Serindia : vol.3 / 75 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0075	Serindia : vol.3
セリンディア : vol.3

At An-hsi I was kept busy for twelve days by manifold exigent tasks which have been Second stay
recorded in my Personal Narrative.¹ Here it will suffice to mention that, besides the prepara- at An-hsi.
tion of a full report to Government on my previous operations, of proposals, accounts, etc., they
included arrangements for the return via Khotan of Surveyor Rāi Rām Singh, now invalided to India,
and the secret acquisition, successfully managed through Chiang Ssŭ-yeh, of extensive further
'selections' of manuscripts from Ch'ien-fo-tung. As soon as my collection of antiques had received
this precious addition of four camel-loads of texts from the hidden temple library, I set out with R. B.
Lāl Singh for the journey which was intended to take us along the foot of the T'ien-shan to
Hāmi, Turfān, and Kara-shahr, and then for another winter campaign into the desert of the
Taklamakān.

Regard for economy of time, and also for the safe transport of our heavy loads of antiques, High road
obliged me to follow to Hāmi the present Chinese high road where it crosses the stony desert from An-hsi
of the Pei-shan in eleven weary marches aggregating a total distance of about 218 miles. It to Hāmi.
has been followed too often by European travellers to need any detailed description here. For
the traveller who is not a geologist there is little to observe in this great waste of gravel and
crumbling rock. The much-decayed ranges of hills, through which the route passes in succession
and which alone break its monotony, rise nowhere much above 7,000 feet, and the wide detritus-filled
valleys or plateaus between them lie rarely more than a few hundred feet below the saddles crossed.
But there are certain aspects of this true 'Gobi' which have their interest for the student of ancient
geography, and which in view of the historical importance of the route deserve to be noted here.

As we moved along from one wretched little roadside station to another, each established with Importance
its mud hovels, tiny post of soldiers, and big heaps of refuse at points where some shallow depres- of 'northern
sion offers a scanty supply of water in well or spring, and occasionally patches of equally scanty graz- A.D. 73.
ing on scrub or reeds, I was able to observe conditions of traffic which certainly could have changed
but little since ancient times. Ever since the Chinese in A.D. 73 first acquired a firm foothold
at Hāmi,² this 'northern route', with the few alternative tracks practicable on the west from Tun-
huang, on the east from the side of Su-chou and the Su-lo Ho bend, had formed an important, if not
the principal, line of communication to the territories on both sides of the T'ien-shan and to the Tārim
Basin. Whenever Chinese power could assert itself in those regions and protect them against
barbarian inroads from the north, this route must have seen heavy traffic carried on much in the same
way as it now is. All information available from Chinese records and later Western sources points
to the conclusion that, ever since the more direct route from Tun-huang to Lou-lan and the
northern oases of the Tārim Basin was finally abandoned in the fourth century, this 'northern road'

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