CHAPTER XXXIX.
OF THE CITY OF LOP AND THE GREAT DESERT.
Lop is a large town at the edge of the Desert, which is called the
Desert of Lop, and is situated between east and north-east. It belongs
to the Great Kaan, and the people worship Mahommet. Now, such persons
as propose to cross the Desert take a week’s rest in this town to
refresh themselves and their cattle; and then they make ready for
the journey, taking with them a month’s supply for man and beast. On
quitting this city they enter the Desert.
The length of this Desert is so great that ’tis said it would take a
year and more to ride from one end of it to the other. And here, where
its breadth is least, it takes a month to cross it. ’Tis all composed
of hills and valleys of sand, and not a thing to eat is to be found
on it. But after riding for a day and a night you find fresh water,
enough mayhap for some 50 or 100 persons with their beasts, but not for
more. And all across the Desert you will find water in like manner,
that is to say, in some 28 places altogether you will find good water,
but in no great quantity; and in four places also you find brackish
water.{1}
Beasts there are none; for there is nought for them to eat. But there
is a marvellous thing related of this Desert, which is that when
travellers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag
behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company
again he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his
comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a
traveller ofttimes be led astray so that he never finds his party. And
in this way many have perished. [Sometimes the stray travellers will
hear as it were the tramp and hum of a great cavalcade of people away
from the real line of road, and taking this to be their own company
they will follow the sound; and when day breaks they find that a cheat
has been put on them and that they are in an ill plight.{2}] Even
in the day-time one hears those spirits talking. And sometimes you
shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still
more commonly the sound of drums. [Hence in making this journey ’tis
customary for travellers to keep close together. All the animals too
have bells at their necks, so that they cannot easily get astray. And
at sleeping-time a signal is put up to show the direction of the next
march.]
So thus it is that the Desert is crossed.{3}
NOTE 1.—LOP appears to be the _Napopo_, _i.e._ _Navapa_, of Hiuen
Tsang, called also the country of _Leulan_, in the Desert. (_Mém._
II. p. 247.) _Navapa_ looks like Sanskrit. If so, this carries
ancient Indian influence to the verge of the great Gobi. [See
_supra_, p. 190.] It is difficult to reconcile with our maps the
statement of a thirty days’ journey across the Desert from Lop
to Shachau. Ritter’s extracts, indeed, regarding this Desert,
show that the constant occurrence of sandhills and deep drifts
(our traveller’s “hills and valleys of sand”) makes the passage
extremely difficult for carts and cattle. (III. 375.) But I suspect
that there is some material error in the longitude of Lake Lop as
represented in our maps, and that it should be placed _something
like three degrees_ more to the westward than we find it (_e.g._)
in Kiepert’s Map of Asia. By that map Khotan is not far short of
600 miles from the western extremity of Lake Lop. By Johnson’s
Itinerary (including his own journey to Kiria) it is only 338 miles
from Ilchi to Lob. Mr. Shaw, as we have seen, gives us a little
more, but it is only even then 380. Polo unfortunately omits his
usual estimate for the extent of the “Province of Charchan,” so he
affords us no complete datum. But his distance between Charchan and
Lob agrees fairly, as we have seen, with that both of Johnson and
of Shaw, and the elbow on the road from Kiria to Charchan (_supra_,
p. 192) necessitates our still further abridging the longitude
between Khotan and Lop. (See Shaw’s remarks in _Proc. R. G. S._
XVI. 243.)
[This desert was known in China of old by the name of _Lew-sha_,
_i.e._ “Quicksand,” or literally, “Flowing sands.” (_Palladius,
Jour. N. China B. R. As. Soc._ N.S. X. 1875, p. 4.)
A most interesting problem is connected with the situation of
Lob-nor which led to some controversy between Baron von Richthofen
and Prjevalsky. The latter placed the lake one degree more to the
south than the Chinese did, and found that its water was sweet.
Richthofen agreed with the Chinese Topographers and wrote in a
letter to Sir Henry Yule: “I send you two tracings; one of them is
a true copy of the Chinese map, the other is made from a sketch
which I constructed to-day, and on which I tried to put down the
Chinese Topography together with that of Prjevalsky. It appears
evident—(1) That Prjevalsky travelled by the ancient road to a
point south of the true Lop-noor; (2) that long before he reached
this point he found the river courses quite different from what
they had been formerly; and (3) that following one of the new
rivers which flows due south by a new road, he reached the two
sweet-water lakes, one of which answers to the ancient Khas-omo.
