国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

> > > >
カラー New!IIIFカラー高解像度 白黒高解像度 PDF   日本語 English
0517 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 517 ページ(カラー画像)

New!引用情報

doi: 10.20676/00000213
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

from Hami, Chiang made me put in a good word for Wang.
I do not know what attention, if any, was paid to it; but
before I left Turkestan Chiang heard the cheerful news
that Wang had been finally exonerated and given a fresh
magisterial charge elsewhere.

We left Su-chou on September 16th, and after passing
again through the gate of Chia-yü-kuan lost all trace of the
'Great Wall' until we reached the small district town of
Yü-mên-hsien five days later. There was good reason to
believe that the road we had followed was already in
ancient times the main line of communication. But the
Limes intended to safeguard it had evidently been con-
structed farther north, where the rugged desert range first
touched at Chia-yü-kuan offered the advantage of a strong
natural rampart. I had subsequently the satisfaction of
finding this assumption verified. On a reconnaissance
made from Yü-mên-hsien to the north, I discovered a line
of ancient towers just beyond the hamlets appropriately
named Shih-tun ('Tower x.') and Shih-êrh-tun ('Tower
XII.'), and on closer search I was able to trace unmistakable
remains of the wall once connecting them.

Far-advanced decay had been caused by the proximity
of marshy ground liable to inundation from a branch of the
Su-lo Ho, whose great westward bend lies close by. Yet
my archaeological conscience as to the connection of these
scanty remains with the ancient Limes of Han times was
assured when, on scraping the somewhat higher ground near
one of the towers, I came upon those significant fascines,
here composed of half-petrified twigs, so familiar from the
Tun-huang border. The very name of Yü-mên-hsien,
'the town of the Jade Gate,' was manifestly borrowed from
that Limes, though its transfer to a point so far east could
certainly not have taken place until long after T'ang times.

On the second day after leaving Yü-mên-hsien for An-
hsi I again sighted the old wall with its line of towers
stretching along the north bank of the Su-lo Ho. It here
afforded protection to the string of small oases which
extend south of the river on both sides of the large walled
town of Bulunjir; this is now but for a tiny garrison almost
deserted. Some twelve miles west of Bulunjir I was able
VOL. II Z