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
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

against each other, as if torn asunder by some force acting from below. I was unable to arrive
at any clear conclusion as to their exact origin.

It was with real relief that, after a weary tramp of twelve miles, we sighted a line of white Arrival at
Yārdangs far away, set off against the darker fringe of rising ground in the distance. The appear- eastern belt
ance of these salt-coated terraces was now gratefully welcomed as a sign that 'land' was near. Yārdangs.
For another five miles we had dragged ourselves painfully onwards, after which the surface of
shōr became somewhat less hard and crumpled ; and at nightfall, having marched a little over
nineteen miles in all, we reached the edge of the salt-coated Yārdang belt. Here I discovered
a delightfully soft patch where brown shōr was overlying a soil of coarse sand ; the camping-place
it offered was a great boon for men and beasts alike, and I felt profoundly grateful for it. I
appreciated it even more when the camels arrived much belated in the dark, realizing what it meant
to have escaped a night's halt on ground where neither beast nor man could have found a spot to
rest in comfort. And when the next days' marches proved that we had crossed this forbidding
sea of hard salt at the very point where it was narrowest, I had reason to be thankful for the indica-
tions that had led me to select this line.

One of the hired camels had broken down some miles out ; the men whom I sent back from Trials of
camp could not find it in the dark, and it was only brought in next morning. The feet of most camels in
of the others were cracked and sore, and the 're-soling' of the worst sufferers kept the men busy crossing.
during the night, though a bitter north-east wind made the work doubly trying. The camels
themselves now seemed to feel hunger more than all the rest of their trials, and could with difficulty
be prevented, on the march, from eating the reed-straw off each other's saddles. As soon as they
had arrived and were unloaded, they took eagerly to eating the soft salty soil. When the abandoned
camel was recovered in the morning neither feeding with oil-cakes from our reserve of emergency
fodder nor a fair drink of melted ice could restore the poor animal's strength. Ultimately, as it
was unable, though unladen, to keep up with the rest, it had to be shot a few miles from the start.
This was the only loss ever incurred on all my desert crossings.

Our march was resumed on the morning of March 2nd with the previous south-easterly bearing. Progress
It led first between salt-encrusted Yārdang ridges of the same type as those we had encountered SE. through
along the opposite shore of the sea-bed. They rose from twenty to twenty-five feet and standing salt-coated
in closely serried lines for the first couple of miles forced us to make constant detours. The Nullahs Yārdangs.
between them showed a hard crust of salt. But its cakes were big and fairly flat, and after the
preceding day's experience the going seemed comparatively easy. Farther on, the lines of Yārdangs
grew wider apart, and the patches of shōr-covered ground between them, one hundred to two
hundred yards broad, were marked only by low swellings of salty soil or small hillocks with gentle
slopes. The ridges themselves all retained their wall-like appearance and showed a uniform
bearing from N. 30° E. to S. 30° W. For the first four and a half miles from camp they continued
to be heavily coated with shōr, as if they had been submerged for a long period in the salt sea.
Yet the shōr between them grew gradually less hard, and was in places overlaid with coarse sand
and a thin coat of gravel, no doubt blown down from the Sai eastwards. The ends of the ridges
still adjoined so closely that passages practicable for camels had to be sought by detours.

Beyond this distance the intervals between the lines of Yārdangs grew wider and wider, and Yārdangs
the Yārdangs themselves less heavily impregnated with salt. They were in consequence far more growing
exposed to the erosive action of the winds, and this had left its clear mark upon them by shaping lower.
their tops into fantastic forms suggesting domes, pinnacles, &c. The ridges themselves became
lower and lower as we continued our march to the south-east, and after having covered close on
nine miles from Camp C. ciii, we reached with true relief the edge of a wide plain. Its level surface,