ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF FRIENDLY HELP xxv
consider myself particularly fortunate in having enjoyed the assistance of such distinguished Sinologist experts as Dr. S. W. Bushell, C.M.G., and Professors É. Chavannes and Douglas. The complete translation and analysis of those documents with which Professor Chavannes, of the Collège de France, has favoured me for publication in my Detailed Report, has already proved of very great value for the study of Chinese influence in Turkestan. Dr. Bushell and Professor Douglas, of the British Museum, have never failed to help me with learned advice on questions concerning Chinese lore.
If I have left it to the last to mention my obligations to my friends Mr. J. S. Cotton, late editor of the " Academy," and Mr. P. S. Allen, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, it is only because theirs was the help benefiting more directly the Western or modern aspect of the work now presented. The former did me the great favour of revising my manuscript with special regard to the requirements of the general reader, a task for which he was exceptionally qualified by his literary experience ; while the other kind friend cheerfully charged himself with a revision of my proofs and greatly helped me by its thoroughness. To his kind offices and the generous mediation of Mr. Cuthbert Shields, I owed the peaceful retreat for scholarly work which the hospitality of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College assured to me during the summer of 1902. With those inspiriting precincts, full of great memories from Erasmus to Ruskin, I shall always associate the recollection of the pleasantest part of my work in England.
The narrative here presented still leaves me far from the conclusion of the labours which the antiquities and observations brought back from Chinese Turkestan have entailed upon me. Yet even thus I cannot prevent my eyes from looking beyond towards other fields of archeological exploration, no less closely linked with the sphere of Indian historical interests and equally
IIIF Color HighRes
