Central Asian Exploration ¹

Abstract

DR. SVEN HEDIN'S latest book possesses an interest for the great world of travellers which is apart from its intrinsic merit as a traveller's record. The blank spaces of the world's map are becoming so narrow; there is so little left for the exploring enthusiast to mark with his pioneer footsteps, that books of this nature must necessarily grow scarcer as the world grows older. This may be one of the last of a grand series which has educated the world (in divers tongues) since the days of Herodotus. The finger of the North Pole still beckons to us, as does that of the South; there are still a few sand wastes in the interior of Arabia, and a few thousands of forest leagues in the interior of South America which have not yielded up their secrets to the keen eye of scientific inquiry—but that is about all. It is the unattractive emptiness of the wildest and most desolate wastes which still remains to be explored, so that the tale which has yet to be told of them will be told by none but men of the true race of the world's heroes of research—men of the stamp of Peary and Sven Hedin—who explore because, to them, the first acquisition of knowledge of the unknown is the one thing that makes life worth living.