Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/77

58 easily taken, and the recently submerged land affords pasturage for sheep. When the reeds are all fed off, the operation is repeated, and a fresh supply of fish and pasturage obtained.

The general character of the Lower Tarim is very much as we have described it. Along the right bank and not far from the river lie bare hillocks of drift-sand twenty to sixty feet high. These sandy wastes continue the whole way down the Tarim to its confluence with Lake Kara-buran, then up the Cherchen-daria in a south-westerly direction, almost as far as the town of Keria, and a long way up the Tarim from the mouth of the Ugen-daria. Indeed the whole country between the right bank of the Tarim on the one side to the oases at the foot of the Kuen-lun on the other is described to be filled with drift-sand and positively uninhabitable.

On the left bank of the Tarim the sands are much less frequent and not nearly so extensive. Here the soil consists of loose saline clay in some places entirely bare, in others again overgrown with rare bushes of tamarisk and occasionally patches of Haloxylon. These plants bind the yielding soil with their roots, the intervals being subjected to the full force of the wind, which accumulates the drift round the bushes so as gradually to form a hillock seven to fourteen feet high beneath each of them; and such hillocks cover vast areas, as they do in Ordos and Alashan.