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Show r (mil. m ln;yiwL r vrv - A V 'J' '.' J 1.1 j, 33 EQ s w'&m. w 2h a3F I frtyytiH'wTMjiiw - "f V A. - .f-- o?- - ' if9 MkStmSg&&i gf ilf i v - Jfs Traveler's Interesting in the Taklamakan Desert of Discoveries Chinese Turkestan By OSCAR T. CROSBY twelve hundred years ago DEAD they who wrote the characters and fash ioned the strange clay heads whose images you see on this page. Forgotten are the societies to which those dead belonged. Buried in the desert sands are the cities in which those societies dwelt Choked and obliterated are the streams which gave to those cities the water of life. Can the busy, noisy present spare a moment to hear the story of the silent last? In sand-burie- 6 Tak-lamak- an k) to-da- y M. A. Stein Dr. In addition to the sites discovered in the several great Sven Hedin by R B 'f l;kl ,S'fM ; S5$&$ ' v ( ' S- yy. m an tdm&iJjL ii, ' ' -- ' " 'vV-'- NEW REPUTATION I lider Haggard is now winning a reputation in England as a on the British agricul-- 1 He has devoted him-- I problem. for years to the task of finding ' hy the country people are drift-- ; to the towns and what measures wld be taken to arrest that drift has been traveling through the ihways and byways of no fewer twenty-seve- n English counties, on the subject srybody whom he has met laborer, jner, squire, parson and tradesman. Hie result of his inquiries is amaz-and his articles on the subject are ting almost a feeling of consterna throughout Great Britain. Arts of England are becoming as 'ome as the veldts of South Af- he says. The villages are an ever increasing at 1. The yeoman clast hat been Hy wiped out. The laborers are :ng to the towns in thousands, T year shows more land laid down Fast, and the country receive sixths of its food from abroad, the farms and other agricultural arises are paralyzed by lack of r' Only the dullards, the vicious the wastrels stay upon the land, use they are unfitted for .any r life. What little labor there is e had is incredibly inefficient ere are some of the opinions gath-h- v Mr. Haggard during his trav-rofarmers and other experts: nless something unforeseen oe- farming must come to an end uchout England for 'lack of lead-author- ' E, m W the ynung men are turning the land. No one who ia fit for stops on it nowadays. he present race of stalwart lair is fat dying out. he neat five years will leave us a man. r;t hen the (wa-jer- s' old men die, and only are left what is to hap-Tland is going to the he i:v ; . - '; ;.;-7 3. yy .' -:, t? ' 'x- ,s ' .3$ ... v- k t Vu t ' ;..' 7. md . tag It urn, ? 321 ! ak alt U " , ' a i "Tk - Oi W t'-- 1125 PAPER MANUSCRIPTS So Old That iM& years a British Resident though Maharajah is nominally inde pendent To foster and protect their trade, and to watch the Russians a British officer is stationed in Kashgar, about three hundred miles from Khotan. It is he who appoints the Aksakols among ihe Hindoo merchants; and it was because of a letter from Colonel Miles, the reent incumbent that the sleek money lender in Khotan had met Captain Anginian (my rompinion) and myself when wr rode into Khotan. A comfortable lodging was put at our disposal, where ample and cleanly rooms were found for spreading our beds, and where our servants could cook the plentiful viands furnished by the rich, irrigated fields of Khotan. Then, also, we had a suitable room for receiving the dignified, amiable Chinese Mandarin, who rules the subject people in kindly paternalism. When all of our caravan wants had been supplied, the Aksakol, knowing the keen taste of Europeans for antiquities, produced the precious bundle, tied in a bit of dirty paper, the sand of the desert still running out of the corners. A native Tmski man had brought it in perhaps one of Dr. Steins men had secreted it from the considerable numbers of manuscripts unearthed by that thorough-goin- g 3 t .v . 33EE bits of paper which by before me. The gooid missionary has lived in Cen- tral Asia for many years, lie was fa' miliar with all that had been taken out by Sven Hedirf and Stein, and with all ihemherantiquarianoddsand ends sold to the British or Russian officials at Kashgar for the benefit of their respective governments. As there is no Eiirniwan within three hundred miles of Khotan. it was most fortunate that Father Kendricks had consented to journey with us thus far. Thank God, he did not share in the trials which came later when wr had painfully climbed the Kuen Lun range to Tibet's cold and tragic heights. It may seem strange that even in Khotan one must be on guard against forgery in ancient manuscripts. Yet Dr. Siein, by close cross-quetoning, forced confession front a clever native, who for several years, and until 1901, fed the Aksakols, and through them the great