THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
OF CENTRAL ASIA
strike me dead, the track has vanished.
Well, what now ? We've lost the way,
Demons have bewitched our horses,
Led us in the wilds astray.
Pushkin.
A YA-YIEH OR YAMEN RUNNER.
Frontispiece.
THROUGH DESERTS AND
OASES OF CENTRAL ASIA
BY
Miss ELLA SYKES
F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF
'THROUGH PERSIA ON A SIDE-SADDLE " AND." A HOME HELP IN CANADA'
AND
Brigadier-General Sir PERCY SYKES
K.C.I.E., C.B., C.M.G.
GOLD MEDALLIST OF THE ROVAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
AUTHOR OF
"a HISTORY OF PERSIA" AND ''THE GLORY OF THE SHIA WORLD"
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
^'71^'^
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
Few works dealing with Chinese Turkestan and the
Pamirs have been published of late years, although
the Heart of Asia, where the empires of Great Britain,
Russia and China meet, can never fail to excite our
interest. Furthermore, the great trade route which
ran from China to the Roman Empire lay across
Chinese Turkestan, from which remote land silk
was introduced into Europe.
The present book has been written in two parts.
The chapters composing Part I., which describe the
nine months' journey in deserts and oases, in moun-
tains and plains, have been written by my sister,
while I am responsible for those dealing with the
geography, history, customs and other subjects.
We are indebted to Mr. Bohlin of the Swedish
Mission in Chinese Turkestan, and to Khan Sahib,
Iftikhar Ahmad of the British Consulate-General,
Kashgar, for much assistance ; and also to Dr. F. W.
Thomas, of the India Office, who has read through
the historical sketch.
A good deal of new material will be found in
the various chapters, and as far as possible the
subjects so ably and exhaustively dealt with by Sir
Aurel Stein have been avoided.
vi THEOUGH DESEKTS AND OASES
To my sister belongs the honour of being the
first Englishwoman to cross the dangerous passes
leading to and from the Pamirs and, with the
exception of Mrs. Littledale, to visit Khotan.
We greatly enjoyed the nine months we spent in
Chinese Turkestan and on the " Koof of the World,"
and if we succeed in arousing the interest of our
readers in this old-world backwater of Asia, and at
the same time convey something of its distinctive
charm, our ambitions will be fulfilled.
P. M. SYKES.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Across the Russian Empire in War Time . . 3
CHAPTER II
Beyond the Tian Shan to Kashgar . . .18
CHAPTEK III
Life at Kashgar . . . . . .39
CHAPTER IV
Round about Kashgar . . . . .66
CHAPTER V
Olla Podrida . . . . . ,86
CHAPTER VI
On the Way to the Russian Pamirs . . .103
CHAPTER VII
The Roof of the World . . . . .129
vii
viii THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
CHAPTEK VIII
PAGE
The Aryans of Sarikol . . . . .148
CHAPTEE IX
The Ancient City of Yarkand . . . .175
CHAPTEK X
Through the Desert to Khotan . . . .191
CHAPTEK XI
Khotan the Kingdom of Jade . . . .209
PART II
CHAPTEK XII
The Geography, Government and Commerce of Chinese
Turkestan . , . . . .235
CHAPTEK XIII
An Historical Sketch of Chinese Turkestan : The Early
Period ....... 248
CHAPTEK XIV
An Historical Sketch of Chinese Turkestan : The
Mediaeval and Later Periods
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER XV
FADE
An Historical Sketch op Chinese Turkestan : The
Modern Period . . . . .275
CHAPTER XVI
A Kashgar Farmer ...... 300
CHAPTER XVII
Manners and Customs in Chinese Turkestan . . 308
CHAPTER XVIII
Stalking the Great Sheep of Marco Polo . .324
INDEX' . . . . . . .333
ILLUSTRATIONS
Note. — The illustrations, with one exception, are from reproductions of
photographs taken by the authors.
A Ya-Yieh or Yamen Runner
Cart used in the Osh District .
