Still further east the inland lake of Lop Nor also rose at about this time. According to a Chinese account the Dragon Town on the shore of Lop Nor was destroyed by a flood. From Himley's translation it appears that the level of the lake rose so as to overwhelm the city completely. This would necessitate the expansion of the lake to a point eighty miles east of Lulan, and fully fifty from the present eastern end of the Kara Koshun marsh. The water would have to rise nearly, or quite, to a strand which is now clearly visible at a height of twelve feet above the modern lake or marsh. In India the fourteenth century was characterized by what appears to have been the most disastrous drought in all history. Apparently the decrease in rainfall here was as striking as the increase in other parts of the world. No statistics are available but we are told that in the great famine which began in 1344 even the Mogul emperor was unable to obtain the necessaries of life for his household. No rain worth mentioning fell for years. In some places the famine lasted three or four years, and in some twelve, and entire cities were left without an inhabitant. In a later famine, 1769-1770, which occurred in Bengal shortly after the foundation of British rule in India, but while the native officials were still in power, a third of the population, or ten out of thirty millions, perished. The famine in the first half of the fourteenth century seems to have been far worse. These Indian famines were apparently due to weak summer monsoons caused presumably by the failure of central Asia to warm up as much as usual. The heavier snowfall, and the greater cloudiness of the summer there, which probably accompanied increased storminess, may have been the reason.