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0265 Across Asia : vol.1
Across Asia : vol.1 / Page 265 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000221
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RECORDS OF THE JOURNEY

Sometimes a yurt is put up inside a mere enclosure of mud walls. Chinese ploughs are used and the land yields a 3-10 fold crop.

We left the Tekes valley at the place where it turns northward, and for a short time went up a narrow cleft between the slopes in the S. Proceeding in a NE direction over a succession of small hills, we came to the valley of the Little Dshirgalan, about a mile wide. On this hill which forces itself between the Dshirgalan and the Tekes in the shape of a long point a great number of kurgan-like mounds are found of varying size from 8o paces at the base to 4 or 5 paces, close to the spot where the hill begins to drop towards the Dshirgalan. They form three groups, the relative positions of which are seen in the illustration.

Group a consists of 13 mounds grouped round two larger ones. The mounds are of earth and there is a depression round them. The largest look approximately like this in section :

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They are grouped as shown in the sketch on the left. The mounds in group b are less connected. The one lying furthest north is very large, of rough boulders and surrounded by a stone ring at a distance of 7 feet from the base of the mound. Two tracks of stones lead from the ring to the foot of the mound. Most of the larger mounds are surrounded by such rings and two tracks from opposite sides lead to the foot of the mound. Occasionally between the outer ring and the mound there are smaller circles of stones, a couple of paces in diameter, and usually a semicircle or 3/4 of a circle of such small stone circles runs outside the stone ring. One of the mounds is enclosed in a stone ring and two semicircles of stone circles one beyond the other. The tracks to the foot of the mound are not always from the same direction. In the centre of all the mounds that I ascended there was a very considerable hollow as though the stones had originally been laid in the form of a ring or had been pushed aside in hunting for treasure. However, none of these hollows reached the level of the ground. The sketch illustrates one of the mounds in the best state of pre-

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