ASIA (lots 68-83)
SECOND FORSYTH MISSION TO KASHGAR
細節
SECOND FORSYTH MISSION TO KASHGAR
Papers of General Sir Thomas Edward Gordon KCB, KCIE, CSI (1832-1914), as second-in-command to Sir Douglas Forsyth, 1871-75. comprising four autograph diaries, one autograph notebook, a collection of thirty-nine drawings and watercolours by Gordon illustrative of the Mission and his expeditions to the Tien Shan and the Great and Little Pamirs, and related items.
1. Autograph diary, 1 August 1871 - 9 November 1873. This begins on leave in Scotland and records his return to India in February 1871 and appointment at Allahabad. His life there includes a narrow escape from a leopard and a tigerhunt. Recommended to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, Gordon learns of his appointment to the second Forsyth Mission to Kashgar on 19 March 1873. He gives a detailed account of the preparations and includes copies of his letters of instruction and a description of the initial stages of the mission towards Kashmir and Ladakh which left Leh on 29 September, in ink, personal notes (1 page), diary (109 pages), list of letters dispatched (26 pages), quarto.
2. Autograph diary, 10 November 1873 - 1 April 1874. Gordon gives a detailed account of the misssion's stay in Yarkand and the arrival in Kashgar on 4 December. He describes the town, their reception, the local troops, his visit to the Tien Shan plateau (31 December - 11 January), and the diplomatic negotiations. Later Gordon travelled to Sirikol and Wakhan (17 March - 1 April), in ink, diary (171 pages), plus blanks, list of letters dispatched (31 pages), notes on animals and natural phenomena (6 pages), octavo.
3. Autograph diary, 21 March - 8 May 1874. Gordon describes his journey of four hundred miles across the Pamir in three weeks. He includes information on Russian activities and news received from Kabul, in pencil, 152 pages, 3 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.
4. Autograph notebook, one section headed 'Mir Wali Khan', last entry dated Leh, 30 June [1874], the second describing a journey beginning at Dubbe on 28 May and returning to 'K' on 9th, in pencil, 75 pages plus blanks, one sketch map of route, 4 x 6 3/4in.
5. Autograph diary, 8 May 1874-31 December 1875. Gordon gives a detailed record of the return journey to Leh, over the Karakoram pass in Kashmir and on to Rawalpindi which the party reached on 23 July 1874, in pencil, 145 pages, 4 x 6 3/4 in.
DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS BY GORDON (39). These include The Hemis Buddhist Monastery, Ladakh; View from the Summit of the Karakoram Pass; Little Pamir Lake; Yakub with Hunting Eagle, Kashgar; Upper Oxus; Tien Shan from Kashgar (three-part panorama); [The Djeran (Gazelle) of Eastern Turkestan], the majority signed by Gordon, twenty-six being published in The Roof of the World or A Varied Life. One, depicting a stag (a maral), Kashgar, is framed and glazed. A complete list with measurements is available on request.
Also included, Trotter (Capt. Henry), Account of the Survey Operations in connection with the Mission to Yarkand and Kashgar, n.d., 4to, author's presentation copy to Gordon; Gordon (T.E.), The Watershed of Central Asia, East and West, 1877, paper covers, reprinted from Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1876; Trotter (Lt. Col. Henry), The Proceedings of the Pamir Boundary Commission, paper covers, reprinted from the Geographical Journal, April 1899, author's presentation copy.
The ancient city of Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang) lay on the Silk Road at the junction of routes from the valley of the Oxus and from China and India. By the middle of the 19th century Kashgar had become a commercial backwater, isolated by mountain ranges and desert and ruled by Chinese warlords.
For a brief period from the late 1860s until 1877 the city became the seat of government of the Muslim state of Kashgaria established by Amir Yakub Beg, an adventurer who claimed direct descent from Tamerlane.
