National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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CH. XXVII `OLD SEATS OF THE TUKHARA' 313
receive due attention, was a canvas bag holding two narrow
and fiât pieces of wood, about six inches long, showing
along one edge a series of small cup-like holes evidently
blackened by smoke. It was only when these pieces came
to be examined at the British Museum that Mr. H. G.
Evelyn-White, then one of my assistants, recognized them
as regular fire-blocks meant for the production of fire by
the churning of small wooden sticks which fitted the holes.
Even then I might have doubted the survival of this primitive method as late as the third century A.D., had
not the subsequent discovery of an exactly corresponding
block at the ancient site north of Lop-nor, which dates from
about the same period, furnished confirmatory evidence.
The search for other old remains in the vicinity of the
T'ang fort was continued with care on November 9th ;
but only in one of the several badly eroded dwellings
which I managed to trace, did we come upon datable
relics in the shape of two fragmentary Kharoshthi tablets.
The ruins of a small Stupa and of a square tower, still
rising about eighteen feet high, both built with sun-dried
bricks of large size (Fig. 105), were the only surviving
remains of more substantial structures near the fort which
could be connected with the earlier settlement. The
havoc wrought by far - advanced wind erosion was, no
doubt, mainly responsible for this scarcity of older
structural remains ; for pottery débris of very ancient
look appeared plentifully on all patches of bare soil for
nearly one mile south of the fort, and whatever copper
coins were picked up about the latter belonged to the
Chinese currency of the Han dynasty.
The most striking evidence, however, of the often-
proved accuracy of my Chinese guide and patron saint
came to light, when a chance find led me to discover that
the clay rampart of the fort, built within a generation or
two of his passage, was in one place actually raised over
a bank of consolidated refuse which belonged to the first
centuries of our era. At a point about a hundred feet
to the west of the fort's single gate, wind erosion had
badly breached the circumvallation of stamped clay.
Searching on the surface thus laid bare, one of the men
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