the spot.

“You know how traditions linger in the East, more especially in those parts of it that are as yet untouched by the railway. Well, I made a few discreet questions, and sure enough there was a yarn of a white man who years before had gone out into the desert seeking old cities, and had come to grief owing to losing his way. The story was not too coherent, needless to say: sometimes he found a ruined city, sometimes he and all his people had died, and one particular version went on to the effect that he had found much gold, and got safely back, but was carried away by the spirits who watched over the treasure, and who were very wroth at its having been touched. It was a lot of trouble to get out the story—you know how difficult it is to get ignorant people like that to talk to strangers.

“But it was clear enough that some wandering white man had been there ages before, and, further, the local people seemed pretty afraid of wandering into the desert. I did not let on about the old man having had anything to do with[23] me. It’s not a good thing to talk about bad luck being in the family, and certainly the old man did not hit it lucky that trip.

[23]

“I hung about prospecting and smelling out the ground, which, by the way, is very little known directly you get off the main route. Northeast you come slap on to the desert practically at once.

“The maps of it are quite useless, compiled from hearsay of wandering Indian or Chinese merchants, I think. I had the most up-to-date ones I could get from the Survey of India. Got hold of old Jones, who was our mapping expert in Palestine; you remember him, Harry.

“He sent me the best he had before I went off, but he wrote to the effect that I would be wise not to rely too much on anything north of the Hami-Urumchi road, barring the triangulated peaks.

“If you look at that atlas on the table there you will see that there is a big stretch of nothingness northeast of Kashgaria labelled Gobi Desert. It is part of the Gobi. For over three hundred miles in every direction it’s got not a single name on it, not even a track. Northward there are two lakes shown with fifty miles of river leading nowhere; and, although I’ve not been there, I’m prepared to make a modest bet that they’re not within one hundred miles of their proper location, even if they do exist. North again of that is Chinese Mongolia, almost unknown even now, and very vaguely mapped.

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