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Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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seen. Gradually the jungle area became more and more invaded
by drift-sand; clumps of trees which had withered and died showed
themselves more frequently; and at last, some eight miles below
the Mazar, the forest changed to a wide expanse of low sand-cones
thickly overgrown with tamarisks and a hardy shrub known as
Ak-tiken. Groups of dead poplars and other trees rose between,
their large stems now gaunt and twisted by age, bearing evidence
of a time when the river carried life further into the desert. From
a high sand-hill close to my camp I could see how the scrubby
jungle spreads out between the great ridges of sand that mark on
the east and west the commencement of the true desert. The
breadth of this area was here fully four miles, and at various points
it formed bays that indent still further into the true desert. The
old course of the river must have extended towards the north-west;
for in that direction the jungle-scrub could be seen for a con-
siderable distance spreading over ground, nowhere broken by high
ridges of sand.
The surmise I formed, that the ancient site would be reached by
following these traces of the former river-course, was confirmed
by the next day's march. This also showed, for the first time in
my experience of the desert, that the distance given by the local
guides was exaggerated. I had been told that the ruins to be
visited would be reached in three marches from Imam Jafar's
shrine. In reality we reached the southern edge of the area con-
taining them by a second easy march of about fourteen miles on the
27th of January. It lay all along in the direction—more exactly
N.N.W.—in which on the previous evening I had sighted the con-
tinuation of the old river-bed. For the first five miles or so the
patches of dead forest were so thick that we had often to pick
with care a way for the camels. Tamarisk brushwood still grew
vigorously amidst the dead trees, chiefly Toghrak. The time when
the latter flourished equally cannot have been very remote. For
many of the lifeless trees still retained their branches, unlike the
shrivelled skeletons of trunks seen elsewhere. A dry channel,
about 4 feet deep, could be traced for some distance, winding
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