have little hesitation in replying
that he did not mention the Lob-nor because he did not see it. From
Charchan, he followed, I believe, neither Prjevalsky's nor Pievtsov's
route, but the old route from Khotan to Si-ngan fu, in the old bed of the
Charchan daria, above and almost parallel to the new bed, to the
Tarim,--then between Sven Hedin's and Prjevalsky's lakes, and across the
desert to Shachau to join the ancient Chinese road of the Han Dynasty,
partly explored by M. Bonin from Shachau.

There is no doubt as to the discovery of Prjevalsky's Lob-nor, but this
does not appear to be the old Chinese Lob-nor; in fact, there may have
been several lakes co-existent; probably there was one to the east of the
mass of water described by Dr. Sven Hedin, near the old route from Korla
to Shachau; there is no fixity in these waterspreads and the soil of this
part of Asia, and in the course of a few years some discrepancies will
naturally arise between the observations of different travellers. But as I
think that Marco Polo did not see one of the Lob-nor, but travelled
between them, there is no necessity to enlarge on this question, fully
treated of in this note.

See besides the works mentioned above: _Nord--Tibet und Lob-nur Gebiet_...
herausg. von Dr. G. Wegener. Berlin, 1893. (Sep. abd. _Zeit. Ges. f.
Erdk._)--_Die Geog. wiss. Ergebnisse meiner Reisen in Zentralasien_,
1894-1897, von Dr. Sven Hedin, Gotha, J. Perthes, 1900.

Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orleans (_De Paris au Tonkin, a travers le
Tibet inconnu_, Paris, 1892) followed this Itinerary: Semipalatinsk,
Kulja, Korla, Lob-nor, Charkalyk, Altyn Tagh, almost a straight line to
Tengri Nor, then to Batang, Ta Tsien lu, Ning-yuan, Yun-nan-fu, Mong-tsu,
and Tung-King.

Bonvalot (28th October, 1889) describes Lob in this manner: "The village
of Lob is situated at some distance from [the Charchan daria]; its
inhabitants come to see us; they are miserable, hungry, _etiques_; they
offer us for sale smoked fish, duck taken with _lacet_. Some small
presents soon make friends of them. They apprize us that news has spread
that Pievtsov, the Russian traveller, will soon arrive" (l.c. p. 75). From
Charkalyk, Prince Henri d'Orleans and Father Dedeken visited Lob-nor (l.c.
p. 77 et seq.), but it was almost dry; the water had receded since
Prjevalsky's visit, thirteen years before. The Prince says the Lob-nor he
saw was not Prjevalsky's, nor was the latter's lake the mass of water o