THE DRY RIVER AND THE DRY MOUNTAINS 275
who had to leave Jan Kul, Dural, and Kara-Kum would have used it. Yet, formerly, the water of the Bujentu valley supported a small village. Here, as in other cases, there appears to have been a mediœval, or Mohammedan period of revival after the earlier abandonment of the site by the Buddhists.
North of Ying-pen rises the steep escarpment of Kuruk Tagh. At its top there is said to be a district which, though called " Davan," or " Pass," is in reality a gently rolling, grassy pasture land, the eastern prolongation of the Tian Shan plateau. In order to avoid this, we made a détour to the east to Kuzzil Singer. The scenery was almost identical with that of eastern Persia so far as the main physiographic forms were concerned. We traversed desolate plains of barren gravel, from which rose low, half-buried mountains, worn into rounded shapes if viewed as a whole, but extremely sharp, jagged, and naked if examined in detail. Some of the hills were wonderfully streaked with patches of red and white shale, which had been enclosed in the black mass of ancient and now much faulted lava flows. The whole region was made up of gravel-filled basins, in which the gravel had often risen so high that it covered the lower passes of the mountains. Long ago, when there had been less deposition of gravel, the basins were separate. Now they have coalesced, and all drain, or would drain if they had water enough, into two main salt plains, or ancient lakes, named Ugunnto and Uzun Bulaki Shor. There are no permanent streams east of the high plateau, and the few springs are for the most part saline. The region is well called the Dry Mountains. It is a typical example of the
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