[The name of Shachau dates from A.D. 622, when it was founded by the first emperor of the T’ang Dynasty.  Formerly, Shachau was one of the Chinese colonies established by the Han, at the expense of the Hiongnu; it was called T’ung hoang (B.C. 111), a name still given to Shachau; the other colonies were Kiu-kaan (Suhchau, B.C. 121) and Chang-ye (Kanchau, B.C. 111). (See Bretschneider, Med.  Res. II. 18.)

“Sha-chow, the present Tun-hwang-hien (a few li east of the ancient town)....  In 1820, or about that time, an attempt was made to re-establish the ancient direct way between Sha-chow and Khotan.  With this object in view, an exploring party of ten men was sent from Khotan towards Sha-chow; this party wandered in the desert over a month, and found neither dwellings nor roads, but pastures and water everywhere.  M. Polo omits to mention a remarkable place at Sha-chow, a sandy hillock (a short distance south of this town) known under the name of Ming-sha shan—­the ’rumbling sandhill.’  The sand, in rolling down the hill, produces a particular sound, similar to that of distant thunder.  In M. Polo’s time (1292), Khubilai removed the inhabitants of Sha-chow to the interior of China; fearing, probably, the aggression of the seditious princes; and his successor, in 1303, placed there a garrison of ten thousand men.” (Palladius, l.c. p. 5.)

“Sha-chau is one of the best oases of Central Asia.  It is situated at the foot of the Nan-shan range, at a height of 3700 feet above the sea, and occupies an area of about 200 square miles, the whole of which is thickly inhabited by Chinese.  Sha-chau is interesting as the meeting-place of three expeditions started independently from Russia, India, and China.  Just two months before Prjevalsky reached this town, it was visited by Count Szechenyi [April, 1879], and eighteen months afterwards Pundit A-k, whose report of it agrees fairly well with that of our traveller, also stayed here.  Both Prejevalsky and Szechenyi remark on some curious caves in a valley near Sha-chau containing Buddhistic clay idols.[1] These caves were in Marco Polo’s time the resort of numerous worshippers, and are said to date back to the Han Dynasty.” (Prejevalsky’s Journeys ... by E. Delmar Morgan, Proc.  R. G. S. IX. 1887, pp. 217-218.)—­H.  C.]

(Ritter, II. 205; Neumann, p. 616; Cathay, 269, 274; Erdmann, 155; Erman, II. 267; Mag.  Asiat. II. 213.)

NOTE 2.—­By Idolaters, Polo here means Buddhists, as generally.  We do not know whether the Buddhism here was a recent introduction from Tibet, or a relic of the old Buddhism of Khotan and other Central Asian kingdoms, but most probably it was the former, and the “peculiar language” ascribed to them may have been, as Neumann supposes, Tibetan.  This language in modern Mongolia answers to the Latin of the Mass Book, indeed with a curious exactness, for in both cases the holy tongue is not