Yakub Beg's seizure of power from the Chinese and his successful conquests towards the east caused considerable alarm to the British and Russian governments both of whom were seeking at the time to protect and extend their imperial Asian possessions. As for Yakub Beg, the Russians represented a far greater threat to his rule than the vanquished Chinese. Thus Yakub Beg was drawn into the Great Game - the political and diplomatic maneouvrings of the agents of Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for ascendancy in western Asia.
It was against this background that the Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook, despatched a second British diplomatic mission to Yakub Beg. The mission was led by Sir Douglas Forsyth who took as his second in command a resourceful officer, Lieutenant-Colonel T.E. Gordon, who played a conspicuous role in the Indian Mutiny. Author, linguist, geographer, surveyor and draughtsman, Gordon recorded his experiences on this mission in his celebrated book The Roof of the World which was published in 1876 with a selection of his own drawings made on the journey.
The purpose of the Forsyth mission had to be concealed behind a commercial front. Gordon, and two other British officers serving in India, Biddulph and Trotter, had been included in the hope that they could conveniently detach themselves from the main party and travel in search of accurate geographical information of a strategic nature and scientific data to take back to India.
Gordon had initially met Forsyth in February 1873 and learnt of his appointment to the mission in the following month. He describes in detail the journey through Kashmir to Kashgar which the party reached on 4 December, remaining there until the mission was concluded just over three months later. At the end of December Forsyth obtained permission from Yakub Beg for Gordon, Trotter and another member of the party to trek north of Kashgar to the Tien Shan plateau to cross the Torugat pass (only thirty-two miles from the Russian fort of Narin) and visit the Chadir-Kul lake.
As tents, baggage animals and food on the Tien Shan expedition were provided by Yakub Beg, their freedom of movement was somewhat restricted and the extreme cold (at one point over eight degrees below zero inside their felt tent) hampered the surveying. But when they reached the frozen lake over eleven thousand feet above sea-level, they were rewarded by spectacular scenery and what Gordon describes as 'a perfect forest of peaks beyond extending from west to east'. Their scientific discoveries included the crater of an extinct volcano, a 'gigantic' wild sheep, 'the gem of our collection of new and rare animals' and the black ibex. (The Roof of the World, pp.65, 81.)
Gordon made a study of Yakub Beg's highly professional army which was trained by a Punjabi soldier of fortune and comprised men of a bewildering number of nationalities bearing firearms of every kind and bore as well as bows and arrows.
The Forsyth mission left Kashgar to return to India in mid-March 1874. Gordon, Biddulph and Trotter again detached themselves from the main party having received permission from Yakub Beg to explore the Pamirs, the vast plateau broken by mountains and broad valleys known to the local inhabitants as the Bam-i-Dunya, or Roof of the World.
This was the first scientific or strategic examination of the region on the north-west frontier of the former Indian Empire which includes a major source of the Oxus and the mountain chain of Sarikol - the ancient Taurus of history and legend.
Gordon and his party rode 400 miles across the Pamirs in three weeks through extremes of cold and heat. They returned through Kashmir, passing through Leh at the end of June 1874. Gordon was then able to inform his superiors of the startling conclusions he had arrived at during his expedition.
He established that it was perfectly feasible for the Russians to advance to the frontier of India over the Baroghil pass and via Chitral in only thirteen marches; the Ishkaman pass was also vulnerable. Furthermore, Gordon had gathered from his conversations with local people that Russian agents and caravans regularly visited Afghanistan, a country which was at the time closed to the British.
The intelligence gathered by Gordon and his fellow officers on the Forsyth mission was swiftly followed up by a British move in the Great Game: the cultivation of the Maharajah of Kashmir whose sphere of influence it was deemed essential to extend northwards to encompass the passes Gordon had discovered could be crossed for much of the year without great difficulty.
Gordon was appointed in 1874 Companion of the Order of the Star of India in recognition of his services on the Forsyth Mission. He was Oriental and Military Secretary in Teheran (1889) and Military Attaché (1891-93). He became a full general in 1894. His autobiography, A Varied Life, was published in 1906.
