THE RUINS OF DESERT CATHAY.* IN these volumes Dr. Stein
provides the general reader with some account of his remarkable Central Asian wanderings during the years I900-1908. The number and extent of his .discoveries make it impossible to issue a detailed report for several years, and that report when it comes will necessarily
be technical and bulky. The present work is not technical and it is never dull : it is a record of adventures and the highly successful pursuit of hidden treasure in the most ancient and mysterious of the world's kingdoms. Dr. Stein followed in the track of the famous Buddhist pilgrim, Hsiian-tsang, and of Marco Polo, and he shared something of the intrepidity and buoyancy of those valiant travellers. He has an immense gift of appreciation and thankfulness—the true pilgrim spirit. His expedition was admirably equipped, but the work was harassing and laborious, for besides time job of finding antiquities there was the business of getting thou home by way of high Himalayan passes. Two years of excavation at a great altitude in so dry a climate would wear out the nerves of most men. They seem to have had no effect on Dr. Stein's. Further, he kept up a voluminous correspondence, and was busy correcting and returning proofs of his Ancient 'Chelan from his different desert camps. But at the end he is as fresh as at the beginning, and devotes the last month to a wild expedition into the Kun-lun mountains, where he reached a height of over 20,000 feet, and had the misfortune to lose several of his toes from frost-bite.
The district explored is that thirsty part of Turkestan bounded on the south by the Kun-lun range and on the north by the Ti'en-span mountains. The Pamirs form its western limit, and on the east it fades into the great desert of Gobi. It is the basin of the Tarim River, a river made by the strong streams from the different mountain ranges, which
finally is "shorn and parcelled" into a trickle that ends in the great marsh of Lop-nor. The basin is, generally
speaking, desert, but at the west lie the oases of Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, and along the north and south sides stretch old trade routes. Dr. Stein travelled from India by way of Chitral to the sources of the Oxus, and thence to Kash- gar, where, like so many other travellers, he enjoyed the
hospitality of the British representative, Mr. Macartney. He saw the first sands with much the same feeling as the Polo:- explorer sees the first drift ice.
"The oases scattered over the huge grey cone of Piedmont gravel showed up clearly as distant dealt patches. Of the river which accounted for their vegetation there was scarcely a trace loft. Such water as had not sunk into the thirsty soil of stones and pebbles was carefully caught in narrow canals and conducted away for irrigation. . . Far away on the horizon north-eastwards the eye caught lines of yellowish-rod waves lit up by the last rays of the sun : it was the real sea of drift sand."
At Kashgar he acquired a first-rate Chinese Secretary, and at Yarkand and Khotan he completed his caravan. Dr. Stein had the happy knack of making friends readily, and few travellers have been more successful in getting on the comfortable side of
4 Ruins of cuthou Personal. Narretamar Eirptoration si.intao(TenitramtlAcuisideacnodi • Westernmost China. By N. Aurel Stein. 2 vols. London : 1428. not]
'Chinese red-tape. He was also well served—largely, we fancy, because he proved himself a capable and considerate leader. He gives us some interesting pictures of life in Yarkand and Khotan and an account of a surveying expedition into the Kun-lun range. By this time autumn was approaching, and he was making ready for his winter's campaign among the -sand-buried ruins of the Tarim Valley desert.
A desert seems at first thought an unpromising place to .hunt for old manuscripts. But the dry sand is the finest of preservatives, and delicate rolls of painted silk and paper written a thousand years ago have survived undamaged by time. Some of the manuscripts were votive deposits, some the contents of the waste-paper basket ; the dates varied, but -most were older than the eighth century of our era. They -exhibited many types of Central Asian character and language, some still undecipherable, but the most interesting . finds were the pictures which showed the Greek influence on :-ancient Buddhist art. To find in a Turkestan desert a seal with a representation of Eros and Hermes seemed to Dr. Stein " to efface all distance in time and space." In the Miran site he found a delicately painted dado of winged angels, very like the Grieco-Egyptian heads from the Fayilin. He dates the figures As not later than the third century. The winged Eros had pene- . tinted far when it was used in Buddhist designs on the confines of China. It was no light task to pack these fragile paintings ..for transport over the Himalayas and many thousand miles . further by land and sea. The plan was to take a board lightly padded with cotton-wool under big sheets of tough . paper and press it gently against the front of the fresco. A large sheet of tin was then introduced at the back of the broken panel and the whole tilted forward. But Dr. Stein's greatest discovery was east of the Lop-nor in the neighbourhood of Tun-Luang, where in the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas a huge discovery of manuscripts and pictures had recently been made. By the exercise of great patience and diplomacy be succeeded in receiving from the guardian of the caves .a large number of the most interesting, for to the temple- keeper the only value lay in the Chinese sacred texts. Twenty-four cases of manuscripts and five of paintings .reached the British Museum from the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas. The interest of the find is chiefly in its connexion with early Buddhist art and the ritual relations of India and China. No lost manuscript of the Greeks, as some 4niglit have dared to hope, had found its way to these caves. In the same district Dr. Stein discovered the western remains of the old " Limes " or Wall of China, built to repel Hun raids, and dating back to the first century. He explored the Jade Gate, the port from which adventurers used to go forth to the unknown west, and he traced several hundred miles of the Wall. The town of Su-ohou marked the furthest eastern limit of the expedition, and in that neighbourhood Dr. Stein did some topographical work in the Nan-Shan range. On the way back he crossed to the north side of the Tarim basin and visited some of the Tinian ruins. From .Kuchar he resolved to imitate Sven Hedin and head boldly across the desert, in the hope of striking the Keriya .River at the point where that stream from the Kun-lun loses itself in the sand. It was a bold act, and by a miracle it succeeded. The description of these sixteen days is the best piece of writing in the book. They found a dead delta, where the Keriya had once flowed, and where nothing was left but hollows in the sand and lines of dead trees. The expedition were almost at the end of their tether when they saw the silver streak which meant ice in a pool of the dying Keriya. 'Thereafter Dr. Stein crossed the desert again to Ak-su, by way of the Khotan River, visited Yarkand, and returned to Khotan, -where lie packed up for the journey home. He returned him- self by the Kun-lun, and had the adventures which ended in frost-bite.
It is a splendid record of a wonderful two years' work. So .rich were the finds that the mere unpacking in the British Museum basement took six months, and it will take a large staff of Orientalist scholars many years to decipher the ' 14,000 odd manuscripts brought back. Only thus shall we • be able to pronounce on the actual yield of the journey in the • way of new knowledge. But, apart from scientific value, Dr. Stein's two volumes make one of the best narratives of travel we have met with for many days, and the illustrations are beyond praise.
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