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Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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the Yārkand river having once carried its water round the south foot of the Kum-tāgh and Chok-
tāgh is not altogether excluded.¹¹ In any case the moister climatic conditions that the Tārim
basin may be supposed to have shared during geographically recent glacial periods would suffice
to explain the existence of an early Stone Age settlement on this ground. In this connexion it
deserves to be mentioned that the only other stone implement found in the desert south of the
Yārkand river was a very well worked stone arrow-head (Pl. XXII),¹² unmistakably neolithic, which
was picked up about half-way between the southern end of the Chōl-kōl and Camp xxv on the
previously described soft loess ground. Everything points to its being a relic of a more recent
period.
Flakes from
eroded rock
formation. Our march on October 31st revealed even more clearly the truly forbidding nature of the
dunes to the south-east. Six formidable ' Dawāns ', some rising to fully 300 feet above the inter-
vening valleys (Fig. 83), had to be crossed in succession, and excepting a few little patches of clay
emerging in one or two of them (Fig. 89), the valley beds were themselves smothered with heaped-up
dunes. Only one peculiar feature, but that a very interesting one, brought a change into the
distressing uniformity of this formidable sea of sand. In the valleys on either side of the third
' Dawān ' from Camp xxvii the lower slopes of the dunes and the depressions between them showed
for the most part a dark red surface, due to small but easily recognizable flakes of a calcareous
sandstone such as prevails in most of the desert hills east of Marāl-bāshi. The surface layer of
the sandy glacis at the north-east foot of the Kum-tāgh had presented exactly the same appearance,
as previously mentioned,¹³ though there the denudation products of the same rock material had
not yet been reduced to an equal degree of fineness. It appears to me scarcely open to doubt
that the ground we were here passing marked the position of a hill fragment, wholly submerged
in drift-sand, forming part of the ancient wind-eroded range that once extended right through to
the Khotan Mazār-tāgh or beyond. Reference to the map (Nos. 8. c. 2 ; 13. B. 4) will show that the
rock island here assumed to underlie the dunes falls almost exactly in the direction of a line drawn
from the Kum-tāgh towards the Mazār-tāgh on the Khotan river and only about two and a half
miles west of a line connecting the latter point with the central crest of the Chok-tāgh and the
highest portion of the Marāl-bāshi Mazār-tāgh.¹⁴
Trials of
march to
C. xxviii. The constant climbs and descents over huge dunes tried the camels on that day's march so
severely, that of the hired animals intended to act as the ' supporting party ' two had completely
broken down, and the rest had been brought along only with great trouble ; yet their loads had
been much lightened at the last camp by letting all camels have a good drink and half of the three
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