国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

Muḥammad Bāqir explained that his father had started cultivation here before the Muhammadan
rebellion, but had been obliged to abandon the work owing to the depredations of roving Tungan
bands from the Kara-shahr side. They also wrought havoc among the Mongols, many of whom
were then still grazing their flocks in the hills to the west and south-west. He had never heard
complaints from his father, who had lived to well over eighty, of any diminution of the water-supply
or of its salinity ; but he was aware of the difficulty of coping with floods on such ground as could
be cultivated lower down the stream. The chief difficulty, however, was obviously want of labour.

Tree-growth On February 26th an interesting march on our way towards Shindī brought me to ground
in valley
from Hsi- of a strikingly different character. An ascent of about six miles, at first very gentle, led up an
ta-shan. alluvial fan abundantly covered with scrub and reeds. Near its head big elm trees, such as were
to be seen here and there lower down also along the shallow branching flood-beds, were gathered
in large groves. Then rather suddenly we found ourselves entering the valley, flanked by steeply
eroded hills from the point where it debouches, in which the whole northward drainage of the Hsi-
ta-shan is conveyed. The valley bottom, from about 60 to 80 yards wide and winding between bare
rocky spurs, looked as if it were completely washed at times by floods from the melting snow on
the high portions of the range and from occasional heavy rain. But by its sides fine elms had found
room to grow up, many of them manifestly of great age. One, a large but by no means exceptional
specimen, showed a girth of over twelve feet at a height of three feet from the ground. Wherever
there were spaces at the bends left untouched by the floods, they were covered by a plentiful growth
of scrub and coarse grasses; farther up the Nullah I found similar vegetation, though much thinner,
ascending also the foot of the precipitous rock slopes. Considering the general character of this
region it looked like a herdsman's paradise, but no trace of his presence was met until some eleven
miles from P'o-ch'êng-tzŭ. The lead smelters, however, were evidently alive to the usefulness of
the wood, and for some miles up the Nullah traces of a cart track showed where dry fuel had been
gathered by them. On an eminence close to the mouth of the valley I noticed a smelting furnace,
and a point about two miles up, where the route followed by Lāl Singh in 1907 to the Altun-ghol
turned into a small side valley westwards, was known to Muḥammad Bāqir as 'Sanzulo'. This
manifestly Chinese designation meant according to him 'Three Ovens', and if so may be derived
from other smelting-places near by and, perhaps, correctly spelt San-tsao-lu.¹

Peaks of Light snow lay in patches over the valley bottom. So it did not occur to us that above the
Hsi-ta-
shan. springs of Chong- and Kichik-tatlik-bulak, known also by the Mongol name of Burgastu, no
water was found in the several wells and 'Kāks' passed. But vegetation continued at the bottom
of the gradually contracting valley, which all along bears the appropriate designation of Chong-
aghiz, 'the big ravine'. The rock exposed on its sides seemed to be composed throughout of
crystalline slate, striking from east to west with a dip of about 80° to the south. After about fourteen
miles of march a point was reached where what seemed the main valley turns to the south-east,
and here an impressive view opened towards the wildly serrated central summits of the Hsi-ta-shan.
Their extremely precipitous rock faces appeared to rise fully three thousand feet above the fairly
open head of the valley, which stretches up to their foot. These rock walls and the sharp pinnacles
above them presented a very striking contrast to the much-eroded outer range through which the
Chong-āghiz has cut its way, and recalled the fantastic appearance of the Kāka-jāde peaks rising
in the Kara-teke range south-west of Uch-Turfān.² As our route led off to the south-west past the
frowning cliffs of a buttress of the main Hsi-ta-shan massif, its highest summits were not sighted
again with sufficient clearness for definite identification. Hence no exact clinometrical readings
could be secured. But according to the rough estimate made by me at the time, those summits