Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/44

Rh not been inside the city, but I have seen its walls distinctly from the sandy ridge in the vicinity. I was afraid to go amongst the ruins because of the bogs around and the venomous insects and snakes in the reeds. I was camped about them for several days with a party of Lob shepherds who were here pasturing their cattle. Besides it is a notorious fact that people who do go amongst the ruins almost always die, because they cannot resist the temptation to steal the gold and precious things stored there."

Another statement of his is as follows (page 30):—

"Nobody can go more than three or four days' journey to the east of the lake, owing to the depth of the soft powdery saline soil, on which neither man nor beast can find footing. From the lake a river goes out to the south-east, across an immense desert of this salt and sand. At fifteen days' or twenty days' journey it passes under a mountain, and reappears on the other side, in China. In olden times a young man of Lob went in his boat to explore the river beyond the lake. After going down the stream for seven days he saw a mountain ahead, and on going closer he found the river entered a frightful black and deep chasm in the rocks. He tried to stop his boat, but the swiftness of the current carried it into the chasm. At its farther end he saw a small black hole inside the mountain, and had only time to lie down in the