CHAP. xxvii.] ARRIVAL AT ENDERE STUPA 413
Endere. Heré, too, the river has in recent years been shifting westwards, so that we found quite a respectable sheet of ice, from 10 to 20 yards in width, covering what previously had been a deserted, dry bed. On the other hand this return to the earlier channel has led to the abandonment of the little ` Tarim ' or colony that had been formed some miles further east on the " new river," now in process of drying up. It was manifest that these constant changes in the river courses, just before the desert absorbs them, account for the many dry. depressions we had crossed since leaving Imam Jafar Sadik.
On the following day we moved up the Endere stream for about ten miles to where a deserted shed of rushes marked the shepherd station of Kara-öchke-öltürgan (" ` Where the black goat sat ") . From there our guides struck into the desert south-eastwards, and after another ten miles' march next morning across low dunes I arrived at what they called the `Potai' of the ` Kone-shahr.' It was, of course, a brick Stupa, as I had assumed when this feature of the site was first vaguely mentioned to me at the Mazar. Nor was I surprised to find that it had been dug into, no doubt in the hope of treasure. All the same I pushed on with increased eagerness southwards, where the remains of old houses were said to exist. The eroded ground around the Stupa , was thickly strewn with pottery fragments, many of them coloured ; but no trace of structural remains appeared until I had arrived quite close to low dunes enclosing the ruins. The rows of wooden posts that rose above the sand were indeed a familiar sight. But the high brick walls of some large building, and the remnants of a màssive rampart encircling the ruins, presented a novel feature.
The contingent of labourers from Niya had arrived just when I was nearing the Stupa. Considering the great distance, some 120 miles, from which the men had been brought, and the difficulty of communicating with them over wholly uninhabited ground, I felt not a little pleased at this well-managed concentration; which enabled me to start work at once. Going over the . ground once enclosed by the circumvallation which had a diameter of about 425
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