Innermost Asia : vol.1 / 651 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0651	Innermost Asia : vol.1
極奥アジア : vol.1

fairly old and the sand was invading all of its numerous courts and shrines. With its elaborate
and graceful wooden pavilions, balustraded passages, and bridges connecting different shrines
it recalled more closely the architecture of celestial mansions as represented in the Ch'ien-fo-tung
paintings of the Western Paradise than any of the structures seen by me on Chinese ground. Its
remains when completely abandoned to the drift-sand may provide an interesting 'site' for some
future excavator a thousand years or more hence. It is evidently a cherished place of pilgrimage
for the inhabitants of the flourishing walled villages by the river, and I regret not to have been able
to secure an account of its origin and tradition.

Below Lo-pa the line of continuous cultivation with its picturesque villages (Figs. 281, 282) comes Lāl Singh's
to an end. Cultivation farther down is reduced to a succession of narrow patches between the high survey
sands covering the foot of the barren low hills eastwards and the wide river-bed. A somewhat south of
wider belt of cultivation was again reached at the large walled village of Hsiang-p'u, where to my Kao-t'ai.
great satisfaction I found Lāl Singh safely arrived after crossing the river. He had completely
carried out his final task in the mountains south of Li-yüan and Kao-t'ai, having received a very
friendly welcome at the camps of the Shera and Sarö Yögurs, small tribes of Mongol and Turkish-
speaking nomads, who graze in those mountains.⁵ By this additional effort my untiring companion
had succeeded in extending the Nan-shan surveys carried out during this journey over an area
quite as large as that mapped there in 1907.

About ten miles below Hsiang-p'u lies the small oasis of Chêng-i, where bare rocky ridges Passage
approach the river valley on both sides and gradually narrow it to a gorge. A military post still through
maintained in the little walled town is a relic of the time when the passage through the mediaeval 'Great
wall, rising immediately above the point where the river enters the gorge between steep cliffs about Wall' at
300 feet high, was guarded as a true kuan or barrier. This character of the locality is marked also Chêng-i.
by small shrines occupying terraces on either side of the river. The defile (Fig. 277) in which the
river has here cut its way through the barren hill chain extending all the way from above Kan-chou
to beyond Su-chou is quite impassable when the river is in flood, and probably impracticable for
traffic at other seasons also. The road towards Mao-mei crosses the bare rocky ridge to the east
by a pass, about 400 feet higher up and away from the river, and then descends again towards
the latter in a narrow tortuous valley. Where the river debouches from the defile and the spur to
the east of it flattens out into a gravel fan, a huge ridge of dunes, probably 300 feet in height,
stretches down from the north to the right bank. The road crosses it over two steep saddles of drift-
sand, and here the hauling up of our carts was accomplished only with great labour and delayed
us for hours. The whole route from below Chêng-i offers a succession of strong defensive positions,
and rows of watch-towers both on and above the pass show that it was duly guarded. From Ta-tzŭ-
wan, the first hamlet encountered on the north side, a long day's march, mostly over bare gravel
or steppe and past straggling strips of cultivation by the river, finally brought us back on August
29th to our old temple quarters by Mao-mei. There to my relief I found the second surveyor safely
returned with our camels from their summer grazing. In spite of the heat that they had experienced
in the low hills beyond the terminal basin of the Etsin-gol, the camels were fit to face the hard work
of the long desert journey before us.

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

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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

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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