for the ramparts of their cities, for the elevated platforms of their timber palaces, or for the solid domes which form the symbols to which Buddhist worship is directed. Yet in all, or nearly all, these countries we find remains of an elaborate and grandiose architecture devoted to religious purposes. Such are the ancient Javan temples, generally built of hewn stone, and including the extraordinary pyramid of sculptured terraces called Boro Bodor. Temples analogous to those of Java have been found in Sumatra, and in connexion with one of them a Sanskrit inscription as old as the seventh century; in Burma we find them of fine brickwork, in the remains of the great medieval city of Pagán, on the Irawadi river, whose ruins cover many square miles, and still exhibit several grand structures rising to a height of nearly 200 feet; others, also of brick, exist in the dense jungles which cover the remains of Yuthia in Siam. And but lately we have become acquainted with the vast remains of Cambojan architecture-immense temples and corridors of hewn stone, with furlongs of sculptured bas-reliefs. In Champa remains of similar character are alleged to exist; but we have no account of them. Each of these different series of remains has its own peculiar characters; but often there are close resemblances of general design, and in the ornamental detail throughout the whole of the series there is much of this resemblance; and that is of Indian character. Yet it must be said that, of the buildings as wholes, we find no type anywhere in India. Recently I have been much struck by photographs of ancient remains in Ceylon, in the possession of Mr. Fergusson, which afford strong corroboration of a suspicion long ago expressed by myself, that the nearest archetype and common parent of these structures may have been in that island.

Time compels me to omit much that I had noted regarding the progress of our knowledge of these countries, and to hasten down to our own times.

After the mission of Colonel Symes and Dr. Francis Buchanan to Ava in 1795, no material advance was made in our knowledge of these regions till the time of the first Burmese war, in 1824-26. For several years from that time the British Government in India exhibited a zeal for the extension of geographical knowledge such as rarely possesses any Government. A little army of surveyors and explorers were thrown upon the frontier of Asám; and the remote territories lying between Asám and Bengal on the one side, and Northern Burma on the other, were partially explored. Some of our officers traversed Northern Burma from Ava to the frontiers of Asám and Silhet; others, starting from Maulmain, visited most of the Western Shan States from the neighbourhood of Ava to the Siamese capital. And in 1837 Lieutenant (now General) William Macleod, of the Madras Army, accomplished the most important journey that had been made, by penetrating across more than half the breadth of the peninsula to the remote state of Kiang-Hung on the great Camboja river, and close to the frontier of China.

After this the abnormal fire of exploration, which the forced collision with Ava had developed in the Government, seemed utterly to die out.

The credit of kindling it again to some extent has been undoubtedly due to the agitation which certain gentlemen have carried on with amazing persistence for many years, in order to promote the opening of an overland trade with China from Rangoon.

For many centuries a considerable land-trade has been maintained between Western China and the valley of the Irawadi. As long ago as 1459, we find on the great Venetian Map of Fra Mauro a rubric attached to a certain point of the upper waters of the river of Ava-" Here goods are transferred from river to river, and so pass on into Cathay." And as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, there is some evidence that the East-India Company had a factory or agent at Bhamo. Of this trade the staple export from China used to be the silk of Ssechuan, and that from Burma cotton; but many minor articles contributed to its aggregate. The object of the agitation to which I have alluded has been to stimulate the Indian Government to take measures for drawing a similar trade in the produce of Western China to our ports on the Bay of Bengal, and, as necessary for that object, to promote the construction of a railroad from Rangoon to the Chinese frontier beyond the Mekong. Meantime the trade by the old route from Talifu in Yunnan to Bhamo had ceased; and to explain this, a slight digression is needful.

It is a remarkable circumstance that in our own older Indian territory there is no province where Mahomedanism is so extensively professed among the peasantry as the remote and secluded district of Silhet, in the east of Bengal. And China affords a curious parallel; for there is no one of the eighteen provinces of China Proper in which Mahomedanism is so prevalent as in the secluded inland province of Yunnan. And this has been the case from a very early period. Already, in the 13th century, a celebrated Persian historian of the Mongols states, though no doubt with great hyperbole, that in Yunnan all the people were Mahomedans. Since about 1855 this Mussulman population has been in a state of revolt against the Imperial Government; and, after wars which have devastated the greater part of the province and which indeed still continue to do so, a part of the Mahomedans have succeeded in establishing their independence in Western Yunnan, under a sultan of their own election, who bears the name of Suleiman, and reigns at Talifu. The anarchy of civil war and the interruption of communication between the Imperial and the Mahomedan parts of the province, as may easily be imagined, have brought the trade practically to a standstill.

