Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / Page 498 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0498	Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1

306 TO THE ENDERE RIVER CH. XXVI

As I pondered over these observations and compared

them with what could be inferred from the uniform rough-

ness of the dwellings, and from the absence of refuse

heaps, the following suggested itself as the most likely

explanation. At a time when the Endere River was follow-

ing a course west of its present bed, and thus bringing

water to the wide open plain now covered with scrub and

Toghraks mostly dead, a colony had been planted here in A

the hope of utilizing the chance offered for an agricultural j

settlement. The provision of a circumvallation and the

crowding together within of numerous dwellings, all of a

uniform type and manifestly provisional, point to a scheme

of colonization very different . from the haphazard growth

of scattered holdings usual in the smaller oases.

This is fully accounted for by the special importance 0

which the area of vegetation along the terminal course of 1

the Endere River must always have claimed in historical

times as the only possible position for a half-way station on the desert route, some 2 20 miles long, between Niya

and the oasis of Charchan. The ruins to be described I

presently of older fortified stations near the east bank I

of the Endere River undoubtedly date from successive

attempts to establish here a settlement which would help

to facilitate and protect traffic on the route leading east-

wards along the Taklamakan to Lop-nor, and thence to

China proper. It thus seems but natural to connect the

unmistakably later ruins of the fortified village with a

systematic endeavour made in Muhammadan times for

the same purpose. The change in the site chosen for the

new settlement was, no doubt, due to a temporary shifting

of the Endere River course. The attempt must have

failed soon, as was shown quite clearly by the absence of

all traces of agricultural development near the site and by

other indications already mentioned.

In the absence of more definite evidence we cannot

make sure of the immediate cause of this abandonment.

Under the peculiar physical conditions prevailing, another

shift of the river to where it now flows, fully five miles to

the east, would have sufficed to make irrigation impossible.

But that other causes might also be thought of was

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books