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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. XXXIX. THE LOB-NOR
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Lob to the region between Arghan and Tikkenlik, unknown in the country of the southern lake. The existence of two lakes shows what a quantity of water from the Thian Shan, the Eastern Pamir, and Northern Tibet flows into the basin of the Tarim. The Russian Lieutenant K. P. Kozlov has tried since to prove that the Chinese Lob-nor is the Kara-Koshun (Black district), which is a second lake formed by the Tarim, which discharges into and issues from the lake Kara-buran. Kozlov's arguments are published in the Isvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, and in a separate pamphlet. The Geog. four. (June, 1898, pp. 652-658) contains The Lob-nor Controversy, a full statement of the case, summarising Kozlov's pamphlet. Among the documents relating to the controversy, Kozlov " quotes passages from the Chinese work Si yui-shui-dűo-tsi, published in 1823, relative to the region, and gives a reduced copy of the Chinese Map published by Dr. Georg Wegener in 1863, upon which map Richthofen and Sven Hedin based their arguments." Kozlov's final conclusions (Geog. four. 1.C. pp. 657-658) are the following : " The Konchehdaria, since very remote times till the present day, has moved a long way. The spot Gherelgan may be taken as a spot of relative permanence of its bed, while the basis of its delta is a line traced from the farthest northern border of the area of salt clays surrounding the Lob-nor to the Tarim. At a later period the Koncheh-daria mostly influenced the lower Tarim, and each time a change occurred in the latter's discharge, the Koncheh took a more westward course, to the detriment of its old eastern branch (Ilek). Always following the gradually receding humidity, the vegetable life changed too, while moving sands were taking its place, conquering more and more ground for the desert, and marking their conquest by remains of old shore-lines. . . .
" The facts noticed by Sven Hedin have thus another meaning—the desert to the east of the lakes, which he discovered, was formed, not by Lob-nor, which is situated i° southwards, but by the Koncheh-daria, in its unremitted deflection to the west. The old bed Ilek, lake-shaped in places, and having a belt of salt lagoons and swamps along its eastern shores, represents remains of waters belonging, not to Lob-nor, but to the shifting river which has abandoned this old bed.
" These facts and explanations refute the second point of the arguments which were brought forward by Sven Hedin in favour of his hypothesis, asserting the existence of some other Lob-nor.
" I accept the third point of his objections, namely, that the grandfathers of the present inhabitants of the Lob-nor lived by a lake whose position was more to the north of Lob-nor ; that was mentioned already by Pievtsov, and the lake was U chu-Kul.
" Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor, I leave to more competent persons to decide.
" The only inference which I can make from the preceding account is that the Kara-Koshun-Kul is not only the Lob-nor of my lamented teacher, N. M. Prjevalsky, but also the ancient, the historical, and the h-zce Lob-nor of the Chinese geographers. So it was during the last thousand years, and so will it remain, if ` the river of time' in its running has not effaced it from the face of the Earth."
To Kozlov's query : " Why Marco Polo never mentioned the Lob-nor, I leave to more competent persons to decide," I have little hesitation in replying that he did not mention the Lob-nor because he did not see it. From Charchan, he followed, I believe, neither Prjevalsky's nor Pievtsov's route, but the old route from Khotan to Si -ngan fu, in the old bed of the Charchan daria, above and almost parallel to the new bed, to the Tarim,—then between Sven Hedin's and Prjevalsky's lakes, and across the desert .to Shachau to join the ancient Chinese road of the Han Dynasty, partly explored by M. Bonin from Shachau.
There is no doubt as to the discovery of Prjevalsky's Lob-nor, but this does not appear to be the old Chinese Lob-nor ; in fact, there may have been several lakes co-existent ; probably there was one to the east of the mass of water described by Dr. Sven Hedin, near the old route from Korla to Shachau ; there is no fixity in these waterspreads and the soil of this part of Asia, and in the course of a few years some
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