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0193 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / Page 193 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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of Khara-nor and was unmistakably connected with it, and
also by Ram Singh's discovery of a river flowing through the
Toghrak-bulak bed. It became certain that the Toghrak-
bulak river was fed from the Khara-nor, and that the latter
was not the terminal basin of the Su-lo Ho river, as had
been assumed hitherto. But it still remained to deter-
mine whether the connection between those two lay, as I
expected, through the series of minor lakes and marshes I
had seen west of Khara-nor, or whether there was perhaps
a channel carrying the water of the Su-lo Ho direct from
the latter down to Toghrak-bulak.
This question, too, was finally answered when on the
morning of April 29th I set out to track this connection.
From our camp near the big magazine ruin we moved to
the north-west, skirting the wide basin of reed-covered
marsh and lagoons, until suddenly we came upon a narrow
and deep-cut Nullah receiving the suspected outflow
towards Toghrak-bulak. It was a regular river, over
twenty-five yards broad, and flowing with a velocity of a
little under one yard per second. In the middle the water
was over six feet deep. Though drinkable, it tasted
distinctly brackish from all the salt deposits which this
spring flood was sweeping out of the lake beds. As I
followed this continuation of the Su-lo Ho for some
distance downwards, I fully understood how easily the
river could here escape discovery owing to the very
deceptive way in which its course is masked by what
looks an unbroken glacis of gravel. I must have ap-
proached it before at another point, to within a quarter of
a mile or so without noticing its existence. Yet for the
time boats could have passed along it with ease.
On the same day I shifted my camp back to the site of
the 'Yü-mên' fort, preliminary to a move for the exploration
of the westernmost portion of the Limes, while Rai Ram
Singh was sent eastwards for survey work about Khara-
nor. Then on April 30th, by a forced march over twenty-
eight miles, I brought my straggling column of camels
and men right across to the point where the line of the
wall as marked by its watch-towers was seen to bend round
to the south-west. The heat and glare on the bare gravel