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EXPLOEATION-EXTENT-DIVISIONS. 15
eastern frontiers of Tibet travellers are arrested by the rugged gorges, the extensive
forests, the absence of population, and consequently of supplies of all kinds, and to
these obstacles is now added the ill-will of the Chinese authorities. During the
present century the Tibetan Government has succeeded better than any other
Asiatic state in preserving the political isolation of the people, thanks chiefly to the
relief and physical conditions of the land. Tibet rises like a citadel in the heart of
Asia ; hence its defenders have guarded its approaches more easily than those of
India, China, and Japan.
EXPLORATION EXTENT DIVISIONS.
The greater part of Tibet remains still unexplored, or at least geographers have
failed to trace with certainty the routes of the Roman Catholic missionaries who
traversed the land before their entry was interdicted. In the first half of the four-
teenth century the Friuli monk, Odorico di rordenone, made his way from China to
Tibet, and resided some time in Lassa. Three centuries later on, in 1625 and 1626,
the Portuguese missionary Andrada twice penetrated into Tibet, where he was well
received by the Buddhist priests. In 1661 the Jesuits Griiber and D'Orville
travelled from China through Lassa to India. In the following century the Tuscan
Desideri, the Portuguese Manoel Freyre, and others visited the Tibetan capital from
India. But the Capuchins had already founded a Catholic mission in Lassa under
the direction of Orazio della Penna, who spent no less than twenty-two years in the
country. At this time the Tibetan Government allowed strangers to penetrate
freely over the Himalayan passes, which are now so jealously guarded. A layman
also lived several years in Lassa, whence he went to China by the Kuku-nor,
again returning via Lavsi to India. This was the Dutch traveller Van de Putte,
who is known to have been a learned man and a great observer, but who unfortu-
nately destroyed his papers and charts, fearing lest these ill-arranged and misunderstood
documents might be the means of propagating error. He left nothing
behind him except a few notes and a manuscript map, carefully preserved in the
M iddelburg Museum in Zealand.
Itineraries traced either astronomically or by the compass and chronometer
are still very rare. The English explorers and the Hindu surveyors employed by
the Indian Government have only visited the south-western districts, and the
upland basin of the Tsangbo north of Nepal
and Sikkim. South-east Tibet ha?
been traversed by French missionaries; but all the recent attempts made to
penetrate from the north and north-east have failed. In imitation of Paskievich
the "Transbaikalian," and Muraviov the " Amurian," the brothers Schlagintweit
have assumed the whimsical title of " Transkuenlunian "
(in Russian, Zakuenlunskiy),
to perpetuate the memory of their passage over the Tibetan mountains;
but they only visited the western extremity of the country. The Russian explorer
Prjevalsky was compelled twice to retire without being able to penetrate into the
heart of the country, and the Hungarian Bela 8/cchenyi also found himself obliged
to retrace his steps. For all the regions not yet visited by the English and Hindu