Товч агуулга:Excerpt from Ruins of Desert Cathay
My excavations in 1900-1901 at ruined sites in the Taklamakan Desert around Khotan first revealed fully the great historical interest of that ancient culture which, as the joint product of Indian, Chinese, and classical influences, once flourished in the oases of Chinese Turkestan. They also showed the remarkable state of preservation in which even the humblest relics of a civilization extinct for long centuries might survive under the sands of a region vying with Egypt in its extreme dryness of climate. By my second journey I succeeded in extending these systematic explorations farther eastwards for nearly a thousand miles in a straight line. There, along routes which from the last centuries b.c. Onwards linked China with the kingdoms of Central and Western Asia and the classical world, are scattered ruins which yielded up plentiful relics throwing light on the early history, arts, and every-day life of regions the past of which, except for rare references in the Chinese Annals, seemed lost in darkness
