of all the riverside lakes to the south of the Qum-darya all the way from Temenpu to Lop-nor, performed a most important piece of work, and contributed greatly to our knowledge of the distribution of water in the desert.
Since NORIN and AMBola% had mapped as much of the river as they could get at without canoes, and fixed its position astronomically, and BERGMAN had dealt with the southward-flowing branch near which the burial-places lay, there remained only the mapping of the lakes on the southern bank of the river to afford a complete picture of the Qum-darya's hydrographic system. This work was carried out by CHEN in a manner that did credit to himself, apart from the advantages accruing thereby to our expedition and its scientific results.
I had certainly never asked him to do it; it would have been cruel to call upon any man in the two hottest summer months, amid clouds of gadflies and mosquitoes and in constant danger of sunstroke, to do a job that would have been trying enough even at a cooler time of the year. CHEN had just as much right as we others to retire to more northerly latitudes or higher altitudes and rest when the heat set in. But he did not. He undertook on his own initiative a program that put the coping-stone on our exploration of the new waterways and lakes, and that justified the assertion that we had left no problem unsolved in connection with the hydrography of the new river.
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