DISCOVERIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 139, 22 June 1901, Page 4

DISCOVERIES.

Wars and rumors of wars sometimes make ns forget the great conquests of peace that are going on. From a correspondent to the London Times we learn of interesting discoveries undertaken at the expense of the Indian Government in Chinese Turkestan far to the west of Peking. The desert of Takla Makan, now a vast expense of sand-dunes and given over during part of tho year to . raging sandstorms, was, it appears, at one time, probably eighteen or nineteen centuries ago, the seat of a flourishing civilisation. Dr -M. A. Stein, who has charge of the explorations, has made excavations where Buddhist shrines once existed, and has brought to light manuscripts of paper and birch bark written in Indian characters. Anoient coins show inscriptions in both Chinese and Indian. Elsewhere in the desert even more interesting discoveries have been made. Wooden houses and Buddhist monasteries, situated amid the orchards and the avenues of trees, the trunks of which still remain in the ground, have yielded up great numbers of inscribed documents, as well as works of art, household objects, and antiquities of every kind. From one find alone more than 500 wooden tablets inscribed with Kharoshthi characters were recovered. The contents of these seem to be correspondence of both a private and an official character; and it is quite possible that we may eventually gain from this source an interesting glimpse of ancient life such as the papyri of Egypt have recently afforded us. In some eases the original clay seals, by which the validity of the documents was attested, and the very string by which they were fastened, have been preserved intact.— Discoveries of a very different sort-may be expected soon in another quarter of the globe. For separate expeditions are to start out this year to explore the frozen region of the Antaretie. The British Government ship “ Discovery ” will leave London in July and reach the ice in November. A land party with provisions for three years will start their survey somewhere between Cape Adair and McMurdo and Wood Bays, while the vessel skirts the ice barrier. A Scotch expedition will go out under W. S. Bruce a month or two later to follow up the discoveries of Weddell in 1823. The Swedes, under private patronage, will sail as near the South Pole as possible, while the German Government is preparing another important expedition.