The specific charges which Prejevalsky brings against Huc's narrative are the following:—
1. His description of the ford of the Pouhain-gol, a river flowing into the Koko-nor Lake from the westward, as an extremely difficult passage of a stream broken up into twelve branches; whereas it forms but a single stream where the Lhassa road crosses it, and that only 105 feet wide, with a depth of one or two feet. (See this work, vol. ii. p. 158, and Huc, ii. p. 200.)
2. His entire omission to mention the high chain south of the Koko-nor.
3. His depicting the Tsaidam country as an arid steppe, whereas it is a salt-marsh, covered with high reeds.
4. His omitting to mention the Tsaidam river, though it is twenty-two times as wide as the Pouhain-gol.
5. What he says regarding the gas on the Burkhan Bota mountain 'is very doubtful,' says Col. Prejevalsky.
6. His representing the Shuga chain as very steep, whereas its gradients would, even as they are, bear a railway.
7. The chain of the Baian-kara-ula, 'about which Huc relates marvellous stories,' is only a succession of low elevations, never exceeding 1,000 feet above the plains that lie to the north, and only a little steeper towards the Murui-ussu. 'There is here no pass' (i.e. I presume no col to be crossed), 'and the road follows a stream down to the Murui-ussu.'
8. Huc speaks only of crossing the Murui-ussu (or Upper Yangtse), after passing the Baian Kara; but the Lhassa road lies along its banks the whole way up to its source in the Tang-la mountains, a distance of some 200 miles.
Now, Nos. 4 and 6 are, as Mr. Ney Elias has already pointed out, mistakes of Col. Prejevalsky 's own. Huc does mention the Tsaidam river; he does not represent
du corps était pris dans la glace, qui était si transparente, qu'on pouvait distinguer facilement la position de ces imprudentes bêtes; on eêt dit qu'elles étaient encore à nager. Les aigles, et les corbeaux leur avaient arraché les yeux' (ii. 219).
