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

bands of Hun raiders could still make their way through them from the Hāmi side towards the
great Chinese route west of Tun-huang, and when the Chinese opened their 'new Northern route'
across those barren hills to Turfān and Guchen.⁵ It was instructive to find that Kirghiz raids of
a corresponding character, made from the high T'ien-shan valleys upon the caravan road in the plains
connecting Ak-su with Kāshgar, are still within living recollection both at Kelpin and Marāl-bāshi.
I have little doubt that they could yet be revived in practice if the hold of the Chinese administra-
tion or of the power northward were relaxed.

Through the
Körum-
boguz
gorge. The route which was followed from Shait-kāk down to Kelpin lay all the way through deep-cut
picturesque gorges. Their precipitous walls of sandstone and gneiss, rising in places to heights
of well over a thousand feet, bore striking evidence to the erosive force of the floods which had cut
through them in past ages. Yet only in the Körum-boguz gorge (Map No. 14. D. 3) was a tiny
stream met with, and this, too, disappeared soon in rubble beds after watering some twenty acres
of wheat-fields at the little 'Terelgha' of Terek-ābād cultivated from the Kelpin oasis. Below this
point the river-bed, completely dry at the time, cuts through the wall-like hill range overlooking
the broad open valley of Kelpin from the north. Then by an imposing rock-gate it debouches on
to a huge gravel glacis stretching down towards the oasis. Instead of taking the more direct track
to the latter, which strikes off at Terek-ābād by a side valley to the south-west, I followed the
steadily widening dry flood-bed down to Sairam-mazār (Map No. 14. E. 3), where its subsoil
drainage gives rise to a lively spring. A Ziārat sacred to Sultān Owraz-atā in a fine shady arbour
marks this modest 'Su-bāshi'. Whatever drainage is else carried down to this huge alluvial fan
does not come to light until some 15 miles lower at Bulak-bāshi. There the flood-bed just
described meets the dry river-bed coming from Kelpin, and from the marshy springs rising near
their junction there forms a stream which carries its water to Achal and as far as the station of
Chilan on the present Ak-su–Kāshgar high road.

Oasis of
Kelpin. The oasis of Kelpin (Map No. 14. D. 4), which I reached on May 15, proved to be a very
pleasant and instructive place, notwithstanding the poor reputation enjoyed by its people, whom
current belief at Ak-su and elsewhere has long represented as thieves and robbers. Perhaps in
the old days, when Kelpin may have served as a convenient base for Kirghiz raids upon the traffic
of the high road south or for the disposal of spoils, the reputation was not altogether undeserved.
Now the oasis presented a picture of intensive cultivation and relatively high rural comfort such as
I had seen nowhere surpassed within the Tārim Basin. Far off from all main routes and thrown
upon their own resources through the distances which separate Kelpin from the nearest markets,
its people seemed to have escaped most of the changes brought about by Chinese and other foreign
influences.⁶ Isolation forced them at the same time to make the best possible use of traditional
methods. The utter barrenness of the hill ranges and bare gravel 'Sais' which surround the long
but narrow strips of cultivation on all sides made the result still more striking.

Extension
of cultivated
area. Of fertile loess soil adjoining the old village lands there was plenty to be seen to the west,
south, and north. But the water available for irrigation is so limited that the new fields opened to
meet the needs of a rapidly increasing population can be tilled only in turns of three or four years.
From reliable local information it was clear that since the establishment of settled conditions, which
followed the Chinese reconquest, the population of the twelve oimaks or hamlets into which Kelpin
is traditionally divided had steadily increased, the total at the time being estimated at about two
thousand homesteads. Yet according to the uniform statement of Kāsim Bēg, the intelligent local