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Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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nearer than T. xxiii. b to be described presently. As the line of the wall coming from the east was
traceable only up to the latter point and there abutted on the marshy foreshore, I was led to assume
that for the intervening distance of fully five miles the ' wet border ' presented by the lake, here at
its widest, was thought to provide sufficient defence. The ground here for over a mile from the
shore is a dead flat and offers no natural position for a watch-station.
But the gap between T. xxii. f and T. xxiii. b was not left altogether unguarded ; for where Position of
the eastern edge of the belt of eroded terraces stretching from T. xxii. f approaches the northern watch-post
extremity of a narrow plateau jutting out from the great Sai on the south we find the two towers T. xxiii. a.
T. xxiii and T. xxiii. a, close together, occupying a conspicuous position at the very end of the
plateau just mentioned.¹⁵ I had already visited them in 1907, as the caravan route to Tun-huang passes
immediately below them, and the results of my renewed examination will be found embodied in the
account I have given of them in Serindia.¹⁶ Considering that the most convenient line of com-
munication from Tun-huang towards Yü-mên and the western end of the Limes must always have
passed here, it appears to me very probable that the occupation of this point by the station T. xxiii. a
and its higher look-out post T. xxiii was intended to serve the double purpose of keeping a watch
on the route, and of linking up the chain of the Limes guard-towers.
The group of watch-stations T. xxiii. b–g and the line of wall connecting them stretches across Boggy
ground which on March 20th to 22nd was found very boggy and in places almost impassable. ground near
This condition appeared to be due in the main to percolation of moisture from a depression to the T.xxiii.b-g.
south of T. xxiii. c and T. xxiii. d. The springs gathering in this are probably fed by subterranean
drainage passing below the gravel Sai from the Tang-ho or river of Tun-huang. It was interesting
to note that this depression is bordered to the south and east by stretches of ground heavily salt-
encrusted, where the surface reproduces, in miniature as it were, the various conditions of shôr
encountered in, and around, the bottom of the ancient Lop sea.
Thus, when on March 21st I transferred my camp to the spring-fed pool of Chien-ch'üan-tzŭ Road worn
(known to the people from Lop as Shôr-bulak),¹⁷ we crossed, for two or three miles before reaching into hard
it, extensive patches of very hard corrugated salt crust recalling those encountered in crossing the salt crust.
arm of the dried-up sea-bed north of Kum-kuduk. It was significant to observe that the road leading
across them was worn quite smooth by traffic, and that its bottom lay three to four feet below the
adjoining surface of hard salt. There could be no doubt that this sunk road was the result of traffic
extending over long periods. The occasional passage of caravans and wood collectors' carts, such
as use the road to-day, could not possibly have produced this condition. The experience gained
here appeared to me a striking confirmation of what I had observed on the line of the ancient
Lou-lan route where it crossed the bay of the dried-up sea-bed to the west of Camp cvi.¹⁸
We may, I believe, trace a notice both of the spring-fed pool of Chien-ch'üan-tzŭ and of the Chinese
dried-up salt marsh to the north-west of it in the interesting topographical text of which a manu- notice of
script, recovered by me in 1907 from Ch'ien-fo-tung and marked Ch. 917, has preserved a fragment. Chien-
According to the translation which Dr. L. Giles has prepared of this manuscript and very kindly ch'üan-tzŭ
pool.
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