National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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324 ALONG THE CHARCHAN RIVER CH. XXVIII
interfered with it. But since then the tide of renewed
development has continued ; and though many of the 1
colonists brought from the western oases under official 1
auspices, recce pressure, have escaped back to their old 0
homes, the population is steadily growing. When I j
crossed the river, still flowing, in spite of the late season, 1
in four or five well-filled channels with a volume far in 1
excess of that of the Khotan Darya as I had seen it in the
0.
autumn, I recognized the possibilities which nature affords
for the Charchan oasis. But who can foresee whether they d
will ever be fully realized, or how near or distant the time may be when desolation will again reign here supreme ? These glimpses of the present Charchan had their best counterfoil in the silent ' Tatis ' which I visited on
the second day to the south-west of the extant oasis. 0
These débris areas of bare eroded soil, where nothing but i
small potsherds, broken pieces of glass, and metal and ci
other fragments of hard material indicate former occupa- 11
tion, extend in patches from the present edge of cultivation ti
for nearly five miles to the south-west. The ground i
presents itself as an almost level Sai of fine gravel, with I
here and there some island-like ' witness ' of loess indicating II
the height of the overlying soil which has been eroded 11
and carried away by the winds since cultivation had i
ceased. Near the Mazar of Yalghuz-tug (` the lonely Yak- 1
standard ') new fields are again invading the area of what the people of Charchan know as the ` Kone-shahr.' Any
remains besides pottery débris which the ground may have
h
once retained, have, of course, long ago been searched for
treasure and destroyed. ii
The line of an old canal running towards this nearest
of the ' Tatis ' was followed by me for nearly two miles to i
its point of junction with the irrigation channel which i
Musa Beg some twenty years before had endeavoured to
put to fresh use and which I had crossed on my approach 1
to Charchan. Old pottery débris cropped up also in ;
extensive patches west of this ancient canal, as far as the t
banks of a shallow depression which receives water from the Ayak-tar stream during the summer floods. Judging
from the configuration of the gently sloping alluvial fan, 1
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