Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet

Volume I

THE TANGUT COUNTRY,

AND THE

SOLITUDES OF NORTHERN TIBET:

BEING A

Narrative of Three Years' Travel in Eastern High Asia.

BY

LIEUT.-COLONEL N. PREJEVALSKY,

OF THE RUSSIAN STAFF CORPS: MEM. OF THE IMP. RUSS. GEOG. SOC.

TRANSLATED BY

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

LATE OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS (BENGAL).

With Maps and Illustrations.

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,

CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.

1876

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

OF

CHAPTER I.

FROM KIAKHTA TO PEKING.

page

CHAPTER II.

THE MONGOLS.

CHAPTER III.

THE SOUTH-EASTERN BORDER OF THE MONGOLIAN PLATEAU.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SOUTH-EASTERN BORDER OF THE MONGOLIAN PLATEAU—(continued).

CHAPTER V.

ORDOS.

CHAPTER VI.

ALA-SHAN.

TABLE OF NOTES TO VOLUME I.

NOTES BY MR. MORGAN.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES BY COL. YULE.

Translator's Preface

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

It was at one of the meetings of the Russian Geographical Society in the winter of 1873-74 that Colonel Prejevalsky, then recently returned from his travels, first gave an account of his adventures and experiences in the heart of Asia.

Being personally acquainted with him, and hearing that he was seeking a publisher for an English version of his work, the idea suggested itself to me of becoming the means of making known to English readers these Russian explorations in countries of daily growing interest. The task, however, would have been a difficult one had I not succeeded in securing the all-valuable co-operation of Colonel Yule, who from beginning to end has assisted me by his ready advice, suggestions, and amendments. To Dr. Hooker, President of the Royal Society, my warmest thanks are also due for his kindness in revising the names of plants.

Most of the illustrations are from photographs lent by Baron Fr. Osten Sacken, late President of the physical section of the Imp. Geog. Soc, and well known in Europe as geographer, explorer, and botanist. He has also furnished the plates 'Ovis Poll' and 'Gyps Nivicola' from his copy of Severtsoff's work on the Fauna of Turkestan. Of the remaining illustrations I am indebted for that of the Rhubarb Plant to Professor Maximovitch, of the Imperial Botanical Gardens of St. Petersburg; three are from photographs by Mr. J. Thomson, whose splendid photographic albums of China and its people are deservedly admired, and the remainder are borrowed from the 'Tour du Monde.'

In the following translation, while preserving the Author's meaning, I have endeavoured to remove from the path of the reader those stumbling-blocks which might arise from following too closely the original idiom; in this way Russian versts are rendered into English miles, Russian fathoms into feet or yards, degrees of Centigrade into Fahrenheit, old style dates into new style, &c.

I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to Mr. Clements Markham, C.B., Hon. Sec. R.G.S., for an introduction to the publishers of this work; to Mr. Henry Dresser, F.Z.S.; to Dr. Günther, of the British Museum; to Mr. Robert Harrison, of the London Library; to Mr. Edward Weller, for the care and pains he has bestowed on the accompanying map; and to Mr. Cooper, who has executed the engravings.

It only remains to say a few words about the Author.

Lieut.-Col. Prejevalsky was born in the government of Smolensk of parents belonging to the class of landed gentry. He received his education at the gym or public school of Smolensk, finishing his studies at the Academy of the Staff Corps. From early life he displayed a strong love for natural science, and it was to gratify these tastes that he applied for and obtained permission to serve in Eastern Siberia. Thither he proceeded in 1867, and there he remained two years, occupying all the time he could spare from his official duties in hunting, shooting, and collecting objects of natural history. On his return to St. Petersburg in 1869 he published his 'Notes on the Ussuri,' containing a great deal of information on the eastern boundaries of Russia in Asia. Soon after its appearance in 1870 Lieut.-Col. Prejevalsky prepared for his second greater expedition, for which his previous travels and studies had served as a preparation. His companion and helpmate throughout this arduous undertaking was Lieut. Pyltseff. I have only to add that, from a letter recently received from him, I learn that he is preparing for a third expedition, and that he hopes this time to penetrate to Lob-nor, and possibly from that quarter into Tibet.

E. DELMAR MORGAN.

London: January 1, 1876.

