Note 2 — Chapter XXVIII · THE MONGOLIAN FRONTIER AT MAIMATCHIN.

Daniel De Foe made his celebrated “Robinson Crusoe” to re-visit his island, and afterwards land in China, where he met with a Jesuit missionary who took him to Peking. Then, crossing the desert, he came to the Argun and Nertchinsk, and so proceeded to Tobolsk and crossed the Urals to Archangel. This, of course, is fiction; but it may be that De Foe, who was never abroad in his life, and who published his “Robinson Crusoe” in 1719, had heard of a route used in his day across the Mongolian desert. When we come to the interesting writings of the Roman missionary Huc, we have, of course, a good deal of information about Mongolia; but his route lay in the south along the great wall of China towards the Himalayas, and not at all in the north.