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Sian and Lanchou where once more they remained for a while. Here people were more hostile. The area already barren was also suffering from a drought. Clark decided to move south towards the Tibetan border where the situation was more favourable; however, before they could do so the Indian surveyor of the party had set up his instruments on a local peak known to the local population as the seat of the deities controlling the wind and rain. The locals saw him carrying out mysterious incantations on the top of their holy mountain and believing that he was the cause of the drought they beat him to death. This was the end of the expedition, which promptly returned to Peking.
Clark took the large collection of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects and botanical specimens back to the US National Museum in Washington and in 1912 a book embodying the results of the expedition was published by T. Fisher Unwin in London under the joint authorship of Clark and Sowerby entitled Through Shen-Kan. This was the start of Sowerby's fame as a scientist and explorer and for the next twenty or so years he continued his collecting expeditions, financed by Clark, with the specimens being sent to the US National Museum.
Once more we have no idea what he did between the end of the Clark expedition in 1909 and the end of 1911, apart from getting himself married. In late 1911, one year after the revolution which brought the Republic into being, he took part in what came to be known as the Shensi Relief Expedition. The expedition's task was to rescue and lead to safety as many foreign missionaries as possible. Setting out in December 1911 they trekked to Sian where the whole area was in a state of political upheaval following the overthrow of the dynasty. Bandit hordes were rampaging and had taken over much of the countryside. After a number of hair-raising experiences they were successful, returning to safety and Peking in early 1912. He was twenty-seven at the time.
He described this in some detail in an appendix to P H Kent's The Passing of the Manchus, published in London in 1912 by Edward Arnold. The appendix, written in the third person was pseudonymous, though a note at the bottom of the page reveals that originally it had been written by Mr A de C Sowerby for the Peking and Tientsin Times.
He returned to Tientsin where his family had been taken to safety from Taiyuan and from which he planned to set out into the peaceful areas of Manchuria to explore and continue his collecting of specimens. He made four separate expeditions into Manchuria and parts of