As an answer to a paper by C. TOMLINSON, in Nature, Nov. 28, 1895, p.
78, we find in the same periodical, April 30, 1896, LIII., p. 605, the
following note by KUMAGUSU MINAKATA: "The following passage in a Chinese
itinerary of Central Asia - Chun Yuen's Si-yih-kien-wan-luh, 1777
(British Museum, No. 15271, b. 14), tom. VII., fol. 13 b. - appears to
describe the icy sounds similar to what Ma or Head observed in North
America (see supra, ibid., p. 78).
"Muh-sueh-urh-tah-fan (= Muzart), that is Ice Mountain [Snowy according
to Prjevalsky], is situated between Ili and Ushi.... In case that one
happens to be travelling there close to sunset, he should choose a rock of
moderate thickness and lay down on it. In solitary night then, he would
hear the sounds, now like those of gongs and bells, and now like those of
strings and pipes, which disturb ears through the night: these are
produced by multifarious noises coming from the cracking ice."
Kumagusu Minakata has another note on remarkable sounds in Japan in
Nature, LIV., May 28, 1896, p. 78.
Sir T. Douglas Forsyth, Buried Cities in the Shifting Sands of the Great
Desert of Gobi, Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc., Nov. 13, 1876, says, p. 29: "The
stories told by Marco Polo, in his 39th chapter, about shifting sands and
strange noises and demons, have been repeated by other travellers down to
the present time. Colonel Prjevalsky, in pp. 193 and 194 of his
interesting Travels, gives his testimony to the superstitions of the
Desert; and I find, on reference to my diary, that the same stories were
recounted to me in Kashghar, and I shall be able to show that there is
some truth in the report of treasures being exposed to view."
P. 201, Line 12. Read the Governor of Urumtsi founded instead of
found.
XL., p. 203. Marco Polo comes to a city called Sachiu belonging to a
province called Tangut. "The people are for the most part Idolaters....
The Idolaters have a peculiar language, and are no traders, but live by
their agriculture. They have a great many abbeys and minsters full of
idols of sundry fashions, to which they pay great honour and reverence,
worshipping them and sacrificing to them with much ado."
Sachiu, or rather Tun Hwang, is celebrated for its "Caves of Thousand
Buddhas"; Sir Aurel Stein wrote the following remarks in his Ruins of
Desert Cathay, II., p. 27: "Surely it was the sight of these colossal
images, some reaching nearly a hundred feet in height, and the vivid first
impressions retained of the cult paid to them, which had made Marco Polo
put into his chapter on 'Sachiu,' i.e. Tun-huang, a long account of the
strange idolatrous customs of the people of Tangut.... Tun-huang manifestly
had managed to retain its traditions of Buddhist piety down to Marco's
days. Yet there was plentiful antiquarian evidence showing that most of the
shrines and art remains at the Halls of the Thousand Buddhas dated back to
the period of the T'ang Dynasty, when Buddhism flourished greatly in China.
Tun-huang, as the westernmost outpost of China proper, had then for nearly
two centuries enjoyed imperial protection both against the Turks in the
north and the Tibetans southward.
