sleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again he will hear
spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the
spirits will call him by name; and thus shall a traveller ofttimes be led
astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way many have
perished. [Sometimes the stray travellers will hear as it were the tramp
and hum of a great cavalcade of people away from the real line of road,
and taking this to be their own company they will follow the sound; and
when day breaks they find that a cheat has been put on them and that they
are in an ill plight.[NOTE 2]] Even in the day-time one hears those
spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of
musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums. [Hence in
making this journey 'tis customary for travellers to keep close together.
All the animals too have bells at their necks, so that they cannot easily
get astray. And at sleeping-time a signal is put up to show the direction
of the next march.]

So thus it is that the Desert is crossed.[NOTE 3]

NOTE 1.--LOP appears to be the _Napopo, i.e. Navapa_, of Hiuen Tsang,
called also the country of _Leulan_, in the Desert. (Mem. II. p. 247.)
_Navapa_ looks like Sanskrit. If so, this carries ancient Indian influence
to the verge of the great Gobi. [See supra, p. 190.] It is difficult to
reconcile with our maps the statement of a thirty days' journey across the
Desert from Lop to Shachau. Ritter's extracts, indeed, regarding this
Desert, show that the constant occurrence of sandhills and deep drifts
(our traveller's "hills and valleys of sand") makes the passage extremely
difficult for carts and cattle. (III. 375.) But I suspect that there is
some material error in the longitude of Lake Lop as represented in our
maps, and that it should be placed _something like three degrees_ more to
the westward than we find it (e.g.) in Kiepert's Map of Asia. By that map
Khotan is not far short of 600 miles from the western extremity of Lake
Lop. By Johnson's Itinerary (including his own journey to Kiria) it is
only 338 miles from Ilchi to Lob. Mr. Shaw, as we have seen, gives us a
little more, but it is only even then 380. Polo unfortunately omits his
usual estimate for the extent of the "Province of Charchan," so he affords
us no complete datum. But his distance between Charchan and Lob agrees
fairly, as we have seen, with that both of Johnson and of Shaw, and the
e