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which led from Tun-huang, on the extreme west of Kan-su, to the main line of oases north of the
Tārim River. From passages of the Chinese Annals which we have already had occasion to
discuss,² it was certain in a general way that the first expansion of Chinese influence into Central
Asia had proceeded by a route which was opened about 110 B.C. through the desert west of
Tun-huang to Lou-lan or the Lop region, and that this route had remained in use through the
whole of Han times. But as renewed reference to those passages will presently show us, the
indications available in the texts would not by themselves suffice to determine the exact direction
of the route. Strong as the archaeological evidence was which pointed to the 'Lou-lan Site' as the
western terminus of the desert route, confirmation by documentary evidence was particularly needed
to meet the serious doubts which the absolutely barren nature of the desert further east was bound
to raise about the correctness of such a location of the route.
From all that the Chinese Annals have to tell us, and from broad geographical facts which
remain unchanged to the present day, it is clear that, throughout the successive periods of China's
control of the Tārim Basin, it was always the great route leading along the southern foot of the
T'ien-shan and through the string of big oases from Korla westwards to Kāshgar which claimed
most importance for Chinese traders, administrators, and soldiers. It was by this route, the Pei-lu
or 'Northern Road' of the Annals, that the bulk of the silk trade, for the sake of which the first
advance of Chinese political and military power into Central Asia was made, moved to Farghāna
or Ta-yüan and into ancient Sogdiana and Bactria.³ The protection of this great trade route
against the inroads of the Huns and their nomadic successors north of the T'ien-shan was the main
purpose for which the Tārim Basin was held, and it always remained the chief aim of the Chinese
administration set up in the 'Western Countries'.
A reference to the map suffices to show that the shortest way to reach that line of oases from
Tun-huang, the westernmost cultivated area on the Kan-su marches of China, lay along the foot of
Kuruk-tāgh and through the Lop desert, past the 'Lou-lan Site', to where the Tārim bends
south-eastwards. But nowadays a marching distance of over two hundred and forty miles of wholly
waterless desert, even on the most direct line, intervenes between the last-named point and the
nearest well on the Tun-huang–Charkhlik caravan track, and this would render the use of the
ancient route wholly impracticable for caravan traffic at the present time.
In Han times and in the century immediately succeeding, it is true, the existence of the
Kuruk-daryā delta, just as it accounts for the occupation of the 'Lou-lan Site', also removed all
difficulties about water and grazing for the western half of that distance; for there the ancient
route undoubtedly led along the bed of the 'Dry River', then still carrying water, to Ying-
p'an, where in 1915 I traced ruins of the same early period, within easy reach of the present
Konche-daryā. But for the eastern half of the old route, the hundred and twenty odd miles
separating the ruins of the 'Lou-lan Site' from the Kum-kuduk wells on the Tun-huang caravan
track, the total absence of water must have been as serious an obstacle in ancient times as it now is.
It was only by my explorations of 1914 that definite archaeological proof was obtained for the
ancient Chinese route having actually crossed this most formidable of deserts, a wholly lifeless
waste of salt and clay, and meanwhile we should have found it hard to believe in the possibility of
such a route having ever been followed by those early pioneers of Chinese trade and influence
westwards, had the fact not been so clearly proved by the documents recovered from the site.
The physical change which has come over this portion of ancient Lou-lan by the drying-up of
the delta to which it once owed water and life is so striking and of such wide geographical interest
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