THE SAND-BURIED RUINS OF CHIRA 175
Beg's house I had seen the ruins of a large village, which evidently had been abandoned recently. The Beg told me their history substantially as Stein has recorded it. Formerly, the villages of Dumuka and Ponak were located eight miles north of the present sites. About 1834, the water supply began to run short, being lost in the sandy jungle above the village. It diminished so greatly that for seven years no water reached the canals during winter. The people were obliged to dig wells. Finally, the scarcity of water became such that distress ensued from the failure of crops. The villagers decided to abandon houses, fields, fruit trees, vineyards, and everything, and move eight miles upstream to a new site. The disadvantages of poorer, sandier soil and of the loss of the labor of years were more than compensated for, they felt, by the greater proximity to the springs where the water from the mountains reappears after its underground course through the piedmont gravel. Each proprietor was given the same amount of land as formerly in a corresponding location, and with it a proportional quantity of water. Chira and Gulakhma also suffered at this time, though much less. Nearly eighty families moved up to Ekken, a very sandy site close to the springs of another stream. There can be no doubt of the authenticity of this account, for Ismail Beg, the relater, heard it from his father, who was among those who moved ; and some of the old people of Dumuka still remember the event. Since the occupation of the new site, no special difficulty as to the water supply has been experienced. Indeed, between 1893 and 1900, it actually increased. There was so much surplus water that the hamlet of Malakalagan was founded by
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