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

> > > >
カラー New!IIIFカラー高解像度 白黒高解像度 PDF   日本語 English
0151 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 151 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000233
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

into the porous, thirsty gravel. Most of the smaller streams
thus disappear entirely, and many of the larger ones do
likewise except during the flood season. The effect is most
marked where the break between the plateaus and the
basin floor takes the form of a fault, for there the steepness
of the slope of the valleys cut in the escarpment causes the
streams to be very swift and to bring down a great amount
of coarse detritus. The sudden change of grade at the base
of the mountains necessitates the deposition of much ma-
terial, with the result that huge slopes of piedmont gravel
are formed. Between Keriya and Cherchen they sometimes
reach a width of forty or fifty miles. Only a large stream
can succeed in crossing such an expanse of parched, naked
gravel. It is evident that the major part of the rather abun-
dant supply of water from the mountains must disappear
in the piedmont gravel zone long before it can reach a
point where it might support much vegetation, or be util-
ized by man. The water is not wholly lost, however, for
it cannot sink straight downward. The gravel contains
frequent lenses of somewhat clayey, less pervious material,
along the slightly sloping surface of which the water is
obliged to flow away from the mountains. Moreover, the
few wells which have been dug show that the lower layers
of the gravel are saturated with water, and hence whatever
more seeps down from above must tend to flow along the
surface of the previous ground water, the level of which
necessarily slopes away from the mountains. The net
result is that the vanished streams spread out into an un-
derground sheet, which slowly, but steadily, flows toward
the centre of the basin. As it gets away from the rather