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0355 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 / Page 355 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000234
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CHAP. XIX.]

RENDEZVOUS IN DESERT   303

much of our route traverses, I could not help feeling uneasy about the result. All the greater was my delight when I ascertained that

the difference between the positions which our wholly independent surveys showed for our actual camp, amounted only to about half a mile in longitude and less than a mile in latitude. If it is taken into account that, since leaving our common camping-place in Khotan, Ram Singh had brought his survey over approximately 500 miles of route (on which for the last 130 miles or so no intersections could be obtained owing to the absence of all prominent landmarks), while my own marches extended over about 120 miles, and lay almost wholly through desert, this slight difference represents in reality a very striking agreement. It could not fail to assure me as to the accuracy of our survey work even far away in the desert sands where the frequent dust-haze, if not the great distances from any elevated point, practically exclude all hope of exact checks by means of triangulation.

Neither Ram Singh nor Jasvant Singh took at first kindly to life in the wintry desert. They both complained bitterly : of the badness of the water which our single brackish well yielded. With the true Indian belief in the omnipotence of ` pine-ka paui,' they were eager to ascribe to this sole factor the unpleasant symptoms for which the combination of trying climatic conditions and previous fatigues and exposure were mainly responsible. Jasvant Singh, probably in consequence of the total want of fresh vegetables, showed signs of an incipient scorbutic affection, which, however, I was soon able to stop by the administration of lime juice I had brought with me from Gilgit. That it had first to be melted did not reduce the effectiveness of this remedy.

For Ram Singh, who anticipated a return of the rheumatic complaint which he had originally contracted while employed on Captain Deasy's explorations, the work requiring plentiful movement which I could assign to him in the . preparation of a general survey of the ruins and of detailed plans of the structures excavated, proved perhaps the best antidote. He subsequently stood the undoubted hardships which our winter campaign in the desert