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

SAD NEWS FROM CENTRAL ASIA

In the spring we had the sad news from our workers in the field that JOE SODERBOM, an elder brother of GEORG'S, had died on the way from Suchow down the Edsen-gol. He had for a short period served as interpreter for our people in Kansu, and was going to join BERGMAN when he fell ill in the village Yingp'an near Mao-mu. His health had for several years not been of the best, and now on the outskirts of the mighty land where he had first seen the light he was suddenly snatched away.

NORIN, meantime, wrote to us from Kashgar that he was being held up on his journeys by the local Chinese authorities on the grounds that the expedition's new contract had not yet been signed. Such negative news spread like lightning all the way to Kashgar, the remotest of all Chinese towns from Peking. Knowledge of a permit, a concession, on the other hand, seemed only with reluctance and very slowly to cover considerably shorter distances.

HASLUND TO STOCKHOLM

In April HENNING HASLUND-CHRISTENSEN arrived in Sweden. In the beginning of 193o, as has already been related, he had wound up his connection with the expedition and gone to India, to devote his energies to the improvement of commercial communications between India and Eastern Turkistan.

On January 13th 1931, however, in the course of his journey with his first caravan, he met with a terrible accident. His caravan was buried under an avalanche, and under the enormous weight of snow and ice HASLUND sustained a severe fracture of the right femur. He was fetched by aeroplane and after some time returned to India; but the broken bone knitted in the wrong position, and he was obliged to go back to Europe to have it broken again in order not to become all too lame. And during the summer of 1931 he lay in hospital in Stockholm.

HORNER'S LOP-NOR JOURNEY

On May 9th we received a telegram from HORNER, in which to our great satisfaction he related that he and CHEN had successfully performed the difficult journey from western Kansu to Lop-nor and back. He also gave in this wire the first exact data regarding the position and size of the new Lop-nor.

HÖRNER's telegram is worth quoting at length.

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