Book excerpt: "The Hungarian born Aurel Stein was a British archaeologist and geographer noted for his pioneering exploration of Central Asia. This is an account of his second major expedition, from 1906-8. Returning to Khotan, Stein extended his original explorations farther eastwards for nearly a thousand miles. It was on this expedition that Stein explored the western end of the Great Wall of China and discovered the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-Huang, where he made his greatest discovery of a vast library in a cave sealed since the 10th century. He removed thousands of documents including a copy of the Diamond Sutra whose date makes it the earliest printed book."--abebooks website.