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0192 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / Page 192 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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94   FROM SARIKOL TO KASHGAR

CH. IX

that the ripening of the oat crops was very uncertain owing to the rigorous climate.

There was, indeed, no sign of spring yet in the air or on the ground when next day, May 31st, we did our long march of forty miles down the wide, open valley to Tashkurghan. Still the extensive stretches of ground terraced and prepared for irrigation which we passed on the left river bank down to the mouth of the Taldekul Jilga, a distance of some eight miles, and with widths up to half a mile, gave evidence both that cultivation is possible in this elevated portion of central Sarikol and that a steady growth of population makes the need of it felt. When I passed down the right bank in 1900 I could not fail to note clear traces of the desolation which a long succession of raids from Hunza down to 1891 had worked. By rendering all permanent occupation in the valley insecure they had greatly reduced its population, and land once manifestly occupied had passed out of cultivation.

Since 1900 the tide of returning prosperity had grown stronger, and there was reason to think that the reclaimed areas which I saw now, and which for the present were being sown only in turn every third or fourth year by Tash-kurghan people, would in time be brought under annual tillage. On the right bank, in fact, enterprise already asserted itself in the shape of a new canal dug at considerable expense by one of the Ihsans who represent the Aga Khan's authority among the Mullai sect widely scattered in these regions. It was to bring the river water to the fertile meadows of Ghan which in 1900 I had seen as a mere summer grazing-ground.

But once we had left behind a succession of fertilizing side streams which descend from the high snowy range westwards, the ground along the left bank of the river changed into a dreary waste of gravel ` Dasht ' fringed by light dunes. The sky had become overcast as if to harmonize with the barren landscape, and the last twenty-four miles of our ride had to be done with an icy north wind blowing in our faces. So I had little attention to bestow on the precarious cultivation started some five miles above Tash-kurghan, which owed its existence to a new canal dug