Several expeditions of exploration and survey to the eastward and north-eastward of our province of Pegu resulted from the stimulus of agitation; but the most important of these undertakings was that despatched under Major Sladen, political agent at the Court of the King of Burma, to visit the Mahomedan authorities in Western Yunnan, and to endeavour to bring about a reopening of the trade. Notwithstanding every promise of support on the part of the King of Burma, and of ostensible orders issued in that sense, the expedition was grievously harassed and retarded by most vexatious proceedings on the part of the Burmese provincial officers-a course ascribed by Major Sladen to bad faith and ill-will on the part of the Court itself, but by Sir Arthur Phayre rather to the jealousy of the Chinese merchants, who feared that the trade might revive only to pass out of their hands.

Major Sladen did eventually make his way to Momien, the first city of China met with on passing that frontier; and to him belongs the credit of being the first European to pass that frontier from the side of the Irawadi. He was most cordially received by the Mahomedan Governor; and his visit ascertained that there was perfect good will on the part of the Mahomedan authorities towards the reestablishment of trade. But the causes which had brought it to a stop still existed, and the goodwill of the rulers could do nothing material to restore trade until order and peaceful communication with the interior of China should be reestablished.

A year and a half before the commencement of Major Sladen's journey, another one of a very remarkable character had been undertaken under the orders of the French Imperial Government. This was an expedition for the exploration of the Mekong, or Great Camboja River, starting from the recently acquired French territory in the delta of that river. Before I was called so unexpectedly to occupy this chair, I had commenced the compilation, from the imperfect materials accessible, of an account of this expedition, which I look on as the most important geographical enterprise that has been accomplished in Asia, at least since Burnes's journey to Bokhara. The work of preparation for the duties of the Section prevented me from making any progress with the paper, though I hope on one day of our sitting to give a sketch of the journey. I will only say now that the mission party, consisting mainly of naval officers, ascended the river, first by boat and afterwards by land, to KiangHung, the point reached thirty years before by Macleod. Here they were compelled to abandon the line of the Mekong; but starting to the north-east they entered the Chinese frontier at Ssemao (the Esmok of Macleod), and travelled across Southern Yunnan to the capital city of the province, almost every where tolerably well received by the Chinese authorities. A detachment of the party under Lieutenant Garnier succeeded in reaching Talifu; but they had to leave it immediately, at the peril of their lives; and on their return to Tong-chuan, where they had left their chief, Captain De la Grée, seriously ill, they found that his death had occurred a few days before. Taking his remains with them, they proceeded to the Great Kiang at Siuchau, and thence descended to Shanghai, in reaching which they completed a journey of several thousand miles, which had occupied two years.

About the same time Mr. Cooper made his two gallant attempts-first, to reach

India from Ssechuan, and again, with singular perseverance, to reach China from

Asám.

The French expedition ascertained that there is no hope of using the Mekong as a commercial route from Yunnan. Though large spaces of its course afford good navigation, this is not only interrupted at no great distance from the head of the delta by actual cataracts, but at intervals by long tracts of rapids, and above the frontier of the Burmese Tributary States the river becomes so rapid as to be continuously quite unfit for navigation. Much the same has been ascertained of the Salwen. Neither of these rivers, therefore, can be turned to account for communication with Western China. The Irawadi remains; and the experience of Major Sladen's ascent to Bhamo, during the month of January, in a steamer navigated entirely by Burmese officers and crew, appears to show that this river is fairly navigable to that station by steamers drawing not more than 4 feet of

water.

Many startling and inconsiderate statements appear in the memorials and other documents which have been addressed to Government on the subject of the new routes for trade with China-as, for example, when the agitators of the question talk of thereby opening up a new trade for our country with 200 millions of people, occupying extensive and rich portions of the earth-as if, forsooth, the trade and products of a vast and varied portion of the earth's surface, merely because that portion happens to be described by one name as China, were like the water in a lake, which may all possibly be drained dry if but tapped at a single point in one of its narrow creeks. The moderation and cautious good sense of one of the memorials, however, forms so striking and refreshing a contrast to such statements as I have referred to, that I will quote it almost in full; it is not long:-" Your memorialists have long entertained the opinion that it would be of the utmost importance to the commerce of this country if a route were opened between Rangoon and the interior of Western China. The information which your memorialists possess on the district through which the various routes hitherto proposed pass, does not justify them in expressing any decided opinion either with regard to any one of these proposed routes, or as to the practicability of opening any route. But the memorialists would respectfully urge upon Her Majesty's Government the propriety of completing the survey which has already been commenced, with the view of authoritatively establishing whether it is practicable to open up such a line of communication.' And I am happy to observe that this dignified and reasonable memorial comes from the commercial metropolis of Scotland; it is the memorial of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures.

