THE WAXING AND WANING OF LOP-NOR 289
strands the dead bushes have not yet been blown away by the wind shows that the time when the lake stood here cannot be very remote; and the living bushes probably indicate a period only a century or two ago. Hedin does not state the height of the strands above the lake, but according to his section of the old lake-bed, the upper lies six feet above the highest recent level of Kara Koshun, that of 1901. "In the history of Kara Koshun," Hedin says, the strands "serve as milestones marking successive stages on its way to destruction. The first ... proves that the northern shore of the lake once extended 12 km. [seven and a half miles] farther to the north than it now does, and implies that its area was at least twice as great as it now is. On the whole . . . the lake has shrunk at a pretty regular rate." Hedin does not believe, however, that the climate of the Lop basin has changed. He attributes the shrinking of the lake to the assumed increase in the size of the marginal lakes of the Tarim, but my observations show that the marginal lakes, the river, and the lake of Lop-Nor all increase and decrease in size together.
Elsewhere Hedin gives what seems to be evidence that the lake stood still higher not many centuries ago. In the salt plain of the old lake-bed seventeen miles north of Kara Koshun and seven feet above it, he found, as he says, "a stake of tamarisk wood 35 cm. [ten inches] long, half buried in the ground, and undoubtedly placed there at a time when the locality was under water. The lower end of the stake was sharply pointed and burnt. Three of my attendants, who were Lopliks, thought that it had been used to moor canoes to, when their owners had been out on an exploring
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