Ancient Khotan : vol.1 / 494 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0494	Ancient Khotan : vol.1
古代コータン : vol.1

with low sand-cones. The dead tamarisk scrub which strewed their slopes sufficed for our
camp fires, while the ice brought along from the Yārtunguz-Tārim saved us the trouble of
digging a well. A fairly strong wind had been blowing for the greater part of the day from
the north or north-east, and the dust-haze it raised showed an ominous persistence.

Our march so far had been almost due east. But on leaving Yantak-chaval on February 19
our guides struck to the north-east. The reason for the change of direction became clear
when, after crossing a great 'Dawān' some 120 ft. high, we found ourselves traversing a broad
stretch of low undulating dunes where progress was relatively easy. Plenty of living tamarisk
and occasional little groups of Toghraks showed that subsoil water was near, and the general
impression I gained was that we were crossing here what may once have been the terminal
area of a river. The latter could only have been an earlier course of the present Endere
river. Towards the east this area was bordered by a long-stretched chain of high dunes, in
which it was easy to recognize from afar the ridge flanking the left bank of the actual Endere
river-bed. From its darker colour it was known to our guides by the appropriate name of
Kizillik, the 'Red (sands)'¹. For fully two miles our march lay over this great accumulation
of dunes, and then we emerged on the western edge of the belt watered by the Endere
stream.

The channel which we now ascended towards the south-east was called by our guides
'the old Daryā' of Endere. Here, too, the river has in recent years shown a tendency to
shift westwards, so that we found quite a respectable sheet of ice, from 10 to 20 yards in
width, covering what previously had been a deserted dry bed. On the other hand, this return
of the summer floods to the earlier channel was causing the 'New Daryā', said to have been
formed further westwards some twenty years before, now to receive annually less and less water.
It was with this change of course, and not with any diminution in the quantity of the water
brought down by the river, that my guides connected the abandonment of the little colony of
'Endere-Tārim', which had been formed on the 'New Daryā' at a point apparently four to
five miles to the north-north-west of where we first struck the river. It was impossible to spare
time for a visit to this modern representative of the terminal oasis of Endere, or for a survey of
the river-courses down to their actual termination. Judging from the guides' statement, the
summer grazing-grounds of the Endere shepherds may extend northward for a day's march
beyond the now deserted 'Tārim'.

On February 20 we marched along the 'Kōne-Daryā' up to the point where, near the
grazing-ground of Kokul-toghrak, the 'New River' was branching off from it, and thence fol-
lowed the main river bed upwards. Not far from a rustic Ziārat we crossed to the right
bank. The river was here about 20 yards broad, holding under its ice-sheet about 2 feet of
water, but the well-defined, steeply-cut banks rising 6 to 7 feet above the level of the ice
indicated a considerable volume of water at other seasons. At a deserted hut of rushes marking
the shepherd station (kichik) of Kara-öchke-öltürgan ('where the black goat sat') we left the
ponies behind, and struck into the desert south-eastwards. The belt of vegetation, the width
of which, owing to the persistent haze, it was difficult correctly to estimate as long as we kept
by the river bank, proved here very narrow. Hence, where we camped for the night, though
scarcely more than two miles in direct distance from the river, there was only bare eroded
ground with here and there low sand-cones covered by scanty dead tamarisk scrub.

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