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Updated: May 24, 2025
Our delight was great, though we mourned for our comrades who had died of thirst in the desert. No doubt you remember the village of Merket, where we set out on pur fatal march through the Takla-makan desert in 1895. In September, 1899, I was again at this village with a large caravan and many servants, my plan on this occasion being to travel through the whole of Eastern Turkestan by water.
This belt includes the Gobi, which extends over most of Mongolia, the Takla-makan, the "Red Sand" and the "Black Sand" in Russian Turkestan, the Kevir and other deserts in Persia, the deserts of Arabia, and lastly the Sahara. In this succession of deserts extending over the Old World from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic the Takla-makan is, then, a link.
In the beginning of April, 1895, I had reached the Yarkand-darya and had encamped at a village, Merket, on its eastern bank. My plan was to cross the Takla-makan desert, which stretches away to the eastward, and to reach the river Khotan-darya, which flows northwards, the distance being 180 miles.
The greater part of Eastern Turkestan is occupied by the desert called Takla-makan, the most terrible and dangerous in the world. A belt of desert runs through the whole of Asia and Africa, like a dried-up river bed.
The latter had succeeded to the name of the dog which died in the Takla-makan desert. The boat floats down with the current, following obediently the windings of the river, and the polemen are on the watch. On the banks grow small hawthorn bushes and tamarisks, interrupted by patches of reeds and small clumps of young trees, among which poplars always predominate.
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