National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

In the case of carts drawn by oxen the proportion of profitable load would scarcely work out
more favourably, considering that the rate of progress would be far slower. The fact that bullock-
carts are scarcely ever met with on the present main routes of Chinese Turkestān seems to suggest
that there may be local reasons operating against their general employment.

Notwithstanding the discouraging conditions under which traffic was thus carried on, and the Records of
very great hardships which the use of the route must have involved, especially for large bodies route used
of travellers, we read in Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien's history that Chang Ch'ien about 119 B.C. proceeded by by Chinese
it to the Wu-sun country as 'leader of an expedition consisting of 300 men, each with two horses, missions.
and oxen and sheep in myriads '.¹⁶ The same contemporary record shows that, during the years
immediately succeeding, commercial and political missions from China followed this route in rapidly
increasing numbers.¹⁷ As they were often exposed to attack and robbery in Lou-lan and Ku-shih
(Turfān), a military expedition numbering 'more than seven hundred cavalry' proceeded in
108 B.C. to chastise those territories.¹⁸

But of the physical difficulties which all these enterprises encountered on the Lou-lan route, Dangers
we gain a true idea from the account given by Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien of the view held among the people of Lou-lan
of Ta-yüan or Farghāna : 'China is far away from us, and in the Salt Lake [region] numbers route
of travellers have met with destruction. To the north of it one falls into the hands of Hu referred to.
[Tartar] robbers ; in the south there is dearth of water and vegetation. . . . Chinese missions con-
sisting of merely a few hundred members have quite commonly lost more than half their staff by
starvation. If this be so, how much less could the Chinese send a big army ?'¹⁹

In spite of the great obstacles so graphically recorded in this account the 'Êrh-shih general' Chinese
(Li Kuang-li) was none the less ordered to set out in 104 B.C. by the Lou-lan route for the distant expedition
goal of Farghāna, 'with six thousand cavalry of the feudal states and several hundred thousand to Far-
men, being recruits selected from the riff-raff of the provinces'. We are told that the Chinese army ghāna.

of goods, supplies, &c., and that these could be carried to
a more distant destination. Camels during the winter cold
and even in the late autumn might well go without water
for a week or longer, and would, if in good condition, need
but little in the way of reed-straw on the journey.

Against such an assumption it must, however, be men-
tioned that the use of camel-carts is not known nowadays
in the Tārim basin or in Kan-su. I have been told of their
employment in portions of Dzungaria, e. g. in the sandy tracts
north of Bar-kul, and they are actually to be seen about
Delhi and in certain neighbouring tracts of the Panjāb. It
should also be remembered that advantage from this change
of transport, just on the ground for which camels are best
adapted, could be secured only if the other draught animals
used in bringing the carts to the limit of the waterless area
were taken back over the route they had come by. Arrange-
ments for such a substitution of transport would require
a great deal of organization and care, and could certainly
not be resorted to at all in the case of privately owned trans-
port such as, no doubt, was used in the case of trade caravans
and the like. Even in the case of Government convoys, &c.,
the practical difficulties attending such 'transhipment' at
stations in the desert would be many and serious.

My friend, Major Frank Douie, D.S.O., R.E., has kindly
called my attention to the help that might have been derived
from the additional expedient of large 'dumps' of water
or ice, reed-straw, and fuel at the stages devoid of resources

of any kind. The loads carried on carts moving with detach-
ments of troops could in that case have been confined to
the rations needed by the men and animals on these marches
and to the indispensable impedimenta of the former. The
transport of the supplies to be 'dumped' would have been
facilitated by the use of camel-drawn carts. Major Douie's
suggestion finds support in the fact that the use of depots
along that portion of the route which lay in the Bēsh-toghrak
valley is distinctly attested, at least at one point, by the
Wei lio's mention of the 'Chü-lu granary'; cf. above, p. 308.

The absence of any traceable remains of such 'dumps'
or depots can, I think, be adequately accounted for. On the
one hand there were no materials for buildings of any sort
available on the ground which the waterless portion of the
route crossed. On the other, it is certain that such occasional
caravans, individual travellers, &c., as still continued to
move along the Lou-lan route during more than two centuries
after the easier route via Hāmi had come into general use
both for trade and military movements, would naturally
use up, to the last stick or straw, whatever may have remained
at those 'dumping-places' of materials capable of being
turned to use for fires, &c.