Actually, no. The scientists and scholars Heartland is assembling are not members of the gloom-and-doom chorus.

This is an excellent abbreviature of the whole duty of a Christian.

These particulars concerning the Jo-ch'iang are mostly stated in the main account:...The fact of bordering on Cer-cen and its southern neighbour may imply that the later Vāshshahri, between Charkhlik and Cer-cen, was originally a Jo-ch'iang station. The extension of the Jo-ch'iang along the whole hinterland south of the mountains is displayed in old Chinese maps also and in that accompnaying Professor Herrmann's Die Seidenstrassen.

a dependent bough or leaf