Serindia : vol.3 / 184 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0184	Serindia : vol.3
セリンディア : vol.3

CHAPTER XXX

TO KUCHĀ AND THE KERIYA RIVER END

Section I.—KORLA AND ITS OLD SITES

Abundance
of water and
land.

My stay at Korla during the last few days of December, short as it was, allowed me to appre-
ciate fully the exceptional physical advantages which this bright oasis in the extreme north-east
corner of the Tārim Basin proper enjoys. Situated as it is at the very debouchure of the big river
which drains the Baghrash Lake, the Korla oasis has the great boon of possessing a water-supply
for irrigation which is not merely abundant but of unfailing regularity. Owing to the fact that the
Baghrash Lake acts as a huge natural reservoir storing the spring and summer floods from the
T'ien-shan ranges to discharge them again gradually, the Konche-daryā, as the river is called from
Korla onwards, preserves throughout the year a remarkable uniformity of volume, a feature wholly
unknown elsewhere in the river system of Eastern Turkestān. This volume is greatly in excess of
the needs of the lands cultivated by the actual population.¹ In 1907 this was locally estimated,
with what seemed a fair approach to accuracy, at 1,700 households, while the water-supply was
acknowledged to be sufficient for irrigating an area which might easily support six times as many.
Enough suitable land for such extended cultivation is certainly available south of the river
(Map No. 49. A. 2).

Restricted
develop-
ment of
Korla.

It seems difficult to account for this discrepancy between conditions so exceptionally favourable
and the comparative smallness of the settlement. But there is reason to assume that the same
difficulties, due to the vicinity of nomadic Mongol neighbours, which at present affect colonization in
the Kara-shahr territory, as explained above, have much to do also with retarding the development
of Korla, now included in the Kara-shahr district. The Mongols, who, with their herds of horses,
etc., frequent the scrub- and reed-covered waste lands south and south-west of Korla for winter
grazing, are by no means welcome visitors for the peaceable Turki settlers. However this may be,
it is certainly curious to note the same relative unimportance of Korla in ancient times as well.
I believe that we have to locate there the small kingdom of Wei-hsü 危須, which figures in the
Han Annals in connexion with Yen-ch'i or Kara-shahr, but subsequently disappears from Chinese
historical records as a separate territory.

Wei-hsü
identified
with Korla.

The identification here proposed of Wei-hsü with Korla appears to me proved by the Former
Han Annals' notices which place this 'kingdom' with its city of Wei-hsü a hundred li from Yen-ch'i
and 260 li to the west of the kingdom of Shan [II].² That the latter must be identical with the

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