- LOP appears to be the Napopo, i.e. Navapa, of Hiuen Tsang,
called also the country of Leulan, in the Desert.
(Mem. 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.
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