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0418	Serindia : vol.1
セリンディア : vol.1

CHAPTER X

THROUGH THE LOP DESERT

Section I.—FIRST VISIT TO MĪRĀN

Start from
Charkhlik.

After three days of continuous efforts I completed at Charkhlik the preparations for my desert
expedition. On the morning of December 6, 1906, I was able to start my column, which comprised
fifty labourers for the proposed excavations and twenty-one camels. The latter were to carry five
weeks' supplies for us all and the ice which would be needed to provide us with water while away
in the Lop desert. My first goal was the 'site of Lou-lan', over a hundred miles to the north-east
of the fishing hamlet of Abdal, the nearest inhabited place, and quite seventy miles from the nearest
point where drinkable water could be found. The necessity of husbanding time was obvious in
view of the other difficult tasks before me which were only practicable during the cold of the winter.
I was obliged, therefore, to take to that distant site as many diggers as I could possibly keep sup-
plied with water. The problem which the latter consideration involved was much complicated by
the uncertainty as to whether ice would already have formed at the salt springs of Āltmish-bulak
and by the limitation of the available camel transport. In spite of all local efforts, the resources of
Charkhlik proved insufficient to add more than seven weakly animals to the eight of my own
caravan and six that I had hired from Charchan.

Route via
Mīrān.

Anxious as I was, for reasons of transport and supplies, to reach the 'Lou-lan Site' as early as
possible, I should not in any case have forgone the chance of paying on my way a preliminary visit
to the ruins of Mīrān, which our maps have shown ever since Prejevalsky's journey of 1876.¹ Abdal,
near the commencement of the Kara-koshun marshes, was to be the true base for our march through
the Lop desert north-eastwards, and the route leading to it via Mīrān was only some seven or eight
miles longer than the usual one past the Kara-buran lagoons and the terminal Tārim (see Map
No. 57). But a special reason for an early visit to Mīrān was supplied by a fragmentary leaf of
paper with Tibetan writing which had been brought to me by Tokhta Ākhūn, the Abdal hunter,
when he joined me at Charkhlik. He declared that he had found it early in the year, while scrap-
ing what he described as the roof of a sand-filled dwelling within a ruined fort at Mīrān. The 'find'
looked undoubtedly old, and, in connexion with what Tokhta Ākhūn could relate about remains of
'Bûts' at other ruins, it determined me to spare a couple of days for a preliminary survey of
the site.

Cultivation
at Mīrān.

The two fairly long marches which brought me to Mīrān have been briefly described in my
personal narrative.² The first, to the wells of Yandash-kāk, lay almost due east, skirting on the
left an extensive area of low tamarisk-cones with patches of other desert vegetation ; on the south
there extended an absolutely bare glacis of Piedmont gravel to the foot of the outermost Āltin-tāgh
range. On the following day, for some twenty-seven miles, we crossed a bare gravel Sai, entirely
devoid of vegetation, until we came to the broad flood-bed of the Jahān-sai ; beyond it we encamped
in the belt of comparatively luxuriant vegetation which flanks the branch known as the stream of

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