ey happen to reside.' The
quotation from my notes runs as follows: 'The women of the place are noted
for their attractiveness and loose character. It is said that many men
coming to Keriya for a short time become enamoured of the women here, and
remain permanently, taking new wives and abandoning their former wives and
families.'

"Hwen Tsiang observed that thirty 'li,' seven or eight miles, west of
Pimo, there is 'a great desert marsh, upwards of several acres in extent,
without any verdure whatever. The surface is reddish black.' The natives
explained to the pilgrim that it was the blood-stained site of a great
battle fought many years before. Eighteen miles north-west of Keriya
bazaar, or ten miles from the most westerly village of the oasis, I
observed that 'some areas which are flooded part of the year are of a deep
rich red colour, due to a small plant two or three inches high.' I saw
such vegetation nowhere else and apparently it was an equally unusual
sight to Hwen Tsiang.

"In addition to these somewhat conclusive observations, Marco Polo says
that jade is found in the river of Pimo, which is true of the Keriya, but
not of the Chira, or the other rivers near Kenan." (Ellsworth HUNTINGTON,
_The Pulse of Asia_, pp. 387-8.)

XXVIII., p. 194. "The whole of the Province [of Charchan] is sandy, and so
is the road all the way from Pein, and much of the water that you find is
bitter and bad. However, at some places you do find fresh and sweet
water."

Sir Aurel Stein remarks (_Ancient Khotan_, I., p. 436): "Marco Polo's
description, too, 'of the Province of Charchan' would agree with the
assumption that the route west of Charchan was not altogether devoid of
settlements even as late as the thirteenth century.... [His] account of
the route agrees accurately with the conditions now met with between Niya
and Charchan. Yet in the passage immediately following, the Venetian tells
us how 'when an army passes through the land, the people escape with their
wives, children, and cattle a distance of two or three days' journey into
the sandy waste; and, knowing the spots where water is to be had, they are
able to live there, and to keep their cattle alive, while it is impossible
to discover them.' It seems to me clear that Marco Polo alludes here to
the several river courses which, after flowing north of the Niya-Charchan
route, lose themselves in the desert. The jungle belt of their terminal
areas, no doubt, offered then, as