Introductory Remarks

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

By Colonel H. Yule.

Within the last ten years the exploration of High Asia which, on our side at least, had long been languid, has revived and advanced with ample strides. So rapid, indeed, has been the aggression upon the limits of the Unknown that in the contemplation of a future historian of geographical discovery it may easily seem that the contraction of those limits in our age might fitly be compared to the rapid evaporation of the cloud with which the breath has tinged a plate of polished steel.

It is hardly a dozen years since our mapmakers had to rely for the most important positions in Chinese Turkestan on the observations of the Jesuit surveyors of the eighteenth century; and as late as the publication of that well-known work of the Messrs. Michell, 'The Russians in Central Asia,' the issue, in the appendix to that book, of a new and corrected transcript of those data, was regarded as of some geographical moment. The incidental notices contained in fragmentary extracts or translations from medieval Persian writers, and the details given in Chinese geographical works, often hard to understand, often themselves (like Ptolemy's Tables) only a conversion into written statement of the graphic representations of loose and inaccurate maps, were painfully studied by those who desired to enlarge or recompile the geography of the great Central basin which lies between the Himalya and the Thian Shan. Indeed, from Samarkand eastward to the caravan-track which leads from the Russian frontier at Kiakhta to the gate of the Great Wall at Kalgan, a space of 47 degrees of longitude, we were entirely dependent on such imperfect criticism of fragmentary sources as we have indicated. Almost the only scientific inroad on this immense territory, and that but trifling in its extent though high indeed in interest, was the excursion of Lieut. John Wood of the Indian Navy to the Great Pamir, in the winter of 1838. The scientific exploration and surveys of the Russians were indeed slowly though surely advancing the march of accurate knowledge from the north; but it was confined within the limits, vast indeed, of their own territory, and touched the Thian Shan only near the western extremity of that mountain region.

With ourselves, exploration, in any extensive sense, beyond our Indian frontier had almost ceased for a great many years after the calamities of Kabul; the only notable exceptions that I can call to mind being the advance of that accomplished botanist Dr. T. Thomson to the Karakorum Pass, and the journey of his colleague Capt. Henry Strachey, of the Bengal Army, across the western angle of Tibet Proper, from Ladak to Kumaon, in 1846. But like the Russians on their side, our survey officers had been gradually mastering the ground up to the limits of the states actually held by our feudatory the Maharaja of Jamu and Kashmir, and to those of the small Tibetan provinces near the Sutlej which fell to us as part of the Sikh dominions at the end of the first Punjab war. And so on both sides a base was secured for ulterior raids upon the Terra Incognita.

This Incognita was not indeed unknown in the sense in which Southern Central Africa was unknown before David Livingstone's first journey; such sources as those to which we have referred above gave some general idea of what the region contained. But even where the Jesuit surveyors left maps, they had left, so far as we know, no narrative or description of the regions in question. And of Tibet in particular we had so little accurate knowledge that the latitude of its capital, the 'Eternal Sanctuary,' the Vatican and holy city of half Asia, was uncertain almost to the extent of sixty minutes.

The first memorable incursion into the territory in question was the journey of Huc and Gabet in 1845-46.

The later writings of Huc, pieces of pretentious and untrustworthy bookmaking, have thrown some shadow upon the original narrative; some of his own countrymen have been disposed to look on his work as half a fiction; and stories have even reached me from Russian sources which professed to recount confessions made by Huc of his having invented his own share in the narrative, and of his having received from Gabet on his deathbed, 'on board a boat in the Canton river,' or taken from his luggage after his death, the true journals on which the popular story of the Journey to Lhassa was founded. These stories are imaginative fabrications, as will be seen from the facts we are about to recapitulate. I confess, however, that, judging from the rubbish of Huc's later writings, my own impression long was that Gabet had been the chief author of the Souvenirs, and this was confirmed to me by a conversation with which the lamented M. Jules Mohl honoured me during his last visit to England. But his recollection, I now feel satisfied, had deceived him.

