国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

the country around the lower reaches of the Edsen-gol right down to the terminal lakes to settle in. In the year 1729, then, DANCHUNG Dola Beile was the first Torgut chief at the Edsen-gol. At the time of our visit to the Torguts they had lived near the river and the lakes for not quite two hundred years.

In the old days all the Mongols on Chinese territory were personal subjects of the emperor. With the introduction of the republic in T91I this relationship lapsed automatically. The Torguts at the Edsen-gol, who now reckoned ninety-seven families, came under the authority of the governor of Kansu, though the prince could in certain matters address himself direct to the government in Peking.1)

The district of the Edsen-gol Torguts extends in the east to Gurnai, in the south to the boundary of Mao-mu and to Holi-shan, in the west the boundary loses itself in the desert, while in the north the mountain Atsi-shan constitutes the boundary.

The above account has treated only of the old Torguts, whose descendants in our days are to be found on the banks of the Edsen-gol and in the previously mentioned parts of Sinkiang. The new Torguts live to the south and south-west of Kobdo.

OUR FIRST METEOROLOGICAL STATION

During the whole of the period we spent at Tsondol work was going on daily towards the establishment of the first permanent meteorological station, which was to be staffed by ZIMMERMANN, SÖDERBOM and MA.

With a warm hand I gave ZIMMZRMANN three very valuable and useful things: my faithful fellow-traveller and pet Hami, from whom I should never have consented to separate if a sprained front paw had not made it impossible for him to follow us on our westward journey; a first-class camera with a considerable number of plates; and the mess-tent, that had been a source of common pleasure during the journey from Pao-t'ou.

For the time being ZIMMERMANN was to live in this spacious tent. To the south of the tent a well had been dug, 21/2 meters in depth, with sixty centimeters of water. The meteorological observatory was surrounded by a square fence with a side of twenty meters. The setting up of the meteorological cage with instruments was more or less the same as at Khujirtu-gol, but it was protected this time by an extra roof of bast mats in the shape of a pyramid and reminiscent of an African negro hut. An eight meter high mast bore the weather-cock, and on the riverbank stood a water-gauge. From a little jetty one could read the temperature of the water.

1 After the division of Kansu into several provinces the Edsen-gol region was included in the province of Ning-hsia. F. B.

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