国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

Sec. i] 1233

I accordingly started on New Year's Day, 1908, to the south-west with light baggage and Start for
a small posse of labourers and guides. All Korla was interested in what, no doubt, was locally desert site.
understood to be a real 'treasure quest'. In spite of the bitter winter cold and expected hardships,
men in numbers offered themselves as labourers, a novel experience on such occasions. Two short
marches brought us first to the extreme south-west fringe of Korla cultivation beyond Tazken, and
then across fine grazing land and luxuriant riverine jungle to the Konche-daryā. We crossed the
hard-frozen river below the Konche-mazār where it fills an unfordable bed over 30 yards wide (Map
No. 45. D. 3), and then moved up the belt of riverine jungle accompanying the bed of the Charchak-
daryā, which in certain years carries flood-water coming from the Kuchā side.
On this march to the well and shepherd-station of Döru-sukte (Map No. 45. c. 3) I first noticed Intermittent
traces of a form of cultivation which is widely practised along the lower courses of the Tārim, the riverine
Inchike, and Konche rivers, and is not without antiquarian interest. Stretches of open level ground cultivation.
which are inundated after several years' interval by a particularly high flood can be sown in the
following spring and, as they retain sufficient moisture from that big watering, yield then an abundant
harvest. But only in very rare instances can cultivation be continued for a second year by means
of small irrigation cuts from the river-bed. Cultivation carried on in this fashion occasionally leads
to transient occupation, and objects left behind at the end of it may, when turning up as 'finds'
centuries later, give rise to quite erroneous conclusions as to the former existence of permanent
settlements on such ground.
It was in the desert belt south between the Charchak and Inchike river-beds that Mūsā Hāji Search of
had, as he declared, seen his ruined site. The short expedition which I made into this wholly desert belt
unsurveyed area, and which was facilitated by the ice found in a newly formed lateral lakelet of the south of
Inchike-daryā known as Jigda-sala (Map No. 45. B. 4), proved very instructive geographically. It Charchak
showed me in typical form the constant changes brought about on this ground by shifting river- river.
courses and the concomitant struggle of the vegetation belts which they produce with the drift-sand,
ever close at hand to follow up local desiccation. But after several days' search in the desert Mūsā
Hāji had to confess his inability to find the 'old town' which he still firmly believed that he had
seen and approached. Fortunately I had taken care from the start to have him accompanied by
level-headed Darōghas from Korla. It was due to their careful search and topographical sense that
on a patch of bare clay steppe surrounded by lines of dunes, 8–10 feet high and strewn with dead
Toghraks and tamarisks, a small ruined circumvallation was ultimately located (Map No. 45. c. 3).
It was a circular rampart of earth, about 180 yards in circumference, about 30 feet thick at its Remains of
base and rising with its narrow top to about 12 feet above the present ground-level. A few pieces of circular
coarse but hard pottery lay near what appeared to have been the entrance. No other marks of enclosure.
occupation were found on the surface; but it must be remembered that there were no signs of wind-
erosion either, which alone could display such relics on ground of this kind. That the enclosure
was meant to serve as a place of safety or as a watch-post is certain, and its size and shape recalled
Merdek-tim.¹⁰ But there was nothing to help towards determining its age. On ground subject to
moisture through riverine changes at recurring periods no ancient refuse and the like could possibly
survive. Mūsā Hāji stoutly denied that this ruined enclosure was his 'old town'—but anyhow he
could show us no other. Going about 2¾ miles north, a dry river-bed lined with dead Toghraks was
crossed, and beyond this, after another 1½ miles and not far from the edge of the living jungle belt,
I was shown a small ruined 'Gumbaz', about 8 yards square, built of clay lumps. It manifestly
marked a Muhammadan grave, and did not look of great age. I may note here in passing that