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CHAPTER XIV

THROUGH THE LOP DESERT TO TUN-HUANG

SECTION I.-THE ROUTE FROM ABDAL TO TUN-HUANG

ON February t 1 my labours at the Miran site were completed, and by the evening of the same day my camp was again shifted to Abdal. There the safe packing of all the antiques which had now to be sent back to Kashgar (Fig. 147) and multifarious preparations kept me hard at work for nine days.

On February 2 I , 1907, I started my caravan, heavily laden with supplies for the new field of exploration to the east. In my Personal Narrative I have given a full account of the trying journey which carried me in the course of three weeks to the westernmost oasis of Kan-su.' Here a brief summary of the characteristic features of the desert ground traversed,2 and a rapid review of the data that we possess regarding the historical topography of the route, must suffice. On certain geographical questions which the survey of this route has raised much fresh light has been thrown by the far more extensive surveys which I was able to make over this forbidding ground, during the winters of 1914 and 1915.3 But these topographical results still await publication by the Trigonometrical Survey Office, Dehra Dun.

There are, and during historical times always have been, two possible direct routes connecting the Lop tract south of the Tarim with Tun-huang, and thus with westernmost China.' One somewhat the longer, but practicable throughout the year in spite of difficulties caused by scarcity of water and grazing, passes along the high, barren slopes of that eastern extension of the main K`un-lun range which to the people of the Lop tract is known as the Altin-tagh or ` Fore-mountains '. This route was surveyed under my instructions by Rai Ram Singh in 1907, and again by R. B. Lal Singh in 1913 ; it is shown on the maps, but for the present need not concern us further. The Lopliksknow it as the idçh yol, or ` mountain route '. The other route, distinguished by them as the chöl yol, `desert route ', follows throughout the deepest line of the long-stretched depression which intervenes between the Kuruk-tagh in the north and the glacis-like foot of the Altin-tagh in the south.

It is this ` desert route ' which we have briefly to sketch here. Pronounced differences in the character of the -ground divide it into three main sections. The first, comprising a total marching distance of some 158 miles, skirts the whole length of the Lop lake-basin on the south. I t starts by winding round the southern edge of the Kara-koshun marshes. Then it keeps close to the south shore of the vastly greater salt-encrusted lake-bed, now dry, to which in Chapters X and XI I have so often had occasion to refer. At Donglik, the first halting-place from Abdal, where the two routes through the desert and the mountains divide, the difficulty about water already made itself felt ; for the small stream there, appropriately known as Achchik-bulak, ` the bitter spring', is salt.

A double march of some forty-five miles over waterless ground, overlooking the dried-up, salt-encrusted lake-bed, brings the traveller to the salt spring of Chindailik. Beyond this, the present caravan track for sixteen miles cuts across the hard, crumpled, salt-cake surface of what was a big bight of this ancient Lop sea (see i\Tap No. 64. A, B. 2). Professor E. Huntington had here noted the

Halt at Abdal.

Geographical observations on journey.

Two routes to Tunhuang.

Past the Karakoshun.

Salt-encrusted old lake-bed.

' See Desert Cathay, i. pp. 503-46; ii. pp. 1-8. Cf. Maps Nos. 61, 64, 67, 68, 70, 74, 78.

Cf. Geogr. Journal, 1916, xlviii. pp. 126' sqq., 205 sqq. See above, PP. 320, 340, 418.

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For the explorations on its north side effected in 291415, cf. Third Journey of Exploration, Geogr. Journal, 1916, xlviii. pp. 126 sqq. [See now also, Geographical Review (New York), 1920, ix. pp. 25 sqq.]

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