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0285 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 285 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

have seen reason to believe that a change of climate caused
the people to give up pastoral nomadism and to adopt the
sedentary pursuits of agriculture. Such a change must have
vastly increased the number of inhabitants. We cannot
say exactly what its influence may have been upon their
character, but it must have been great. In the far more arid
region of Endereh, a change of climate of precisely the same
nature caused a reversal of the process. Physical conditions
became less favorable, the habitability of the country was
diminished, and the dense population of an agricultural
community gave place to a few scattered shepherds. If
similar results have taken place in other regions, history
may have been influenced most profoundly thereby.
From Endereh eastward for two hundred and fifty miles
to Charklik, our journey was uneventful. We followed the
zone of vegetation quite closely, but zigzagged more or less.
Everywhere, in this remote region, there are unmistakable
evidences of a great change of climate. For scores of miles
where no man lives, we found great tamarisk mounds, dead
poplars, or vast beds of dead reeds. All of the few previ-
ous travelers who have visited the country have strictly
followed the road, which naturally keeps along the southern
edge of the zone of vegetation, where alone water is avail-
able in shallow saline wells, and where, of course, the vege-
tation is more vigorous than elsewhere. Hence they have not
noticed the unmistakable evidences of desiccation which
abound elsewhere.
A hundred miles east of Cherchen we came to the Vash
Sheri River, which rushes swiftly down from the moun-
tains, and, after losing most of its volume in the piedmont