Innermost Asia : vol.1 / Page 495 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

0495	Innermost Asia : vol.1

to a narrow bed, cut between steep clay banks about 20 feet high. Where a bridge from the suburb
crosses the bed, it is only 50 feet wide.

There remains finally to be considered the question why the military station intended to guard Reason for
the southern end of the desert route was placed on the right bank of the river, on ground quite guarding
incapable of cultivation and otherwise far from attractive. The answer to this question will also right
help to throw light on the reasons which induced the builders of the Han Limes to carry its line, bank.
from the great bend of the Su-lo-ho as far as the spur opposite to the Wan-shan-tzŭ hills, close along
the right bank over what at all times must have been desolate desert. I believe that the reason
must be looked for in the obvious advantages of military defence, which, being due to topographical
facts, have remained unchanged ever since Chinese power first reached these westernmost confines
of Kan-su.

At first sight the river might suggest itself as the natural and most convenient border line, and Access to
the cultivated ground on the left bank as the most suitable position for a military station intended water
to guard the termination of a route across the desert by which attack from the north-west might barred.
threaten these marches. But closer consideration soon disclosed that the determinant factor in
defence here is not the river, easily fordable during the greater part of the year, but the waterless
desert stretching in a wide belt immediately to the north of it. Across the barren gravel glacis of
the Pei-shan no water is to be found nearer than a marshy spring which Professor Futterer's map
places at a direct distance of seventeen miles from the position of Ch'iao-wan-ch'êng, in a depres-
sion marked also by our survey.⁷ It is obvious that, by preventing access to the water of the
river, raids upon the oases south of the Su-lo-ho and the great line of communication leading past
them could be checked far more effectively than by keeping a watch merely on the river's left
bank.⁸

We may thus, I believe, reasonably account both for the line chosen here for the border 'wall' Chinese
of Han Wu-ti and for the occupation of Ch'iao-wan-ch'êng as a military station some eighteen eye for
centuries later. Both were measures resulting from a policy of Chinese expansion towards Central military
Asia, and on both occasions those responsible for the military safeguarding of the 'corridor' of topography.
the lower Su-lo-ho valley, essential for that policy, were guided by the same keen eye for the
quasi-strategic aspects of topography that has remained a traditional inheritance of Chinese military
organization.

In connexion with Ch'iao-wan-ch'êng it may here be mentioned that its position was likewise Alternative
well chosen for watching a second route that debouches from the Pei-shan in this vicinity. I mean route to
the route followed first by Messrs. Grum Grishmailo and then by M. Obrucheff. It starts some Hāmi.
8 miles higher up from the bend of the Su-lo-ho and thence leads with a winding course, first north
and then north-west, to its junction with Professor Futterer's route at Mo-t'ou-ching (Map No.
37. D. 4).⁹ This route as a line of communication with Hāmi is less direct, but nevertheless of some
importance, as it connects past the wells of Ming-shui (Map No. 40. A. 1) with other tracks prac-

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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Citation Information

OCR Text

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books