Travellers in Antique Lands.(Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800)(Book Review)

Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800, compiled by Raymond John Howgego; Hordern House Rare Books, 2002, $295.

AT A TIME when any subject, however trite, seems to qualify for publication in the guise of an encyclopedia, or worse a set of lists, the appearance of an Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800 is a refreshing cause for celebration. This volume, the first of a projected three, has the characteristics that should be the basis of any good encyclopedia. It is authoritative, compendious and highly readable. Within nearly 1200 pages and 7500 entries the book provides an account of explorers and their achievements from the earliest recorded traveller, Zimri-Lim (1760 BC), to the giants of the eighteenth century including, of course, James Cook.

Remarkably, the encyclopedia is the work of one man, Raymond Howgego, an English physicist who has turned a fascination with travel and exploration into a vocation. In this great plum pudding of a book a reader dips into its pages to find unexpected treasures alongside familiar figures. Cook, Dampier and Cabot will be familiar to an English-speaking audience, as will the now-controversial Marco Polo (the entry in the encyclopedia assumes he did go to China but rehearses the arguments of the sceptics).

Those with an already developed interest in exploration will welcome the attention given to men such as Tome Pires, the apothecary-turned-merchant who chronicled the early Portuguese entry into South-East Asia in the sixteenth century, and the Dutchman Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, whose intelligence about Portuguese activities in the East was instrumental in the establishment of the Dutch East India Company, the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie.

Beside these familiar, or at least better known, names the range of other travellers Howgego identifies is staggering. None are more so than the Chinese pilgrims and officials who criss-crossed the Asian continent and the Indian Ocean from the early centuries of the Christian era to the fifteenth century, the time of the great sea voyages of the eunuch admiral Zeng He (Cheng Ho in the older rendering of his name).

Under the patronage of the Ming emperor, Zeng commanded or directed no fewer than seven voyages into the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433, making China the dominant maritime and commercial power in the region and reaching as far as Africa. Famously, following one of his voyages Zeng brought back the first giraffe ever to be seen by the imperial court. This was a prize so rare that the emperor himself greeted the beast on arrival at the palace gates.

Yet Zeng He's achievements with imperial patronage, given the huge ships and vast crews of his expeditions, seem somehow less impressive than the travels of a man such as Zang Qian (Chang Ch'ien). Supported by hundreds of men rather than the thousands who accompanied Zeng He, Zang travelled for more than twenty years (138-116 BC) through Central Asia, was held as a prisoner for ten years in Kashgar, and in the course of his journeys opened up the Silk ...