museums in London and St. Petersburg, with mysterious bits of yellow paper over which the wise men vainly studied. They were particularly puzzled, and, at last, made suspicious by the fart that a number of different alphabets, all unknown, were represented in these cabalistic writings. Now, alphabets are generally less numerous than languages, and when Dr. Stein, fresh from his own personal unearthings, saw that the genuine manuscript showed no letters rimilar to those that had been coming from this industrious forger, hr was able to confound him and turn him over to the mandarin for punishment. The true manuscripts are hard enough for the palrographs, since they seem to rontain, in separate pieces, three distinct languages one is Sanskrit, one a language simply railed Central Asian, and Irof. Hoe-rulto whom 1 pliowed the bundle bought by me, says a third language. not yet deciphered, also appears in some of the fragments. Whether all the leaves in the manuscript as handed to me had been taken from the same site, Father .Hendricks could not learn. Those in Sanskrit are almost wholly Buddhist sacred literature, and they constitute the bulk of the whole. Their approximate date is 750 A. D. The other fragments have not yet been studied sufliciently to fix a date. Prof, lloerule, in the short afternoon which we spent together at Oxford, was able to determine only this as to the pieces that they seemed to contain a contract for agricultural materials. 1 hope some of our scholars may be interested to probe deeper. Di. lioerulc was good enough to say that he would he glad to correspond with any one desiring the aid of his work, which stands almost alone in this field. As it is not probable that other examples nm-acre- d, st non-Sansk- Only the Profoundest Students of Antique Writing Can Read Them ally rpeaking, further from Khotan, d mounfurther from the tains than the later example. The discoveries thus far made indicate, therefore, that during a period of about four hundrrd years there was a progressive diminishment of the habitable area. It is ever shrink ing toward the sources of the streams, which find it ever more difficult to fix a constant course arross the windswept sands. Thus we see the desert as destroyer the desert as preserver, but as pirsrrtrr only of the, empty husks of that life which for a season was permitted to flourish. '1 hesc fatal movements, however, were not cataclysmic. There is no reason to suppose that our forgotten brethren of the destroyed oases were smothered instantly as were those of Pompeii or Martinique. There was time to starve through many years, perhaps, until, hopeless, they abandoned home and farm to serk some friendlier spot whrre they might meanly support thrir diminished numbers. Some unconsidered trifles they left snow-cappe- behind, to be folded in the warm bosom of the sand while the centuries moved on. These we now cherish as mementoes of that drama, intimate to each one of us the drama of human life and death. The photograph marked No. 1 is of a fragment of a leaf from a volume of Buddhistic sacred literature. The full length of the page must have been about twelve inches, aa is shown by placing the varioua fragments together. Ihe circular hole ahown was at about three inrhea from the end,' and a cord to hold the pages in order passed through it No. 6 is another fragment similar to No. t, and No. s is a wider leaf than those two. No, 4 shows writing whirli is not in Sanskrit; it is in some unknown tongue. These fragments are probably the oldest known examples of Paper manuscript. No. 5 is a photograph of wood carving probably twelve centuries old, and No. clay figures found j showsd some cities. in the sand-burie- sand-burie- e, THE ANCIENT LAWRENCE FAMILY RIDER HAGGARDS . w of these finds will be seen in this country for some time, I have placed these temporarily ill the Smithsonian Institute, with request that thry be made available, as far aa possible, to any inquiring paleogrsph. In the ruins known as the Niya River Site, Dr. Stein found wooden tablets covered with what is known as Indian Kharnt1ii writing. Concerning this find, Dr. Stein says: Deserted Many Centuries Ago There is ample evidence to show Mr. Oscar T. Crosby, to whom bethat this remarkable site must have longs the distinction of first bringing been deserted already within the first to America fragments of manuscripts few centuries of our era. Apart from from the ancient, d cities the Kharosthi writings of the tablets in Ihe Taklainakan desert of Chinese and the leather documents, there is the Turkrstan, it a resident of Washing, eloquent testimony of the coins. The ton. D. C. numerous over finds, extending very Mr. Crosby and Captain Anginian, the whole area, include only copper his companion, are tnc only white pieces