righteousness, and treated the strangers in so niggardly a manner that
Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, and Hwuy-wei went back towards Kao-ch'ang,(12)
hoping to obtain there the means of continuing their journey. Fa-hien
and the rest, however, through the liberality of Foo Kung-sun, managed
to go straight forward in a south-west direction. They found the
country uninhabited as they went along. The difficulties which they
encountered in crossing the streams and on their route, and the
sufferings which they endured, were unparalleled in human experience,
but in the course of a month and five days they succeeded in reaching
Yu-teen.(13)

NOTES

(1) An account is given of the kingdom of Shen-shen in the 96th of the
Books of the first Han dynasty, down to its becoming a dependency of
China, about B.C. 80. The greater portion of that is now accessible
to the English reader in a translation by Mr. Wylie in the "Journal
of the Anthropological Institute," August, 1880. Mr. Wylie
says:--"Although we may not be able to identify Shen-shen with
certainty, yet we have sufficient indications to give an appropriate
idea of its position, as being south of and not far from lake Lob."
He then goes into an exhibition of those indications, which I need not
transcribe. It is sufficient for us to know that the capital city
was not far from Lob or Lop Nor, into which in lon. 38d E. the Tarim
flows. Fa-hien estimated its distance to be 1500 le from T'un-hwang.
He and his companions must have gone more than twenty-five miles a day
to accomplish the journey in seventeen days.

(2) This is the name which Fa-hien always uses when he would speak
of China, his native country, as a whole, calling it from the great