国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

cases full of precious art objects were taken from the Palace Museum. They were to be kept in Nanking or in bank-vaults in Shanghai, pending quieter times.

Even now, with the Japanese so far away, Peking was no abode of peace. Japanese soldiers from the Legation Guard were manoeuvring with machine-guns on the glacis outside the Legation Quarter and in the adjacent streets, as if they were already masters of the famous old Imperial City.

I shall revert to the further development of the Japanese advance shortly.

RETURN OF NORIN AND BOHLIN

On February 2nd ERIK NORIN turned up again in Peking, after several years of fruitful research in the heart of Asia. We had not met for four and a half years. He now came from Tibet, and had travelled by steamer from India. Unfortunately, he fell ill soon after his arrival, and had to stay in bed with fever for some time.

Eight days after NORIN we had BIRGER BOHLIN and his former caravan-leader, the Dane BENT FRIIS-JOHANSEN, back in Sweden House in good fettle.' BOHLIN brought with him a full load of valuable palaeontological collections from Kansu, Tsaidam and Mongolia.

In this way the Swedish colony grew apace, and Sweden House was soon the scene of greater activity than ever before. Fossils dug out of the hills and mountains of Inner Asia were unpacked. New cases were filled with specimens; and the material that was not to be dealt with by BOHLIN himself was distributed among the different specialists who were to examine and describe it. Later on NoRIN's collections also arrived from Urumchi, whence they were brought by a Baltic car-agent named TAMBERG.

Our discussions often lasted far into the night, and we frequently took counsel with the head of our committee, Professor Liu Fu, and the director of the Geological Survey of China, Dr WONG WEN-HAO. We now made the final arrangement as to the division of the collections.

THE JAPANESE APPROACHING PEKING

The armies of Nippon were approaching the temple city of Jehol, which fell into their hands on March 4th. It was thought that Peking would be the next objective, and that the Japanese would not be satisfied with less than absolute control of the five provinces of North China.

1 FRIIS-JOHANSEN had left the service of the expedition at the end of 1931, returning to Peking in the company of SÖDERBOM on February 21st 1932, bringing collections of fossils from our Kansu geologists. During the rest of that year he supervised the transport of petrol between Kuei-hua and Suchow for the Eurasia Co. Now, however, he was leaving this employment, and later in the spring he went to Kashmir to resume his merchant activities. F. B.

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