Papers of General Sir Thomas Edward Gordon KCB, KCIE, CSI (1832-1914), as second-in-command to Sir Douglas Forsyth, 1871-75. comprising four autograph diaries, one autograph notebook, a collection of thirty-nine drawings and watercolours by Gordon illustrative of the Mission and his expeditions to the Tien Shan and the Great and Little Pamirs, and related items.
1. Autograph diary, 1 August 1871 - 9 November 1873. This begins on leave in Scotland and records his return to India in February 1871 and appointment at Allahabad. His life there includes a narrow escape from a leopard and a tigerhunt. Recommended to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, Gordon learns of his appointment to the second Forsyth Mission to Kashgar on 19 March 1873. He gives a detailed account of the preparations and includes copies of his letters of instruction and a description of the initial stages of the mission towards Kashmir and Ladakh which left Leh on 29 September, in ink, personal notes (1 page), diary (109 pages), list of letters dispatched (26 pages), quarto.
2. Autograph diary, 10 November 1873 - 1 April 1874. Gordon gives a detailed account of the misssion's stay in Yarkand and the arrival in Kashgar on 4 December. He describes the town, their reception, the local troops, his visit to the Tien Shan plateau (31 December - 11 January), and the diplomatic negotiations. Later Gordon travelled to Sirikol and Wakhan (17 March - 1 April), in ink, diary (171 pages), plus blanks, list of letters dispatched (31 pages), notes on animals and natural phenomena (6 pages), octavo.
3. Autograph diary, 21 March - 8 May 1874. Gordon describes his journey of four hundred miles across the Pamir in three weeks. He includes information on Russian activities and news received from Kabul, in pencil, 152 pages, 3 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.
4. Autograph notebook, one section headed 'Mir Wali Khan', last entry dated Leh, 30 June [1874], the second describing a journey beginning at Dubbe on 28 May and returning to 'K' on 9th, in pencil, 75 pages plus blanks, one sketch map of route, 4 x 6 3/4in.
5. Autograph diary, 8 May 1874-31 December 1875. Gordon gives a detailed record of the return journey to Leh, over the Karakoram pass in Kashmir and on to Rawalpindi which the party reached on 23 July 1874, in pencil, 145 pages, 4 x 6 3/4 in.
DRAWINGS AND WATERCOLOURS BY GORDON (39). These include The Hemis Buddhist Monastery, Ladakh; View from the Summit of the Karakoram Pass; Little Pamir Lake; Yakub with Hunting Eagle, Kashgar; Upper Oxus; Tien Shan from Kashgar (three-part panorama); [The Djeran (Gazelle) of Eastern Turkestan], the majority signed by Gordon, twenty-six being published in The Roof of the World or A Varied Life. One, depicting a stag (a maral), Kashgar, is framed and glazed. A complete list with measurements is available on request.
Also included, Trotter (Capt. Henry), Account of the Survey Operations in connection with the Mission to Yarkand and Kashgar, n.d., 4to, author's presentation copy to Gordon; Gordon (T.E.), The Watershed of Central Asia, East and West, 1877, paper covers, reprinted from Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1876; Trotter (Lt. Col. Henry), The Proceedings of the Pamir Boundary Commission, paper covers, reprinted from the Geographical Journal, April 1899, author's presentation copy.
The ancient city of Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan (Sinkiang) lay on the Silk Road at the junction of routes from the valley of the Oxus and from China and India. By the middle of the 19th century Kashgar had become a commercial backwater, isolated by mountain ranges and desert and ruled by Chinese warlords.
For a brief period from the late 1860s until 1877 the city became the seat of government of the Muslim state of Kashgaria established by Amir Yakub Beg, an adventurer who claimed direct descent from Tamerlane.
