The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 371 ページ（カラー画像）

0371	The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1

0371

The Pulse of Asia : vol.1

アジアの鼓動 : vol.1

to reach; the zone of piedmont gravel; the gently sloping
plain of the basin floor covered in part with dry brown reeds
and pale green camel-thorn also dry, and in part a mere
waste of naked clay or hard, white salt; the aggregation of
huge, sombre sand dunes five or six hundred feet high, ris-
ing like a range of mountains, dark gray and deep purple,
far beyond the shimmering white expanse of ice and salt
which forms the playa of Böjanti; the villages set in dark
patches of irrigated land; and the ruined towns and dead
vegetation giving evidence of a former more abundant
water supply.

Apart from the questions of size and altitude, it is chiefly
the dearth of vegetation which differentiates the Turfan
basin from that of Lop. In the larger basin, in spite of vast
deserts and areas of dying vegetation, the villages are usu-
ally located in the midst of vigorous reeds, tamarisks, and
poplars, supported by the great floods of early summer.
One's mental picture of a village includes hundreds of trees
for every house. In Turfan, on the other hand, wild trees
are unknown, having long been cut off, if they ever existed,
and even cultivated trees are scarce. One thinks of a Turfan
village as a group of gray mud houses, and only secondarily
does one call to mind the precious trees — brown and bare
when I saw them — which rise behind the protection of
high mud walls. A glance at the horizon shows the reason
for the difference — the mountains rarely rise to the limit
of perpetual snow. Hence the time of highest water comes
in the early spring, and there is no unfailing surplus in
summer.

In the Lop basin, the summer floods from the snowy

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

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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

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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