File:Ruins of desert Cathay - personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China (1912) (14596513328).jpg

Identifier: ruinsofdesertcat01stei (find matches)
Title: Ruins of desert Cathay : personal narrative of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Stein, Aurel, Sir, 1862-1943 Archaeological Survey of India
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Publisher: London : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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had thenreluctantly been obliged to leave unexcavated as a reservefor another visit. While my tent was being pitched, Iset out to find them, and soon set foot amidst their sand-buried timber (Fig. 91). The distance and other difificultiesovercome made me feel like a pilgrim who has reached hissacred goal after long months of wandering. At the ruinI had struck, a large wooden bracket, decorated withcarvings in Gandhara style, lay exposed on the surface.As I sat on it listening to the great silence around me,and thought of the life which seventeen hundred yearsago had thronged this ground, now disputed only by therival forces of drift sand and erosion, I enjoyed thehappiest moments of rest I could wish for that evening. Next morning I divided my party. Ram Singh, theSurveyor, was despatched north-eastward with three camelsand an adequate supply of water to search for the ruinswhich Islam Akhun, a Niya villager, had offered to showat the distance of one march from the site as we knew it.
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o I > t CH. XXIII FIRST EXCAVATION 273 He was then to push due north into the desert as far as hecould in a day without exhausting the camels. I myselfwith the rest of my column tramped on under Ibrahimsguidance over the high sands to the north-north-west, inquest of the ruined dwellings upon which my old guide hadlighted in his wanderings two years previously. Progresswas slow over the steep dunes closely packed amidst amaze of tamarisk-covered sand-cones, and it took fully anhour before I reached the nearest of these ruins. It provedthat of a timber-built dwelling, half covered by a big dune,just beyond the line to which living tamarisk scrub extended. Marching on over absolutely bare dunes for another twomiles, I passed one after another of the ancient housesreported. They lay in a line along what must have beenthe extreme north-western extension of a canal once fed bythe Niya River. The line proved to be situated only abouttwo miles to the west and north-west of the northernmos

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