includes 8,500,000 in Manchuria, 2,580,000 in Mongolia,
6,430,020 in Tibet and 1,200,000 in Chinese Turkestan.
Some of these regions are only nominally Chinese. Those on
the western frontier were until comparatively recent years
almost as unknown as the poles. Sven Hedin's description of
those that he traversed is wonderfully fascinating. Only a
daring spirit, the explorer of the type that is born, not made,
could have pierced those vast solitudes and wrested from them
the secret of their existence. That Hedin had no money for
such a costly quest could not deter this Viking of the Northland.
Kings headed the subscription and others so eagerly followed
that ample funds were soon in hand. Princes helped with
equipment and counsel. The Czar made all Russian railways
free highways, and every local official and nomad chieftain
exerted himself to aid the expedition. Hedin does not claim
to give anything more than an ordered diary of his travels,
together with a description of the lands he explored and the
peoples he found. But what a diary it is! It takes the reader
away from the whirl of crowded cities and clanging trolley-cars
into the boundless, wind-swept desert and the solitude of
majestic mountains where the lonely traveller wanders with his
camels through untrodden wildernesses or floats down the
interminable stretches of unknown rivers, while night after
night he sleeps in his tiny tent or under the open sky. The
author failed to reach the long-sought Lassa, the suspicious
Dalai Lama refusing to be deceived or cajoled and sternly sending
the inquisitive traveller out of the country. But the expedition
of three years and three days was rich in other disclosures of
ruined cities and great watercourses and lofty plateaus and
majestic mountain ranges. The population is sparse in those