Daoud and Sattur
Watering Horses in the Tuman Su
Kashgar Women and Children
Water-Carriers at Kashgar
Shoeing in the Kashgar Bazar
A Kashgar Grandmother
Priest at the Temple of Pan Chao
Kashgar City (showing the city wall and Tuman Su)
Women at the Shrine of Hazrat Apak
Chinese Soldiers at the Kashgar Yamen
Jafar Bai displaying the Visiting Card
Study of Kashgar Women
Ruins of the Buddhist Tvm^ Kashgar
The Shrine of Bibi Anna
Fording the Gez River
Kirghiz Women in Gala Dress
Loading up the Yaks
Bringing in an Ovii Poli (Nadir with rifle)
(a) The Game of Baigu — the Mel6e
(6) The Game of Baigu — the Pick-up
(c) The Game of Baigu — the Victor
xi
FACE PAGE
Frontispiece
26
41
66
58
60
62
64
67
68
69
74
77
82
85
93
109
118
124
146
160
150
160
xii THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
Nasir Ali Khan, a Muhi of Sarikol
Sarikoli Dancers
Muztagh Ata — The Snout of a Glacier
A Kirghiz and his Daughter
Kashgar Musicians
Our Arabas on the Yarkand Road
A Hunting Eagle
Ferry on the Yarkand River
The Pigeon Shrine .
Beggars at the Gate .
A Dulani Shaykh
Dulani Musicians
A Dulani Woman and her Son
The Tian Shan or Celestial Mountains
The Tungani Commander of the Troops at Khotan
Tamerlane ....
A Load of Clover from Isa Haji's Farm
The Sons of Isa Haji ploughing
A Magician and his Disciple .
A Kashgar School
A Woman throwing Mud to effect a Cure
Ovis Poli — the 51 -inch head .
Hunting-Dogs with Kirghiz owner
FACE PAGE
156
158
162
164
170
,176
182
192
206
212
222
224
226
236
242
268
302
304
314
316
320
328
330
MAPS
Supplementary Sketch Map showing Country to the East of
Route Map ...... 275
Map to illustrate Authors' .Routes . {In pocket at end of volume)
ERRATUM
^^ ..it was broken up into islands.
PART I
B
CHAPTER I
ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN WAR TIME
The cities are called Taskent ^ and Cashayrey^ and the people that
warre against Taskent are called Cassaks ^ of the law of Mahomet, and
they which warre with the said countrey of Caskayre are called Kirghiz,
Gentiles and idolators. — Anthony Jbnkinson.
On March 5, 1915, my brother and I started off on
our long journey to Kashgar, the capital of Chinese
Turkestan, where he was to act for Sir George
Macartney, the well-known Consul-General, who was
taking leave.
Owing to the War, we were obliged, as the first
stage of our journey, to travel to Petrograd by the
circuitous route through Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The small Norwegian steamer, the Iris, in which we
embarked at Newcastle, made its way up the coast
of Scotland to a point opposite Peterhead in order to
avoid mines and submarines, after which it crossed
to Bergen. We passed two choppy nights in stuffy
cabins with the portholes tightly screwed up, and I
was too prostrate with sea-sickness to care when the
engines of our steamer stopped dead during the first
afternoon. My brother rushed up on deck to see if
we were held up by a German submarine, which might
mean the unpleasant experience of internment for
^ Tashkent, Kashgar, CossackB.
8
4 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES px. i
him, but after a couple of hours we went on again,
and no explanation of the delay was given us.
Some three months later this same vessel was
attacked in reality, two torpedoes being fired at her,
and only the zigzag course skilfully pursued by the
captain saved her from destruction. . Amundsen, the
discoverer of the South Pole, was on board, and
wrote to the papers describing the incident, and
strongly reprobated Germany's policy towards neutral
shipping, which, he declared, had converted him to
the side of the Allies.
To return to our journey, we finally steamed in
safety up a long fiord, and Bergen stood up pic-
turesquely against its background of snow-covered hills.
