Innermost Asia : vol.2 / 216 ページ（カラー画像）

0216	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

on his way to join me. I arranged through Muḥammad Bāqir, who was eager to try his luck as
a hunter while we halted, to leave directions for the young surveyor under a cairn at the spring of
Yaka-yārdang-bulak. But it was uncertain when he would be there and whether he would find
the instructions.

Section III.—TO ANCIENT GRAVEYARDS BY THE KURUK-DARYĀ

Start for
Kuruk-
daryā.

On the morning of March 6th we set out for the Kuruk-daryā, after a night during which a
strong wind from the north-east had allowed us little rest or comfort. In order not to load our
camels too heavily, we left behind all baggage that could be spared and took a restricted store of
ice, expecting to be able to supplement it from the ice sheet to be found at Yaka-yārdang-bulak.
Our way for the first two miles led down the stony bed extending south from Yārdang-bulak.
Then I struck to the south-south-east, where Dr. Hedin's map showed Yaka-yārdang-bulak to
be situated ; with this guidance and that of a tracing of Lāl Singh's survey, I hoped to have no
difficulty in finding the spring, even without the help of Muḥammad Bāqir, who had failed to
rejoin us. We were proceeding over absolutely bare gravel Sai when a violent Burān sprang up
from the south-east and with the dust haze carried before it effaced all the distant view. After we
had covered about six miles from camp under these dismal conditions, the bearing followed brought
us down over steeply eroded clay banks into a bay-like depression studded with Mesas.¹ Those
close to which we passed all rose to a height of 30 to 35 feet, and at once carried me back to well-
remembered sights around the ancient Lop Sea. Having skirted this strange Mesa-filled area,
which was found by subsequent survey to extend about four miles farther to the east, we reached
a wide network of shallow beds clearly representing the main drainage channel into which are
gathered all the flood-beds we had passed since leaving Jigda-bulak.

Halt at
Yaka-
yārdang-
bulak.

Here we came upon living tamarisk-cones and also, before long, the first patch of reeds.
Following the shallow flood channels to the south-east, over ground which the blinding dust raised
by the icy gale made still more deceptive, we arrived, about three miles beyond the Mesas, at a belt
of open salt-encrusted ground. As Lāl Singh's plane-table suggested that he had camped near
the northern edge of this, I now steered to the east and halted on reaching some luxuriant
beds of reeds after a total march of twelve miles. Recognizing this as approximately the place
where Lāl Singh's camp had stood, I halted the baggage and set out with Shamsuddin to search
for the more northerly of the two springs which the plane-table indicated. But this attempt was
frustrated by the unlucky combination of the 'low visibility' resulting from the Burān and the
absence of Muḥammad Bāqir ; returning that morning to Yārdang-bulak from the place where
he had shot the wild camel, he had failed to meet us when we crossed the Sai. We found indeed
to the north-west a narrow channel, coming from a little Nullah marked by steep clay cliffs, in
which the shōr-covered soil felt moist. We walked up it for about a mile and on digging there came
upon water at a depth of only one foot. But it was utterly salt and undrinkable even for the camels.²
We then looked for the spring marked to the eastwards, amidst the low salt-encrusted hillocks,
like miniature 'White Dragon mounds', which there skirt the foot of the gravel glacis ; but our

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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
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