IIIFカラー高解像度
国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
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| IIIFカラー高解像度 |
| Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 | |
| 中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.1 |
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引用情報
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
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