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0079 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 79 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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than people, and out again by the east gate. Just within
that a beautiful memorial arch in wood, of some age and
badly decayed, offered a pleasant relief to the eyes from
all the surrounding squalor.

We moved on through a well-cultivated tract with
orchards and scattered but substantial homesteads, but had
scarcely covered more than three miles when a mounted
messenger from the Ya-mên overtook me. He did not
bring news of the much-delayed transport and coolies,
but, to my great delight, telegraphic messages from
Kashgar and Peking. Immediately on my arrival at
Tun-huang I had taken care to send off Ibrahim Beg to
the town of An-hsi, four marches to the north-east, where
I knew the great high road from Turkestan to Kan-su to
pass and the telegraph line along it; messages entrusted
to him were to announce my arrival by wire both to Mr.
Macartney and to the Peking Legation. I was aware how
little reliable was that wire linking East and West, with
deserts between the rare stations, and with its constant
breakdowns lasting at times for a week or two. So my
joy at receiving replies within ten days was all the greater.

It was an exciting quarter of an hour as I sat by the
road-side deciphering the messages, which, like my own,
had, for the sake of reducing cost and risks of distortion,
been despatched in the Eastern Telegraph Company's
excellent code 'Via Eastern.' The news proved reassur-
ing from both sides. Kashgar reported all well and a
big mail-bag having been started via Khotan. From
the Legation I heard that arrangements were completed
through the Chinese Foreign Office, allowing me to draw
6000 Taëls, equivalent roughly to £1000, from the Tao-
t'ai's treasury at Su-chou. It was a relief to have been
brought so rapidly into touch with the distant East and
West. But what I enjoyed most, perhaps, was the feeling
of living for the moment as it were in two widely different
periods. For travel or the transmission of letters the
distances separating me from Kashgar, and still more from
India or Europe, claimed an allowance of long weary
months such as Marco Polo would have found natural.
And now into this mediaeval perspective of time to which