I
Early in the autumn of 1867 my brother and I, with his family, were
settled at St. Petersburg. I entered the university, and sat on the
benches among young men, almost boys, much younger than myself. What I
had so longed for five years before was accomplished: I could study;
and, acting upon the idea that a thorough training in mathematics is
the only solid basis for all subsequent scientific work and thought, I
joined the physico-mathematical faculty in its mathematical section.
My brother entered the Military Academy for Jurisprudence, whilst I
entirely gave up military service, to the great dissatisfaction of my
father, who hated the very sight of a civilian dress. We both had now
to rely entirely upon ourselves.
Study at the university and scientific work absorbed all my time for
the next five years. A student of the mathematical faculty has, of
course, very much to do, but my previous studies in higher mathematics
permitted me to devote part of my time to geography; and, moreover, I
had not lost in Siberia the habit of hard work.
The report of my last expedition was in print; but in the meantime a
vast problem rose before me. The journeys that I had made in Siberia
had convinced me that the mountains which at that time were drawn on
the maps of Northern Asia were mostly fantastic, and gave no idea
whatever of the structure of the country. The great plateaux which
are so prominent a feature of Asia were not even suspected by those
who drew the maps. Instead of them several great ridges, such as,
for instance, the eastern portion of the Stanovói, which used to be
drawn on the maps as a black worm creeping eastward, had grown up
in the topographic bureaux, contrary to the indications and even to
the sketches of such explorers as L. Schwartz. These ridges have no
existence in nature. The heads of the rivers which flow toward the
Arctic Ocean on the one side, and toward the Pacific on the other, lie
intermingled on the surface of a vast plateau; they rise in the same
marshes. But, in the European topographer’s imagination, the highest
mountain ridges must run along the chief water-partings, and the
topographers had drawn there the highest Alps, of which there is no
trace in reality. Many such imaginary mountains were made to intersect
the maps of Northern Asia in all directions.
To discover the true leading principles in the disposition of the
mountains of Asia--the harmony of mountain formation--now became a
question which for years absorbed my attention. For a considerable
time the old maps, and still more the generalizations of Alexander von
Humboldt, who, after a long study of Chinese sources, had covered Asia
with a network of mountains running along the meridians and parallels,
hampered me in my researches, until at last I saw that even Humboldt’s
generalizations, stimulating though they had been, did not agree with
the facts.
Beginning, then, with the beginning, in a purely inductive way, I
collected all the barometrical observations of previous travellers, and
from them calculated hundreds of altitudes; I marked on a large-scale
map all geological and physical observations that had been made by
different travellers--the facts, not the hypotheses--and I tried to
find out what structural lines would answer best to the observed
realities. This preparatory work took me more than two years; and
then followed months of intense thought, in order to find out what
the bewildering chaos of scattered observations meant, until one day,
all of a sudden, the whole became clear and comprehensible, as if it
were illuminated with a flash of light. The main structural lines
of Asia are _not_ north and south, or west and east; they are from
the south-west to the north-east--just as, in the Rocky Mountains
and the plateaux of America, the lines are north-west to south-east;
only secondary ridges shoot out north-west. Moreover the mountains of
Asia are _not_ bundles of independent ridges, like the Alps, but are
subordinated to an immense plateau--an old continent which once pointed
towards Behring Strait. High border ridges have towered up along its
fringes, and in the course of ages terraces, formed by later sediments,
have emerged from the sea, thus adding on both sides to the width of
that primitive backbone of Asia.
There are not many joys in human life equal to the joy of the sudden
birth of a generalization, illuminating the mind after a long period
of patient research. What has seemed for years so chaotic, so
contradictory, and so problematic takes at once its proper position
within an harmonious whole. Out of the wild confusion of facts and
from behind the fog of guesses--contradicted almost as soon as they
are born--a stately picture makes its appearance, like an Alpine chain
suddenly emerging in all its grandeur from the mists which concealed
it the moment before, glittering under the rays of the sun in all its
simplicity and variety, in all its mightiness and beauty. And when the
generalization is put to a test, by applying it to hundreds of separate
facts which seemed to be hopelessly contradictory the moment before,
each of them assumes its due position, increasing the impressiveness
of the picture, accentuating some characteristic outline, or adding
an unsuspected detail full of meaning. The generalization gains in
strength and extent; its foundations grow in width and solidity; while
in the distance, through the far-off mist on the horizon, the eye
detects the outlines of new and still wider generalizations.
He who has once in his life experienced this joy of scientific creation
will never forget it; he will be longing to renew it; and he cannot
but feel with pain that this sort of happiness is the lot of so few of
us, while so many could also live through it--on a small or on a grand
scale--if scientific methods and leisure were not limited to a handful
of men.
This work I consider my chief contribution to science. My first
intention was to produce a bulky volume, in which the new ideas about
the mountains and plateaux of Northern Asia should be supported by a
detailed examination of each separate region; but in 1873, when I saw
that I should soon be arrested, I only prepared a map which embodied
my views and wrote an explanatory paper. Both were published by the
Geographical Society, under the supervision of my brother, while I
was already in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. Petermann,
who was then preparing a map of Asia, and knew my preliminary work,
adopted my scheme for his map, and it has been accepted since by most
cartographers. The map of Asia, as it is now understood, explains, I
believe, the main physical features of the great continent, as well
as the distribution of its climates, faunas, and floras, and even its
history. It reveals, also, as I was able to see during my last journey
to America, striking analogies between the structure and the geological
growth of the two continents of the northern hemisphere. Very few
cartographers could say now whence all these changes in the map of Asia
have come; but in science it is better that new ideas should make their
way independently of any name attached to them. The errors which are
unavoidable in a first generalization are easier to rectify.