306 THE PULSE OF ASIA
Mr. Sokovu, did everything possible to facilitate my journey. I cannot speak too gratefully of the great courtesy with which I was everywhere treated by Russian officials. Eight days of rough riding in a post-wagon brought me to Omsk on the Irtysh River. There, with a crowd of friendly officers returning from the Japanese war, I took the train for Moscow, where I arrived the 24th of April, 1906.
To resume the description of Turfan, the chief physical features of the basin will be readily understood from an examination of the accompanying map and cross-section, (page 307). On the north, the dark Bogdo range, numbered 1 in the cut, the northeastern end of the Tian Shan plateau, rises to a height of from 12,000 to 14,000 feet, and forms the source of the chief streams. Its base is buried in a typical piedmont deposit of sloping gravel (2), like a beach ten or fifteen miles wide, in which practically all the streams from the mountains disappear except in time of flood. If the gravel, as followed from the mountains toward the playa, merged into the finer deposits of the basin floor as it does in the Lop basin, most of the water would never reappear, except perhaps in the form of a zone of vegetation, and Turfan would be almost uninhabitable. Fortunately for man, a geological fault or dislocation, A—B in the section, has taken place in the basin during very recent times along a line running roughly east and west parallel to the Bogdo range, and about thirty miles south of its crest. On the north side of the fault, a part of the earth's crust has been pushed up, and forms a little range (3) with a southward facing scarp of bright red sandstone. The redness of the range has given rise to the name " Fire Mountains "
IIIFカラー高解像度
