Cathay and the way thither Volume 1; being a collection of medieval notices of China

by Henry Yule

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 ... longitude of the cities of Chinese Turkestan, in accordance with Captain Montgomerie's approximate determination of Yarkand, arises from the impossibility of reconciling this with the difference between Ilchi and Yarkand in the Jesuit Tables. This amounts in those Tables to 4 18'; whilst the collation of Montgomerie's position of Yarkand with the Jesuit position of Ilchi reduces it to 2 61', and with the position which the former's own data induced him to assign to Ilchi it comes down to 1 30'. It had indeed long been pretty certain that the Jesuit position of Ilchi was too far east; and a communication, for which I have had to thank Captain Montgomerie since this went to press, reports later data obtained by Colonel Walker (who will no doubt publish them in detail) as fixing Ilchi approximatively to longitude 79 25' and latitude 37 8'. This longitude I have adopted in my map, whilst in regard to Yarkand I have stretched Captain Montgomerie's data westward as far as their circumstances seemed to justify (perhaps further than he would admit), assigning to it a longitude of 77. This is still 36' further east than the assignment of any previous map, whilst it reduces the discrepancy from the Jesuit data in relation to Ilchi, though still leaving it inevitably large. Next to this general uncertainty about the longitudes the great geographical puzzle about this region appears to be the identity of the main source of the Oxus. In addition to Wood's River, which he traced to the Sirikul Lake, most maps represent another, a longer and therefore perhaps greater, feeder from a more northern source, under the name of the River of Bolor or Wakhsh. Nor has the narrative of Wood's journey through the district of Wakhan yet displaced from our maps another position assign...

210 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

Sir Henry Yule was a Scottish Orientalist.

He was born at Inveresk, Scotland, near Edinburgh, the son of Major William Yule (1764-1839), translator of the Apothegms of Ali. Henry Yule was educated at Edinburgh, Addiscombe and Chatham, and joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840. He served in both the Sikh wars, was secretary to Colonel (afterwards Sir) Arthur Phayre's mission to Ava (1855), and wrote his Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava (1858).