In the end of 1846, as Sir John Davis tells us, Mr. A. Johnston, his own secretary as Plenipotentiary in China, in proceeding from Hong Kong to Ceylon, found Père Joseph Gabet, then on his way to France, a fellow-passenger with him, and heard from him many particulars of the journey. Mr. Johnston found these so curious and interesting that he noted down the principal circumstances, and on rejoining his chief presented him with the MS., and Sir John sent it on to Lord Palmerston. 'Nothing more,' adds Sir John Davies, 'was heard of the matter till the appearance of Huc's two volumes' (i.e. in 1851). This is, however, a mistake, as I find by an examination, as careful as my time has allowed, of the volumes of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi.

The first notice of the journey that I find in this periodical is in vol. xix. pp. 265 seqq. (1847). This, after some introductory matter regarding the origin of the Mission in Mongolia, gives a letter from Huc to M. Etienne, the Supt.-General of the Congregation of the Mission, dated Macao, December 20th, 1846, presenting a sketch of the journey up to their arrival at Lhassa, January 29th, 1846.

The next paper bearing on the subject is in the same volume, and is a Notice sur la Prière Bouddhique, by M. Gabet, 'qui vient de rentrer pour quelques mois en France.'

Vol. xx. (p. 5) contains a letter from Gabet to M. Etienne, dated Tarlané, June 1842. It had been mislaid, and thus was not published till 1848. It describes a journey to the Suniút country and the Great Kuren, i.e. Urga. This is the basis of the passages on that subject in the Souvenirs (vol. i. pp. 133 seqq.).

In the same volume, p. 118, we have an extract from a report by Gabet, which continues the narrative of Huc's letter in vol. xix. down to their exit from Tibet. It is vague and dull, and presents a great contrast to his comrade's vivacity. At p. 223 there is a fuller account by Gabet of their residence at Lhassa. It is curious that it does not contain a word of their swaggering conduct in presence of the mandarins, as described in the Souvenirs. Vol. xxi. (1849), and xxii. (1850), contain supplementary letters or papers by Huc, and this finishes the series. The Souvenirs were published in 1851.

Gabet had then apparently already been sent to the Brazils, where he died; and I have no doubt the Souvenirs were, as they purport to be, the work of Huc himself, based on the papers by both, of which extracts had been published in the Annales. I doubt whether even any extraneous aid of Parisian littérateurs was called in; Huc himself was an adept in that vein, as his letters show.

Colonel Prejevalsky several times finds fault with Huc's inaccuracy in details, a subject which will be briefly noticed presently. And in one of the letters which was sent to Russia during his journey, he even seems to imply a doubt of the genuine character of the narrative. Of this he has probably thought better, as the expression of suspicion is not repeated in the present work. Indeed, Colonel Prejevalsky's own plain tale is the best refutation of such suspicions. For it is wonderful, to the extent of the coincidence of their routes, how the representations of the glib French priest and the Russian soldier agree. Only Prejevalsky's picture of the scene before him is a photograph, careful in accuracy, but not displaying much power of selection as to light or point of view; Huc's is the painting of a clever, perhaps too clever, artist, but still coloured from nature. Artist he is indeed, and as far as may be from science, but, after reading Prejevalsky's narrative, I have felt, more than ever before, the charm of Huc's vivacious touches; more than ever, because the perusal of the Russian work convinced me that his pictures (I do not refer to the braggadocio, probably imaginary, of his conduct before Chinese officials) are true as well as clever. Who that has read the book,—though probably the generations that have risen since 1851, and that have had so much else to read may not have read them,—who can forget that inimitable picture of the yaks of the caravan, after fording the freezing waters of the Pouhain-gol, staggering under the load of icicles that depended from their shaggy flanks? or that other of the wild company of the same species, nipt by the frost in swimming across the head-waters of the mighty Yangtse, and there frozen hard in cold death, the whole hairy herd of them?

The specific charges which Prejevalsky brings against Huc's narrative are the following:—

1. His description of the ford of the Pouhain-gol, a river flowing into the Koko-nor Lake from the westward, as an extremely difficult passage of a stream broken up into twelve branches; whereas it forms but a single stream where the Lhassa road crosses it, and that only 105 feet wide, with a depth of one or two feet. (See this work, vol. ii. p. 158, and Huc, ii. p. 200.)

