670 



EXPLORATIONS IN MONGOLIA AND TIBET. 



Lob nor,* make their dwellings of reeds and feed on wild grapes, wliich 

 they dry. From this description I have no doubt these people are the 

 half-wild inhabitants of Turki origin seen by Prjevalsky and other 

 travellers in the marshes and canebrakes of Lob-nor. 



On the lith of April, I started back for Shang. Crossing the Yogore 

 my pony broke through the ice and was drowned, I nearly sharing the 

 same fate. The next day my saddle was recovered, also my notes and 

 papers in my saddle-bags. On the 18th I joined my other men with 

 the pack animals in the valley of Oim, where the Dzassak of Baron was 



Fig. 7.— Scene in Mongol village of Shaug (8. E. Ts'aidaiu). 



* See ''Land of the Lamas," p. 159. Douglas Forsyth, Journal Roy. Geo. Soc, xlvii, 

 p. 6, says: "There are numbers of eucampments and settlements on the banks of the 

 marshy lakes and their connecting channels; perhaps there are as many as a thou- 

 sand houses or camps. These are inhabited by families who emigrated there about 

 one hundred and sixty years ago. They are looked upon Avith contempt by true 

 believers as only half Musselmans. The aborigines are described as very Avild 

 people — black men with long, matted hair, who shun the society of mankind and 

 wear clothes made of the bark of a tree. The stuft' is called "luff," and is the liber 

 of a plaut called "toka chigha," which grows plentifully all over the sandy wastes 

 bordering on the marshes of Lop." Wild men are said to live ou the lower Tsaugpo, 

 in Tibet. The Mongol Lama Sherab jyats'o says that in Pemakoichheu (north of 

 Mira Pedam) the Lh'opa "kill the mother of the bride in performing their marriage 

 ceremony when they do not find any wild men, and eat her flesh." See Report on the 

 Explorations in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet, from 1856 to 1886, p. 7 ; also pp. 50 and 52. 



