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0579 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 579 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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OCR読み取り結果

it seemed from its debouchure to look down upon the oasis
of Korla and, sighting the unlimited horizon of the yellow
'sand-ocean' beyond, to feel that there was but a single
watershed far away left between me and the Indus! The
short halt which detained me at Korla until New Year's Day
of 1908 was pleasant though full of work. It was cheer-
ful to find myself again among homely Turki folk of the
true type, and to enjoy the comfort of such a clean and
spacious room as the local Beg was able to offer me,
boasting even of a papered window. It was a pleasant
experience, too, to behold an oasis which enjoyed the
rare boon of having an unfailing supply of water for
irrigation, far in excess of the actual needs of its people.
But foremost in my feelings was the satisfaction of having
here, close to the north-east end of the great sandy desert,
returned once more to my own ground.

This old fascination of the Taklamakan induced me to
test the persistent reports about an 'old town' half-
buried amidst the dunes, which Korla people declared
they had seen in the desert south-westwards. The in-
formation which reached me while at 'Ming-oi' had sounded
rather vague and romantic when gathered from the fear-
bound tongues of labourers. But it took a more substantial
form when at last fat and jovial Tahir Beg (Fig. 277),
whom the Amban had deputed to act as my local factotum,
acknowledged that he, too, knew of the 'old town.' His
own cousin Musa, the 'Haji,' he told me, had some five
years before come upon the ruins while hunting in the
desert west of the Konche Darya, as the river from the
Baghrash Lake is called below Korla.

The detailed account of the place which was described
as a small ruined fort with a conspicuous gate, was con-
firmed in essential particulars by the discoverer himself,
a gaunt, weatherbeaten figure, when he was brought into
Korla (Fig. 280). He declared that he had not seen the
ruins again, a dust-storm immediately after the discovery
having prevented return, but was prepared to guide me.
As the existence of some ruined 'Gumbaz,' or domed
structures, was attested independently by a number of per-
sons in the jungle belt of the Inchike Darya which lay in