THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER: ASIA AND AUSTRALIA
The beginning of the nineteenth century was signalized by the
initiation of the great trigonometrical survey of India, and the
first half-century was a period of much important geographical and
anthropological work within that empire, but to no great extent beyond
its boundaries, though in 1808 a mission penetrated to the sources of
the Ganges, and Baluchistan and Afghanistan were in some part explored
by officials of the East India Company. But the physical problems of
the heart of the continent were left to a later period--those, for
instance, concerned with the trans-Himalayan region (as viewed from
India), including Tibet, eastward that region so important in the
hydrography of the continent, where the river systems of China and
Burma take their rise, northward the deserts of Mongolia and Turkestan,
westward the nodal mountain-region of the Pamirs, and the area which
long concealed the sources of the Brahmaputra (Tsanpo) and the rivers
of Punjab. In spite of the endeavours of the Tibetans to hold inviolate
the secrets of their land--in great measure successful so far as their
capital, Lhasa, was concerned--the Indian native surveyors, such as
Nain Singh, Krishna, and Ugyen Gyatso, were able to penetrate the
country, and even Lhasa itself; their work covered the period 1863–82.
And the last quarter of the century provides a wonderful record of
continuous exploration in Tibet, as will appear from the mere quotation
of names and dates--P. Bonvalot and Prince Henry of Orléans, 1886–87;
W. W. Rockhill, 1888 and 1891; Hamilton Bower, 1891–92; Dutreuil de
Rhins and F. Grenard, 1893–94; St. George Littledale, 1895; Captains
W. S. Wellby, 1896, and H. H. P. Deasy, 1896, whose work was afterwards
extended by Captain C. G. Rawling and by Sir M. A. Stein; and Sven
Hedin, 1896–98, 1899–1902, 1906–08, whose last journey revealed the
existence, long suspected, of the great mountain system north of the
upper Tsan-po. This list is by no means exhaustive, nor can be that of
the Russians who worked from the opposite direction, from their own
territory; their leader was Nicolai Prjevalsky, who in 1871–73 and in
1876 worked in the Tsaidam region and made the first contribution to
the mapping of the important hydrographical area above referred to, and
in 1879 studied the vast physical changes which have taken place in
Central Asia within historic times, and form one of the most remarkable
geographical problems in the world. He continued his work in 1883–85,
and was followed by Pevtsov and Roborovsky (1889 and 1894), P. K.
Kozlov, Potanin, and many others. The names of Russian scientists, such
as Baron A. Kaulbars and L. Griesbach, are also associated with the
problems of the Aral and Caspian depressions. The former extensions of
human settlement over areas now covered by the Central Asian deserts
has been brought to light in great measure through the researches of
Sven Hedin, and especially of Sir M. A. Stein. The general result of
all these investigations has been to modify profoundly, even during the
present generation, preexisting ideas of the physical geography of the
central region. Nor should we overlook the work of recent travellers
in China proper, a broad canvas on which outlines had been sketched
earlier; but details remained, and still in great part remain, to be
filled in, though Ferdinand Baron von Richthofen, in the course of his
seven journeys in 1868–72, left few districts entirely unvisited.
The problem of the former existence of flourishing communities in areas
now desert, and of the causes of the change, has a partial counterpart
in southern Arabia. The modern period of Arabian exploration began
earlier than that of Central Asia. The journeys of J. Halévy (1869),
E. Glaser (1889), and J. T. Bent (1893) in the south were primarily
archæological in purpose. In other parts of the peninsula the work of
J. L. Burckhardt (1815), Sir R. F. Burton, Captain G. F. Sadlier, W. G.
Palgrave, Charles Doughty, Wilfrid Blunt, C. Huber, Musil, Leachman,
and others, has made it possible to lay down at least the position
of the chief towns and settlements, and the main physical outlines,
with close accuracy, save in the Dahna or great desert of the southern
interior, which remains untrodden.
The detailed exploration of Australia began from Sydney, the earliest
settlement, and was directed along the coast rather than towards the
interior, the penetration of which was difficult. George Bass, after
a short expedition inland, was accompanied by Matthew Flinders in
exploring the coast of New South Wales as far as the George River
and Hat Hill towards the end of the eighteenth century; in 1797–98
Bass Strait was found to separate Tasmania from the mainland, and
that island was circumnavigated. Bass was subsequently lost in
South America; but Flinders extended the work in 1801–03, when,
having sailed from England, he worked from King George Sound at the
south-west of Australia right round the south, east, and north coasts
as far as Arnhem Bay, west of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and would have
accomplished more but for the unseaworthiness of his ship. Flinders
was not only a competent explorer, but also a man of theories: he
took the limestone cliffs of the Great Australian Bight (south coast)
for coral reefs, and when he entered Spencer Gulf he thought of a
northward strait connecting with the Gulf of Carpentaria, and conceived
an Australian archipelago; nor was he wholly disabused until he had
definitely located the heads of both gulfs. A number of important
inlets, such as Port Phillip, Keppel Bay, and Port Bowen, were
thoroughly investigated by him, and he also surveyed the Great Barrier
Reef. And the substitution of the name of Australia for New Holland is
due to a suggestion of his. His unfinished survey of the western shores
was completed by Captain P. P. King in voyages between 1817 and 1822.
