Nikolai Mikhail Ovich 1839-1888 Prjevalsky Przhevalsky

PRJEVALSKY [PRZHEVALSKY], NIKOLAI MIKHAIL OVICH (1839-1888), Russian traveller, born at Kimbory, in the government of Smolensk, on March 31, 1839. He was educated at the Smolensk gymnasium, and in 1855 became a subaltern in an infantry regiment. In 1856 he became an officer, and four years later he entered the academy of the general staff. From 1864 to 1866 he taught geography at the military school at Warsaw, and in 1867 was admitted to the general staff and sent to Irkutsk, where he explored the highlands on the banks of the Usuri. This occupied him until 1869, when he published a book on the Usuri region, partly ethnographical in character. Between Nov. 187o and Sept. 1873, accompanied by only three men, he crossed the Gobi desert, reached Peking, and explored the Ordos and the Ala-shan, as well as the upper part of the Yangtsze-kiang. He also penetrated into the then closed country of Tibet, reaching the banks of the Di Chu river.

On his second journey in 1877, while endeavouring to reach Lhasa through east Turkestan, he re-discovered the great lake Lop-nor (q.v.). On his third expedition in I879-8o he pene trated, by Hami, the Tsai-dam and the great valley of the Tibetan river Kara-su, to Napchu, 170 m. from Lhasa, when he was turned back by order of the Dalai Lama. In 1883-85 he under took a fourth journey in the mountain regions between Mongolia. and Tibet. On these four expeditions he made valuable collec tions of plants and animals. He discovered the wild camel and

the early type of horse, now known by his name (Equus prjewalskii). In Sept. 1888 he started on a fifth expedition to Lhasa, but on Nov. 1 he died at Karakol on Lake Issyk-kul. A monument was erected to his memory on the shores of the lake, and the town of Karakol was renamed Przhevalsk (q.v.).

The English translation of the account of his first journey, Mongolia, the Tangul Country, and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet (1876) was edited by Sir Henry Yule; the account of his second journey, From Kulja, across the Tian-Shan, to Lop-nor, was translated into English in 1879.

PROA

(Malay, prau), the general term in the Malay language for all vessels, from the sampan or canoe to the square-rigged kapal, but in western usage confined to the swift-sailing craft that the pirates of the Indian Ocean made familiar to sailors in eastern waters. The chief points which characterize these vessels are that while the weather-side is rounded the lee-side is flat from stem to stern, that both stem and stern are exactly similar in shape, and that there is a small similarly shaped hull swung out from the side of the main hull on poles, which acts as an outrigger and prevents the vessel heeling over. The main hull carries the mast rigging and an enormous triangular-shaped sail.