Nikolay Przhevalsky

“ Huc's is the painting of a clever, perhaps too clever, artist, but still coloured from nature. Artist he is indeed, and as far as may be from science, but, after reading Prejevalsky's narrative, I have felt, more than ever before, the charm of Huc's vivacious touches; more than ever, because the perusal of the Russian work convinced me that his pictures (I do not refer to the braggadocio, probably imaginary, of his conduct before Chinese officials) are true as well as clever. ”

“ It is not like a tame camel; its limbs are very thin, and it is altogether slim built, I have seen them in the desert together with herds of wild horses. They are not timid, and do not run away at the sight of a man. They do nothing unless attacked; they then run away, or else they turn and attack the huntsman; they are very fierce, and swift in their action as an arrow shot from the bow; they kill by biting and trampling under foot, and they kick too like a cow. ”

“ Before reaching Lake Lob we had to march due south and strike the valley of the Tarim at a point eighty-six versts distant from Korla. For some way the country has the appearance of an undulating plain covered with a pebbly or gravelly soil, and totally devoid of vegetation, forming a belt twenty to twenty-five versts wide, more or less, running parallel to and at the foot of the Kurugh-tagh, a low, waterless, and barren range forming the last arm of the Tian Shan in the direction of the Lob-nor desert. ”

“ Shaw and Hayward and Johnson were the pioneers of British exploration in Eastern Turkestan; and these have been followed by the less perilous journeys of Sir D. Forsyth and his companions, by the ride of the latter across Pamir, and by their success in connecting, at least by preliminary survey, our own scientific frontier with that of Russia. Cooper's two daring attempts to traverse the formidable barriers which man, even more than nature, has set between India and China, are hardly within the field that we are contemplating. ”

“ Fragments of sculptures are found among the débris, and in some galleries sunk in the rock there are paintings of men and animals on the walls as fresh and bright in colour as if they were new. Precious stones, gems, and trinkets are occasionally found in the rubbish of the crumbled walls, and marvellous tales are told of the lustre and size of some that have been picked up here by wandering shepherds. ”

“ Even wolves are rare in the desert, and would scarcely be dangerous to a full-grown camel. Besides being habitually wary, it will resort to the most inaccessible spots to avoid man, and it is probable that the sandy wastes to the east of Lake Lob have served time out of mind as its settled abode. Of course in earlier ages the limits of its distribution may have extended much farther than at the present time, when all that remains for it is the most remote corner of the great desert of Central Asia. ”

“ We have indulged in that digression after wild camels, which Prejevalsky denied himself. He passed on into the lofty and uninhabited desert of Northern Tibet, which extends for a width in latitude of some 500 miles, at an altitude of 14,000 to 15,000 feet above the sea, and reached the upper stream of the Great Yangtse, known there to the Mongols as the Murui-ussu or Winding Water. In this region, uninhabited by man, wild animals abound; wolves, argali or wild sheep, antelopes of various sorts, and above all the wild yak, are found in vast numbers. ”

“ In winter the wild camel keeps entirely to the lower and warmer desert, only entering the mountains from time to time.
Unlike the domesticated animal, whose chief characteristics are cowardice, stupidity, and apathy, the wild variety is remarkable for its sagacity and admirably developed senses. Its sight is marvellously keen, hearing exceedingly acute, and sense of smell wonderfully perfect. The hunters told us that a camel could scent a man several versts off, see him, however cautiously he might approach, from a great distance, and hear the slightest rustle of his footsteps. ”

“ In this range, after a short and easy ascent from the side of the table-land, at a distance of only twenty-seven miles from the arid desert of Ala-shan, the travellers found themselves on a fertile soil, abounding in water, where rich grass clothed the valleys, dense forests darkened the steep slopes of the mountains, and animal life appeared in great abundance and variety. ”