The accident of a drought in 1813 drove some of the Sydney settlers
to look for new pastures in the hinterland. The divide between the
short eastward and the long westward drainage systems was surmounted
with difficulty; a road to the point where the town of Bathurst
afterwards grew up was promptly made, and an arresting geographical
problem confronted the investigators when the westward-flowing rivers
Macquarie and Lachlan were found. Lieutenant Oxley, R.N., attempting to
follow the Lachlan in 1815, was presently brought to a halt by great
swamps. He struck south to avoid them, and narrowly missed discovering
the Murrumbidgee river, before he turned back to carry to Sydney the
conviction that the westward drainage generally was lost in swamps
fringing an inland sea. Cunningham found a route from this coast up
to the rich Liverpool Plains, towards the north of New South Wales,
in 1823; but for the most part exploration was temporarily directed
to the south-west, and Hamilton Hume and Hovell in 1824–25 took an
inland route from New South Wales to the south coast on the west side
of Port Phillip. This inlet was not recognized by them; they returned
to report that they had seen the coast-land, and found it good, further
to the east at Western Port; settlers who visited that district on
their recommendation were disappointed, and the development of the
Victoria coast-lands received a set-back in consequence of this error.
Cunningham in 1828 opened the route from the coast at Brisbane to the
downs of the south Queensland hinterland. In the same year a new phase
was entered in the solution of the problem of the far interior, when
Charles Sturt, carrying with him Oxley’s conviction of the existence
of an inland sea, journeyed inland at a season of drought to find
the Macquarie river losing itself on the dry plains, and the Darling
flowing salt. He attributed this fact to an admixture of sea-water, and
set down the interior of the continent as a desert. In the following
year he settled the problem of the drainage of the Murrumbidgee,
Lachlan, and Murray rivers by following them to the mouth of the Murray
in Lake Alexandrina (south coast); and although he now held that the
waters of the Darling were included (as they are) in this system, it
was still doubted whether there was a divide between north and south
flowing waters about the central latitude of New South Wales, where,
in the interior, high ground was known to exist. Sir Thomas Mitchell
settled this question by a great journey in 1836, which, among other
results, immediately threw open to settlement the fertile country
about Port Phillip, hitherto, as we have seen, neglected through the
misunderstanding of Hume and Hovell.
The larger problems of Australian geography were thus early settled,
though there was (as even now there is in some parts) a multitude of
details to be filled in. But the leading questions awaiting solution
by explorers now become economic rather than purely geographical. Thus
we find Dr. Leichhardt’s first expedition (1844), from Moreton Bay
in southern Queensland by the Burdekin, Mitchell, and Roper rivers
to Port Essington, inspired by the conception of an overland route
between Sydney and a northern seaport. He was lost (and the mystery
of his fate was never solved) in 1848 in attempting a crossing of the
continent from east to west, and Kennedy’s expedition in the same year,
in attempting to cross northern Australia, also met with disaster,
where A. C. Gregory succeeded in 1855–56. The penetration of the
interior from the south and the crossing to the north had attracted
travellers before this; Eyre in 1840 had discovered the series of
salt lakes and swamps which he lumped together under the name of Lake
Torrens, while Sturt in 1845 added little to Eyre’s discoveries,
and, after failing to penetrate the Stony Desert to the north, put a
temporary period to explorations in that quarter. Babbage in 1856 and
Parry in the following year obtained more accurate knowledge of the
Lake Torrens region, and Goyder in 1857 reported a great freshwater
lake which was found later to have been conceived out of some shallow
pools and visions of the mirage. J. M. Stuart’s six expeditions
from south to north in 1858–61 added much to exact knowledge; that
of Robert Burke and William Wills in 1860–61, ill-managed as it was
and ending in the death of the leaders, obtained a fame in excess
of its scientific value; but other expeditions sent in search of it
achieved better results, and incidentally made clear the danger of
assessing the worth of some of the inland districts on the report of
one traveller who might have come upon them at an unfavourable season.
Thus J. McKinlay in 1861 brought word of fertile lands which Sturt had
condemned as desert. The many journeys through the interior of Western
Australia--such as those of J. S. Roe (1836), the brothers Gregory,
H. M. Lefroy (1863), Sir J. Forrest (various expeditions in and
after 1869), Warburton (1873), and Ernest Giles (first crossing from
Adelaide to Perth by an inland route, 1875)--though often of extreme
importance from an economic point of view, whether concerned with the
discovery of pastoral lands or of gold or other mineral fields, can
only be referred to here as having gradually opened up the detailed
knowledge of this part of the continent, and as having redeemed it
in part from a reputation for complete inhospitality, until we have
now a trans-continental railway planned to connect the systems of
south and of western Australia. The exploration of the Kimberley and
north-western areas of the state was delayed until the latter half of
the last century.