PREFACE.
The favourable reception accorded two years ago to "Travels in Mongolia," and the interest which still attaches to the countries of Central Asia induce me to publish an English version of Colonel Prejevalsky's travels to Lob-nor, the more readily that no European hitherto has visited it in modern times.
That Colonel Prejevalsky's narrative is so brief is accounted for by the great physical prostration from which its author has been suffering, the effect of hardship and exposure in desert and swamp, necessitating his giving up for the time all literary work and taking complete rest at his estate in the government of Smolensk.
Soon after this translation was begun, Baron von Richthofen's lecture, delivered before the Berlin Geographical Society, on the results of Pre-
