security and the forfeiture of the deposit would perhaps be found to press unduly on some of the less wealthy newspaper proprietors, clauses have been inserted, enabling the publisher of a newspaper to take his paper out of the operation of this portion of the Act for such time as he pleases by undertaking to submit his proof to an officer appointed by the Government before publication, and to publish nothing which such officer objects to.

These restrictions were considered odious by the people at large, and were cancelled by Lord Ripon, who succeeded. Lord Lytton as Viceroy, and the press was once more set at liberty in 1882.

During this period the right of Government servants to contribute to newspapers was also restricted by Lord Northbrook. Till 1875 servants of Government were at liberty to own or edit any newspaper in the country. In July, 1875, Lord Northbrook enforced the following restrictions: 1. No officer in the service of Government is permitted, without the previous sanction in writing of the Government under which he immediately serves, to become the proprietor, either in whole or in part, of any newspaper or publication. Such sanction will only be given in the case of newspapers or publications mainly devoted to the discussion of topics not of a political character, such, for instance, as art, science, or literature. The sanction will be liable to be withdrawn at the discretion of the Government.

2. The Government of India will decide in case of doubt whether any engagements of officers with the press are consistent with the discharge of their duties to the Government.

3. Nothing in this resolution is intended to relax the provisions of any regulations on the subject which now apply to the

army.

FOURTH PERIOD (1882-1898).

Of

Since the liberation of the press again in 1882, newspapers enjoyed complete freedom till the present year. course, during the administration of Lord Lansdowne, the

Official Secrets Act was passed, which prevented the publication of confidential State documents in the newspapers, but it did not restrict in any way the liberty of the press. But last year the Government of India resolved to restrict the liberty of the press in India, and instead of introducing a special Act for the purpose or re-enacting the Vernacular Press Act, they embodied the necessary changes in the Indian Penal and Criminal Procedure Codes. The laws relating to defamation and sedition have been made more rigorous in their application, and editors of newspapers have been placed at the mercy of Magistrates, who have the right to call upon any editor to produce security for good behaviour. The number of newspapers both in English and in the Vernacular languages has increased greatly since 1882. There are now eighteen dailies in India, of which five are edited by natives of the country. According to the last report on the "Moral and Material Progress and Conditions of India," there were in 1896-97 647 periodicals in Bengal, one of which, a periodical in Bengali, was edited by two Hindu ladies, 123 Vernacular newspapers in the North-West Provinces and Oudh, one English paper and three Vernacular papers in Assam, 181 newspapers and 19 periodicals in Bombay, and III newspapers in the presidency of Madras. A total of a thousand newspapers is certainly not large when the extent and population of India are taken into account, but, considering that the press in India is only about a century old, the progress may be reckoned as remarkable.

FROM THE PAMIRS TO PEKIN: ACROSS ASIA WITH SVEN HEDIN.

BY SIR JOHN JARDINE, K.C.I.E.

In these two handsome volumes,* meant for the general reader, the Swedish traveller gives what he rightly calls "a plain account of his journeys through Asia" and his more memorable experiences. The style is picturesque as well as clear; and thus in keeping with the illustrations that adorn the pages. Details of scientific research and linguistic discoveries are left for later publication, along with the 121 yards of map-sheets, showing 6,520 miles of marches in mountains and deserts, now being worked out at the famous institute of Justus Perthes at Gotha. The ordinary reader is assuredly the gainer by this sifting of matter. But the geographer and the statesman will not be content without clearer means of comparing Hedin's achievements with those of earlier travellers in the same parts.

Our author explains elsewhere that having no love for sport he gave up his spare time to researches which he recorded daily, e.g., a vast number of names of places never yet marked on any map, European or Asiatic. He thus differs from most recent visitors to the Pamirs who, as Lord Curzon tells us, were attracted chiefly by the pursuit of Ovis Poli. In another respect also Sven Hedin is unlike many writers on the affairs of Central Asia. He eschews politics and it is only by the passing events of his days in Russian territories or Chinese that we can infer something about those systems of Government with which. Lord Curzon and Carey deal.

The narrative, by avoiding deep problems, is in our opinion more delightful, more likely to arouse the desire of

* "Through Asia." By Sven Hedin. With nearly 300 illustrations from sketches and photographs by the author. 2 vols. Methuen and Co.

the "general reader" to wander among the scenes which Hedin's pen and pencil paint so well. Imagination, eager always to embody the forms of things unknown, often inspires men to travel. This faculty it was which in 1894 drew the Viceroy-Elect of India to the Pamirs: he was moved by a passage in Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," beginning, "I would examine the Caspian Sea," and ending, "I would find out with Trajan the fountains of Danubius, of Ganges and of Oxus." To Lord Curzon, the waters of the Oxus descending from "his high mountain-cradle of Pamere, from the hidden Roof of the World, told of forgotten peoples, and whispered secrets of unknown lands."

The same feeling must have animated many of those older missionaries, warriors, and traders whom religion, chivalry, or commerce impelled to distant regions. We learn from the Venerable Bede that in his day it was quite a common practice for the better sort of laity in our island, as well as the clergy, to make a voyage to the Eternal City; and in a much later age, according to Chaucer, who knew all about pilgrimages, the wife of Bath, besides visiting the famous shrines of Cologne, Santiago, and Rome, had been three times at Jerusalem. His "verray perfight gentil knight" had made war in Africa and Asia Minor, as well as in Spain and Russia. But it was not in Europe only that this love of adventure was found. In the early centuries of our era, pious Chinamen crossed the desert, returning with cartloads of Buddhist scriptures. Fa-hian, Sung Yun, and Hwen Thsang, all the three at different times traversed the Pamirs; but then the veil fell over those desolate mountains, to be lifted only, after the lapse of six centuries, by that famous Venetian, Marco Polo. For later travels, in which most nations have furnished recruits, the limits of space require us to refer merely to Hedin's chapter on explorers. A map ought to have been added, showing the journeys of the Russian soldier Przhevalsky and the Bombay Civil Servant, Mr. A. D. Carey. Northern Tibet, the Desert of Gobi, and

other regions beyond the Caspian Sea are still little known.

"Even the maps of Africa cannot now show a white patch of such vast extent as occurs under the name of Tibet on our maps of Central Asia."

Until the Russians had pushed their conquests eastward, the old vague geography, limited to those classic and romantic names found in the ancient charts, might almost have been stated in the language of Milton:

"As when a vulture, on Imäus bred,

Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,

To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids,

On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs

Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;

But in his way lights on the barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and wind their cany-wagons light;

So on this windy sea of land, the Fiend
Walked up and down alone, bent on his prey;
Alone, for other creature in this place

Living or lifeless to be found was none."

These lines of the poet are, to my mind, a fair epitome of the routes, the scenery, the peoples, and the incidents of life in those forlorn lands to which Sven Hedin devotes his 1,200 pages. Prose fails to infuse the sense they breathe of the bitter mountain air, the gleaming glaciers, the icy paths where his horses fell into ravines, the solitudes of moving sand which he had to travel day by day, in danger from hunger and thirst, from robbers and wild beasts, the pastures where he rested with the shepherd tribes as he journeyed on towards the great wall of China. Hedin, as we shall presently see, was the equal of Milton's vulture in endurance and perseverance. He lived a long while with the Khirgiz nomads, a single European, eating their food and speaking their language; and once in northern Tibet, as Carey had done before him, he and his little caravan wandered about for two long months without seeing traces of other human beings. In an earlier march towards the Khotan-daria, having missed his last follower, he had