of the Chinese Han dynasty, men who have ever penetrated into whose reign came to a close scientist northwestern Tibet, and their explo220 I he use of wood as the only rations have placed towns, mountains Chaffering for writing material apart from leather the Manuscript and rivers on what was formerly a is also a proof of great antiquity. There is as yet no quotable value for blank space on the map. Mr. Crosby use The of for wd so must bita of world-ol- d was the first white man to visit the writing purposes paper, jiaper is beChinese from attested Turkestan fashion in trade awhile in Oriental Central Aian city of Khotan. at least the fourth century, A. D., onfore 1 could call the precious thing But Mr. Croshy'a explorations have mine own. The Aksakols first offer wards, yet among all the ruiped not been confined to Central Asia. houses and ancient rubbish heaps not as usual, was that the Sahib should He was the first American to cross the smallest scrap of paprr was disthe Abyssinian plateau to the Nile give anything the Sahib chose. But covered. 1 had already learned to refuse this country, and he added much to the Sven Hedin also found a site in noblesse oblige position, and insisted world's geographical knowledge of the which wooden numerwere tablets definite more a that region. He has also added geoproposition. upon conevidence the and owner was ous, Tiien the original generally pointgraphical accuracy to the maps of A. D. destruction ed about was a to J.so bargain Somaliland and the Soudan. In Alaska sulted, and finally As said above, the date suggested struck at twenty rupees about $6.60 and Mexico, too, lie has made extendby my Sanskrit leaves is much later ed explorations. leaving both parties satisfied. He is a graduate of All this time of chaffering permitted say A. D. 750 and Dr. Stein give apWest Point, having entered from Misme to consult Father Hendricks (once proximately the same date of destrucsissippi, but lie gave up an army comtion for some of the sites examined a Dutchman, now almost an Asiatic) mission to become an electrical Oscar T. Crosby. as to the genuineness of the strange by him. The older ruina are, gener- T Sarafoff'a Turkish Frienda. The De Wet of Macedonia ia Boris Sarafoff. He is the hero of countless A few days ago a young man with "See here," he said to the head of thew VI, he said. profile, becau-- e your face is not stories of daring escapes, punishment a love for BY ELEANOR LEXINGTON. bets stepped into the house, "this is supposed to be a making raised the Lawrence Thomas Sir name Lawrence goes tack character of British art in the esti- straight." reproduction of the Sea! of New York None of the Lswrences came over of Turkish outrages and desperate a design-ruttinplant. State.' lie held a silver disk deEach illustrates the the beginning of things. fights. in a but about Aftrr dozen all the story mation of Mayflower, I'll bet you a dinner, he said to a about four inches inupdiameter, Reynolds Europe. mountof As Apollo was the god death he was portrait painter to King years later John Lawrence became a pravity of Turkish character. ed in a dark stained wood frame. friend who had charge of the It resident of Plymouth, and three brothlaurea or from But laurel comes one George. the England poets, story machines, "that you can't repro- doesn't look enough like a seal to he and William an were ers. at Hitwas manifested John. Thomas, that offsets some rather of the others. called one. Iiok at thec lines stiff, genius Apollinaris, which was sacred to him early age, and his father, who was early settlers. One of the patentees friend of Sarafoff in Iondon re- duce that on steel with one of your cramped, ugly. 1 can't sell pudgy deand sprang from a shoot sent from of land on the Connecticut River waa ceived a letter from him some time machines and make it the signs like that." which of The New with Lawrence. wreath the Mayor Henry was heaven, He picked up a ago in which he tells of one of his size it is now. Well, what are we going to do? York City in 67a was John 1 escapes wherein he was aided by a bronze campaign medal about two asked the head of the house. to crown a poet, who became the poet one of who had first hern the and which likewise shows that Do?" the sale-malaureate. Was the first to bear the "Why, Aldermen. He was al-- o Mayor again Turk, Mohammedans are in secret inches in diameter. The medal was make the replied die hv the reducing machine. in 1691; and about one hundred years many name Laurens, Laurence or Lawrence, of varieties sren the time one at with Macedonian the cause. many Get the seal made in a bronze later Cornelius Laurence was Mayor sympathy the successor of Apollo, the poet lau"The Turks had me cut off from the of the last Presidential campaign. It easting and reduce