imes of the 23rd June con following obituary notice of Mr. Baber Our Calcutta correspondent telegraphs Much regret is felt at Bhamo on account of the death there on the 16th inst, of Mr. Edward Colborne Baber." By his death her Majesty's service in the East loses one of its most brilliant and gifted members. Mr. Baber's constitution wever was. very strong, and he succumbed, no doubt, to the effects of prolonged residence in unhealthy climates, and the hardships of the remarkable journeys by which he is best known to the outside world. Many who saw Mr. Baber during his last visit to this country two years ago, and who perceived the persistence with which ill-health clung to him, felt that the chances of his retarn from Bhamo were not very gre: through the usual grades of official promotion, "In 1875 his chance of distinction came. In the February of that year Mr. Margary, an officer of the Cousulsr service in China, who was proceeding under Imperial passports to meet Colonel Browne's mission from Burma into China, was murdered at Manwyne, en the borders of the two countries. The circumstances sur rounding this tragedy were so doubtful and suspicious that Sir Lhomas Wade, then British Minister in Peking, despatched, for he purpose of inquiring into the matter, mission under the late Mr, Grosvenor, and of this Mr, Baber was a member. 'The mission left Hankow, on the Yangtze, in November, 1875, reaching Tali Fu in April, 1876, and' Bhamo some time later, The route of the mission between Tali and Momien was described by Mr, Baber, and was subsequently published as a Blue-book. To use the words of Lord Aberdare, then President of the Royal Geographical Society, when presenting Mr, Buber with the Society's gold medal in 1883:-—"'This ive, in spite of the disadvantage of i's appearance as a Blue-book, and obtaining but a limited cireulayet_'w fit audience found, though few,' and made European) geographera acquainted with the fact that a geographical observer and narrator ut remarkable power had appeared in the Far East." Subsequently the Chefoo Convention was signed with the Chinese Government, and under it a British official was permitted to reside in the town of Chungking, on the Upper Yangtze, for the purpose of studying the trade and trade routes of the region.
was in accordance with the fitness of things that Me, Baber should have been the first officer appointed to this important and peculiar post, and it was while there out the series of explore:
in Eastern Szechuan and the borders of Tibet which have made his name known geographers all over the world, and which procured for him the gold medal of the val Geographical Society. The peculine value of these explorations to geography was that they connected the travels of the Baron von Richthofen and those of the brilliant but unfortunate Frenchman Francis Garnier. The record of these was subsequently published by the Royal Geographical Society in the first of its series of "Supplenientary Papers." Speaking of these journeys on the occasion area ly referred to, Lord Aberdare, as the official representative of British geographers, said—Of these great services to geography I have given only the dry outlines. is the merest justice to you to add that your journeys have been exceptionally ive, because of the exceptional riots and accurate knowledge with which you started on your travels. Your mastery of the Chinese language, and of Chinese customs and habits of thought, enabled you to collect great amount of miscellaneous information, which has been conveyed in narratives full of novelty, vivacity, and sustained interest. Alto: gether, both in these journeys and the report of their results, you have displayed the qualities of an_accomplished traveller in a degree of which we have had few examples, and which fully justify our choice of you fur sharing with Sir Joseph Hooker our highest distinction, even although you have, we firmly believe, only given the first fruits of that rich harvest which we expect from your matured powers and enlarged experience." Of the record itself the late Sir Horny Yule speaks as "that admirable and delightful narrative published in the spring of 1882 by the Royal Geographical Society, which the periodical Press has allowed to pass
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.