THROUGH ASIA 
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not more than thirty years old. The banks of both lakes, 
Kara-buran and Kara-koshun, were totally destitute of 
every trace of forest, old or new. They were both en- 
tirely surrounded by the barren desert. Close to and 
around the northern Lop-nor, on the contrary, I found both 
dead and living forest. 
The explanation of this unequal distribution of forest is 
not far to seek : the southern Lop-nor is of such recent 
formation that the forest has not yet had time to reach its 
shores. 
These arguments are based upon facts of pure physical 
geography. There are also others of a historical character. 
I have already mentioned more than once, that the Chinese 
cartographers entered upon their maps a large lake, sur- 
rounded by several smaller ones, in 40° 30' N. lat. 
Six hundred and twenty-five years ago Marco Polo 
visited the “town of Lop.” Its ruins, which have now 
almost entirely disappeared, probably lie immediately 
south of the lake Kara-buran, If there had been any 
lake in that neighbourhood at the time of his visit, the 
great Venetian traveller could hardly have avoided taking 
some notice of it. True, he does not mention Yarkand, 
or Khotan, or the Cherchen-daria, a stream which he 
actually crossed over. All the same, it is a fact which 
deserves mention, that Marco Polo does not say a word 
about the existence of a lake occupying the position of 
Przhevalsky’s Lop-nor ; but he does give a detailed 
description of the Lop desert — “ which is so large that the 
traveller needeth a full year to cross from the one side 
of it to the other.” 
The old chieftain of Abdal, Kunchekkan Beg, a friend 
of Przhevalsky, and also my especial friend, is eighty 
years old. Both his father, Jehan Beg, and his grand- 
father, Numet Beg {the dignity of beg being hereditary 
in the family), lived to be ninety years of age. Kunchek- 
kan Beg told me, that his grandfather lived beside a 
large lake north of the existing Lop-nor of Przhevalsky, 
and that, where the latter now is, there was at that 
time nothing but the sandy desert. The first formation 
