friends started first in the suite of an envoy, having separated for a
time from Pao-yun and his associates.

Le Hao, the prefect of Tun-hwang, had supplied them with the means of
crossing the desert before them, in which there are many evil demons and
hot winds. Travellers who encounter them perish all to a man. There is
not a bird to be seen in the air above, nor an animal on the ground
below. Though you look all round most earnestly to find where you can
cross, you know not where to make your choice, the only mark and
indication being the dry bones of the dead left upon the sand.

[Footnote 1: Ch'ang-gan is still the name of the principal district (and
its city) in the department of Se-gan, Shen-se. It had been the capital
of the first empire of Han (B.C. 202 A.D. 24), as it subsequently was
that of Suy (A.D. 589-618).]

[Footnote 2: The period Hwang-che embraced from A.D. 399 to 414, being
the greater portion of the reign of Yao Hing of the After Ts'in, a
powerful prince. He adopted Hwang-che for the style of his reign in 399,
and the cyclical name of that year was Kang-tsze. It is not possible at
this distance of time to explain, if it could be explained, how Fa-hien
came to say that Ke-hae was the second year of the period. It seems most
reasonable to suppose that he set out on his pilgrimage in A.D. 399, the
cycle name of which was Ke-hae. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks" it is
said that our author started in the third year of the period Lung-gan of
the Eastern Ts'in, which was A.D. 399.]

[Footnote 3: Lung embraced the western part of Shen-se and the eastern
part of Kan-suh. The name remains in Lung Chow, in the extreme west of
Shen-se.]

[Footnote 4: K'een-kwei was the second king of "the Western Ts'in."
Fa-hien would find him at his capital, somewhere in the present
department of Lan-chow, Kan-suh.]

[Footnote 5: Chang-yih is still the name of a district in Kan-chow
department, Kan-suh. It is a long way north and west from Lan-chow, and
not far from the Great Wall. Its king at this time was, probably,
Twan-yeh of "the northern Leang."]

[Footnote 6: Dana is the name for religious charity, the first of the
six paramitas, or means of attaining to nirvana; and a danapati is "one
who practises dana and thereby crosses the sea of misery."]

[Footnote 7: This was the second summer since the pilgrims left
Ch'ang-gan. We are now, therefore, probably, in A.D. 400.]

[Footnote 8: T'un-hwang is still the nam