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| 0147 |
Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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of the population, all Dolāns who until very recent times led a semi-nomadic life and in places
still continue to do so.¹ I found these difficulties illustrated on entering, at a distance of about
four miles, a wide belt where fields and farms had been abandoned during recent years to luxuriant
reeds and scrub. The water-supply was said to have been inadequate during the preceding few
seasons ; but the scarcity could not have been very serious, seeing that the young trees in the
abandoned arbours and orchards were still flourishing vigorously.
Following a track known as *Kelpin-yoli*, by which the people of Kelpin are accustomed to
make their way to Marāl-bāshi through the desert, we passed into a sandy steppe ; here young
Toghraks had grown up in plenty since irrigation was first extended, some seventeen years before,
to the outlying cultivation belt that had now again been abandoned. After a march of about
nine miles vegetation became restricted to sparse tamarisk-cones, many of them dead. These,
too, disappeared near the point where we left the Kelpin track to make for a gap visible in the
rugged hill range of Bēl-tāgh to the north-east. For over five miles we now travelled over a bare
clay steppe, which soon began to show those regular wind-cut terraces or ' Yārdangs ' with which
I had become so familiar in the Lop basin. They reached here only to an average height of between
four and six feet, with a bearing varying between N. to S. and NE. to SW. This bearing, like
that of the Yārdangs met with in 1908 on my way south of Kelpin, clearly showed that the direction
of the prevailing winds was here also much the same as in that far-off Lop desert where the effect
of wind-erosion is so widely marked.
But, on approaching the gap above mentioned,² I found a far more striking demonstration of the
vast power exerted by wind-erosion over the whole Tārim basin, and of the great part it has played
over countless ages in shaping its surface formations. For the gap, about half a mile wide and
lying at its bottom about 150 feet above the level of the plain, had manifestly been cut through
by the force of the winds, which strike the range at right angles and are ever at work here with
their corrosive agent, the drift-sand. To the south of the gap and along the south-western or lee
face of the range the sand lies heaped up in huge dunes to an estimated height of at least 500 feet
from the level of the plain. The crest of the range rises steeply above the dunes for another hundred
feet or so, everywhere showing sharp cuttings like the top of a crenelated wall. The effects of
wind-erosion, presented here on a huge scale, resembled in every detail those I had observed years
before on the east face of the modern town walls of An-hsi and at the breached and half-effaced
circumvallations of the ruined towns near An-hsi and Ch'iao-tzŭ.³ In and near the gap no
sand was lying, because the winds sweeping freely over the gentle gravel slope would carry off
whatever particles of decomposed rock, &c., they had brought. But farther south, where the
grinding work of the wind is actually proceeding along the hill crest, the sand, whether driven up
from the north-east or locally produced by erosion, is allowed to settle down on the lee side and to
accumulate in stationary dunes. The slight east to west bend in the direction of the range shown
here by our survey may help further to account for the exceptional height of the accumulations
at this point. Altogether no more striking illustration could be looked for of that great process
of wind-erosion which has carved out and isolated all the bold island-like hills to the east and
north-east of Marāl-bāshi.⁴ I shall have occasion farther on to recur to the evidence here afforded,
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684
Copyright (C) 2003-2019
National Institute of Informatics
and
The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.
