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 |
| Serindia : vol.2 | |
| セリンディア : vol.2 |
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引用情報
| Sec. i] GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES OF LOWER SU-LO HO BASIN 585 provided a protective zone of waterless ground very difficult to penetrate even for small parties. The safety from raids which this belt assured must have become progressively greater as the route advanced westwards beyond the terminal Su-]o Ho course ; for there the central portion of the Kuruk-tagh, wholly devoid of water, pasture, and even fuel, widens more and more on the north and renders any crossing by mounted parties practically impossible. The huge sand ridges of the Kum-tâgh desert provided the Lou-lan route with an equally safe flanking defence on the south, and we shall see further on how skilfully the flank of the Limes itself was protected on the same side. Thus it is quite certain that no risks of human interference in the shape of Hun raids had to be feared on that part of the ancient route which lay west of the terminal basin of the Su-lo Ho. Chinese statesmen—and soldiers, too,—seem at all times to have been particularly sensitive to such risks, and far less ready to face them than those arising from natural difficulties. This fact deserves to be emphasized here in concluding our rapid survey of the geographical factors which determined the importance of Tun-huang and the extension of the westernmost Chinese Limes beyond it. For it helps to explain at the same time why the Emperor Wu-ti's commanders carried their line of wall and watch-stations so far out into the desert as the Su-lo Ho's terminal basin, and also why they originally fixed upon the Lou-lan route in spite of all its formidable natural obstacles. | |
| Natural difficulties versus enemy risks. |
SECTION II.—IN SEARCH OF THE ' OLD WALL' NORTHWARD
Though I was kept busy during my ten days' halt outside Tun-huang town by manifold First visit to
tasks, I had taken the earliest chance they left me for a first visit to the famous site of old `BuT ddhhou as
Buddhist temple grottoes, known as Ci`ien fo-tung, or the ' Caves of the Thousand Buddhas'. Caves'.
They are situated about twelve miles to the south-east of the town, where a barren valley flanked by conglomerate cliffs debouches from the dune-covered foot-hills (Map No. 78. D. 4). My attention had been first directed to them in 1902 by Professor L. de Lbczy, the distinguished head of the
miles and was forced through want of water to return to the lake ; cf. the map, 24 versts to I inch, attached to vol. iii of the Report on his expedition, and the account of this excursion given ibid., i. pp. 564 sqq., as translated by Dr. Hedin in Central Asia, ii. pp. r oo sqq. As to the possible identity of this route, if it ever existed, with the new northern route ', which the Former Han Annals mention as having been opened in A.D. 2, see below, chap. aux. sec. vi.
Dr. Hedin's own journey into the central Kuruk-tâgh, described loc. cit., ii. pp. 104 sqq., carried him first from Béshtoghrak north to a point approximately 90° 26' long., 41° 28' lat., and thence to the springs of Âltmish-bulak. Nowhere on this journey was water to be found, until after eleven marches a salt spring was reached, known to wild-camel hunters from Singer as Kauriik-bulak, about thirty-two miles to the east-north-east of Âltmish-bulak.
The region of the central Kuruk-tagh to the north-east of Âltmish-bulak, which R. B. Lal Singh under my instructions surveyed in 1914 close up to 42° lat. (cf. Geogr. Journal, xlviii. pp. 205 sq.), proved equally waterless and, if anything, even more sterile through the total absence of desert vegetation, living or dead, over great stretches of ground.
It may thus be considered as certain that the desert ranges
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and plateaus of the Kuruk-tâgh, to the north of a line drawn from Kaurtik-bulak (itself north-east of the Lou-lan Site) to Bésh-toghrak and the terminal Su-lo Ho Basin, are now wholly devoid of water as far north as the Shona-nbr, the terminal marsh of the Hâmi River, a direct distance of not less than 160 miles from Bésh-toghrak. This big area of absolute desert could not be traversed at the present day except with camels and during the winter, when the transport of ice would facilitate the provision of water.
I can find nothing to justify the belief that the physical conditions on this ground could have been essentially different in Han times, and consequently I feel convinced that the ancient route between the end of the Limes and Lou-lan must have been then as well protected by nature against human interference from the north as it would be now, if raiding Huns were established along the T'ien-shan. It is true that Dr. Hedin, about one march to the north of Bésh-toghrak, came upon some cairns and fragments of an iron cooking-pot (see Central Asia, ii. pp. io6 sq.). But the date of these relics is quite uncertain, and, having been found not far from the Bésh-toghrak valley, they might well have been left behind by hunters of wild camels.
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