I use the word ‘new’ merely by way of comparison with the state
of things in Kien-long’s time, when the map was made. It appears
that the Chinese map shows the Khas Lake too far north to cover the
Kara-Koshun. The bifurcation of the roads south of the lake nearly
resembles that which is marked by Prjevalsky.” (Preface of E. D.
Morgan’s transl. of _From Kulja across the Tian Shan to Lob-nor_,
by Colonel N. Prjevalsky, London, 1879, p. iv.) In this same volume
Baron von Richthofen’s remarks are given (pp. 135–159, with a
map, p. 144), showing comparison between Chinese and Prjevalsky’s
Geography from tracings by Baron von Richthofen and (pp. 160–165) a
translation of Prjevalsky’s replies to the Baron’s criticisms.
Now the Swedish traveller, Dr. Sven Hedin, claims to have settled
this knotty point. Going from Korla, south-west of Kara-shahr, by
a road at the foot of the Kurugh-tagh and between these mountains
and the Koncheh Daria, he discovered the ruins of two fortresses,
and a series of milestones (potaïs). These tall pyramids of clay
and wood, indicating distances in _lis_, show the existence at an
ancient period of a road with a large traffic between Korla and
an unknown place to the south-east, probably on the shores of the
Chinese Lob-nor. Prjevalsky, who passed between the Lower Tarim and
the Koncheh Daria, could not see a lake or the remains of a lake
to the east of this river. The Koncheh Daria expands into a marshy
basin, the Malta Kul, from which it divides into two branches, the
Kuntiekkich Tarim (East River) and the Ilek (river) to the E.S.E.
Dr. Sven Hedin, after following the course of the Ilek for three
days (4th April, 1896) found a large sheet of water in the valley
at the very place marked by the Chinese Topographers and Richthofen
for the Lob-nor. This mass of water is divided up by the natives
into Avullu Kul, Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, and Arka Kul, which are
actually almost filled up with reeds. Dr. Sven Hedin afterwards
visited the Lob-nor of Prjevalsky, and reached its western
extremity, the Kara-buran (black storm) on the 17th April. In 1885,
Prjevalsky had found the Lob-nor an immense lake; four years later
Prince Henri d’Orléans saw it greatly reduced in size, and Dr. Sven
Hedin discovered but pools of water. In the meantime, since 1885,
the northern (Chinese) Lob-nor has gradually filled up, so the lake
is somewhat vagrant. Dr. Sven Hedin says that from his observations
he can assert that Prjevalsky’s lake is of recent formation.
So Marco Polo’s Lob-nor should be the northern or Chinese lake.
Another proof of this given by Dr. Sven Hedin is that the Chinese
give the name of Lob to the region between Arghan and Tikkenlik,
unknown in the country of the southern lake. The existence of two
lakes shows what a quantity of water from the Thian Shan, the
Eastern Pamir, and Northern Tibet flows into the basin of the
Tarim. The Russian Lieutenant K. P. Kozlov has tried since to prove
that the Chinese Lob-nor is the Kara-Koshun (Black district),
which is a second lake formed by the Tarim, which discharges
into and issues from the lake Kara-buran. Kozlov’s arguments are
published in the _Isvestia_ of the Russian Geographical Society,
and in a separate pamphlet. _The Geog. Jour._ (June, 1898, pp.
652–658) contains _The Lob-nor Controversy_, a full statement
of the case, summarising Kozlov’s pamphlet. Among the documents
relating to the controversy, Kozlov “quotes passages from the
Chinese work _Si-yui-shui-dao-tsi_, published in 1823, relative to
the region, and gives a reduced copy of the Chinese Map published
by Dr. Georg Wegener in 1863, upon which map Richthofen and Sven
Hedin based their arguments.” Kozlov’s final conclusions (_Geog.
Jour._ _l.c._ pp. 657–658) are the following: “The Koncheh-daria,
since very remote times till the present day, has moved a long way.
