Sir Henry Yule Has Shown Long Ago
That The Dread Of Being Led Astray By Evil Spirits Haunted The Imagination
Of All Early Travellers Who Crossed The Desert Wastes Between China And
The Oases Westwards.
Fa-hsien's above-quoted passage clearly alludes to
this belief, and so does Hiuan Tsang, as we have seen, where he points in
graphic words the impressions left by his journey through the sandy desert
between Niya and Charchan.
"Thus, too, the description we receive through the Chinese
historiographer, Ma Tuan-lin, of the shortest route from China towards
Kara-shahr, undoubtedly corresponding to the present track to Lop-nor,
reads almost like a version from Marco's book, though its compiler, a
contemporary of the Venetian traveller, must have extracted it from some
earlier source. '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 these sounds might be have strayed from their
course and been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and
goblins.'...
"As Yule rightly observes, 'these Goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi.'
Yet I felt more than ever assured that Marco's stories about them were of
genuine local growth, when I had travelled over the whole route and seen
how closely its topographical features agree with the matter-of-fact
details which the first part of his chapter records. Anticipating my
subsequent observations, I may state here at once that Marco's estimate of
the distance and the number of marches on this desert crossing proved
perfectly correct. For the route from Charklik, his 'town of Lop,' to the
'City of Sachiu,' i.e. Sha-chou or Tun-huang, our plane-table survey,
checked by cyclometer readings, showed an aggregate marching distance of
close on 380 miles."
XXXIX., p. 196.
OF THE CITY OF LOP AND THE GREAT DESERT.
"In the hope of contributing something toward the solution of these
questions [contradictory statements of Prjevalsky, Richthofen, and Sven
Hedin]," writes Huntington, "I planned to travel completely around the
unexplored part of the ancient lake, crossing the Lop desert in its widest
part. As a result of the journey, I became convinced that two thousand
years ago the lake was of great size, covering both the ancient and the
modern locations; then it contracted, and occupied only the site shown on
the Chinese maps; again, in the Middle Ages, it expanded; and at present
it has contracted and occupies the modern site.
"Now, as in Marco Polo's days, the traveller must equip his caravan for
the desert at Charklik, also known as Lop, two days' journey south-west of
the lake." (Ellsworth HUNTINGTON, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 240-1.)
XXXIX., pp.
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