forced to conclude that the same great sand movements which destroyed the towns must have resulted in a shifting of the stream-beds which were once the source of life.
In addition to the sites discovered by Sven Hedin in several great journeys, others have been found by Dr. M. A. Stein of the Indian Educational Service. His admirable work at a number of points around the modern city of Khotan, together with the philological research of Prof. Hoerule, now at Oxford, may be taken as the basis of a special body of learning which we shall call the arches ology of the sand-buried cities of Turkestan.
It may seem strange that even in Khotan one must be on guard against forgery in ancient manuscripts. Yet Dr. Stein, by close cross-questioning, forced confession from a clever native, who for several years, and until iyor, fed the Aksakols, and through them the great museums in London and St. Petersburg, with mysterious bits of yellow paper over which the wise men vainly studied. They were particularly puzzled, and at last made suspicious by the fact that a number of different alphabets, all unknown, were represented in these cabalistic writings. Now, alphabets are generally less numerous than languages, and when Dr. Stein, fresh from his own personal unearthings, saw that the genuine manuscript showed no letters similar to those that had been coming from this industrious forger, he was able to confound him and turn him over to the mandarin for punishment.
The true manuscripts are hard enough for the paleographs, since they seem to contain, in separate
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