it to large a small die Nrw of York. of that the resident "and a mountains, says to reate? Or was lie letter, etched and in relief around on the machine." The Lawrences were men of ac- have the other way would have contained did it. They have been doing ancient Italian city Laurentium? the tion. Lieutenant Thomas Lawrence meant gone border the bust and heads it They outer the bashi bazouks. ever since. Other houses took lip served with distinction in the Revolu I saw encountering The first of the name of whom United of all Presidents of the the the light of a house and took the idea. Gradually tlje cramped, stiff tion, and so did Elijah Lawrence, who my chancel with it. A Turk opened States. there is any authentic record was St. In the center was the designs began to disappear from the Life was one of Guard. Washington's the door and gave me entrance. He of the bust of market. 1 hey had to. Nobody would Laurence, or Laurentius, who suffered representation The could Lawrences claim relationinvited me to cat with his family. The "resident McKinley. buy them. Thus the Seal of the State martyrdom by being broiled on a ship with Washington, the connection bashi bazouks came and demanded admedal was fastened on the ma- of New York as it now appears in the The gridiron, August to, 58. back hundred several dating years to mittance. The first of the name in England chine, the wheels were set revolving, majority of metal decorations is one James Lawrence of Ashton Hall, who This man is a Turk and my and in about eight hours of actual of the best executed and handsomest was Laurence the Monk, who became married Matilda de Washington friend' worthsaid my host, and, apparently grinding the medal had been repro- seals of any State in the Union. Archbishop of Canterbury. So Washington's half brother was named satisfied, bear bazouks went duced on a steel die less than h ily did founders of the family Lawrence A Strange Accident of an inch in diameter. It was away. the name that the hero of one Crusade "I spent the night there, and next SO small that the design on it could Major Samuel Lawrence served was Robert Laurens of Ashton Hall, Some time ago a man fell dead in a through the Revolution. He was at morning early I bade the Turk and his not be distinguished without the aid who was knighted for his valor and crowded street of San Francisco. The Bunker Warren and near when good-bI felt certain he Hill, cross under family but a of a raguly. powerful microscope; given arms, he was shot After a few months' really thought me a Turk, until, at the lease the heads and expressions on hospital surgeons were astonished to Another "worthy" was Sir Henry he service obtained leave of of absence he reached his "one out hand of and India, the faces were seen to be perfect re- find that he had died of what appearparting, Lawrence, Viceroy and returned home to Groton to said : all time, to whose the noblest productions of the designs on the ed to be a bullet wound in his temple. Good-bBoris Sarafoff. marry his sweetheart, Susanna Psr- original medal. memory a statue was erected in St. A hundred people who witnessed the had whom been to he ker, engaged All the big silverware manufacturPauls Cathedral. His brother, Lord for two years. It was his mother accident were ready to testify that no Turkish him Cossacks. ers now these make their by designs John Lawrence, who succeeded r. who proposed the marriage at this A set of toilet articles firearm had been discharged at the Russia is not the only country machines. as Viceroy, also gave his life to aa time. Susanna had better be Sam's backed with silver decorations time. vancing the interest of Great Britain widow than his forlorn damsel," she whose battles arc fought by Cossacks. richly An esunniiHtion in high relief gets its beauty from the a small in the East. His success in diplomatic said. Turkey, too, has her share of these freedom with which the designer is alin the man's brain. For a life he attributed to advice given by fiebblr as with to are tin.-While and, fighters, be was Russia, the die too ready Don't the case wa a mystery, lowed to work by reason of the they his mother: nv.rmge ceremony her and in cruel soldiers. most bet progress, the tire a'artn bell soundmachines. Hand mirror backs, match until an ingenious detective solved it speak your mind. In Turkey they are called "Chir-kasse- s. safes, silver pen knife handles and a with an explanation which lie ed. summoning all soldiers to arms, Lord John had a grim humor and proved ChrisTheir outrages on the whereupotf the bridegroom partec by experiment. often expressed himself with Spartan variety of other tian peasants of Bulgaria, when great from from his 1 bride he at turned the church door die of is wheels from a made a silverware