longer than the camel-man and I, and finally had to be recalled. He did not know what I had found, and supposed that our quest had been in vain. As he had already told Ibrahim what a liar he was, he supposed that I would think that he had been lying again. He came back in a sad fright, apparently expecting an immediate beating. I gave him a little coin instead. A look of amazement and incredulity went over his face, and then, as he realized that I meant it, he fell on his knees, stroked his beard with a long invocation to Allah, and wanted to kiss my feet.
The stones and slag which we found apparently belong to a time more ancient than the ruined houses. Possibly they are of the same date as the thickly strewn pottery of an area over two miles long lying around the most remote houses, but the appearance of the tamarisk mounds in the vicinity indicates that they are older than the houses themselves. The pottery, with the accompanying slag and bones, is in a much finer state of comminution than is common among the main ruins. It is possible that it represents a town more ancient than the Niya of the Kharosthi documents, or at least the part of a single town which was abandoned at a very early date, just as Rawak was abandoned before Dandan-Uilik.
The condition of the vegetation agrees closely with that of the ruins. To the end of the present flood channel it is vigorous; a little farther out in the desert among the upper ruins, the great majority of the poplars are dead, but retain their branches, and the half-dead tamarisks form mounds ten or twenty feet high; among the main ruins the poplars have been reduced to mere trunks with few or no branches,
IIIFカラー高解像度
