Ruins of Desert Cathay Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER LIV BY THE ANCIENT WALL NORTH OF TUN-HUANG From the height of the town wall a watch-tower had be sighted to the north-north-east, and for that we set out the morning of March 25th, with an icy wind sweepii down from the east. At first our progress was great impeded by the swampy condition of the ground, whl was being purposely flooded for sowing. Large patch of the scrub-covered waste, once no doubt fields, had be cleared by burning, and water was now being brought them in a rather erratic fashion by damming up channe which originally might in parts at least have been cut f irrigation. The camels and the men, now on foot, we forced to great detours and remained far behind. But with a few of my people on horseback I struggle across to the ' Pao-t'ai,' which proved to be about foi miles off. It was, as I had surmised from the first, watch-tower of ancient construction. The material he: consisted of hard lumps of salt-impregnated clay quarrie from the low ridge on which the tower was raised; b. any doubt as to its age was removed by observing in th strange masonry the same layers of reeds and tamarii twigs at regular intervals which were characteristic the towers guarding the old wall farther west. Tl whole formed a remarkably compact mass about tweni feet square at its base, and still over eighteen feet hig the permeating salts acting apparently like a sort cement. Its solidity could be gauged from the fact tha though wind erosion had attacked and worn away tl natural clay beneath the corners, the structure overhun there without any injury. Ch.uv STOPPED BY SU-LO HO FLOOD 45 There was no trace of a wall line to be seen anywhere, and as the only landmark which might be a tower was seen in the distance north-eastward, I decided to follow a cart track which see...Read More