Archaeological Reconnaissances in North-Western India and South-Eastern Īrān : vol.1 / 154 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0154	Archaeological Reconnaissances in North-Western India and South-Eastern Īrān : vol.1
西北インドと南東イランにおける考古学的調査 : vol.1

CHAPTER IV
IN THE BAMPŪR BASIN

Section 1—PREHISTORIC REMAINS OF BAMPŪR

THE four marches of February 22nd–25th, covering an aggregate of about
75 miles, which brought us from Fanūch to the Bampūr river, had little
of general and nothing of archaeological interest to offer. The first led up the
course of the stream which waters Fanūch and provides moisture higher up
for an ample growth of scrub, and then took us across the low watershed which
here, at an elevation of about 2,900 feet, divides the drainage towards the
Arabian Sea from that of the Bampūr basin. Beyond it, for the remaining 60
miles, the whole of the route led over a gently sloping desert glacis of stony
detritus and gravel. Water was to be found only in wells or springs within the
larger torrent beds, ordinarily dry, which descend from the hills of Lāshār and
Chāmp and are reached by floods after heavy rain.

At Maskhūtān, the first stage, a qanat provides irrigation for the fields of
some fifty households; but only some mat-huts of Balūch nomads were met
at the stages of Marra and Balūchān-chāh. Here and there low ridges and
hillocks of decomposed rock crop out from the glacis to break the monotony
of this wide belt of waste. Dreary as were its aspects, it brought back to me
memories of happy Central-Asian travels, and the dunes of coarse sand near the
broad depression of Giskuk, crossed on the last march to the river, helped to
strengthen those impressions. Farther away to the east a belt of heavy sand
approaches the river towards Bampūr and Fahreh (or Īrān-shahr, to give its
latest official name), and thus adds another typical feature to the general
character of the great drainageless basin.

Just before we arrived at the bank of the Bampūr river, near the village of
Saiyyidābād, a colony laid out by Saiyyid Khān, Sirdār Ḥusain Khān's father,
on the evening of February 25th a dust storm and some drops heralded the
approach of rain, the first for fully a year. So we were glad to gain the right
bank to pitch our camp, and thus to escape the risk of being cut off from Bampūr
by a subsequent flood which might render the river unfordable for days or even
a week or two. At the time the river-bed, fully 200 yards wide, held water
only in a shallow channel about 30 yards across, while a small canal near the left
bank absorbed the rest of the drainage.

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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

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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