376 JOURNEY TO ANAMBARUIN-UI,A.
the air becomes to that extent charged with dust and sand, that it is impossible to travel, and everybody has to halt wherever they happen to be.
I was told that it was only three years since this locality ceased to be cultivated. The oldest man amongst my guides recalled that some fifty or sixty years before five or six Tungan families had been settled there; but they fled when the first great Tungan revolt broke out, for they were unwilling to make common cause with the insurgents. Near our camp were the remains of three houses, and a little higher up the ruins of five others, all said to have been built by Tungans. Probably the ruins of Kan-ambal date from the same period. At the present time the glen of Lu-tschuen-tsa is visited in certain years by Mongol nomads, who pitch their
Fig. 298. ICE ON THE BROOK OF LU-TSCHUEN-TSA.
tents in the vicinity of the ruins; the years when they do not visit this glen they remain in Särtäng. The following tradition is connected with this place. Parts of the ruins and ancient remains which we found there are said to date from the distant period when the Mongol chief Dandschin Kan Tädsche was at war with the Chinese. He had preferred a request to Bantschin Bogdo (Pantschen Rimpotsche) in Taschilumpo, that he might be the ruler over the Mongols; but when his desire was refused, he proceeded with his warriors and picked fighting-men to Si-ning-fu and seized the town. The Chinese then called upon him to yield the town up to them, but he replied that he intended to hold it as long as his provisions lasted. When his supplies were exhausted, he cut his way out, and went to Anambaruin-ula, Lutschuen-tsa, and Kara-schahr. After this the priest in Tibet promised him, that at the end of 36o years he should be reincarnated and be the ruler over the Mongols, an event which is believed to have happened a hundred years ago. Anyway my guides were convinced that the stone walls which we saw dated from those troublous times, and so also did the names Igo-jempen and Sigo-jempen, the One Wall and the
IIIFカラー高解像度
