Innermost Asia : vol.1 / 646 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0646	Innermost Asia : vol.1
極奥アジア : vol.1

of ponies were frightened by the prospect of having to leave the ta-lu, 'the big road', and the
distance from the new district head-quarters at Tung-lo-hsien (Map No. 46. c. 3) made it easy for
the local headmen or 'Hsiang-yehs' to play their part in the game of obstruction. It needed
continuous efforts during three days, coupled with whatever influence the military commandant,
threatened with the displeasure of his 'T'i-t'ai', could exert, before the seventeen animals needed
were collected. I had agreed to pay double the official rate of hire, and in order to lighten the loads
I let Li Ssŭ-yeh and Naik Shamsuddin return to Kan-chou with every man whom we could spare
while we were in the mountains.

Start for
mountains. On July 13th we were at last able to start. Moving along the foot of a loess-covered spur which
here marks the northernmost outlier of the Nan-shan, we passed the half-deserted walled town
of Yung-k'ou, another small garrison place with a 'Hsieh-t'ai' or colonel in command. Notwith-
standing the steadily increasing elevation, about 8,800 feet at Yung-k'ou, and the total absence
of running water in any of the branching beds of the river which passes Yung-k'ou, all the land right
up to the point where the river's main tributary stream debouches above the village of Chiao-mên-
chiang-tzŭ was laid out in fields. Owing to want of labour and probably also of sufficient manure,
much of the cultivable land is tilled only in alternate years.

Ascent to
O-po pass. The following day's march carried us from our camp at the outfall of the stream right up to
the head of its valley and across the watershed which divides it from the eastern head-waters of the
Kan-chou river due south. It was delightful to find myself again in true alpine scenery, ascending
a verdant valley (Fig. 280) with meadows by the stream covered with carpets of flowers and all
the slopes clothed with luxuriant forest. Above Pien-tung-k'ou, where the road passes through
a 'chiusa' guarded by a small post, the valley narrows to a picturesque gorge by which the stream
coming from the watershed has cut through a high outer range.² From this gorge the route
emerges, near the decayed fort of Êrh-tao-kou, on to a wider portion of the valley (Fig. 279) where
the two main feeders of the stream meet from the north-west and south-east respectively. Here
we encountered the first camps of Tanguts grazing their large herds of yaks and flocks of sheep on
the grassy expanse of wide downs. Snow bridges still covered in places the bed of the small stream,
above which a gentle ascent led to the easy pass of O-po-ling-tzŭ, about 12,680 feet above sea-level,
marking the watershed.

Head-
waters of
Kan-chou
river. From the pass the view lay quite open across the wide plateau that is the gathering-place of
the head-waters of the O-po-ho, the eastern main feeder of the Kan-chou river, as seen in Fig. 278.
The range bordering it to the south and south-east marked the watershed towards the Ta-t'ung-ho,
a tributary of the Huang-ho, and thus towards the Pacific Ocean. The full view of this watershed
and the thought that these mountains owed their abundant vegetation solely to the moisture carried
from the ocean might well have made me forget the huge distance still separating us from it. But
as we stood on the pass, there swept up the valley from the north a strong wind, carrying with it
a dust-haze as if to remind me how close we were still to the great deserts of innermost Asia. If
it is moisture derived from the ocean that produces the rich vegetation of these mountains, it is the

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