National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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receives practically the whole of the Su-lo Ho drainage (Map No. 74. A. 3, 4). The characteristics
of this second section of the route, over 96 miles long, are clearly determined by the fact that,
instead of skirting as the first did the utterly desolate shores of the dried-up salt sea, it leads along
a great valley. Desert ground as it is, it carries enough subsoil moisture to feed wells of drink-
able water at numerous points and close to the surface, and also to maintain more or less con-
tinuous belts of reed and scrub growth. The soil is sandy throughout, no longer shôr or gravel,
and the desert vegetation it supports steadily increases after Yantak-kuduk is passed. Fresh water
can be found by digging within a few feet of the surface at most places as far as Bêsh-toghrak.
There reed and scrub grazing is sufficiently abundant, and even a few stunted wild poplars may be
seen, which account for the name, the 'Five Poplars', now given to it by the Lopliks. As we
advance from Achchik-kuduk north-eastwards the valley gradually narrows. The long dune-
covered ridge on the south approaches closer and closer to the foot of the barren Kuruk-tâgh range;
this rises here to about 1,500 feet above the valley bottom, which at Bêsh-toghrak contracts to only
about five miles in width.
The second section of the desert route as far as Bêsh-toghrak offers none of the serious
difficulties encountered on the first. To the east of Bêsh-toghrak, however, the character of the
ground undergoes a notable change. There, after a distance of about five miles, a belt of dunes
rising to 40–50 feet in height is encountered, and after crossing this the route strikes the western-
most of a series of depressions constituting a dried up terminal basin of the Su-lo Ho. In my
Personal Narrative a detailed account has been given of the interesting physical features en-
countered on crossing this basin to a point near its eastern head.⁹ In it I have also explained the
special interest attaching to the geographical questions which those features raise.¹⁰
The presence of subsoil water within easy reach, which alone makes the valley descending from
Bêsh-toghrak to the eastern extremity of the ancient Lop lake-bed practicable for traffic, is directly
due to the fact that a certain portion of the Su-lo Ho drainage, at least during its big summer
floods, must still find its way somehow, probably underground, into the depressions of its earlier
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432
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442
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452
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462
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472
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482
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492
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502
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512
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522
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532
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552
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562
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572
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592
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