IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Serindia : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAPTER XVI
THE OASIS OF NAN-HU AND THE YANG BARRIER
SECTION I.—REMAINS BETWEEN TUN-HUANG AND NAN-HU
Help for desert campaign westwards.
REGARD for the tasks ahead made me restrict my halt at Tun-huang to a single day, April 4, 1907. Considering the manifold preparations needed for my main campaign in the desert westwards, this could not possibly have sufficed, if the opportune arrival of circular instructions from the Viceroy at Lan-chou, recommending me and my researches to all authorities of westernmost Kan-su, had not stimulated my official friends at Tun-huang to increased efforts to help me in overcoming the local vis inertiae. At the same time I was glad to note the genuine scholarly interest which my discovery of dated Han records had aroused in the learned magistrate Wang Ta-lao-yeh. With his ready support—and by using the incentive of high rates for all payments—I managed somehow to raise a month's supplies, twelve fresh labourers, additional camels for transport, and also as many ` Ketmans ', those excellent implements of the Turkestan excavator, as could be secured among the Muhammadan refugees at Tun-huang.
The route I proposed to follow was first to take me south-west along the edge of the foot-hills to Nan-hu, a small oasis where I knew, from Zahid Beg's information and Captain Roborovsky's
map, of the existence of ruins. Moving due north from Nan-hu, I would strike the line of the
western Limes near its middle, and survey new ground en route. The first march, on April 5, was short, and left time also for a rapid examination of the ` old town ' (chiu eh`êng), the crumbling clay
walls of which face the present town of Tun-huang at about a mile's distance to the west of the
Tang Ho. The site was said to mark the position of the Sha-chou of Tang times, but it is now completely abandoned to fields and gardens. I was unable to discover any reliable tradition as to the
date at which this town was deserted ; but the liability of the site to inundation from the river was
said to have been the cause of it. That the place must have ceased to be occupied long before the Tungan rebellion was clearly proved by the total absence within the circumvallation of any structural
remains above ground. That no such remains could have survived below the soil was made obvious
by the swampy condition of the fields. The enclosing walls, completely ruined in places, formed a duly orientated rectangle, measuring about 1,485 yards from north to south and 65o yards across.
They were built throughout of solid layers of clay, about four inches thick, and at the south-east
corner still rose in fair preservation to a height of about twenty feet. The distance thence to the west bank of the river bed was only some 15o yards. One gate on the south and two on the west
face were traceable. A tower defending the north-west corner was still about forty feet high. A comparison with the walls of the present town, which form a square of about i,1oo yards, shows that the area enclosed within the old ch`êng was slightly smaller.
Thence the route turned off to the south-west and, passing several large and well-kept temples,
brought me to the edge of present cultivation on this side after a little over three miles. Here the ruins of a smaller walled town, known as Chên fan-hsien and said to have been the seat of a separate
hsien or magistrate in pre-rebellion times, served to recall again the havoc wrought by the last great Tungan rising. From this place the route led along the banks of an earlier river bed, now
Ruined walls of Sha-chou town.
Ruins of Chênfan-hsien.
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