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| 0060 |
Innermost Asia : vol.2 |
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OCR Text
ments regarding Lāl Singh's work after the connexion of his triangulation had been secured
required still more care. I was anxious that he should survey as much as possible of the wholly
unexplored portion of the Kuruk-tāgh which extends between Āltmish-bulak and the terminal
depression below Hāmi. Survey work on this forbidding desert ground would certainly be attended
with serious risks, and neither my old surveying companion's indomitable energy nor the hoped-
for help of Abdurrahīm and his brave camels could altogether guard against them.
Survey of
Turfān
basin. No physical difficulties would have to be faced in the course of the detailed survey of the Turfān
basin, which was to occupy the second surveyor during the winter months. But the arrangements
for this task, too, necessarily called for a good deal of attention. Carefully determined points in
the hill range forming the northern rim of the basin proper, which were to serve for clinometrical
height readings, had to be selected from the outset ; and appropriate measures had to be taken
to obviate the risk of Chinese official obstruction with survey work which had to be carried on in
a closely inhabited area and obviously could not be brought under the head of archaeological
operations.¹ Curiously enough when obstruction came, towards the end of my stay in Turfān,
it was not against topographical but archaeological activity that it was directed.
Track from
Shona-nōr
to Chik-tam
surveyed. Surveyor Muḥammad Yāqūb had rejoined me on November 5th, after having carried out
satisfactorily the survey task with which he had been charged after leaving Hāmi. He had not
been able to secure there any guide acquainted with the track which the Russian Trans-frontier
Map marks 'from native information' as leading from the Shona-nōr depression to Lukchun.
Information subsequently obtained by Lāl Singh at Deghar showed that this track, traditionally
known as having been used at one time by hunters of wild camels from Hāmi, had become im-
practicable for more than a generation by the drying up of certain salt springs. So Muḥammad
Yāqūb, in accordance with my instructions, first proceeded to the outlying oasis of Kara-dōbe
(Map No. 34. B. 3), visited by me in 1907, and thence made his way, past dry Wadis descending
from the north, to the terminal bed of the Hāmi drainage known as Shona-nōr. He found this,
as well as the two smaller depressions of Kosh-gumbaz-nōr and Kichik-nōr linked with it, quite
dry. The whole area, as seen in Maps Nos. 34. A. 3, 31. D. 3, with its far-stretching tongues of gravel
Sai and Mesa-filled depressions between them, evidently exhibits the same characteristic features
of ancient lacustrine basins with which the terminal basin of the Su-lo-ho and, on a much larger
scale, the ancient Lop sea-bed, have made us familiar. Thence he passed over absolutely barren
wastes of stone or gravel due west towards Pichan, reaching the first water and vegetation after
five days, at a small spring to the south-east of Chik-tam. Considering that no ice was as yet
available and that for fully ten days the little party, including a hunter from Hāmi, had to subsist
on the water carried in two of my galvanized iron tanks, it was a very plucky performance. At
the same time it conclusively proved that this track, a portion of which had been followed by Colonel
Kozlov as a member of Captain Roborovsky's expedition, could never have served as a regular
route.
Ruins of
Idikut-
shahri. Apart from the survey arrangements above indicated, my first stay at Kara-khōja was mainly
devoted to reconnaissances for the purpose of discovering those sites and ruins where, even after
the labours of preceding expeditions, there still remained scope for profitable archaeological work.
From that convenient base I paid preliminary visits in succession to the cemetery sites near Kara-
khōja and its large sister village Āstāna ; to the cave-shrines of Toyuk ; the ruined temples of
Senghim-aghiz, Chikkan-kōl, Bezeklik and Murtuk. But, naturally, I was at first principally
attracted by the remains still surviving within or quite close to the large ruined town, popularly
known as Dākiānūs-shahrī, but also and more appropriately designated as Idikut-shahrī, the
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