of Chinese history have solidified, Dr, Hedin describes this longest, oldest and "best known road on earth which passes through cities whose names conjure up beautiful romance and ring resonantly in the ear. From Sian, it runs via Lanchow, Hangchow, Tung-hwang to Kashgar, and Ferghana Samarkand, Iran and Baghdad, through the Syrian Desert and Asia Minor to Angora and Istanbul (Constantinople.) What a gigantic and marvellous project would it be to restore it for it would link east and west in one long road:
The Westerner who likes to take long automobile trips would surely get his fill on this road. The distance from Shanghai to the Atlantic in a straight line is 6,600 miles; the road, with its curves, is about 9,000 miles. It would give the traveller the most interesting and wonderful mótor trip en earth. Every day he would meet new and picturesque scenes of humming life in the cities of China, the magnificent desolation of the Gobi Desert, the Mongolian nomads with their herds...the sand dunes, the ruins of old cities, the new lake Lop-Nor, the new river Kum. darya, the oases of East Turkestan, Tamerlane, Samarkand, and the whole splendour of the Persian architectural creations praised by poets.
A motor highway from Shanghai to Bremen or Boulogne, via the old sik road, would become a new link of communication, a new means of ce-operation, of understanding and of peace between the two continents, Asia and Europe, Dr. Hedin observes. It would be a link between two races, two religions, Buddhisth and Christianity, two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, and between two worlds, the Orient and the Occident. It is a beautiful dream, too beautiful to be contrasted against the present warlike position of the world, but it could be realized by men who could build the Great" Wall or dig the Panama Canal,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.