CH. XIII VALLEYS OF SANJU AND PUSKI 157
important equipment, the skins which were to serve both for a raft and for water transport in the desert. That after three months Musa had not yet arrived at Sanju was a source of considerable concern to me. But there was comfort at least in the thought that I had myself avoided serious loss of time by not taking this trade-route.
The official rest-house close to the Bazar of Saidullakenti, which the attentive Chinese officer in charge of the route had prepared for my accommodation, proved anything but a peaceful abode ; and as the heat was also perceptible, I resumed my journey on July 31st without regret. I was now within a day's march of Zanguya on the main Karghalik- Khotan high road ; but the wish to complete my survey of the route farther south decided me to move on to Duwa, the last of the small oases among the foothills of the Kun-lun, west of Khotan. The distance, about thirty-five miles, was too great to be covered in one day. So after a short march I had to halt at Puski, the only valley en route where water was obtainable. I found there a narrow strip of cultivation extending in patches for some six miles along the bed of a stream which is fed by springs but also serves as a flood channel for the melting snows of the hills.
There would have been no inducement to stop at this little oasis of some forty homesteads surrounded by the most barren of hills, had I not learned soon after my arrival of a ruined mound or ' Tim ' some distance farther down. The men of Puski estimated it at about a Pao-t'ai,
i.e. roughly two miles. But when I rode out in the
afternoon to visit it, I soon realized through my glasses that the distance would be nearly four times as much and the ruin could not be reached before dusk. So the survey of it had to be left for the next day. The heat at Puski was great, 90° Fahr. even after nightfall, and the ride to the ruined Stupa—for as such I could recognize it even from a distance—next morning anything but refreshing.
The structure of sun-dried bricks, originally dome-shaped and resting on a square base, proved greatly injured by diggings for ' treasure.' Yet a careful survey convinced me that in dimensions and arrangement it must have
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