Innermost Asia : vol.2 / 269 ページ（カラー画像）

0269	Innermost Asia : vol.2
極奥アジア : vol.2

Korla with its Chinese garrison, and is easily accessible from the high road. It was scarcely
surprising that with the lulling of official apprehensions almost all these unwilling settlers had soon
found their way thence to the Kara-shahr side, where they could join an older colony of their kin
and obtain better openings for their hereditary pursuits.

The conclusions to which the above information had led me as regards the latest shift of the Observa-
head-quarters of modern Wei-li were fully confirmed by what I observed on the occasion of our tions at ' old
move on March 29th from the 'new town' of Kara-kum to the northward. For about two miles Kara-kum '.
clearings had been made and fields laid out amidst patches still showing luxuriant tamarisk jungle.
Then after crossing an unreclaimed area, where a dry bed was pointed out to me as the head of
an old river-course connected with the lagoon of Gherilghan-köl near our Camp ccli, we arrived at
the southern edge of 'old Kara-kum' cultivation. Reeds and scrub had overrun most of the fields,
but the people who still occupied two farms had no complaints to make of the unproductiveness of
their soil. A mile farther on we reached the half-deserted Bāzār of the 'old town' with its Sarai
and Ya-mēn buildings. Here I was able to examine a number of settlers who had stuck to their
land, among them some who had come when the colony was first established about 1900. They
expressed themselves quite satisfied with the quality of the soil they were cultivating, and attributed
the departure of others to some extent to the damage done in certain parts of the cultivated area by
the accumulation of stagnant water below rice fields, which causes shōr to develop around. It
was over-abundance of canal water and neglect of drainage that accounted for this. But the reasons
for the abandonment of a far greater proportion of the land were to be found, firstly in the vagrant
disposition of settlers of the type described above who were ever for trying their luck in new places ;
and secondly in official pressure which had forced others to give up their holdings and to take up
land in the newly 'boomed' settlement on the river. In an orchard close to the Ya-mēn various
fruit trees and vines were still thriving, eloquent proof that both soil and water suited their cultiva-
tion. But with signs of neglect all round, their death through want of regular irrigation could not
be long deferred. Yet the canal which brought water to the distributary channels of both old and
new Kara-kum had been enlarged only a few years before with the help of some two thousand men
collected for this beneficent corvée from Korla, Bugur, and other oases. Where I measured its
discharge higher up close to Shinega, it amounted to over 200 cubic feet of water per second, and
there was nothing to prevent this being greatly increased ; for the canal took off above Korla, where
the volume of the Konche-daryā was at all seasons greatly in excess of present irrigation require-
ments.

Leaving the last fields of 'old Kara-kum', the road passed across a wide level plain with Ruined
abundance of scrub and reeds, where water was said to be everywhere obtainable at no great station,
depth and to be free from salinity. Having thus covered some eight miles through a district which, Y. ix, at
given an adequate population, could readily be transformed into a fertile tract, we turned off north- Suget-
eastwards, when within sight of Shinega village, to the spring of Suget-bulak at the foot of the bulak.
gravel glacis. A ruined tower rises near it on a low projecting terrace of the Sai and is passed by
the track coming from Sanje and Yār-karaul. It has decayed into a shapeless mass of brickwork,
about 37 feet in diameter and about 10 feet high, and has evidently suffered much through the
burrowings of treasure-seekers. Its position leaves no doubt that it belonged to the line of ancient
watch-stations guarding the route from Ying-p'an. I could not learn of any ruin intermediate
between Y. ix and Yār-karaul, about ten miles distant ; but from the configuration of the ground
it seems probable that when this tower was intact, the post of Yār-karaul on its high Mesa could
be sighted from it.

This was the last of the watch-towers of which remains could be traced along the ancient
ii 5 ii

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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
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