National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

he gave useful help by large-scale surveys of the extensive area over which its ruins are
scattered, while renewed excavations rewarded by abundant results kept me busy for a
fortnight. ²⁴

After this we once again separated, Rām Singh returning southwards to the mount-
ains, while I proceeded partly over unsurveyed desert eastwards to the
Surveys to Endere,
Charchan, Charkhlik. ruined site of Endere,²⁵ where the easternmost limit of our surveys
of 1900-01 was reached. After the exploration of earlier remains
discovered in the vicinity, I continued my journey north-eastwards to Charchan by the old
caravan track along the line where a belt of sandy desert supporting scanty grazing meets
the area of bare dunes covering the northern fringe of the great gravel glacis of the K'un-lun. ²⁶
From Charchan I carried my plane-table traverse along the unsurveyed route near the right
bank of the Charchan river or along the line of adjoining marshes as far as the grazing
ground of Lashkar-satma; thence I followed the usual caravan track by the old site of
Vāsh-shahri to Charkhlik. ²⁷

Here at the only permanently inhabited place of any size in the whole Lop region
representing the terminal basin of the Tārim, I was obliged to make a
Survey along N. foot
of K'un-lun. few days' halt for the manifold preparations necessary for my explor-
ations in the waterless desert north-eastwards. Before moving again
I was rejoined by Rām Singh who had fixed his triangulation stations along the K'un-lun
range from Surghāk past Kara-sai and Kaṭa as far as Saïkanji, south of Charchan. After a
rapid visit to Charchan he had returned to the foot of the mountains in the south-east, but
owing to the severe cold of the season and an attack of rheumatism was obliged to confine
himself thereafter to plane-table work. This, however, could as far as approximately the
87th degree of longitude be controlled by intersections from high peaks he had already
triangulated from the west. Increasing pains had then forced him to regain the caravan track
near Vāsh-shahri. ²⁸

On December 6th I started from Charkhlik for the expedition which was to take me
across the waterless Lop desert north-eastwards to the ruins of the
Start for Lop desert. ancient Loulan site first located by Dr. Hedin in 1901. The route
chosen led past the small colony of Mirān, then only spasmodically
cultivated, and near it I was able to trace remains of an extensive ancient settlement. ²⁹
Rapid excavations soon proved its importance and determined my subsequent return to the site.
Rām Singh had followed me to Mirān, but the rheumatic attacks from which he was
suffering then and during most of the following winter months made effective work very
difficult for him on the trying ground ahead. Nevertheless we brought him along on the only
camel which could be spared as a mount, the remainder of the twenty-one animals being
needed for the transport of indispensable baggage, food supplies and water, i. e. ice. With a
party of fifty men including labourers for excavations, I crossed the Tārim at the small fishing
hamlet of Abdal. Thence after leaving behind the last salt lagoons of the dying river
I pushed on northward across a forbidding waterless waste of bare wind-eroded clay and
drift-sand for seven marches from the Tārim to where the principal ruins of Lou-lan were
found in the position correctly indicated by Dr. Hedin's map. ³⁰