The probability of a great attraction of China trade to the ports of Pegu, even if there were a good highway opened out to the Chinese frontier, depends not on rhetorical statements about the vast population and products of the Celestial Empire, but (and here I will borrow a felicitous expression which I remember to have been applied in India by that admirable public servant the present Governor of Jamaica, Sir John Peter Grant) on the question where the trade-shed of that produce shall be found to exist a question on which I have never seen any great light thrown. As regards the important part of the export trade at least, we have to look not to Yunnan and Kwei-Chau, which are in the main mountainous regions, and comparatively unproductive, but to Ssechuan. I observe that Mr. Cooper, a sensible and on this point quite unprejudiced observer, does consider that a large part of the produce of Ssechuan would seek an outlet by the Irawadi if the land route were again open. Looking to the length of land journey from the fertile portions of Ssechuan to Bhamo, this opinion certainly surprises me. But the fact is that we know extremely little of the extraordinary skill of the Chinese in utilizing rivers which we should in this country regard as mere trout-streams, for internal navigation, or of the extent to which such means apply in reducing the length and cost of the route in question. My own impression is that the Yangtsé, in spite of all the difficulties of its upper reaches, as being free from the complications of a double frontier, and the anarchy of tribes imperfectly controlled, will carry to the sea for many years to come the produce of Ssechuan and Central Yunnan, rather than any outlet by Burma or the Shan States. I do not myself see how the long land-route by Kiang-Hung could become attrac

tive without a railroad; and the construction of a railroad in such a direction certainly seems to me visionary. Coming to practical questions, who is to pay for such a scheme? The Government of these islands? The question needs no answer. The gentlemen who are so ready to memorialize Government on the subject? If they will, it is well; but I doubt it. If in our own old Indian territory, after railways have been making for twenty years, it has been found impossible to get a single line of railway undertaken except with a guarantee (that is to say, practically, as the guarantees are, at the cost of the Government), is it likely that men who withhold their money there, will risk it in driving a railway through a scantily peopled and almost unknown region to tap a remote corner of China? Is it, then, the Indian Government that is to be at this expense? I remember how a somewhat similar system of agitation induced a former Secretary of State, in opposition to the views of the Indian Government, to sanction the guarantee of a short but costly railway on like speculative grounds-I mean from Calcutta to an uninhabited swamp upon a creek of the Delta, which it was expected would prove a great harbour of commerce; but that line is now almost a pure dead weight upon the Indian revenue. The Indian Government is already sufficiently burdened with railway guarantees, to say nothing of the immense amount of work already laid out, and still to be done, in completing its domestic railway system. When mutterings of discontent on account of increased or changing taxation are beginning to be heard so audibly in India, a wise Government will hold back for a time from measures of almost sure benefit, rather than disregard a warning so ominous. And it would be mad, under such circumstances, to engage its revenues in costly and speculative schemes for the extension of British commerce so problematical as this.

What I think we may reasonably hope for is:-first, to see Western China tranquillized, and the old channel of trade restored and stimulated by the access of British steamers to Bhamo; secondly, from gradual but inevitable political change in our own relations to the Burmese Government, I should expect to see our own influence brought into more direct operation at Bhamo, so that we shall be able to act either in the suppression of marauding, or in opening out by engineering the short road to the Chinese frontier cities, unhampered by such paltry obstacles as the intrigues of Burmese underlings, or the jealousies of Chinese traders. And I venture to think that our Government, as a general rule, need neither grudge the small cost of surveys and explorations beyond our frontier, nor hesitate to apply some degree of pressure on native governments to sanction such measures, without which these governments are apt to think us not in earnest in our proposals. If my memory does not deceive me, our Minister at Peking, in 1860, declined even to apply to the Chinese Regency for passports for an expedition which Lord Canning had sanctioned for exploration in Thibet, and in consequence a promising geographical enterprise was abandoned. The French Minister, in 1866, was less punctilious in pressing a similar demand. The expedition of the Mekong was in consequence furnished with imperial passports; and these passports, even in such a time of civil war and confusion, backed by tact and energy, secured them everywhere in China a decent, and sometimes a cordial reception, as well as free passage through those hitherto untraversed provinces.

