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0517 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 517 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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CH. I.XXX TRACING LINE OF ` GREAT WALL' 337

from Hami, Chiang made me put in a good word for Wang. I do not know what attention, if any, was paid to it ; but

before I left Turkestan Chiang heard the cheerful news that Wang had been finally exonerated and given a fresh magisterial charge elsewhere.

We left Su-chou on September i 6th, and after passing again through the gate of Chia-yü-kuan lost all trace of the Great Wall ' until we reached the small district town of

Yü-mên-hsien five days later. There was good reason to
believe that the road we had followed was already in

ancient times the main line of communication. But the Limes intended to safeguard it had evidently been constructed farther north, where the rugged desert range first touched at Chia-yü-kuan offered the advantage of a strong natural rampart. I had subsequently the satisfaction of

finding this assumption verified. On a reconnaissance made from Yü-mên-hsien to the north, I discovered a line

of ancient towers just beyond the hamlets appropriately named Shih-tun (' Tower x.') and Shih-êrh-tun (` Tower xli.'), and on closer search I was able to trace unmistakable remains of the wall once connecting them.

Far-advanced decay had been caused by the proximity of marshy ground liable to inundation from a branch of the

Su-lo Ho, whose great westward bend lies close by. Yet my archaeological conscience as to the connection of these scanty remains with the ancient Limes of Han times was assured when, on scraping the somewhat higher ground near one of the towers, I came upon those significant fascines, here composed of half-petrified twigs, so familiar from the Tun-huang border. The very name of Yü-mên-hsien,

the town of the Jade Gate,' was manifestly borrowed from that Limes, though its transfer to a point so far east could certainly not have taken place until long after T'ang times.

On the second day after leaving Yü-mên-hsien for Anhsi I again sighted the old wall with its line of towers stretching along the north bank of the Su-lo Ho. It here afforded protection to the string of small oases which extend south of the river on both sides of the large walled town of Bulunjir ; this is now but for a tiny garrison almost deserted. Some twelve miles west of Bulunjir I was able

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