EXCURSION TO THE MASAR-TAGH 457 
which lie buried among its sands. These gold-seekers are 
always looked at askance by their neighbours, and should 
be avoided. They will not work ; but live on the hope 
of making their fortune at a single stroke. They are 
parasites, a burden upon their neighbours, who in their 
“spare time” occupy themselves with thieving and robbery. 
For needless to say, they never find any hidden treasure. 
But whence do all these legends come? How explain 
all these confirmatory accounts of buried cities, and these 
varying traditions of the great city of former times, Takla- 
makan, which was swallowed up in the sand ? Is it merely 
by accident that these legends fiy from mouth to mouth in 
Khotan and Yarkand, Maral-bashi and Ak-su? Is it 
merely by accident that this ancient city is always known 
by the same name? Is it merely for the sake of making 
themselves interesting" that the natives describe these 
deserted houses in detail, which they say they have seen, 
and where, they .say, in former times there were great 
forests, the home of the musk-deer and other big game ? 
No, it cannot be by chance ; these legends nmst have a 
foundation and a cause. Deep under them there must 
verily be some reality for them to rest on ; they ought 
not to be scorned, they ought not to be despised and 
neglected. 
To these fabulous, these adventurous tales I gave the 
eager ear of a child. Every day added to the allurements 
of the perilous journey I contemplated. I was fascinated 
by all these romantic legends. I became blind to danger. 
I had fallen under the spell of the weird witchery of the 
desert. Even the sandstorms, those terrible scourges of 
Central Asia, which have their cradle in the heart of that 
sand-heated furnace — even they were in my eyes beautiful, 
even they enchanted me. Over there, on the verge of the 
horizon, were the noble, rounded forms of the sand-dunes, 
which I never grew tired of watching ; and beyond them, 
amid the grave-like silence, stretched the unknown, en- 
chanted land, of whose existence not even the oldest 
records make mention, the land that I was going to be 
the first to tread. 
