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0522 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / 522 ページ(白黒高解像度画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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324 ALONG THE CHARCHAN RIVER CH. XXVIII

interfered with it. But since then the tide of renewed

development has continued ; and though many of the   1

colonists brought from the western oases under official   1

auspices, recce pressure, have escaped back to their old   0

homes, the population is steadily growing. When I   j

crossed the river, still flowing, in spite of the late season,   1

in four or five well-filled channels with a volume far in   1

excess of that of the Khotan Darya as I had seen it in the

0.

autumn, I recognized the possibilities which nature affords

for the Charchan oasis. But who can foresee whether they   d

will ever be fully realized, or how near or distant the time may be when desolation will again reign here supreme ? These glimpses of the present Charchan had their best counterfoil in the silent ' Tatis ' which I visited on

the second day to the south-west of the extant oasis.   0

These débris areas of bare eroded soil, where nothing but   i

small potsherds, broken pieces of glass, and metal and   ci

other fragments of hard material indicate former occupa-   11

tion, extend in patches from the present edge of cultivation   ti

for nearly five miles to the south-west. The ground   i

presents itself as an almost level Sai of fine gravel, with   I

here and there some island-like ' witness ' of loess indicating   II

the height of the overlying soil which has been eroded   11

and carried away by the winds since cultivation had   i

ceased. Near the Mazar of Yalghuz-tug (` the lonely Yak-   1

standard ') new fields are again invading the area of what the people of Charchan know as the ` Kone-shahr.' Any

remains besides pottery débris which the ground may have

h

once retained, have, of course, long ago been searched for

treasure and destroyed.   ii

The line of an old canal running towards this nearest

of the ' Tatis ' was followed by me for nearly two miles to   i

its point of junction with the irrigation channel which   i

Musa Beg some twenty years before had endeavoured to

put to fresh use and which I had crossed on my approach   1

to Charchan. Old pottery débris cropped up also in   ;

extensive patches west of this ancient canal, as far as the   t

banks of a shallow depression which receives water from the Ayak-tar stream during the summer floods. Judging

from the configuration of the gently sloping alluvial fan,   1