Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/11

vi "It would appear that the Russian traveller Prejevalsky in his last remarkable journey in the heart of Central Asia, did not explore Lob-nor at all, as he claims to have done. Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen, one of the first comparative geographers of the day, has examined the account of the journey more especially by the light of Chinese literature, and proves, almost incontestably to our thinking, that the true Lob-nor must lie somewhere north-east of the so-called Kara-Kotchun Lake discovered by Prejevalsky, and that in all probability it is fed by an eastern arm of the Tarim river. This, at all events, would account for the remarkable diminution in bulk undergone by the waters of that stream as they proceed southward, which could not but strike an attentive reader of the Russian explorer's narrative. The whole question is well worthy of further investigation, and it is possible that Prejevalsky, whom a recent telegram from St. Petersburg reports as about to return to Central Asia, may be enabled to elucidate it."

On reading this it seemed to me that the writer had been a little too hasty in his conclusions, and that Colonel Prejevalsky might suffer an injustice