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| 0131 |
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 |
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could be got to move off. In the meantime I was able
to survey the surroundings better. The storm had ceased
overnight, and only a light haze to the south remained to
mark its passage. Subsequently I had many occasions to
observe how much more transient than along the Takla-
makan are the atmospheric effects of the storms which
sweep the coarse sands of the Tun-huang desert.
I could now see plainly that not the buildings alone,
but also the fields and arbours surrounding them, bore
every mark of approaching abandonment. Close to the
homestead we had occupied the fields were being overrun
by light drift sand. They are still being cultivated; but
irrigation fails to keep off the low dunes moving up from
the west, which had already enveloped the feet of the
trees of an avenue some 300 yards off, and threatened to
choke the shallow channels bringing water to them. A
small ruined shrine nearer to the main farm still showed
its painted gateway. But the beams of the roof had
fallen, and the drift sand caught within the walls had
almost completely smothered what remained of the clay
images.
Elsewhere I could see fields overgrown with thorny
scrub, threshing-floors edged round by low dunes, or
neatly-laid-out small orchards where the drift sand lay feet
deep along the fences, and the cuts needed for irrigation
were sadly neglected. An air of hopeless decay hovered
over the whole place, and my antiquarian imagination
found it easy to call up the picture it will present when the
desert shall have finally claimed it. Thus Dandan-oilik
or the Niya site may have looked during the last decades
preceding abandonment. I wondered to whose lot it will
fall to excavate 'the site' which is now preparing here,
and what that archæologist, say, of two thousand years
hence will make of the scraps of English or Indian writing
which our stay over one night may have contributed to
the rubbish heaps accumulated at Shui-i. From considera-
tion for that confrère far off in the ages, I purposely
refrained here from burning my waste paper!
Of course I did not lose the chance, with approaching
ruin so plainly written upon this small settlement, of
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