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0249 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / Page 249 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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the gleaming expanse of the broad, shallow river, with its
sand-bars, snags, and driftwood. Beyond it lay a golden
plain of reeds, and a low belt of green poplar woods. The
scene might almost have been on some slow river in Indi-
ana. But the white and brown flock of fat-tailed sheep,
the shepherd boy wading across the stream in a white gown
and a fur cap, and above all the great two-humped camels
stripping the leaves from the poplars, disturbed the illusion.
The line of low yellow hills a mile away beyond the band
of green was the border of the great red desert, whose slowly
drifting sands have marched persistently forward for two
thousand years or more in the wake of dying vegetation.

In returning to the region of villages, I followed a route
in the sand several miles west of the Keriya River. There
was nothing which could by any possibility be an old course
of the river leading to Dandan-Uilik. There were, however,
a number of isolated areas of dead vegetation lying in large
hollows surrounded by sand. They became more numer-
ous as we approached the zone of vegetation. Along the
border of the zone, half or more of the plants were dead.
Such phenomena furnish strong evidence that not only
among the ruins, but in other parts of the now lifeless des-
ert, vegetation flourished abundantly at no very remote
period.