heaven.' Here at Su-chou, where he might well think himself near to his goal, and where, nevertheless, he came to be detained for sixteen weary months, the devoted Jesuit traveller succumbed in 1607 to disease and privations. I had thought of him and his plucky perseverance at all the points—Lahore, Peshawar, the Pamirs, Sarikol, Yarkand, and Khotan—where I had touched the line of his wanderings. And grateful I felt now to Fate which had allowed me to reach the site of his tragic end. There is nothing to suggest even approximately the spot where his wearied limbs were laid to rest by the young Chinese convert whom the Jesuit fathers had despatched from Peking to his relief, and who arrived just a few days before all earthly trouble was ended. But I hope that when the Catholic Mission at Su-chou shall have built its permanent chapel, means may be found to recall to those who worship in it the memory of Benedict Goëz.
The city of Su-chou, rebuilt on a new site after the destruction caused by the last great Muhammadan rising, seemed a busy and flourishing place, but sadly deficient in those quaint old temples which abound at Tun-huang. Evidently the new settlers brought here from different parts of China were less ready for pious sacrifices than the people who had held out at that ancient outpost. The number of shops with goods brought from the seaports was large, and articles of Japanese manufacture were plentiful. But the attempt I made in them to pick up articles which might help to replenish my exhausted stock of official presents, proved a failure. Only the shoddiest productions of the West seemed to penetrate to what was once an emporium for China's Central-Asian trade.
Far more refreshing than this futile attempt at ` shopping' was a day's excursion to the ancient border wall which I made in Father Essems' company. We struck the remains of a wall at a point some eight miles in a direct line northward ; but the marshy nature of the ground intervening in parts obliged us to make a considerable détour. Cultivation still extends to the Limes, but only in detached belts. In the areas separating them I came repeatedly on traces of old fields now abandoned to coarse
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