Indian Antiquary Vol 46

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 182

170
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1917
to our Lou-lan base camp, whence they could return in safety under Ibrahim Beg's guidance to the world of the living.
The season's initial sand-storm which had broken with full fury on the preceding night and which the Lopliks attributed to the wrath of the dead we had disturbed, made this march exceptionally trying, apart from the risks of straying, which the semi-darkness involved for the men. To my great relief I found Lal Singh safely arrived after accomplishing his survey tasks in the west on a cirouit of some 400 miles. He had been duly joined by that plucky hunter, Abdu'r-Rahim, who with his life-long desert experience and his magnificent camels brought fresh strength for our column. It may serve to illustrate the stamina of his animals, bred and reared in the Kuruk-tagh, that the baby camel to which one of them gave birth at the Lou-lan site subsequently traversed with us all those waterless wastes of salt and gravel unharmed and almost throughout on its own legs.
Together we moved then north to the Kuruk-tagh in order to secure for our hard-tried camels a few days' rest with water and grazing at the salt springs of Altmish-bulak. The new route followed on the three days' march allowed me to examine moze burial-grounds on the gravel glacis which overlooks the ancient riverine belt, now dried up and eroded by the wind. Their remains proved very helpful for explaining my previous finds east of the Lou-lan site. But even more welcome was the four days' halt at Altmish-bulak. Its springs, saline as they are, gave our brave camels their first chance of a real drink after three weeks, and on the reed beds around them they could gather fresh strength for the hard task still before them. After the dead world we had toiled in, this little patch of vegetation seemed delightful, too, to us humans.
After replenishing our ice supply and taking a carefully arranged store of fuel, we started on February 24 for our respective tasks. The one allotted to Lal Singh was to survey the unknown north-east shores of the great salt encrusted' basin, which represents the fullest extension of the dried-up ancient Lop-nor, and the barren hill ranges of the Kuruk-tagh overlooking them. I myself accompanied by Afrazgul and Shams Din proposed to search for the ancient Chinese route where it left the edge of the once inhabited Lou-lan area, and to trace it over whatever ground it might have crossed right through to where it was likely to have diverged from the line still followed by the desert track, which leads from Tun-huang along the southern shore of the great dried-up Lop Sea towards Miran. It was a fascinating task after my own taste, combining geographical and historical interest, but one attended also by serious difficulties and risks.
From what I knew of the general character of the ground before us, it was certain that we could not hope for water, nor over most of it for fuel to melt our ice with, before striking the Fun-huang caravan track, a matter of some ten days' hard marching judging from the approximately calculated distance. There was a limit to the endurance of our brave camels, and with the heavy loads of ice, fuel, and provisions which had to be carried for the sake of safety, I could not expect the animals, already hard tried by the preceding week's work in absolute desert, to remain fit for more than ten to twelve days. It was impossible to foresee what physical obstacles might be met and might delay us beyond the calculated measure of time in this wilderness devoid of all resources and now more barren, perhaps, than any similarly large area of this globe. And there remained the problem how to hit the line of the ancient route and to track it through on ground which long before the dawn of historical times had ceased to otter any chance for human occupation. For a careful search of any relics left behind by the ancient traffic, which had passed through what the Chinese Annals vaguely