American Geographical Society

À Travers l'Afrique Australe by Jules LeclercqJournal of the American Geographical Society of New York, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1895), pp. 90-91Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/196850 .

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90 Book Notices.

one is the Guanahani of Columbus. He admits at the same time that, in the maps of the sixteenth century,

the transference and reduplication of names was made in a wholesale manner,

and he claims only to have furnished additional evidence in favour of Samana.

It may well be doubted whether Guanahani can ever be identi- fied in such a manner as to make an end of controversy on the subject; but meanwhile the style and manner of Mr. Redway's argument are to be commended.

Four reproductions of charts elucidate the text.

A Travers Z'Afrique Australe, par Jules leciercq, Membre Collabora- teur de ia SocieIte mperiale Russe de Ge'ographie, etc. Ouvrage

pccom5agnef de gravures et d'une Carte. Pp. 313, I8mo. (Librairie

P/on.) Paris, 1895.

M. Leclercq is an unwearied traveller, and he tells his expe- riences, whether of Colorado, or Samarcand, or South Africa, in the same agreeable style.

He arrived at Cape Town in June, in the rainy season, which is the South African form of winter. The city seemed to him altogether ugly and unworthy of its situation, but he was greatly impressed by the Municipal Gardens, the Library and the Museum.

He devotes a chapter to the government of the colony, and another to Sir Henry Loch and Mr. Cecil Rhodes, whom he admires. From Cape Town he crossed the Karroo to Kimberley and the diamond mines. Here he was able to study the life of the workmen. One company employed 8,ooo men: I,400 whites, 6,ooo blacks, and several hundred convicts, of various races. In one compound M. Leclercq saw 2,000 Caffres, who were locked up every night, when their twelve working hours were past, to be marched out in files in the morning. They are regularly searched after the day's labour; yet they manage to secrete a certain pro- portion of the stones. These men are paid for their work, and this is the one distinction between their lot and that of the slaves in the Brazilian mines.

M. Leclercq visited also the Orange Free State, the Transvaal, Zululand and Natal. He foresees that the English capital will ulti- mately carry the day against the independent spirit of the Boers, in spite of their victories in the field; and in describing these he makes a criticism of Mr. Gladstone, which will hardly take its place in history.

He was delighted with Natal, the paradise of Africa, where the Hindus are establishing themselves, and in Zululand he could not

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Book Notices. 91

sufficiently admire the native race. He expresses the opinion that the future of all South Africa belongs to the natives, Caffres or Zulus:

.... Ai posteri L'ardua sentenza. ...

Diary of a Journey though Mongolia and Tibet in ioSg'9 and 1892. By William Woodville Rockhill, Gold Medalist of the Royal Geograph- ical Society. Published by the Smithsonian Institution. 8vo, pp. XX-41 3. Washington, S894.

Mr. Rockhill's journey was undertaken partly under the aus- pices of the Smithsonian Institution. In an Introductory Notice the author briefly describes the previous journeys in Tibet from the time of Friar Odoric, in 1325, down to the year I89I. Some of the most valuable work has been done by the native explorers trained for scientific geographical work, and sent into the coun- tries beyond the Himalaya by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. They have traversed the whole of Tibet from south to north and from west to east, and have surveyed the important towns and the country of Central and Western Tibet. One of them, known as A K-- , has made a map of the city of Lh'asa on a scale of four inches to the mile. Excellent as surveyors, these explorers are not well-trained observers, and details of value escape their attention.

It was after his journey in I888-I889 that Mr. Rockhill deter- mined to visit Mongolia and Tibet once again and, if possible, to reach Nepal or Sikkim by crossing Tibet from north-east to south- west. He endeavoured to steer clear of Lh'asa, but was diverted from his intended path, when at very nearly the same spot at which Bonvalot and Bower had been stopped, and was forced by the Tibetans to turn his face eastward. The remainder of his journey was through a not unknown country, but he believes that he has been able to collect information which will be of value to future explorers.

The sketch route-map accompanying the volume is from an original on a scale of four statute miles to the inch.

Wherever Mr. Rockhill has been able to check his observations by those of others-the Jesuits in the 17th Century, Prjevalsky and Bower-he has found a fair agreement in the results, though he regards his own work as nothing more than a rough preliminary sketch of a nearly unknown region. During the whole length of his journey of 3,400 miles, Mr. Rockhill took observations for time and latitude, and for altitude, by the boiling point of water

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