THE WAXING AND WANING OF LOP-NOR 293
large amount of water which must have been diverted from the Tarim River by the populous towns of Lulan and of more remote districts. Next, during the early centuries of the Christian era, there is a decrease in the recorded size of the lake, and this even though the towns of Lulan and other places were being abandoned and their water supply set free to reinforce the lake. Then, in the Middle Ages, there appears to have been an expansion of the lake. This can hardly have been due to diminished use of the rivers for irrigation, for at that time the population of the Lop basin appears to have been greater than now, though not equal to that of the Buddhist epoch of prosperity about a thousand years earlier. Finally, during the last few hundred years, there has been a decrease both in the size of the lake and in the population about it. Thus the fluctuations of Lop-Nor agree perfectly with the climatic pulsations of which we have found proof in other parts of the Lop basin and in Kashmir. Far to the west, at Ordam Pasha, Stein describes ruins for which no adequate water supply now exists. And far to the east, the united Bulundsir and Tan-Ho rivers appear once to have flowed to Lop-Nor. On the dry lower part of the course which they formerly followed, the natives describe two ruined sites of the type with which we are familiar. The Chinese of Dung Khan (Tung Hwang, or Sa-Chow), higher up on the Tan-Ho, say that the ruins were abandoned by their ancestors long ago because the water of the rivers would no longer reach them. In the same region, the old Chinese local history, translated by Mr. Hunter, says that certain mountains were formerly covered with snow all the year round, though now they are
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