The exploration of Mongolia bas been almost entirely monopolized by the Eussians. The great unknown tbat lay beyond their Siberian frontier fifty years ago was a " loadstar " to the Russian pioneers, who were for ever pushing on from their newly acquired territory into what, they thought, might be richer lands. Thus, the wide Mongolian plateau and Dzungarian steppes were explored by men chiefly of Russian nationality. In consequence, there is, perhaps, no country in the world on which there is so little information in the English language as Mongolia and Dzungaria.The mysfcerious and almost incredible wanderings of Atkinson published in 1858-60 (whose unsatisfactory accounts are almost impossible to follow), the journeys of Ney Elias in 1872-3, and Younghusband in 1887, give us the sum total of our knowledge of things Mongolian in the English language. In the Yenisei basin we had no forerunners, and in Dzungaria but one, Etherton, who, in 1909, rode from Kulja to Tulta in the
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