The spot Gherelgan may be taken as a spot of relative permanence
of its bed, while the basis of its delta is a line traced from the
farthest northern border of the area of salt clays surrounding the
Lob-nor to the Tarim. At a later period the Koncheh-daria mostly
influenced the lower Tarim, and each time a change occurred in the
latter’s discharge, the Koncheh took a more westward course, to
the detriment of its old eastern branch (Ilek). Always following
the gradually receding humidity, the vegetable life changed too,
while moving sands were taking its place, conquering more and more
ground for the desert, and marking their conquest by remains of old
shore-lines....
“The facts noticed by Sven Hedin have thus another meaning—the
desert to the east of the lakes, which he discovered, was formed,
not by Lob-nor, which is situated 1° southwards, but by the
Koncheh-daria, in its unremitted deflection to the west. The old
bed Ilek, lake-shaped in places, and having a belt of salt lagoons
and swamps along its eastern shores, represents remains of waters
belonging, not to Lob-nor, but to the shifting river which has
abandoned this old bed.
“These facts and explanations refute the second point of the
arguments which were brought forward by Sven Hedin in favour of his
hypothesis, asserting the existence of some other Lob-nor.
“I accept the third point of his objections, namely, that the
grandfathers of the present inhabitants of the Lob-nor lived by
a lake whose position was more to the north of Lob-nor; that was
mentioned already by Pievtsov, and the lake was Uchu-Kul.
“Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor, I leave to more
competent persons to decide.
“The only inference which I can make from the preceding account is
that the Kara-Koshun-Kul is not only the Lob-nor of my lamented
teacher, N. M. Prjevalsky, but also _the ancient, the historical,
and the true Lob-nor_ of the Chinese geographers. So it was during
the last thousand years, and so will it remain, if ‘the river of
time’ in its running has not effaced it from the face of the Earth.”
To Kozlov’s query: “Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor,
I leave to more competent persons to decide,” I have little
hesitation in replying that he did not mention the Lob-nor because
he did not see it. From Charchan, he followed, I believe, neither
Prjevalsky’s nor Pievtsov’s route, but the old route from Khotan to
Si-ngan fu, in the old bed of the Charchan daria, above and almost
parallel to the new bed, to the Tarim,—then between Sven Hedin’s
and Prjevalsky’s lakes, and across the desert to Shachau to join
the ancient Chinese road of the Han Dynasty, partly explored by M.
Bonin from Shachau.
There is no doubt as to the discovery of Prjevalsky’s Lob-nor, but
this does not appear to be the old Chinese Lob-nor; in fact, there
may have been several lakes co-existent; probably there was one to
the east of the mass of water described by Dr. Sven Hedin, near
the old route from Korla to Shachau; there is no fixity in these
waterspreads and the soil of this part of Asia, and in the course
of a few years some discrepancies will naturally arise between the
observations of different travellers. But as I think that Marco
Polo did not see one of the Lob-nor, but travelled between them,
there is no necessity to enlarge on this question, fully treated of
in this note.
See besides the works mentioned above: _Nord—Tibet und Lob-nur
Gebiet_.... herausg. von Dr. G. Wegener. Berlin, 1893. (Sep. abd.
_Zeit. Ges. f. Erdk._)—_Die Geog. wiss. Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in
Zentralasien_, 1894–1897, von Dr. Sven Hedin, Gotha, J. Perthes,
1900.
Bonvalot and Prince Henri d’Orléans (_De Paris au Tonkin, à
travers le Tibet inconnu_, Paris, 1892) followed this Itinerary:
Semipalatinsk, Kulja, Korla, Lob-nor, Charkalyk, Altyn Tagh,
almost a straight line to Tengri Nor, then to Batang, Ta Tsien lu,
Ning-yuan, Yun-nan-fu, Mong-tsŭ, and Tung-King.
Bonvalot (28th October, 1889) describes Lob in this manner: “The
village of Lob is situated at some distance from [the Charchan
daria]; its inhabitants come to see us; they are miserable,
hungry, _étiques_; they offer us for sale smoked fish, duck taken
with _lacet_. Some small presents soon make friends of them.
They apprize us that news has spread that Pievtsov, the Russian
traveller, will soon arrive” (_l.c._ p. 75). From Charkalyk, Prince
Henri d’Orléans and Father Dedeken visited Lob-nor (_l.c._ p.
