Desert of Gobi. The great highway between Pekin and Europe from time immemorial, has been the caravan tract from the western end of the great wall across this desert. The route issues from the western end of the great wall, and, moving through the Kiayu pass, has to traverse N.W. 500 miles of a desolate sand tract to reach the city of Khamil. At this town the road bifur cates, the upper branch leading through Barkul, Urmachi, and Kurkur-usu into Zungaria ; the lower through Pijan, Turfan, Karashar, and Kuehn to Aksa in Ea,stern Turkestan. While Chinese rule prevailed, Zungaria and Eastern Turkestan formed the province of Ili.
Gobi desert in 1860 reached within 6 miles of the town of Ilchi on the N.E., but its shifting sands move along in vast billows, overpowering everything. Mr. Johnson was told that on one occasion, in the space of 24 hours, 360 towns were buried. Ilchi and Yarkand are said to have been founded after this event. Near Ilcbi, the edge of this desert has the appearance of a low range of broken hills, and consists of hillocks of moving sand, varying in height from 200 to 400 feet.
The belief that wildernesses are haunted places, is a very old and general one. Jesus himself, in a very solemn passage (Luke xi. 24), adopts the Jewish phraseology as to this belief. Pliny says
(vii. 2) that in the deserts of Africa phantoms in human shape appear to travellers, and immediately vanish again. But the belief is especially pre valent among the nations of Central Asia. By them deserts are held to be the especial head quarters and rendezvous of malignant spirits ; hence the wilderness of Turan, and particularly the great sand waste of Gobi, have from hoar antiquity bad an evil fame. The Turks have a saying that evil spirits play at—ball in desert places. Both Fa Hian and Marco Polo allude to the evil genii of the deserts of Central Asia ; and Rubruquis tells of a frightful defile, where the demons were said to snatch travellers off their horses. The Afghans believe each of the nume rens solitudes in the mountains and deserts of their country to be inhabited by a lonely demon, whom they call the Ghol-i-Biaban, or spirit of the waste, a gigantic and frightful spectre, which devours passengers.—Schmidi, p. 352 ; Yule's Cathay, i. p. 157 ; Tod's Rajasthan, i. p. 19, ii. pp. 196, 202, 211, 289 ; .Mignan's Travels, p. 32 ; MacGregor, Khorasan; Mr. Johnson, I:. Geog. Soc. Jr. 18G7 ; Sir Bartle Frere on the Runn of Cutch ; Pottinger's 7'ravels ; G. Rawlinson, 1 ; Allajor R. D. Upton, p. 165.