Yakub Beg's seizure of power from the Chinese and his successful conquests towards the east caused considerable alarm to the British and Russian governments both of whom were seeking at the time to protect and extend their imperial Asian possessions. As for Yakub Beg, the Russians represented a far greater threat to his rule than the vanquished Chinese. Thus Yakub Beg was drawn into the Great Game - the political and diplomatic maneouvrings of the agents of Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia for ascendancy in western Asia.
It was against this background that the Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook, despatched a second British diplomatic mission to Yakub Beg. The mission was led by Sir Douglas Forsyth who took as his second in command a resourceful officer, Lieutenant-Colonel T.E. Gordon, who played a conspicuous role in the Indian Mutiny. Author, linguist, geographer, surveyor and draughtsman, Gordon recorded his experiences on this mission in his celebrated book The Roof of the World which was published in 1876 with a selection of his own drawings made on the journey.
The purpose of the Forsyth mission had to be concealed behind a commercial front. Gordon, and two other British officers serving in India, Biddulph and Trotter, had been included in the hope that they could conveniently detach themselves from the main party and travel in search of accurate geographical information of a strategic nature and scientific data to take back to India.
Gordon had initially met Forsyth in February 1873 and learnt of his appointment to the mission in the following month. He describes in detail the journey through Kashmir to Kashgar which the party reached on 4 December, remaining there until the mission was concluded just over three months later. At the end of December Forsyth obtained permission from Yakub Beg for Gordon, Trotter and another member of the party to trek north of Kashgar to the Tien Shan plateau to cross the Torugat pass (only thirty-two miles from the Russian fort of Narin) and visit the Chadir-Kul lake.
As tents, baggage animals and food on the Tien Shan expedition were provided by Yakub Beg, their freedom of movement was somewhat restricted and the extreme cold (at one point over eight degrees below zero inside their felt tent) hampered the surveying. But when they reached the frozen lake over eleven thousand feet above sea-level, they were rewarded by spectacular scenery and what Gordon describes as 'a perfect forest of peaks beyond extending from west to east'. Their scientific discoveries included the crater of an extinct volcano, a 'gigantic' wild sheep, 'the gem of our collection of new and rare animals' and the black ibex. (The Roof of the World, pp.65, 81.)
Gordon made a study of Yakub Beg's highly professional army which was trained by a Punjabi soldier of fortune and comprised men of a bewildering number of nationalities bearing firearms of every kind and bore as well as bows and arrows.
The Forsyth mission left Kashgar to return to India in mid-March 1874. Gordon, Biddulph and Trotter again detached themselves from the main party having received permission from Yakub Beg to explore the Pamirs, the vast plateau broken by mountains and broad valleys known to the local inhabitants as the Bam-i-Dunya, or Roof of the World.
This was the first scientific or strategic examination of the region on the north-west frontier of the former Indian Empire which includes a major source of the Oxus and the mountain chain of Sarikol - the ancient Taurus of history and legend.
Gordon and his party rode 400 miles across the Pamirs in three weeks through extremes of cold and heat. They returned through Kashmir, passing through Leh at the end of June 1874. Gordon was then able to inform his superiors of the startling conclusions he had arrived at during his expedition.
He established that it was perfectly feasible for the Russians to advance to the frontier of India over the Baroghil pass and via Chitral in only thirteen marches; the Ishkaman pass was also vulnerable. Furthermore, Gordon had gathered from his conversations with local people that Russian agents and caravans regularly visited Afghanistan, a country which was at the time closed to the British.
The intelligence gathered by Gordon and his fellow officers on the Forsyth mission was swiftly followed up by a British move in the Great Game: the cultivation of the Maharajah of Kashmir whose sphere of influence it was deemed essential to extend northwards to encompass the passes Gordon had discovered could be crossed for much of the year without great difficulty.
Gordon was appointed in 1874 Companion of the Order of the Star of India in recognition of his services on the Forsyth Mission. He was Oriental and Military Secretary in Teheran (1889) and Military Attaché (1891-93). He became a full general in 1894. His autobiography, A Varied Life, was published in 1906.