perhaps, inheritances, heavy dray had brevity and marched to join the troops. brought to light by the American war out by machinery. jammed the pebble against fh' steel his ancestor, John Knox, the Scottish The Lawrence arms are a cross correspondent, MacGahan, caused the A remarkable story is told about the rails of the car track, and thru disreformer. To some one wno tsked War. Since then they work of the die machine in bringing charged it up into the air with such raguled gules. Crest, out of an East- Russo-Turkis- h him whether there had been much ern crown, or, a cubit arm entwined have not been so much in evidence, the bronze and metal reliefs of the tcrrilic force that it crashed into the flogging at his school, he replied: ,7I was flogged every day except by a wreath of laurel, in the hand, a being used in Turkeys Asiatic Seal of New York State up to its brain of the passer-b- y as if it had been always anxious to show off the in- dagger. Motto: "In Cruce Salus." ("In one, and then I was flogged twice high standard of beauty, grace a bullet. present callers ask used Lawto the cross is salvation.) These were fant prodigy, and art. A young man who was emWith equal like to have the the arms granted to the Crusader. Some Straight Tipi. True Bravery. rence, the preacher, expressed r.tmself whether they would ployed as traveling salesman for a the "I didn't know that you had the poets or paint Raguled, or raguly, is a term used to Some of the straight tip we get in large silverware concern came in from when asked how he intended to sup- boy recite from stems of a thi world couldn't be told from the the road one day, kicking strenuously ability to write poetry." having lost nil their portraits. With the frankness represent the rough-hew- n port his family, heCharles 1- - w be- of youth the young artist told one of tree, from which the branches have "I havent, but I have a great deal straightness that is proverbially sup- about some of the designs in his sam living at the time of courage. headed. "We must all live on Mat- - his sitters that he most paint her in been rudely lopped. posed to belong to a gunstock. pie case. journeys, others have been found by Dr. M. A. Stein of the Indian Educational Service. His admirable work at a number of points around the modern city of Khotan, together with the philological research of Dr. Hoe-rul- e, now at Oxford, may be taken as the basis of a special body of learning which we shall call the archd cities of aeology of the Turkestan. It has been my good fortune to obtain a bundle of the paper manuscripts taken from one of these towns. The Hindoo Aksakol in Khotan brought it to me while I was outfitting for a journey up to the Tibetan plateau in September, 1905. The term Aksakol means graybeard, but the various Hindoos who had received this title of dignity in Turkestan were genermen, active trader ally middle-age- d nominated to represent the body of merchants of their own nationality in each of the big towns of Chinese Turkestan. Thus in Khotan there was an Andijani Aksakol, as well as my Hindoo friend. The former was a native of Russian Turkestan, whose merchants have immemorially trafficked across the Alai Mountains with their race kindred in Chinese territory. The Hindoos, travelling over the Karakamur Himalayas, have likewise maintained for many centuries trade relations with the same region, and thence even to China proper, far to the East Their route is long and incredibly difficult much of it at altitudes exceeding 1A000 feet, but the rude mountains offer nothing better.. This trade originates in Kashmir, where there has been for at least thir- - Sven Hedin discovered mins of ancient dwellings in the desert of Eastern (or Chi-mTurkestan. These ruins are in m sense impressive from the archi-tect- 's point of view, being quite similar to the ordinary Turkrstan dwell-m- g of plaster . or adobe ground wooden frames. But historically they are of prime interest. For testimony is thus given that civilization once existed in regions which are sow quite uninhabitable because they As the ire completely without water. distance of the ruins from present water courses is too great to justify the supposition of irrigation ditches stretching from the one to the other, we are forced to conclude that the same great sand movements which destroyed the towns must have resulted in 1 shifting of the stream beds which were once the source of life. The Work of 1895-- " . uV'.'VO j. r L AN AMERICAN ? ' ' ,;.-- X MtJ v (aJ.i'r'A.kEi.4 T i s T" .fc .w frfHiiyiGp ' v- ?- s' yfctfxT' m? Jj. !;k& J sssssaa - i ; ji - gESsriyiy- 'n ;v nmmtzh m 1. ITL. mm iHfwnf! . ; && 's VS- rriT umiWj ' WHAT THE DIE MACHINE CAN DO g THE die-cutti- one-quart- 1 .zu-renr- e, n. en-rsv- one-eight- y. y, cxprl relief-stampe- d I Ja |