Seven Hedin's “Through Asia”

Abstract

CAPTAIN FRANK YOUNGHUSBAND prefaced his charming work on Central Asia “In the Heart of a Continent,” by a lament that his early education had been wasted on dead languages, so that he started on his travels ignorant of scientific methods of thought or observation (see NATURE, June 11,1896). Dr. Sven Hedin has no such fault to find with his upbringing. Trained in physical geography in the University of Berlin under the great Asiatic traveller Baron von Richthofen, he chose the least-known parts of Asia as a field for exploration, and fitted himself as an explorer by years of preliminary study and Eastern travel. Few men, especially in this country, attracted instinctively to the studies which can make them geographers, have had the opportunity of becoming travellers, although many travellers have been stimulated by their experiences to take up the study of geography. Dr. Hedin writes, as he travelled, like an accomplished geographer. He was no sportsman; and, although a sedulous collector, he was neither botanist, zoologist nor geologist, possessing only that sympathetic general knowledge of natural science which is essential to a geographer, and invaluable to a traveller as a guide to observation. He not only qualified himself in practical astronomy and surveying, so as to collect trustworthy material for maps, but took special pains to master all necessary languages. Besides his native Swedish he was proficient in German, French, Russian and English, and could thus converse easily with every European traveller and official he met; he had already learned Turki, so that in western Central Asia he could question the natives directly, and in the course of the journey he acquired sufficient facility in the use of Mongol and Chinese to enable him to dispense with interpreters.