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| 0375 |
Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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on a straight line drawn from the *castrum* L.E. to the end of the northernmost branch of the
Kuruk-daryā and to the 'Tati' area marked on it in Map No. 29. c. 3.
From that point westwards it appears to me quite certain, in view of unchanging and clearly Ancient
defined physical features, that the line of the ancient high road must always have kept as close to highway
the foot of the Kuruk-tāgh glacis as consideration for water-supply, grazing and fuel would permit : Kuruk-
for the level Sai of gravel along the edge of the glacis would in ancient times, just as now, have daryā.
offered the easiest ground for traffic. Protection was there afforded from all those troubles of
flooding, shifting banks, drift-sand, &c., with which roads close to rivers are always beset under
the conditions of the Tārim basin.¹⁶ The route leading from the Lou-lan station L.A. towards
Ying-p'an could not have gained the natural highway along the edge of the Kuruk-tāgh glacis
and the river-bed skirting it by a shorter line than the one running to the north-west and striking
the gravel Sai near the point marked by Lāl Singh's 'Tati'. And that the route actually followed
this line is made highly probable by the fact that along it there stretches, as the map shows, the series
of ruined Stūpas, Buddhist shrines and residences between L.A. and L.B. which I explored in 1906.¹⁷
The remains and the records found at L.A. leave no doubt that the ruined station at that spot Route from
was, anyhow during the closing period of the occupation of Lou-lan, the administrative centre of L.E. to
the territory through which the Chinese 'route of the centre' passed. There must have been Kuruk-
adequate reasons justifying its location at this point, such as facilities for irrigation and the con- daryā.
sequent command of agricultural resources. But whatever these considerations may have been,
they could not do away with the fact that travel by the route leading first from L.E. south-west-
wards to the L.A. station and thence north-westwards to the nearest point at the foot of the Kuruk-
tāgh glacis involved a not inconsiderable detour. It is therefore probable that the direct route
between the first and the last points was also frequented to some extent, and this may help to account
for the traces of ancient occupation that we encountered between Camp 84 and the edge of the glacis.
As we continued our march to the north-west from the remains of the ancient dwelling described Approach
on the preceding page the Yārdang ridges became steadily lower and flat patches of ground, to foot of
obviously levelled down by wind-erosion, such as I had noticed already before reaching the ruin, glacis.
became ever more frequent. The sand was growing coarser as we approached the edge of the Sai,
and this increased strength of the corrosive agent evidently accounted for the greater extent of the
ground over which erosion had completed its work and produced flat depressions. One of these
clay-bottomed depressions, crossed at about eight and a half miles' distance from camp, showed signs
of having occasionally been flooded by drainage from the hill slopes northward. Varying flood
levels were marked by lines of Toghrak trunks which may have been washed down from the slopes
of Yārdangs that have since completely disappeared. Here I came also upon a few specimens of
those curious wind-driven balls of thorn, known as *shap*, which, apparently rootless, can keep
alive on a minimum of atmospheric moisture. They may have been brought down from a higher
level on the Kuruk-tāgh glacis.
The actual foot of this glacis, marked by a gravel Sai, was reached about a mile beyond the Ancient
last-named depression and close to the point where Lāl Singh's Camp 80 had stood. Above this burial-
to the north and only about two furlongs away, a few broad clay terraces of no great height emerge chamber.
from the uniform gravel cover of the Sai, evidently 'witnesses' of an older ground level which had
escaped being buried by the deposit of piedmont gravel. On the top of one of these, Azīz, an
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684
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