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

of their abandonment. I was therefore particularly glad of the opportunity afforded by my halt
at the ' new town ' of Kara-kum, still actually ' in the making ', to secure some reliable information
about the ground close by from which the latest shift had just been made, and as to the reason
why that ground had been relinquished. I was fortunately able to make my inquiries in several
quarters of widely different character and to compare the data.

It was a peculiarly happy chance that enabled me to gather the official view of the case from
the late magistrate of the district, a very intelligent Tungan talking fluent Turkī, who was just
on the point of retiring to Urumchi. Familiar with the local conditions of his charge from a stay
which had extended over several years, and at the same time no longer directly interested in its
affairs, he was ready to offer observations with a frankness not usual among Chinese administrators
still in office and to do so at the same time, as far as I could judge, without bias. The difficulties
with which all efforts to encourage cultivation on the lower Tārīm, in the Lop tract proper, have to
contend were attributed by Huang Ta-lao-yeh partly to the vagaries of the river branches, which often
interfere with the maintenance of canal heads and favour the opening of new canals by other small
colonies at the expense of the older ones, but even more to the attitude of the indigenous Lopliks.
Themselves unfitted by their habits for steady agricultural work, they oppose the settlement of
immigrants likely to remain on the land from fear that these will interfere with their grazing and
traditional livelihood. In spite of these impediments, Tikenlik was more than maintaining itself
as a village of considerable size for these parts. Afrāz-gul, whose independent report on Tikenlik
fully confirmed the above statements, found there close on 150 households, among them a large
proportion of Turfān people, some of whom had been settled there for about twenty years. Of
fields being ruined by shōr he heard no complaints, but he did hear of occasional shortness of the
canal discharge, due to the causes above indicated.

Conditions very different from these were affecting the fortune of Kara-kum, as might evidently
be expected from the distinct geographical character of the district. As reference to the map
will show, the lands of Kara-kum lie in a big nook which is bounded in the north by a low outlying
plateau from the Kuruk-tāgh, on the east by the glacis of the hill range striking towards the south-
east, and on the other sides is encircled by the bending course of the Konche-daryā. It is not from
this adjacent portion of the river's course that Kara-kum receives its irrigation, but from a large
canal which takes off above Korla not far from where the drainage of the Baghrash lake issues
from the hills. This canal is carried through a gap in the above-mentioned plateau near the village
of Bāsh-engiz (Map No. 21. D. 1). Thence passing the prosperous village of Shinega it distributes
its water over the flat expanse of fertile alluvium at 'old' Kara-kum. Cultivation here is thus
wholly independent of any changes in the course or level of the river, and is assured a constant and
abundant supply of water coming almost straight from the great lake reservoir which gathers the
drainage from a considerable section of the high T'ien-shan. The water brought down by this
canal is as fresh as that of the lake, and it is not its salinity that has caused trouble at Kara-kum.

There, as in other places, the outcrop of shōr which has injuriously affected a portion of the
area brought under cultivation near 'old' Kara-kum was, as Huang Ta-lao-yeh explained and older
settlers I consulted acknowledged, directly a result of over-irrigation carried on without any
attempt to provide for adequate drainage. The plain being almost perfectly level, the water, where
it has been left to stagnate around the fields, has necessarily caused the soil of these to turn more
and more salt with a consequent rapid diminution of the yield. Exactly the same difficulty always
occurs at canal ends, in India as well as Turkestān, wherever the water-supply is abundant and
efficient control is not exercised to enforce the requisite drainage operations. Even where the
ground by its fall provides natural drainage, cultivation newly opened is bound in an arid region