77 _et seq._), but it was almost dry; the water had receded since
Prjevalsky’s visit, thirteen years before. The Prince says the
Lob-nor he saw was not Prjevalsky’s, nor was the latter’s lake the
mass of water on Chinese maps; an old sorceress gave confirmation
of the fact to the travellers. According to a tradition known from
one generation to another, there was at this place a large inland
sea without reeds, and the elders had seen in their youth large
ponds; they say that the earth impregnated with saltpetre absorbs
the water. The Prince says, according to tradition, _Lob_ is a
local name meaning “wild animals,” and it was given to the country
at the time it was crossed by Kalmuk caravans; they added to the
name _Lob_ the Mongol word _Nor_ (Great Lake). The travellers (p.
109) note that in fact the name Lob-nor does not apply to a Lake,
but to the whole marshy part of the country watered by the Tarim,
from the village of Lob to end of the river.
The Pievtsov expedition “visited the Lob-nor (2650 feet) and the
Tarim, whose proper name is Yarkend-daria (_tarim_ means ‘a tilled
field’ in Kashgarian). The lake is rapidly drying up, and a very
old man, 110 years old, whom Pievtsov spoke to (his son, 52 years
old, was the only one who could understand the old man), said
that he would not have recognized the land if he had been absent
all this time. Ninety years ago there was only a narrow strip of
rushes in the south-west part of the lake, and the Yarkend-daria
entered it 2½ miles to the west of its present mouth, where now
stands the village of Abdal. The lake was then much deeper, and
several villages, now abandoned, stood on its shores. There was
also much more fish, and otters, which used to live there, but
have long since disappeared. As to the Yarkend-daria, tradition
says that two hundred years ago it used to enter another smaller
lake, Uchukul, which was connected by a channel with the Lob-nor.
This old bed, named Shirga-chapkan, can still be traced by the
trees which grew along it. The greater previous extension of the
Lob-nor is also confirmed by the freshwater molluscs (_Limnaea
uricularia_, var. _ventricosa_, _L. stagnalis_, _L. peregra_, and
_Planorbis sibiricus_), which are found at a distance from its
present banks. Another lake, 400 miles in circumference, Kara-boyön
(_black isthmus_), lies, as is known, 27 miles to the south-west
of Lob-nor. To the east of the lake, a salt desert stretches for a
seven days’ march, and further on begin the Kum-tagh sands, where
wild camels live.” (_Geog. Jour._ IX. 1897, p. 552.)
Grenard (III. pp. 194–195) discusses the Lob-nor question and the
formation of four new lakes by the Koncheh-daria called by the
natives beginning at the north; Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, Sugut Kul,
Tokum Kul. He does not accept Baron v. Richthofen’s theory, and
believes that the old Lob is the lake seen by Prjevalsky.
He says (p. 149): “Lop must be looked for on the actual road from
Charchan to Charkalyk. Ouash Shahri, five days from Charchan,
and where small ruins are to be found, corresponds well to the
position of Lop according to Marco Polo, a few degrees of the
compass near. But the stream which passes at this spot could
never be important enough for the wants of a considerable centre
of habitation and the ruins of Ouash Shahri are more of a hamlet
than of a town. Moreover, Lop was certainly the meeting point of
the roads of Kashgar, Urumtsi, Shachau, L’Hasa, and Khotan, and it
is to this fact that this town, situated in a very poor country,
owed its relative importance. Now, it is impossible that these
roads crossed at Ouash Shahri. I believe that Lop was built on the
site of Charkalyk itself. The Venetian traveller gives five days’
journey between Charchan and Lop, whilst Charkalyk is really seven
days from Charchan; but the objection does not appear sufficient to
me: Marco Polo may well have made a mistake of two days.” (III. pp.
149–150.)
The Chinese Governor of Urumtsi found some years ago to the
north-west of the Lob-nor, on the banks of the Tarim, and within
five days of Charkalyk, a town bearing the same name, though not on
the same site as the Lop of Marco Polo.—H. C.]
NOTE 2.—“The waste and desert places of the Earth are, so to speak,
the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward
creation; its signs and symbols there.... Out of a true feeling
of this, men have ever conceived of the Wilderness as the haunt
of evil spirits. In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil
Spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of
the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly
as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the Lord of the Libyan
sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt.” (_Archbp. Trench,
Studies in the Gospels_, p. 7.) Terror, and the seeming absence of
a beneficent Providence, are suggestions of the Desert which must
have led men to associate it with evil spirits, rather than the
figure with which this passage begins; no spontaneous conception
surely, however appropriate as a moral image.
