If we start from the southernmost corner of Mongolia where the Gobi desert impinges on the Great Wall, north of the Chinese province of Kansu,—crossing, on our way south, the arids and waste of Ala-shan,—we are suddenly brought up by the high mountain range that divides the Gobi desert on the north from the little-less desert country of the Koko-nor and Tibet on the south.

This mountain range, crossed by Prejevalski and named by him the Richthofen range, after the celebrated German traveller of that name, forms a fertile isthmus between two deserts by which the road leads from China proper to the Tarim basin and the Lob-nor depression in the west, and so brings us to the subject of our present chapter—Chinese Turkestan.

Chinese Turkestan, also known as Eastern Turkestan, is officially called by the Chinese, Hsinkiang or the New Dominion, adding, since 1877, as the result of Tso Tsung-tang's great campaign against the successors of Yakob Beg, a nineteenth to the original eighteen provinces of China proper,—although this name is unknown to the inhabitants, who are familiar only with the local names, such as Hi with Kulja to the north of the Tien-shan; and Khotan, Yarkand and Kashgar to the south.