Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/569

Rh be most important to fix the period. It will throw new light on the history of Central Asia; it will teach us much about the migrations of the Buddhist peoples.

"I stayed at the second town, which was much smaller and where I found nothing, for two days, and then struck out north with my caravan, and reaching the bed of the Jarim River, followed it down to the city of Korla. I here prepared for my journey to discover the old Lop-Nor. I did discover it. I went by the old Chinese maps, and I proved that Richthofen was right and Prshewalsky was wrong. My course was south by south-east. I found the old Lop-Nor in the beginning of April, 1896. There was no road, and I had to guide myself through the desert by the Chinese maps. I followed the eastern shore of the lake, and made a map of it. It took me five days' march to reach the southern end. On its shores I found some native villages, huts made of bundles of reeds. The people are very wretched, miserable people. They had never seen a European before. I marched on, south to the new Lop-Nor, the one discovered by Prshewalsky.

"At the end of April I returned to Khotan by Marco Polo's southerly route, and made many scientific observations on the way. In Khotan I prepared for my journey through Thibet. This was a very difficult journey. I had to climb the Kwen-Lun range and cross on to the high Thibetan plateaus by the lofty passes. For two months we marched along these plateaus at an altitude of 16,000 feet. It was a horrible country, bare desert, sand, and stones, here and there a salt lake. There was but the scantiest vegetation, and we could find so little fodder for our animals that in those two months forty-nine out of the fifty-six I had in my caravan perished of fatigue and starvation. We did not meet a single man during all those weeks, and the only living things we saw were herds of wild yaks and of wild horses. We used to shoot the yaks for food. We reached Tsaidan in the beginning of November. From there we marched east to the great lake of Kokonur, and so on to Pekin, which I reached on March 2d of this year."

From Pekin Dr. Sven Hedin traveled through Mongolia in Chinese carts to Kiachta, and thence by the Trans-Siberia railway home. He reached Stockholm on May 10th, after an absence of three years and seven months.