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0434 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 434 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
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canals. They were located on the mountain sides at an ele-
vation of from 10,000 to 10,500 feet above the sea. As we
concluded at the time: "They must be hundreds, possibly
thousands, of years old, since they are thoroughly graded,
and are sometimes wholly obliterated for a space. They can-
not be of extreme age, however, for many can still be traced
throughout their entire length, although they lie across
slopes of considerable steepness, where erosion is so rapid
that such small features must soon be eradicated. They
must be irrigation canals, for they contour around the hills,
are broad enough to carry most of the water of the streams
from which they diverge, and come to an end in places suit-
able for fields. The peculiar feature is that they lie at a great
altitude, where there is now no agriculture, nor could be, it
would seem. Snow falls at Son Kul, so the people say, dur-
ing all but two months of the year. On the morning of July
8, at the altitude of the upper canals, I walked on new snow
which was said to have been a foot deep a few days before.
The next morning, near the shore of Son Kul, below the level
of the fields once watered by the canals, the ground was stiff
with frost, and the little pools on the edges of the brooks were
skimmed with ice. Moreover, if agriculture were possible
under such conditions, irrigation seems unnecessary. In
July, the ground was saturated with moisture, and the na-
tives told us that the grass is always as green as when we
saw it [in summer, at least]. The simplest hypothesis is that
at some time since the human occupation of the country,
the climate was warmer, and therefore drier than now, but
this cannot be proved. In regions such as Transcaspia and
Persia, there is strong evidence of a greater water supply