Bonvalot And Prince Henri D'Orleans (De Paris Au Tonkin, A 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-tsu,
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, etiques; 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'Orleans 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 2-1/2 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.
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