Page:Harold Lamb--Marching Sands.djvu/35

 Asia are not good things to monkey with. But, look here." He drew a map from his pocket and spread it out on his knee. "Here's the spot where Van Schaick located the Wusun—our long-lost but not forgotten cousins. Well and good. Only that spot, which you and your friends call the 'blind spot' of Asia, happens to be in the middle of the far Gobi Desert. How do you figure people existed there for several centuries?"

Delabar hesitated, glancing up at the moving tracery of smoke that rose from the funnel, against the clouds. They were on the boat deck. "The Ming annals mention a city in that place, some two thousand years ago. A thousand years later we know there were many palaces at this end of the Thian Shan—the Celestial Mountains. Remember that the caravan routes from China to Samarcand, India and Persia are very old, and that they—or one of the most important of them—ran past this blind spot."

"Marco Polo trailed along there, didn't he?"

"Yes. We know the great city of the Gobi was called Sungan. The Ming annals describe it as having 'massive gates, walls and bastions, besides underground passages, vaulted and arched.'"

"European travelers don't report this city."

"Because they never saw it, my friend. Brent, who was at the edge of the Gobi near there, states that he saw towers in the sand. And the Moham-