“ These natives are in general all remarkable for the pallor of their complexions, for their hollow chests and weak frames. The men are of average height, many even tall; the women (whom we rarely saw) are of smaller stature.
If we happened to enter one of their dwellings—the fair sex, married and single, invariably took to flight, disappearing like mice through the crevices of their reed walls.
Our companion, Zaman Beg, having had more opportunities of seeing and studying the ladies on the Tarim, spoke in terms the reverse of flattering of their beauty. ”

“ The later writings of Huc, pieces of pretentious and untrustworthy bookmaking, have thrown some shadow upon the original narrative; some of his own countrymen have been disposed to look on his work as half a fiction; and stories have even reached me from Russian sources which professed to recount confessions made by Huc of his having invented his own share in the narrative, and of his having received from Gabet on his deathbed, 'on board a boat in the Canton river,' or taken from his luggage after his death, the true journals on which the popular story of the Journey to Lhassa was founded. ”

“ Once aware of its danger, it instantly takes to flight, and never stops for some dozens, or even hundreds of versts. A camel I fired at certainly ran twenty versts without stopping, as I saw by its traces, and probably farther still, had I been able to follow it, for it turned into a ravine off our line of march. One would suppose that so uncouth an animal would be incapable of climbing mountains; the contrary, however, is actually the case, for we often saw the tracks and droppings of camels in the narrowest gorges, and on slopes steep enough to baffle the hunter. ”

“ The Pass is that feature in a mountain range which most interests travellers, and which they hear most frequently named; passes always have names; ranges, among people who have no books of geography, are apt to have none. ”

“ Owing to the absence of forests in Yulduz, the deer frequent the belts of low bushes, climbing the rocks as easily as the mountain sheep, and so like these as to be mistaken for them at a distance. In spring, during the months of May and June, they are eagerly pursued by hunters for the sake of their young horns—so called ‘panti’ which fetch high prices in China. Thus, in Kulja, a pair of large, six-pointed antlers is worth fifty to seventy roubles, in first hands; and even small ones fetch fifteen, twenty, or thirty roubles. ”

“ One of the most novel and remarkable circumstances that come out in this narrative is the existence of an intensely moist mountain region in Kansu, to the north of the Hoang-ho, and on the immediate east of Koko-nor. This tract [25] constitutes there what Prejevalsky calls the 'marginal range,' a feature everywhere characteristic of the plateau of Mongolia, i.e. a belt of mountain following and forming the rim of the plateau and the descent from it, but also rising considerably above the level of the plateau itself. ”

“ The height of Lake Lob is 2200 feet, and therefore the fall of the Tarim, notwithstanding its rapid stream averaging three feet per second, [13] is only slight.
From Akhtarma our road lay down the Tarim, now approaching its bank, now retreating to some distance from it. There is no valley in our sense of the word; neither the configuration nor quality of the soil changes even on the very bank of the river. The same loamy plain, the same drift-sand as in the desert, continue to within a hundred paces of the water. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one moves about without a little store of them. If you go to pay a visit of ceremony, or to ask a favour of anyone, or to return thanks for one received, you begin by displaying the khata; you take it in both hands and present it to the person whom you wish to honour. If two friends who have not met for a long time chance to forgather, their first care is the reciprocal offer of the khata; . . . also when a letter is written it is customary to fold up along with it a small khata. The finest phrases, the handsomest presents, all are of no esteem without the khata ”

“ The struggle is over, the desert has gained the mastery over the river, life is swallowed up in death. But before finally disappearing, the Tarim forms by the overflow of its last waters an extensive reedy marsh known from ancient times as Lob-nor. The name Lob-nor as applied to the lake is unknown to the natives by whom the whole lower course of the Tarim receives this appellation, whilst the lake itself goes by the general name of Chon-kul (i. e. great lake) or more often Kara-kurchin, denoting the whole administrative district. ”

“ But the chief and royal city is all built with walls of black and white, and all its streets are very well paved. In this city no one shall dare to shed the blood of any, whether man or beast, for the reverence they bear to a certain idol which is there worshipped. ”