IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CH. XXVI ORIGIN OF RUINED SETTLEMENT 307
brought home to me by a curious observation. The oval enclosure of the ruined village consisted of a mud rampart, about sixteen feet broad at the base, carrying at a height of about eight feet a platform of rush bundles fixed on rough beams. Over this again on the outside rose a parapet of rough bricks and clay about i 2 feet in thickness. Almost the whole of this circumvallation was still traceable,
except on the north segment where tamarisk - covered dunes overlaid it, and throughout the exposed portion of
the wall showed marks of having been subjected to fire.
Charred fragments of wood lay about on the rampart, and the clay was reddened by burning. Considering also that
a number of the huts cleared in the course of our two days' digging had their timber partially burned, it was evident that a conflagration had played its part in the early end of the deserted settlement.
On November 7th I visited, about one mile north of the ruins, a small salt marsh, said to be fed by springs, in a depression which seemed to have once formed part of
an old river-bed coming from the south-east and long completely dried up. Then after a last look at the silent
village I marched due east towards the actual river course
by the broad track which our camels had trodden when bringing water. After about three miles we crossed a
high ridge of sand marking the western edge of some
Kone - darya,' and another two miles farther struck a succession of shallow beds which the river had filled during
the last summer flood. In the newly formed main channel, half a mile beyond and about ten yards broad, the water was flowing with a depth of over three feet and a strong current.
Tokhta Muhammad, the owner of the forlorn small colony of Endere Tarim struggling with the vagaries of
the river some distance lower down, had joined me at the ruined village. From his statement and that of some
of the Niya men who had worked there, I knew that the river's move into this new bed some three years before meant in reality a return to the western channel which I had seen in 1901 completely dry, and which was then locally known as the ` Kone-darya.' The ` new river' of
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