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0179 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 179 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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systematic excavation with the whole of my little band of
diggers. A couple of days earlier it had been unexpectedly
strengthened by the two lost Nan-hu labourers, who to
Chiang's and my own great relief turned up by the route
from the east, looking very woe-begone, but as sound as
their nature and opium would allow. As far as Chiang
could make out their tangled story, they had fallen asleep
after a little 'smoke' of their beloved drug, mistaken the
track when they woke up, and then aimlessly strayed in
the desert until, after two days' wandering without water,
they were guided to the caravan track by the smoke from
the camp fire of the herdsmen we had met on our first
approach to Khara-nor. At a later season—and even now
without the sustaining effect of their opium—these hapless
fellows would almost certainly have perished. So nothing
worse befell them than that the herdsmen, who rightly
suspected desertion, had forced them to rejoin us.
The hillock we had to clear measured some eighty
yards from east to west and nearly as much across, and
there was nothing on the gravel-strewn slopes to show
where to search for rubbish and ancient remains. So
parallel trenches had to be dug all along the slopes down
to the natural hard clay in order to make sure that nothing
at this important point should escape us. There was
plenty of work here for the men, and it took them fully
three days to complete it, though on the very first there
arrived a most opportune reinforcement in the shape of
twelve additional labourers whom Ts'ao Ta-lao-ye, Lin
Ta-jên's petty officer, had managed to bring up from Tun-
huang along with half a month's fresh supplies. What
with all the digging effected by the men—whom small but
prompt rewards for interesting finds kept up to the mark—
the little hillock soon suggested a kopje girt with shelter
trenches against modern gun-fire. The results were ample
and offered strange surprises.
One of these was provided by the narrow tunnel on
the north-west slope, in which we first discovered that
batch of wooden records from Wang Mang's reign. For
instead of forming a window to some subterraneous
chamber, as I had at first suspected, it proved to be the