ClairBoone at 13:22, 26 February 2026

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{{Short description|British traveller in Central Asia (?-1936)}}

'''Arthur Douglas Carey''' ({{Circa|1844}}–1936) was a British civil servant in India, now remembered as a traveller in [[Central Asia]], and in particular for exploration in what is now [[Xinjiang]].

==Early life==
Carey was educated at the [[City of London School]], and qualified for the [[Indian Civil Service]] in 1864. He went out to Bombay in 1865. He was a Collector of Salt Revenue in 1881, and the same year Acting Commissioner of Indian Customs.<ref name="IBD">{{cite IBD1915|wstitle=Carey, Arthur Douglas}}</ref><ref name="Obit">{{cite journal |title=Obituary: Arthur Douglas Carey |journal=The Geographical Journal |date=1936 |volume=88 |issue=2 |pages=191–192 |jstor=1785866 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1785866 |issn=0016-7398}}</ref>

==Expedition 1885–1887==
On his self-financed Central Asian journey while on furlough from the Indian Civil Service, Carey started from [[Simla]]. He was accompanied from [[Leh]] as interpreter by [[Andrew Dalgleish (spy)|Andrew Dalgleish]].<ref name="Obit"/> Their group left Leh and crossed the valley of the [[Chang Chenmo River]] into the [[Aksai Chin]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Marshall |first1=Julie |title=Britain and Tibet 1765-1947: A Select Annotated Bibliography of British Relations with Tibet and the Himalayan States including Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan Revised and Updated to 2003 |date=2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-32784-3 |page=179 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2dV_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA179 |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Chinese Turkistan and Northern Tibet.jpg|thumb|Journeys of A. D. Carey and [[Nikolay Przhevalsky]] of the 1880s in what is now southern Xinjiang]]
For some of the way Carey and Dalgleish were accompanied by [[H. E. M. James]].<ref name="AIM25">{{cite web |title=Carey, Arthur D (d 1936), AIM25 collection description |url=https://aim25.com/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=6369&inst_id=10&nv1=search&nv2= |website=aim25.com}}</ref> In Carey's words:

<blockquote>I struck a bargain for baggage-ponies with the Tartars of the frontier villages on the [[Pangong Lake]], and left Tanksé on the 12th of August with a caravan of thirty-one men and forty-nine ponies.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Carey |first1=A. D. |title=A Journey Round Chinese Turkistan and along the Northern Frontier of Tibet |journal=Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography |date=1887 |volume=9 |issue=12 |page=732 |doi=10.2307/1801130 |jstor=1801130 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1801130 |issn=0266-626X}}</ref></blockquote>

They travelled east from [[Nubra]], passing the landmark Lake Mungtsa (various spellings) and reaching Tashlik-kul on the edge of the Aksai Chin on day 17. They used a high pass, rising to over {{convert|17,500|feet}}. They headed north to [[Keriya Town]] and so to [[Hotan]] (Khotan).<ref>{{cite book |title=Journey of Carey and Dalgleish in Chinese Turkistan and Northern Tibet and Orography from RGSSPv3 |date=1890 |page=18 |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.1282/page/18/mode/1up}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Sandberg |first1=Graham |title=The exploration of Tibet : its history and particulars from 1623 to 1904 |date=1904 |publisher=Calcutta : Thacker, Spink & Co.; London : W. Thacker & Co. |page=197 |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924023493863/page/n209/mode/2up}}</ref><ref name="Waller">{{cite book |last1=Waller |first1=Derek |title=The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia |date=2004 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-4904-2 |page=163 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sqkeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA163 |language=en}}</ref>

In terminology of the time attributed to [[Carl Ritter]], the party had crossed the [[Kunlun Mountains]].<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Kuen-lun}}</ref> This first leg of the journey was {{convert|585|miles}}. The route was not at all well known, but had been documented in 1873 by [[Kishen Singh (explorer)|Kishen Singh]], in association with the mission of [[Douglas Forsyth]] to [[Kashgar]]. Singh went from north to south, rather than south to north, as Carey's party did, and [[Ney Elias]] later.<ref name="Waller"/><ref>{{cite book |title=Journey of Carey and Dalgleish in Chinese Turkistan and Northern Tibet and Orography from RGSSPv3 |date=1890 |page=10 |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.pahar.1282/page/10/mode/1up}}</ref>

Carey and Dalgleish were the first Europeans to follow the [[Hotan River]] from Hotan downstream into the [[Tarim Basin]], and the [[Yarkand River]]. At the confluence, they went along the [[Tarim River]] to the eastern Kashgar Plain.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baumer |first1=Christoph |title=History of Central Asia, The: 4-volume set |date=2018 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-83860-868-2 |page=117|volume=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DhiWDwAAQBAJ&pg=RA1-PA117 |language=en}}</ref> They visited [[Karasahr]], and went into winter quarters at Kurla to its south. He then turned south to the [[Lop Nur]] salt lake region.<ref name="IBD"/><ref name="Obit"/>

Crossing the [[Altyn-Tagh]], the party gained the [[Tibetan Plateau]], and visited the [[Qaidam Basin]], now in [[Qinghai]]. Then looping north they crossed the so-called Humboldt Range of the Kunlun Mountains, and made a way back through [[Hami]], [[Urumchi]], and [[Yarkand]].<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Tibet}}</ref> The expedition ended in Ladakh, reached by a more northerly route than on the outbound journey, and the [[Karakorum]] pass.<ref name="Obit"/>

For his leadership of this expedition, Carey was awarded the Founder's Medal of the [[Royal Geographical Society]] in 1889.<ref name="AIM25"/>

==Later life==
Carey was Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari, 1891. In 1891–2 he was in [[Lisbon]], involved in the [[Goa Treaty]] negotiations, at the time of the [[Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891]].<ref name="IBD"/> He retired from the Indian Civil Service in 1893, and went to live in Switzerland. He died on 11 June 1936, at age 91.<ref name="Obit"/>

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carey, Arthur Douglas}}
[[Category:1840s births]]
[[Category:1936 deaths]]
[[Category:Indian Civil Service (British India) officers]]
[[Category:Year of birth uncertain]]

[[Category:19th-century British civil servants]]
[[Category:19th-century British explorers]]
[[Category:People educated at the City of London School]]

Arthur Douglas Carey - Revision history

ClairBoone at 13:22, 26 February 2026