'Tis For
These Reasons That Travellers And Merchants Often Prefer The Much Longer
Route By Kamul." (Visdelou, P. 139.)
"In the Desert" (this same desert), says Fa-hian, "there are a great many
evil demons; there are also sirocco winds, which kill all who encounter
them.
There are no birds or beasts to be seen; but so far as the eye can
reach, the route is marked out by the bleached bones of men who have
perished in the attempt to cross."
["The Lew-sha was the subject of various most exaggerated stories. We find
more trustworthy accounts of it in the Chow shu; thus it is mentioned in
that history, that there sometimes arises in this desert a 'burning wind,'
pernicious to men and cattle; in such cases the old camels of the caravan,
having a presentiment of its approach, flock shrieking to one place, lie
down on the ground and hide their heads in the sand. On this signal, the
travellers also lie down, close nose and mouth, and remain in this
position until the hurricane abates. Unless these precautions are taken,
men and beasts inevitably perish." (Palladius, l.c. p. 4.)
A friend writes to me that he thinks that the accounts of strange noises
in the desert would find a remarkable corroboration in the narratives of
travellers through the central desert of Australia. They conjecture that
they are caused by the sudden falling of cliffs of sand as the temperature
changes at night time. - H. C.]
Hiuen Tsang, in his passage of the Desert, both outward and homeward,
speaks of visual illusions; such as visions of troops marching and halting
with gleaming arms and waving banners, constantly shifting, vanishing, and
reappearing, "imagery created by demons." A voice behind him calls, "Fear
not! fear not!" Troubled by these fantasies on one occasion, he prays to
Kwan-yin (a Buddhist divinity); still he could not entirely get rid of
them; but as soon as he had pronounced a few words from the Prajna (a
holy book), they vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
These Goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi, though that appears to be
their most favoured haunt. The awe of the vast and solitary Desert raises
them in all similar localities. Pliny speaks of the phantoms that appear
and vanish in the deserts of Africa; Aethicus, the early Christian
cosmographer, speaks, though incredulous, of the stories that were told of
the voices of singers and revellers in the desert; Mas'udi tells of the
Ghuls, which in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely
hours; the traveller, taking them for comrades, follows and is led astray.
But the wise revile them and the Ghuls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of
Tyana and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see an
Empusa or Ghul taking many forms. They revile it, and it goes off
uttering shrill cries. Mas'udi also speaks of the mysterious voices heard
by lone wayfarers in the Desert, and he gives a rational explanation of
them. Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: "If the
messenger be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so
that he strays from his course and perishes." The Afghan and Persian
wildernesses also have their Ghul-i-Beaban or Goblin of the Waste, a
gigantic and fearful spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael
of the West Highlands have the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, the Desert
Creature of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems
exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnas or Empusa. Nicolo Conti in the
Chaldaean desert is aroused at midnight by a great noise, and sees a vast
multitude pass by. The merchants tell him that these are demons who are in
the habit of traversing the deserts. (Schmidt's San. Setzen, p. 352; V.
et V. de H. T. 23, 28, 289; Pliny, VII. 2; Philostratus, Bk. II. ch.
iv.; Prairies d'Or, III. 315, 324; Beale's Fahian; Campbell's Popular
Tales of the W. Highlands, IV. 326; I. B. IV. 382; Elphinstone, I.
291; Chodzko's Pop. Poetry of Persia, p. 48; Conti, p. 4; Forsyth, J.
R. G. S. XLVII. 1877, p. 4.)
The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon of
another class, and is really produced in certain situations among
sandhills when the sand is disturbed. [See supra.] A very striking account
of a phenomenon of this kind regarded as supernatural is given by Friar
Odoric, whose experience I fancy I have traced to the Reg Ruwan or
"Flowing Sand" north of Kabul. Besides this celebrated example, which has
been described also by the Emperor Baber, I have noted that equally
well-known one of the Jibal Nakus, or "Hill of the Bell," in the Sinai
Desert; Wadi Hamade, in the vicinity of the same Desert; the
Jibal-ul-Thabul, or "Hill of the Drums," between Medina and Mecca; one on
the Island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, discovered by Hugh Miller; one among
the Medanos or Sandhills of Arequipa, described to me by Mr. C. Markham;
the Bramador or rumbling mountain of Tarapaca; one in hills between the
Ulba and the Irtish, in the vicinity of the Altai, called the Almanac
Hills, because the sounds are supposed to prognosticate weather-changes;
and a remarkable example near Kolberg on the shore of Pomerania. A Chinese
narrative of the 10th century mentions the phenomenon as known near
Kwachau, on the eastern border of the Lop Desert, under the name of the
"Singing Sands"; and Sir F. Goldsmid has recently made us acquainted with a
second Reg Ruwan, on a hill near the Perso-Afghan frontier, a little to
the north of Sistan. The place is frequented in pilgrimage. (See Cathay,
pp. ccxliv. 156, 398; Ritter, II. 204; Aus der Natur, Leipzig, No. 47
[of 1868], p. 752; Remusat, H. de Khotan, p. 74; Proc. R. G. S. XVII.
91.)
NOTE 3. - [We learn from Joseph Martin, quoted by Grenard, p. 170 (who met
this unfortunate French traveller at Khotan, on his way from Peking to
Marghelan, where he died), that from Shachau to Abdal, on the Lob-nor,
there are twelve days of desert, sandy only during the first two days,
stony afterwards.
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