IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
| CH. I | DRIED-UP LOP SEA-BED 5 |
the Kuruk-darya reached here an ancient terminal oasis up to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. Through this once habitable ground, and across the difficult salt-encrusted expanse of the dried-up sea beyond it (Fig. 8), there had passed the earliest Chinese route leading from the Su-lo-ho trough into the Tarim basin. In a later chapter I shall describe the truly forbidding aspect of this now utterly
lifeless ground, and shall give some account of the difficult
t.
explorations by which I was able to track the vestiges of the ancient route across this formidable desert.
This ancient Chinese route crossed the salt-encrusted sea-
t bed east of Lou-lan and then turned up a valley-like depres-
rI sion to the north-east. This takes us across a dry lake-bed
surrounded by a maze of fantastically eroded clay terraces
a) to the lowest portion of the basin of the Su-to-ho, which
contains this river's delta and its present terminal marshes.
~t Uninhabited except for the oasis of Tun-huang and a few
minor oases, the Su-lo-ho basin need not detain us long; for notwithstanding its extent of some 220 miles from east to west, its natural features are remarkably uniform, as was its
G rôle throughout history. It derives its importance from the
~é fact that, flanked by high mountains in the south and desert
wastes in the north, it forms a natural `corridor' leading from north-western China into Central Asia. In a subsequent chapter I shall describe how I discovered and explored the ruins of the ancient Chinese Limes or fortified border-line intended to protect this corridor.
Beyond the Su-lo-ho basin at the famous Chia-yü-kuan gate of the mediaeval `Great Wall' of China we reach the
d
di easternmost of the undrained areas with which we are con-
cerned. It extends from the headwaters of the Kan-chou
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