National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

On my arrival at Kashgar early in October, Captain G. Sherriff, the British Consul-
General, who throughout offered most valuable help, found the local Tao-tai unpre-
pared for such arrangements. Repeated telegraphic application to the distant provincial
headquarters brought after a fortnight an intimation from the 'Chairman' or governor
that I should proceed to Urumchi personally to discuss arrangements with him. This
would have meant a caravan journey of at least six weeks, taking me far away from
the desert areas where the winter's explorations were planned, and practically implying
the loss of a whole working season.

Three more weeks passed before the chairman's assent was secured to my proceeding
to Urumchi by a route which skirts the southern edge of the Taklamakan and which
would allow me on the way to visit certain ancient sites abandoned to the desert sands.
By the middle of November I was at last enabled to leave Kashgar for Khotan. Special
reference by the Consul-General elicited definite official assurance that on my way I was
to be allowed 'to work', i.e. to examine ancient remains and to carry out needful sur-
veys. A subordinate Chinese official was to accompany and assist me, obviously for the
purpose of watching and reporting my proceedings.

By the time I had reached the oasis of Domoko, in the vicinity of which I had reason
to look for ruins of Buddhist times hidden among the dunes, serious obstruction began
to manifest itself. The magistrate of the Keriya district declared that he had received
instructions prohibiting any 'digging' or making of plans at ruins. Being an official of
known anti-foreign disposition he did his best to prevent me from obtaining needful
local guidance to ruins or labour to clear them of the encumbering drift sand. An old
and faithful Turki follower of my former journeys was thrown into prison merely for
having come to see me as I passed his village. It all strangely contrasted with the
ready help and genuine interest by which on my former expeditions scholarly Man-
darins had invariably facilitated my researches, and without which they would have
been impossible for the most part.

When I resumed my way eastwards from Keriya, where an attack of bronchitis, brought
on by exposure, had laid me up for a fortnight, the difficulties about labour, transport, &c.,
continued. Nevertheless, on revisiting the ancient site in the desert beyond Niya, a sand-
buried modest Pompeii abandoned in the third century A.D., it was possible to supplement
former investigations by useful surveys and finds. They were achieved under very trying
physical conditions largely through the devoted efforts of my two Indian assistants.

By the middle of February we had made our way across a succession of forbidding
high ridges of sand and past another old site to the isolated oasis of Charchan. There
news overtook me that the Nanking Government had cancelled my passport and insisted
on my returning to India. The official communication of the Chinese Foreign Ministry
had reproduced a series of unjustified allegations which the body known as the 'National
Commission for the preservation of Chinese antiquities', under the influence of the
above-mentioned agitation, had brought forward about my former explorations. They
were coupled with equally unfounded statements about my present aims. I could not
meet these charges at the time from such a distance, but learned months later with all
the more satisfaction that the President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a friend
familiar with all my work, in a letter published in The Times of January 3rd had duly
exposed the fantastic character of those statements.

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