“According to the belief of the nations of Central Asia,” says
I. J. Schmidt, “the earth and its interior, as well as the
encompassing atmosphere, are filled with Spiritual Beings, which
exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on
the whole of organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are
Deserts and other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in
which the influences of nature are displayed on a gigantic and
terrible scale, regarded as the chief abode or rendezvous of evil
Spirits.... And hence the steppes of Turan, and in particular
the great sandy Desert of Gobi have been looked on as the
dwelling-place of malignant beings, from days of hoar antiquity.”
The Chinese historian Ma Twan-lin informs us that there were two
roads from China into the Uighúr country (towards Karashahr). The
longest but easiest road was by Kamul. The other was much shorter,
and apparently corresponded, as far as Lop, to that described in
this chapter. “By this you have to cross a plain of sand, extending
for more than 100 leagues. You see nothing in any direction but
the sky and the sands, without the slightest trace of a road; and
travellers find nothing to guide them but the bones of men and
beasts and the droppings of camels. During the passage of this
wilderness you hear sounds, sometimes of singing, sometimes of
wailing; and it has often happened that travellers going aside to
see what those sounds might be have strayed from their course and
been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and goblins.
’Tis for these reasons that travellers and merchants often prefer
the much longer route by Kamul.” (_Visdelou_, p. 139.)
“In the Desert” (this same desert), says Fa-hian, “there are a
great many evil demons; there are also sirocco winds, which kill
all who encounter them. There are no birds or beasts to be seen;
but so far as the eye can reach, the route is marked out by the
bleached bones of men who have perished in the attempt to cross.”
[“The Lew-sha was the subject of various most exaggerated stories.
We find more trustworthy accounts of it in the _Chow shu_; thus it
is mentioned in that history, that there sometimes arises in this
desert a ‘burning wind,’ pernicious to men and cattle; in such
cases the old camels of the caravan, having a presentiment of its
approach, flock shrieking to one place, lie down on the ground and
hide their heads in the sand. On this signal, the travellers also
lie down, close nose and mouth, and remain in this position until
the hurricane abates. Unless these precautions are taken, men and
beasts inevitably perish.” (_Palladius_, _l.c._ p. 4.)
A friend writes to me that he thinks that the accounts of strange
noises in the desert would find a remarkable corroboration in the
narratives of travellers through the central desert of Australia.
They conjecture that they are caused by the sudden falling of
cliffs of sand as the temperature changes at night time.—H. C.]
Hiuen Tsang, in his passage of the Desert, both outward and
homeward, speaks of visual illusions; such as visions of troops
marching and halting with gleaming arms and waving banners,
constantly shifting, vanishing, and reappearing, “imagery created
by demons.” A voice behind him calls, “Fear not! fear not!”
Troubled by these fantasies on one occasion, he prays to Kwan-yin
(a Buddhist divinity); still he could not entirely get rid of them;
but as soon as he had pronounced a few words from the _Prajna_ (a
holy book), they vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
These Goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi, though that appears
to be their most favoured haunt. The awe of the vast and solitary
Desert raises them in all similar localities. Pliny speaks of the
phantoms that appear and vanish in the deserts of Africa; Aethicus,
the early Christian cosmographer, speaks, though incredulous, of
the stories that were told of the voices of singers and revellers
in the desert; Mas’udi tells of the _Ghúls_, which in the deserts
appear to travellers by night and in lonely hours; the traveller,
taking them for comrades, follows and is led astray. But the wise
revile them and the Ghúls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of Tyana
and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see
an _Empusa_ or Ghúl taking many forms. They revile it, and it goes
off uttering shrill cries. Mas’udi also speaks of the mysterious
voices heard by lone wayfarers in the Desert, and he gives a
rational explanation of them. Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of
the Western Sahara: “If the messenger be solitary, the demons sport
with him and fascinate him, so that he strays from his course and
perishes.” The Afghan and Persian wildernesses also have their
_Ghúl-i-Beában_ or Goblin of the Waste, a gigantic and fearful
spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael of the West
Highlands have the _Direach Ghlinn Eitidh_, the Desert Creature
of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems
exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnás or _Empusa_. Nicolò Conti
in the Chaldaean desert is aroused at midnight by a great noise,
and sees a vast multitude pass by. The merchants tell him that
these are demons who are in the habit of traversing the deserts.
