some well-preserved wooden tablets bearing Kharoshthi script. They held out an encouraging promise at the outset, and also furnished conclusive proof that this area fully four miles to the south of the first ruins explored in i go I held remains belonging to the same early period.
When in the twilight of that first evening I strolled across the high sands to a ruin sighted in r go r but reluctantly `left over' for unavoidable reasons and lighted upon a fine carved cantilever since laid bare by the slight shift of a dune, I felt almost as if I had never been away, and yet grateful for the kindly Fate which had allowed me to return. But I little dreamt then how rich an archaeological haul was awaiting for me close by.
Next morning, after tramping some four miles over absolutely bare dunes, I started our fresh excavations at the northernmost of the ruined dwellings which Ibrahim had discovered scattered in a line some two miles to the west of the area previously explored. These structures, then hidden from our view by high dunes, evidently marked what must have been the extreme north-western extension of the area once reached by a canal from the terminal course of the Niya river.
The ruin we first cleared was a relatively small dwelling, covered only by three or four feet of sand, and just of the right type to offer an instructive lesson to my Indian `handy man', brave Naik Ram Singh, and the men. It occupied a narrow tongue of what, owing to the depression produced around by wind erosion, looked like high ground, extending in continuation of the line of a small irrigation canal still marked by fallen rows of dead poplars. As soon as the floor was being reached in the western end room
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