Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 609 ページ（カラー画像）

0609	Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2

0609

Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2

中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2

to ascertain this, and luckily all clouds had now disappeared
for some days past. So Lal Singh was left behind with
the theodolite near a row of tamarisk-covered hillocks we
passed at 11 A.M., while I pushed on to the south. The
Shahyar men had again become very downcast, and the
increasing frequency of wild camels' droppings failed to
rouse confidence. Luckily the going was easy, the dunes
being quite low. After nine miles from our last camp I
found myself suddenly on the left bank of a wide river bed,
cut to a depth of twenty or thirty feet and only partially
filled by dunes. Its breadth was more than 150 yards.

Deep hollows showed here and there at its bottom
below banks of hard mud, and one of these tempted me
to try digging a well. The camels were far behind, and
thus no time would be lost if we failed. To my delighted
surprise the men after a few feet struck what felt like
damp sand, and as the digging continued with vigour in
spite of the threatening vicinity of a big dune, water was
at last reached at a depth of fourteen feet. But it oozed
out very slowly, and the sand of the sides for several feet
from the bottom kept falling in. The whole of the well
led through fine river sand, and I kept wondering how
long this would hold under the pressure of the dune
which towered above the mouth at the distance of only
a few feet. The subsoil water thus reached was some
forty feet below the level of the nearest bank.

The caravan was, of course, halted in spite of the short-
ness of the day's march, for such a chance was not lightly
to be missed. Not till late in the evening had water
gathered sufficiently for the immediate need of all ; and,
in spite of men being kept at work in batches all through
the night, only four half-filled Mussucks were ready by
daybreak, and the ponies got but a few glassfuls.

Our march on February 9th opened hopefully. The
discovery of water seemed to justify confidence in our dry
river bed as the right guide ; and the imposing width with
which it stretched ahead, two to three hundred yards broad,
and for some miles almost straight, gave a sense of space
and freedom (Fig. 284). The tracks of wild camels
frequently crossed the flat sands filling the bed. But more

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