home and have been studied by a number of Orientalists:  G. Schlegel, O. Donner, G. Deveria, Vasiliev, G. von der Gabelentz, Dr. Hirth, G. Huth, E. H. Parker, W. Bang, etc., and especially Professor Vilh.  Thomsen, of Copenhagen, who deciphered them (Dechiffrement des Inscriptions de l’Orkhon et de l’Ienissei, Copenhague, 1894, 8vo; Inscriptions de l’Orkhon dechiffrees, par V. Thomsen, Helsingfors, 1894, 8vo), and Professor W. Radloff of St. Petersburg (Atlas der Alterthumer der Mongolei, 1892-6, fol.; Die alttuerkischen Inschriften der Mongolei, 1894-7, etc.).  There is an immense literature on these inscriptions, and for the bibliography, I must refer the reader to H.  Cordier, Etudes Chinoises (1891-1894), Leide, 1895, Id. (1895-1898), Leide, 1898, 8vo.  The initiator of these discoveries was N. Iarindsev, of Irkutsk, who died at Barnaoul in 1894, and the first great expedition was started from Finland in 1890, under the guidance of Professor Axel Heikel. (Inscriptions de l’Orkhon recueillies par l’expedition finnoise, 1890, et publiees par la Societe Finno-Ougrienne, Helsingfors, 1892, fol.) The Russian expedition left the following year, 1891, under the direction of the Academician W. Radloff.

M. Chaffanjon (Nouv.  Archiv. des Missions Scient. IX., 1899, p. 81), in 1895, does not appear to know that there is a difference between Kara Korum and Kara Balgasun, as he writes:  “Forty kilometres south of Kara Korum or Kara Balgasun, the convent of Erdin Zoun.”

A plan of Kara Balgasun is given (plate 27) in Radloff’s Atlas.  See also Henri Cordier et Gaubil, Situation de Holin en Tartarie, Leide, 1893.

In Rubruquis’s account of Karakorum there is one passage of great interest:  “Then master William [Guillaume L’Orfevre] had made for us an iron to make wafers ... he made also a silver box to put the body of Christ in, with relics in little cavities made in the sides of the box.”  Now M. Marcel Monnier, who is one of the last, if not the last traveller who visited the region, tells me that he found in the large temple of Erdeni Tso an iron (the cast bore a Latin cross; had the wafer been Nestorian, the cross should have been Greek) and a silver box, which are very likely the objects mentioned by Rubruquis.  It is a new proof of the identity of the sites of Erdeni Tso and Karakorum.—­H.  C.]

[Illustration:  Entrance to the Erdeni Tso Great Temple.]

NOTE 2.—­[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 113, note) says:  “The earliest date to which I have been able to trace back the name Tartar is A.D. 732.  We find mention made in a Turkish inscription found on the river Orkhon and bearing that date, of the Tokuz Tatar, or ‘Nine (tribes of) Tatars,’ and of the Otuz Tatar, or ‘Thirty (tribes of) Tatars.’  It is probable that these tribes were then living between the Oguz or Uigur Turks on the west, and the Kitan