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0209 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 209 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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[Photo] 184 GROUND-PLAN OF ANCIENT WATCH-STATION T. VI. B.

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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wooden posts of the narrow entrance arranged to take
heavy bolts, plainly indicated that the need of defence had
been present to those who
first built the small post.
The remains of furniture
and equipment left behind
by the last occupants as of
no value showed the same
uniform simplicity befitting
a remote frontier. There
were curious carved handles
or hooks of wood, intended,
perhaps, as emblems or for
supporting stands of arms;
pieces of hard wood with
leather-lined grooves, which
seem to have belonged to
cross-bows or small cata-
pults; wooden tent-pegs
with rough design of a
human head on the top;
pieces of painted and
lacquered bowls in wood;
much-mended rags of silk
garments, and, more plenti-
ful still, rope-soled shoes of coarse make (Figs. 173, 174).
Among the dozen or so of wooden records which had found
a safe refuge in a layer of refuse on the floor of an outer
room, there was one dated in the year 68 B.C. But after
all preceding experiences it scarcely needed this docu-
mentary evidence to convince me that, in a soil which had
seen extremely scanty rainfall for the last two thousand
years, and was far removed from any chance of interference
by human agency, nothing but wind erosion could prove
destructive even to the most perishable remains.