records relating to military action on a stage manifestly not local. But the majority of the documents refer to petty details of administrative routine as carried on by those who looked after the cultivation, food stores and transport of a small Chinese military colony. The difficulties about making it self-supporting are curiously illustrated by repeated orders urging the reduction of food issues to officers and men.
The Kharoshthi documents, of which the text has now been published by Professor Rapson and his learned collaborators in France, show in character, language and other respects the closest agreement with those from the Niya site. From extract translations subsequently communicated to me I was able to establish that the indigenous designation of the locality was Kroraina. Of this the name Lou-lan was meant to be a rendering, the nearest which Chinese phonetics would permit of.
To the many miscellaneous relics which the clearing of that large rubbish-heap, as well as the search of other ruined dwellings around, yielded I cannot refer here. But a curious fact illustrating the destructive force which has left its mark over the whole site, calls for mention. Careful examination of some much-broken narrow terraces visible here and there to the south and north of the area occupied by the ruins showed that they had once formed part of ramparts built of stamped clay with intervening layers of tamarisk brushwood. This was the regular method of construction used by the ancient Chinese engineers for defensive works in this region and was specially adapted to withstand wind erosion.
Yet of this circumvallation, which formed originally a square of about 1020 feet inside, only fragments survived even on those sides which, built exactly to follow the direc-
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