2. His entire omission to mention the high chain south of the Koko-nor.

3. His depicting the Tsaidam country as an arid steppe, whereas it is a salt-marsh, covered with high reeds.

4. His omitting to mention the Tsaidam river, though it is twenty-two times as wide as the Pouhain-gol.

5. What he says regarding the gas on the Burkhan Bota mountain 'is very doubtful,' says Col. Prejevalsky.

6. His representing the Shuga chain as very steep, whereas its gradients would, even as they are, bear a railway.

7. The chain of the Baian-kara-ula, 'about which Huc relates marvellous stories,' is only a succession of low elevations, never exceeding 1,000 feet above the plains that lie to the north, and only a little steeper towards the Murui-ussu. 'There is here no pass' (i.e. I presume no col to be crossed), 'and the road follows a stream down to the Murui-ussu.'

8. Huc speaks only of crossing the Murui-ussu (or Upper Yangtse), after passing the Baian Kara; but the Lhassa road lies along its banks the whole way up to its source in the Tang-la mountains, a distance of some 200 miles.

Now, Nos. 4 and 6 are, as Mr. Ney Elias has already pointed out, mistakes of Col. Prejevalsky 's own. Huc does mention the Tsaidam river; he does not represent

the Shuga range as very steep: 'Le mont Chuga était peu escarpé du côté que nous gravissions' (ii. 213). The great trouble in passing it was owing to a strong icy wind and deep drifts of snow, in which they had to pitch their tent and dig for argols.

As regards No. 7 I can find in Huc no marvellous stories. He speaks, indeed, of the terrors of avalanches, though probably meaning only the perils of snow-drifts. The snow lay very deep when he passed, and it is conceivable, pace Col. Prejevalsky, that the course of a ravine may not have been the path adopted under such circumstances.

As regards No. 8 there is nothing I think in Huc absolutely inconsistent with his having followed up the great river after crossing it. But Prejevalsky himself is, according to his countryman Palladius, not quite correct in saying that the road in question follows the river to its source. And moreover there are three roads on towards Lhassa from the point where the river is crossed.

In cases 1 and 2 it is probable that Huc was filling up a mere skeleton diary from memory, and the experience of many will recognise that in such a process natural features will sometimes exchange characteristics in the recollection. This has, possibly, been the case with the Pouhain-gol and the Tsaidam river in Huc's narrative; whilst it is by no means made certain that there are not routes, more or less diverse, and parallel to one another, which are adopted according to circumstances. Altogether Col. Prejevalsky's criticisms are a little too much in the vein of Huc's countryman: Je ne crois pas aux tigres, moi, parceque je n'en ai pas vu!

As for No. 5, 'the gas on the Burkhan Bota,' it is absurd to make even the suggestion of bad faith in regard to this; it is only an instance of Huc's exceeding ignorance of nature, with all his cleverness. The passage is so curious in this light as to be worth quotation. At the foot of the mountain he says:—

'The whole caravan halted awhile, as if to question its own strength... A subtle and light gas was anxiously indicated, which they called pestilential vapour, and all the world seemed to be downcast and discouraged. After having taken the prophylactics which tradition enjoins, and which consist in munching two or three cloves of garlick, at last we began to clamber up the flanks of the mountain. Soon the horses refused to carry their riders; we began to go afoot with short steps; insensibly all faces grew pale; the action of the heart was felt to be waning; the legs would no longer do their duty; presently we lay down, got up, and made a few steps in advance, then lay down again; and in this deplorable fashion it was that the famous Burkhan Bota was crossed.'

All this is a vigorous description of the occasional effects of rarefied atmosphere on a person using bodily exertion. The very phrase used, les vapeurs oestilentielles, is a translation of the term Bish ka hawa, or 'poison-air,' by which the pains of attenuated atmosphere are indicated on the Indian side of the Himalya. Even the cloves of garlick, mentioned by Huc, are the ancient Asiatic antidote used in such circumstances. Benedict Goës, in describing the passage of Pamir, speaks of the custom of using garlick, leeks, and dried fruits as 'an antidote to the cold,' which was so severe that animals could scarcely breathe it. Faiz Bakhsh and the Mirza both mention the use of dried fruits;and Mr. Matthew Arnold refers to a variety of the same, I have no doubt with good authority. But then Huc goes on to talk foolishness about 'the carbonic acid gas which we know is heavier than atmospheric air'—and so forth, and to tell how this carbonic acid gas caused a difficulty about lighting a fire. Marco Polo mentions the latter fact, but, belonging to the pre-scientific age, he attributes it to the great cold.

