XII PREFACE
archaeological discovery. Faithful reproductions in colour of some of the fine paintings here recovered make it easy to appreciate the artistic value of these ` finds,' and to recognize how the influence of Graeco- Buddhist models victoriously spread itself to the Far East. A new chapter may be said to have been opened in the history of Eastern art ; but it will take long years of study before all its problems can be elucidated, and probably longer still before all that is of historical and philological interest can be extracted from those thousands of manuscripts in Chinese, Sanskrit, Uigur, Tibetan, ` unknown ' Central-Asian languages, and the rest.
After explorations among the snowy Nan-shan ranges, where some 20,000 square miles were mapped in an interesting and very imperfectly known mountain region towards Tibet, there followed our second archaeological winter campaign (1907-1908) in the Tarim Basin. Apart from a further series of important antiquarian discoveries, this included a successful crossing of the great ` Sea of Sand ' of the Taklamakan at its widest, a task accomplished under considerable risks and difficulties. The time still available in the summer and autumn of 1908 before the return to India was utilized for fresh geographical work in the high and almost wholly unexplored Kun-lun mountains south of Khotan and Keriya. Here we succeeded in pushing our surveys across exceptionally rugged ranges and through inaccessible, deep-cut gorges up to the great glaciers which feed the sources of the Khotan River. Subsequently we made our way across the terribly barren plateaus of the extreme north-west of Tibet to the head-waters of the Kara-kash.
Great hardships had to be faced on this journey owing to the inclement nature of the ground, and just when completing my exploratory tasks by an ascent to the ice-clad crest of the main Kun-lun Range, at an elevation of about 20,000 feet, I suffered a severe frost-bite which
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