On the Principality of Karategin. By Major-General ABRAMOF.

On Minicoy Island. By Major BASEVI.

The author, who was connected with the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, visited the island (which is situated west of Cape Comorin) with the object of comparing the intensity of gravity on an island station with that at inland stations in the same latitude. The result of Major Basevi's observations was the conclusion that the force of gravity is greater on the coast than inland, and at an ocean station like Minicoy greater than on the coast. The island is of coral formation,

covered with cocoa-palms, and contains more than 2000 inhabitants, who are of the same race as the Maldives, and of the Mohammedan religion.

On the Ruined Cities of Central America. By Captain L. BRINE, R.N. The author stated that it was not until the year 1750 (more than 200 years after the Spanish conquest) that the existence of ruined cities and temples lying hidden in the jungles and forests of Central America was revealed to the knowledge of the Spanish Government. A small party of Spaniards, travelling in the State of Chiapas, happened to diverge from the usual track leading from the southern limit of the Gulf of Mexico to the Mexican Cordilleras, and accidentally discovered in the dense forest remains of stone buildings-palaces and templeswith other evidences of a past and forgotten civilization of a very high order. These ruins were those of Palenque. Some years subsequently to this discovery, the King of Spain ordered an official survey to be made, and this survey was made in 1787 under the direction of Captain del Rio. Later official surveys were also made in 1806 and 1807; but these, with the usual secrecy of the Spanish conquerors, were not generally made public, and thus it happened that only as recently as the year 1822, at the revolution of Mexico, did the existence of these ruins first become known in Europe. Since then other hidden cities or temples had been discovered--Copan, in the State of Honduras; Ocosingo, on the frontiers of Guatemala; and several in Yucatan, of which Uxmal and Chichen-Itza are the most famous. It was very remarkable that all these ruins, evidently the work of one particular and highly civilized race of Indians, should only be found in a very limited area. None exist in South America, and none in that part of the continent commonly distinguished as North America; they all lie within the Tropics, between the 14th and 22nd parallels of north latitude, and were chiefly adjacent to the Mexican and Honduras Gulfs, or in the plains on the west of the Cordilleras of Central America. On the eastern or Pacific slopes and plateaux, within the same parallels, are also remains of ancient fortifications and sacrificial altars, but these are of a less elaborate type, and are allied to the Aztecan structures of Mexico. The author gave an account of a journey made by him across the continent in the spring of last year, from the Pacific, through Guatemala, to the Atlantic; he examined in detail the mixed populations and conditions of the countries between the Cordilleras and the Pacific, the central plateaux, with their aboriginal Indian races and ruins, the region (almost entirely unknown) inhabited by those unbaptized Indians called the Candones, near which lie the ruins of Ocosingo and Palenque; he concluded the journey by traversing Yucatan, visiting the strange ruins with which the country abounds, and emerging on the northern coast of the Peninsula at Sisal.

The Interior of Greenland. By Dr. ROBERT BROWN.

After reviewing the old ideas of the nature of the interior, Dr. Brown spoke at length of the views which his own studies and those of others had led him to. Various more or less successful attempts had been made to penetrate into the interior, viz. by Dalager, Kielssen, Rink, Hayes, Rae, Nordenskjold and Berggren, various Danish officers and Eskimo on hunting trips, &c., and one in which, with his companions MM. E. Whymper, A. P. Tegner, C. E. Olsen, J. Fleischer, and an Eskimo, he had shared in. The result of all these expeditions showed that the interior is one huge mer de glace, of which the outlets and overflow are the comparatively small glaciers on the coast, though in reality, compared with the glaciersystem of the Alps, they are of gigantic size. The outskirting land is to all intents and purposes merely a circlet of islands of greater or less extent. There are in all probability no mountains in the interior, only a high plateau from which the unbroken ice is shed on either side to the east and west, the greatest slope being towards the west. This "inland ice" was increasing, as necessarily it must, and would most likely eventually overlie the country as it once had in former periods of the earth's history. He considered that Greenland might be crossed