In a Chinese Itinerary through Tangut and Tibet, already cited, I find a perfect explanation of Huc's strange talk. At a great many stations on both sides of the Murui-ussu (or Upper Yangtse), it is noted that there are 'noxious vapours' at the camping-ground; so no doubt Huc merely accepted and embellished the phrase of his travelling companions.

A more amusing illustration of this notion is given in Dr. Bellew's recent book, 'Kashmir and Kashgar,' where an Afghan follower, to whom he had given chlorate of potash, says: 'Yes! I'll take this, and please God it will

cure me. But this dam is a poisonous air, and rises out of the ground everywhere. If you walk ten paces it makes you sick, and if you picket your horse on it, it spurts from the hole you drive your peg into, and knocks you senseless at his heels.'

Huc, whatever his cleverness as a painter of striking scenes, was not only without science, but without that geographical sense which sometimes enables a traveller to bring back valuable contributions to geographical knowledge, even when without the means of making instrumental observations.

A succession of political events during the last twenty years has greatly changed the state of things in Upper Asia, and has tended to the rapid widening of geographical knowledge. The chief of these events have been the revolt of the Mahommedan subjects of China in Eastern Turkestan and Dzungaria, followed by the advance of Russian authority into the basin of Ili, and by our own communications with the new authorities in the Kashgar Basin; the results of war with China in the establishment of Europeans at Peking, and the gradual abatement of the barriers that excluded them from the exploration of the interior provinces of China Proper; and, lastly, the rapid spread of Russian power over Western Turkestan.

The journey of the unfortunate Adolphus Schlagintweit to Kashgar, where he was barbarously murdered in 1857, was the first achieved from the Indian side.

In the last twelve years Col. Montgomerie has been indefatigable in his organisation of expeditions into the Unknown region by trained Pundits. First Yarkand was reached; then Lhassa; and a variety of other geographic raids were made upon Tibetan territory by this kind of scientific light-horse. But much as they have done to fill up blanks upon our maps, and to amend their accuracy, it is impossible for us to regard these vicarious achievements with the same satisfaction that we derive from geography conquered by the daring and toil of Euro travellers of the old stamp. These, however, have not been lacking either on the Russian side or on our own, nor, as we shall see, have France and Germany failed to contribute to the series of modern explorations in High Asia. Shaw and Hayward and Johnson were the pioneers of British exploration in Eastern Turkestan; and these have been followed by the less perilous journeys of Sir D. Forsyth and his companions, by the ride of the latter across Pamir, and by their success in connecting, at least by preliminary survey, our own scientific frontier with that of Russia. Cooper's two daring attempts to traverse the formidable barriers which man, even more than nature, has set between India and China, are hardly within the field that we are contemplating.

Since 1865-66 Armand David, like Huc and Gabet a Lazarist priest, but very unlike them in his zeal for natural science, has made a variety of adventurous journeys within the eastern borders of this little-known region. On one of these expeditions (1866) he devoted ten months to the study of the natural history of the Mongolian plateau in the vicinity and to the westward of Kwei-hwa-cheng or Kuku Khoto. In 1868 he visited the province of Szechwan, and advanced into the independent and hitherto entirely unknown Tibetan highlands on its NW. frontier, and thence into the eastern part of the Koko-nor territory. On this and previous journeys he claims to have discovered forty new species of mammals, and more than fifty of birds. Among the former are two new monkeys, living in very cold forest regions of the hill country just mentioned, and a new white bear. There has as yet been no publication in extenso of the journeys of this ardent and meritorious traveller.

Baron Richthofen, whose explorations of China have been at once the most extensive and the most scientific of our age, has traversed only a small part of the Mongolian plateau; but from his remarkable power of apprehending, and of indicating in a few words, the most characteristic features of structure and geography, he has thrown more light on the physical character of the region, so far as he saw it, than any other traveller.

Our countryman, Mr. Ney Elias, who has shown a remarkable combination of a traveller's best gifts with singular modesty in their display, has carried a new line of observations along the vast diagonal of Mongolia from the Gate at Kalgan to the Russian frontier on the Altai, through Uliassutai and Kobdo, a distance of upwards of 2,000 miles. To him these remarks are often indebted.

