var. ventricosa, L. stagnalis, L. peregra, and Planorbis sibiricus), which are found at a distance from its present banks.  Another lake, 400 miles in circumference, Kara-boyoen (black isthmus), lies, as is known, 27 miles to the south-west of Lob-nor.  To the east of the lake, a salt desert stretches for a seven days’ march, and further on begin the Kum-tagh sands, where wild camels live.” (Geog.  Jour. IX. 1897, p. 552.)

Grenard (III. pp. 194-195) discusses the Lob-nor question and the formation of four new lakes by the Koncheh-daria called by the natives beginning at the north; Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, Sugut Kul, Tokum Kul.  He does not accept Baron v.  Richthofen’s theory, and believes that the old Lob is the lake seen by Prjevalsky.

He says (p. 149):  “Lop must be looked for on the actual road from Charchan to Charkalyk.  Ouash Shahri, five days from Charchan, and where small ruins are to be found, corresponds well to the position of Lop according to Marco Polo, a few degrees of the compass near.  But the stream which passes at this spot could never be important enough for the wants of a considerable centre of habitation and the ruins of Ouash Shahri are more of a hamlet than of a town.  Moreover, Lop was certainly the meeting point of the roads of Kashgar, Urumtsi, Shachau, L’Hasa, and Khotan, and it is to this fact that this town, situated in a very poor country, owed its relative importance.  Now, it is impossible that these roads crossed at Ouash Shahri.  I believe that Lop was built on the site of Charkalyk itself.  The Venetian traveller gives five days’ journey between Charchan and Lop, whilst Charkalyk is really seven days from Charchan; but the objection does not appear sufficient to me:  Marco Polo may well have made a mistake of two days.” (III. pp. 149-150.)

The Chinese Governor of Urumtsi found some years ago to the north-west of the Lob-nor, on the banks of the Tarim, and within five days of Charkalyk, a town bearing the same name, though not on the same site as the Lop of Marco Polo.—­H.  C.]

NOTE 2.—­“The waste and desert places of the Earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward creation; its signs and symbols there....  Out of a true feeling of this, men have ever conceived of the Wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits.  In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil Spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the Lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt.” (Archbp.  Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 7.) Terror, and the seeming absence of a beneficent Providence, are suggestions of the Desert which must have led men to associate it with evil spirits, rather than the figure with which this passage begins; no spontaneous conception surely, however appropriate as a moral image.