles further, passing successively through the districts of Gharan, Shighnan, and Roshan countries which had hitherto only been known to us by name. He could not penetrate beyond Kila Wamar, the chief town of Roshan; but curiously enough another employé of the Survey, "The Havildar," who had been dispatched by the late General Walker irom India in 1873 on an independent exploration, went from Kabul to Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, and thence started on a tour which, combined with the Munshi's exploration to Kila Wamar, entirely altered the map of that hitherto little-known portion of Central Asia. He visited the towns of Kolab, Khawaling, Sagri Dasht, Kila Khum (the capital of Darwaz), Kila Wanj, and Yaz-Ghulam. At Kila Khum the Havildar struck the Oxus (still called the Panjah), and his road for 40 miles lay on the right bank of the river-never previously mapped or, as far as I know, visited by any explorer. At Yaz-Ghulam, the eastern frontier village of Darwaz, he was unfortunately turned back-just as he had got within a long day's march of the Munshi's farthest point at Kila Wamar. The Havildar, who was ignorant of what the Munshi had done only a few weeks previously to his own arrival at Yaz-Ghulam, was most anxious to complete his own work. In order to do so he went back by Kolab to Ishkashim, and endeavoured to make a survey down the river to Yaz-Ghulam; but he was again stopped, this time at the southern frontier of Shighnan, and was prevented from carrying out his intentions. Thus there was a gap between the explorations of the Havildar and the Munshi, the existence of which was much regretted; fortunately the missing link was a short one-some 20 miles as the crow flies. A Russian scientific mission visited these parts ten years later, in 1883 ; but the map then compiled differs greatly from their latest published map of 1910, which again differs from an intermediate map published in 1900, I fancy that accurato surveys of these little-known countries have still to be made.
