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0141 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / Page 141 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
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CHAPTER V

DISCOVERIES AT THE NIYA SITE

In the desert due south of Dandan-oilik but far nearer to
the still cultivated ground of the village tracts of Gulakhma
and Domoko were other old sites awaiting exploration.
They were all duly visited by me in the course of my first
and second expeditions and proved to have been abandoned
to the sands about the same period as Dandan-oilik or some
centuries later. But none of them proved so ancient, so
interesting and so important in every way as the extensive
sand-buried settlement which I discovered in the desert
well beyond the present termination of the Niya river. So
I propose to take my readers there straight, just as good
fortune guided me there in January 1901 directly after I
had said farewell to Dandan-oilik and the scene of my first
excavations.

Three days of tramping across the dunes to the east had
brought me to the Keriya-darya, hard frozen at the time.
It is the only river among those descending from the K'un-
lun east of Khotan which, being fed by considerable glaciers,
manages to penetrate far into the Taklamakan before it,
too, dies away among high ridges of sand. Marching up its
course for four more days, no longer on foot now, but thanks
to a successfully arranged concentration on horseback, I
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