National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 |
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336 AT VASH-SHAHRI AND CHARKLIK CH. XXIX
a very painful operation which without the skill and pluck
of Hassan Akhun, my experienced camel - man, would j
scarcely have succeeded. As it was, it took hours for each
of the injured camels to be duly ` re-soled,' and half-a- %
dozen men to hold down the huge writhing patient.
Early on the morning of December ist I started my caravan for the two final marches to Charklik, a distance of close on fifty miles. Almost the whole of this distance lay over a desolate glacis of gravel, fringed only here and there by patches of scanty tamarisk growth and thorny
scrub stretching northward. We halted in a narrow belt 11
of marshy vegetation by the side of the Tatlik-bulak stream, and next day, after a long dreary ride under a hazy
sky, sighted at last from afar the trees of the Charklik r
oasis. En route we had met the first travellers since leaving Charchan, a couple of traders clad in heavy furs taking some fifty donkeys laden with wool to Khotan. Now, as twilight descended, I was received at an out- lying patch of cultivation by the Begs of Charklik. Their attention left no doubt as to the assistance which P'an
Ta-jên's recommendation had assured me at the local f
Ya-mên.
Refreshed by the tea of a modest Dastarkhan I rode on for another six miles, past straggling fields of poor aspect and over intervening wastes, to the broad river-
bed where the thin streaks of water already carried ice. 'a
The new well-built Bazar beyond looked large as we crossed it in darkness, and soon I found comfortable
quarters in the spacious house of Tursun Bai, a settler of 4
substance. My host was one of those ` Lopliks ' who, as more or less nomadic fishermen, have lived in isolation for centuries by the marshes and lakes of ` Lop ' and had taken to agriculture only within a generation or two. The comfort of his large brick - built homestead gave striking proof of the progress since made. Yet a look at his quaint Mongolian features would by itself have sufficed to remind me that I had now indeed reached Lop, Marco Polo's " town at the edge of the Desert, which is called the Desert of Lop."
It was this desert which offered the goal for my
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