The Summit of Mount Everest.
(By permission of the Mount Everest Committee.)
THE LAST SECRETS
The Final Mysteries of Exploration
By JOHN BUCHAN
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
First Impression, September 1923
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS
TO THE MEMORY OF
BRIG.-GEN. CECIL RAWLING, C.M.G., C.I.E.
WHO FELL AT THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES
AN INTREPID EXPLORER
A GALLANT SOLDIER
AND THE BEST OF FRIENDS
PREFACE
The first two decades of the twentieth century willrank as a most distinguished era in the history ofexploration, for during them many of the greatgeographical riddles of the world have been solved.This book contains a record of some of the mainachievements. What Nansen said of Polar explorationis true of all exploration; its story is a "mightymanifestation of the power of the Unknown over themind of man." The Unknown, happily, will be alwayswith us, for there are infinite secrets in a blade ofgrass, and an eddy of wind, and a grain of dust, andhuman knowledge will never attain that finality whenthe sense of wonder shall cease. But to the ordinaryman there is an appeal in large, bold, and obviousconundrums, which is lacking in the minutiæ ofresearch. Thousands of square miles of the globestill await surveying and mapping, but most of theexploration of the future will be the elucidation ofdetails. The main lines of the earth's architecturehave been determined, and the task is now one ofamplifying our knowledge of the groyning andbuttresses and stone-work. There are no more unvisitedforbidden cities, or unapproached high mountains, orunrecorded great rivers.
"The world is disenchanted; oversoon
Must Europe send her spies through all the land."
It is in a high degree improbable that many geographicalproblems remain, the solving of which will comeupon the mind with the overwhelming romance ofthe unveilings we have been privileged to witness.The explorer's will still be a noble trade, but it willbe a filling up of gaps in a framework of knowledgewhich we already possess. The morning freshnesshas gone out of the business, and we are left with theplodding duties of the afternoon.
Some of the undertakings described in these pageshave not been completed. The foot of man has notyet stood on the last snows of Everest, or on thesummit of Carstensz. One notable discovery I havenot dealt with—the great Turfan Depression in theheart of Central Asia, far below the sea level, theexistence of which was first established by the Russian,Roborowski, before the close of last century, and thedetails of which have been described by Sir AurelStein in his Ruins of Desert Cathay and Serindia.But Sir Aurel's interest was chiefly in the antiquitiesof the place, and the more strictly geographicalresults have not yet been given to the world.Today, if we survey the continents, we find nothingof which the main features have not been alreadyexpounded. The Amazon basin might be regardedas an exception, and only a little while ago mendreamed of discovering among the wilds of theBolivian frontier the remains, perhaps even th