920 
THROUGH ASIA 
and he said he would try to talk the amban back to reason. 
After that the conversation passed over to other topics. 
Shi Darin was deeply interested in my travels, and asked 
me hosts of questions. When I told him about my 
disastrous journey across the Takla-makan Desert, he 
exclaimed loudly, and was ready to throw himself on my 
neck. “Oh, and so that was, you ! I was in Khotan 
at the time ; nothing else was talked about but your 
unfortunate journey. Ling Darin told me about you, 
and we both hoped to have met you in Khotan.” 
The said Ling Darin was no less a person than 
Paul Splingaert, a Belgian, who had spent some thirty 
years of his life in China, and who for four years acted 
as interpreter to Baron von Richthofen in his travels 
through that country. He was now an induential man- 
darin in Su-chow, having become virtually a Chinaman, 
and married a Chinese wife ; by her he had eleven 
children, of whom several were then being educated in 
a Roman Catholic mission-school at Shanghai. 
Splingaert and Shi Darin had been sent by the governor- 
general at Urumchi to make a journey of inspection through 
East Turkestan, more particularly to inquire into the exist- 
ence of gold in the mountains on the southern borders of 
the country. Thus they were staying in Khotan at the 
same time that 1 was wandering about the forests of 
Buksem. When they reached Kashgar, I had just started 
for the Pamirs ; and when I returned to Kashgar in the 
autumn, they had already left. 1 had a great wish to 
meet Splingaert ; as I was the bearer of greetings to him 
from Baron von Richthofen. But we did not meet until a 
year later, when I found him at the Russian embassy in 
Peking. He was then on the point of settling in Tien-tsin, 
having been appointed to an important position there 
through the recommendation of Li Hung Shang. 
Having thus found out one another’s mutual acquaint- 
ances, I and Shi Darin became real good friends, as 
though we had known one another for years. He 
remained half the night with me, shared my supper, 
smoked, talked. I showed him my route - maps and 