Dr. Bushell and Mr. Grosvenor have also passed the Wall at Kalgan to visit Dolon-nor, and Shangtu, the desolate site of the summer-palace of the great Kublaï.

We cannot attempt to recall even the chief names in the history of exploration from the Russian side, though I should be loath to leave unspecified the successful journey of that accomplished couple, Alexis and Olga Fedchenko, to the Alai Steppe, which is in fact a northern analogue of Pamir, separated from the southern plateaux, so called, by the mighty chain to which Fedchenko gave the name of Trans-Alai, the Kizil-yurt of our own Anglo-Indian travellers. But of all modern Russian incursions on the tracts that we have designated as the Unknown, Lieut.-Col. Prejevalsky's has been the boldest, the most persevering, and the most extensive.

The scene of his explorations was that plateau of Mongolia of which we have so often spoken, and that region which rises so far above it, the terraced plains, and lofty deserts of Northern Tibet, which spread out at a level equal to that of the highest summits of the Bernese Oberland, whilst the ranges which buttress the steps of the ascent rise considerably higher.

Captain (now Lieut.-Col.) Prejevalsky was already known as an able explorer, when, in 1870, he was deputed by the Imperial Geographical Society of St. Petersburg, under the sanction of the War Department, to conduct an exploration into Southern Mongolia. With his companion he left Kiakhta on November 29, 1870, for Peking, where they remained till the spring.

The time was unfavourable for such a journey as was proposed; for the Mahommedan rebellion in NW. China and the adjoining regions was in full blaze. Singanfu, the capital of Shensi, and famous capital of China in ancient times, had in the spring of 1870 been invested, and an invasion of Shansi, perhaps of Pechihli itself, had only just been barred by a timely check of the rebels at Tung-kwan, on the great south-west elbow of the Yellow River, a point often, and in all ages of Chinese history, the key of important campaigns. About midsummer the strong frontier town of Kuku Khoto (or Kwei-hwa-cheng), in the border-land north of the Great Wall, was entirely blockaded from the side of Mongolia, whilst raids were frequently made into its suburbs. In October Uliassutai had been attacked, and the open part of the town burnt, and so greatly were the Chinese alarmed for Urga itself that they allowed it to be protected by a Russian garrison.

Prejevalsky himself does not (in this work at least) state these sufficient reasons for delaying his expedition; he rather seems to leave us to infer that the delay was part of the programme; but we borrow the details from a notice by Mr. Ney Elias, who was himself in North China and cognisant of the circumstances.

It was impracticable, however, in such a state of things to carry out the journey projected, and in the meantime Colonel Prejevalsky determined on undertaking a preliminary and experimental journey to the busy town of Dolon-nor and the salt lake of Dalai-nor in Eastern Mongolia. Returning to Kalgan, he reorganised his little caravan, and on May 15 again ascended the Mongol table-land, and travelled westward parallel to its southern margin, and through the Tumet country, till they struck the western extremity of the Inshan mountains on the northern bank of the Hoang-ho. Thence they descended to Bautu, on the left bank of the river, and crossed into the dreary plains of the Ordos.

Their course lay now for nearly 300 miles westward, and parallel to the southern bank of the river, where it forms that great northern bend, familiar to all who have been in the habit of consulting maps of China. In all our maps the river is here represented as forming a variety of branches, but the main stream as constituting the most northerly of these. This bed still remains, but the river now flows in the most southerly of the channels, some thirty or forty miles farther south than it did in former times.

At the town of Ding-hu (called on former maps by the Mongol name Chaghan-subar-khan), the travellers crossed to the left bank of the Yellow River, and here they were in the province of Ala-shan, of which we have from Prejevalsky for the first time some distinct account. It forms a part of Marco Polo's Tangut, and probably a part, at least, of Ala-shan is identical with his district of Egrigaia, of which the chief town was called Calashan.

Twelve days' journey to the south-east brought the party to Din-yuan-ing (Wei-ching-pu of maps), the present capital of the principality, where they were well received by the Prince and his family, who has a deep impression of the greatness of the White Khan, i.e. of the Czar. This reception Col. Prejevalsky notes as the only hospitable welcome that they had met with; and he hardly records any recurrence of the like.