Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/45

26 bottom of the boat, when it was drawn into the dark passage. The top of the boat scraped the roof of the channel, and bits of stone continually fell upon him. After a long time he emerged from the darkness into light, and found the bottom of his boat strewed with nuggets of gold. He went down the river for some days, and finally found himself in Peking."

In the mythical geography of the Chinese, less exaggerated than that of the Hindoos nevertheless, the Hoang Ho is made to rise in the eastern slopes of the Bolor. By the river Tarim, and by a subterranean passage, they placed it in communication with Lake Lob, which they thought was a part of a vast dried-up sea, and which, according to M. Lassen, has given the Hindoos the first notion of a northern sea.

This story would appear to be the popular mode of accounting for the belief that the river Tarim, flowing through Lake Lob, and being apparently lost in the Great Desert, in reality reappears in China as the great Hoang Ho, or Yellow River.

The idea that the waters of the Tarim, flowing through Lake Lob, communicate with a large Chinese river, which empties itself into the sea, seems to have prevailed from early times until now. In the Tarikhi Rashidi, of Mirza Haidar, Lake Lob is mentioned as covering an area four months' journey in circuit, and as giving exit to the great Kara Moran river of China. Since that