(_Schmidt’s San. Setzen_, p. 352; _V. et V. de H. T._ 23, 28, 289;
_Pliny_, VII. 2; _Philostratus_, Bk. II. ch. iv.; _Prairies d’Or_,
III. 315, 324; _Beale’s Fahian_; _Campbell’s Popular Tales of the
W. Highlands_, IV. 326; _I. B._ IV. 382; _Elphinstone_, I. 291;
_Chodzko’s Pop. Poetry of Persia_, p. 48; _Conti_, p. 4; _Forsyth,
J. R. G. S._ XLVII. 1877, p. 4.)
The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon
of another class, and is really produced in certain situations
among sandhills when the sand is disturbed. [See _supra_.] A
very striking account of a phenomenon of this kind regarded as
supernatural is given by Friar Odoric, whose experience I fancy I
have traced to the _Reg Ruwán_ or “Flowing Sand” north of Kabul.
Besides this celebrated example, which has been described also by
the Emperor Baber, I have noted that equally well-known one of the
_Jibal Naḳús_, or “Hill of the Bell,” in the Sinai Desert; Wadi
Hamade, in the vicinity of the same Desert; the _Jibal-ul-Thabúl_,
or “Hill of the Drums,” between Medina and Mecca; one on the
Island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, discovered by Hugh Miller; one
among the Medanos or Sandhills of Arequipa, described to me by Mr.
C. Markham; the Bramador or rumbling mountain of Tarapaca; one
in hills between the Ulba and the Irtish, in the vicinity of the
Altai, called the Almanac Hills, because the sounds are supposed
to prognosticate weather-changes; and a remarkable example near
Kolberg on the shore of Pomerania. A Chinese narrative of the 10th
century mentions the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on the
eastern border of the Lop Desert, under the name of the “Singing
Sands”; and Sir F. Goldsmid has recently made us acquainted with
a second _Reg Ruwán_, on a hill near the Perso-Afghan frontier,
a little to the north of Sístán. The place is frequented in
pilgrimage. (See _Cathay_, pp. ccxliv. 156, 398; _Ritter_, II. 204;
_Aus der Natur_, Leipzig, No. 47 [of 1868], p. 752; _Rémusat, H. de
Khotan_, p. 74; _Proc. R. G. S._ XVII. 91.)
NOTE 3.—[We learn from Joseph Martin, quoted by Grenard, p. 170
(who met this unfortunate French traveller at Khotan, on his way
from Peking to Marghelan, where he died), that from Shachau to
Abdal, on the Lob-nor, there are twelve days of desert, sandy
only during the first two days, stony afterwards. Occasionally a
little grass is to be found for the camels; water is to be found
everywhere. M. Bonin went from Shachau to the north-west towards
the Kara-nor, then to the west, but lack of water compelled him to
go back to Shachau. Along this road, every five _lis_, are to be
found towers built with clay, and about 30 feet high, abandoned by
the Chinese, who do not seem to have kept a remembrance of them
in the country; this route seems to be a continuation of the Kan
Suh Imperial highway. A wall now destroyed connected these towers
together. “There is no doubt,” writes M. Bonin, “that all these
remains are those of the great route, vainly sought after till now,
which, under the Han Dynasty, ran to China through Bactria, Pamir,
Eastern Turkestan, the Desert of Gobi, and Kan Suh: it is in part
the route followed by Marco Polo, when he went from Charchan to
Shachau, by the city of Lob.” The route of the Han has been also
looked for, more to the south, and it was believed that it was
the same as that of the Astyn Tagh, followed by Mr. Littledale in
1893, who travelled one month from Abdal (Lob-nor) to Shachau; M.
Bonin, who explored also this route, and was twenty-three days from
Shachau to Lob-nor, says it could not be a commercial road. Dr.
Sven Hedin saw four or five towers eastward of the junction of the
Tarim and the Koncheh-daria; it may possibly have been another part
of the road seen by M. Bonin. (See _La Géographie_, 15th March,
1901, p. 173.)—H. C.]