KAMI, OR KUMUL 479 



below the surface of the ground after leaving the moun- 

 tains. The torrents sink below the surface in the pied- 

 mont gravel slopes at the foot of the hills, but appear 

 again twenty miles out on the plain in the form of 

 copious springs, which ooze up and form the irrigation- 

 supply of the oasis. 



No existing map gives a true idea of the hydrography 

 of this region. Rivers, intimated by continuous blue 

 lines, flowing out into the waste where they form lakes 

 (called Kul), are common errors on the maps. As a 

 matter of fact, the water which escapes being used for 

 irrigating purposes generally disappears below the sur- 

 face of the ground ; though in a few cases, when there 

 is a sufficient supply from the mountains, it may re- 

 appear again in some depression far out in the desert 

 in the form of small saline springs. 



The Narin River, for instance, the main source of the 

 water-supply that feeds Kumul, disappears into the 

 ground a couple of miles from the point where it leaves 

 the rugged sandstone foot-hills of the Karlik Tagh ; 

 eighteen miles farther on, five large springs appear in what 

 was once its river-bed. This water is used for irrigating 

 the oasis .^ Twenty miles below the town the water is too 



* Although these springs are the main irrigation-supply, they are 

 not the only ones. The eastern half of the oasis we found to be dependent 

 upon small springs, of the same type, which originated from the drainage 

 of the Edira Valley, the next valley eastwards of the Narin. Apart from 

 these, all the cultivation at the north-east of the oasis, which extends 

 for some four or five miles, rehes upon a water-supply obtained from melting 

 snows or rain in the mountains, arriving by way of the Edira Valley, or 

 by the canal, which has been led with great labour for some twelve miles 

 across the plain, from close below Toruk, where it catches the surplus 

 of the spring and summer floods. FaiUng this supply, the crops would be 

 ruined. " Kariz," or subterranean canals, as employed in other parts 

 of Turkestan and Persia, only existed in a ruined state to the west of 

 Togucha. 



II — II 



