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 Uighur country (towards Karashahr). The longest but
easiest road was by Kamul.