We thought that the pleasant-mannered Norwegians
were decidedly Scotch in appearance, and a sturdy
youth, quite of the type of a Highland gillie, soon
guided us to the Hospidset Hotel, which had originally
belonged to the Hanseatic League in Bergen. In old
days the apprentices lived in this house, being locked
up safely at night, and though the building has under-
gone considerable restoration, it is still a characteristic
piece of architecture.
Next morning we tramped round Bergen in our
snow-boots, finding the steep roads very slippery with
frozen snow, even the inhabitants falling headlong
now and again. Here and there children were merrily
tobogganing, dashing recklessly across the main street
through which the trams were running, and hurling
themselves down steep inclines on the other side in a
way that made me shudder. They were all sensibly
clad in woollen garments, their rosy faces peering
out from fur caps or fur-trimmed hoods, and it did
one good to see them. A graver note was struck as a
CH. I
ACKOSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
funeral passed by, with all the mourners on foot ; and
the pastor, in a stiff ruff with muslin frills at his wrists,
seemed to have returned from the sixteenth century,
and might have posed for a portrait of Calvin. Sleighs
were everywhere, drawn by sturdy little ponies that
raced along at a great pace with jingling bells and
kept their feet wonderfully.
We left by the night train for the twenty-seven
hours' run to Stockholm, changing at Christiania,
and next day were speeding through a land of snow
and pine inhabited by a hardy-looking, fur-clad race.
Fish seemed a staple article of food, and we were
offered salted prawns, herring-salad, raw sardines and
anchovies ; veal, ham and tongue, with pickles or
cold fried bacon, forming the meat course. There
were no sweets or fruit, but for compensation we had
delicious coffee and cream. In the restaurant car
the bread and rolls were fastened up in grease-proof
paper, sugar in tiny packets, and biscuits in sealed
bags, in order to prevent unnecessary handling.
It was night when we steamed into the " Venice
of the North," a city which must be lovely in the
summer, as it rises from its waters ; but at the time
of our visit the river was covered with floating blocks
of grey ice, and all the world was skating or ski-ing.
The people were not unfriendly to us, but from
more than one source we learnt that, owing to their
hereditary fear of Russia, the Swedes were generally
partisans of Germany, in contradistinction to the
Norwegians, who, as a nation, were warmly in favour
of the Allies.
We had a five o'clock dinner (three to five o'clock
being the usual time, reminding one of early Victorian
customs), and then settled ourselves into the com-
6 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
fortable sleeping coupes wliicli we were to inliabit for
two nights as far as Karungi, the direct route across
the Gulf of Bothnia being inadvisable for obvious
reasons. There were four racks for light luggage in
each compartment, a convenient washing apparatus
and a table, and we could open our windows, whereas
in Eussia we found the windows screwed up until the
spring.
But there was one thing in which the Eussian
trains, with their three bells rung for departure, com-
pared favourably with those of Scandinavia, and that
was that the latter gave no real warning when they
were about to start. The engine whistled and moved
off immediately, with the result that I was always
nervous about walking up and down the platform,
for the iron steps leading up to the carriages were
so slippery with frozen ice that T feared to risk a fall
if I scaled them in a hurry.
A Eussian girl travelling in the carriage next to
ours had given her ticket to the care of a French lady,
a complete stranger to her, and, strolling along the
platform, with a fur collar round her neck but no fur
coat, was unluckily left behind. The railway officials
sent her ticket back to her and took care of her
belongings, and I trust that some good Samaritan
aided her, but she must have had a most unpleasant
experience. I asked a Swede who talked to me why
the trains gave practically no signal when th^y
started, and he said that there was some reason
which he had forgotten.
The country lay deeper in snow the farther north
we advanced, and on either side, as far as eye could
reach, the undulating ground was covered with vast
forests of fir and pine. At intervals we passed little
OH. I
ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
towns and villages, the snriall wooden houses, painted
in many colours, giving the impression of toy-dwell-
ings. The brightly clad fur-capped little girls with
long fair plaits of hair seemed as if they had come
to life from the fairy books of my childhood, and one
could almost credit the existence of gnomes and trolls
in those limitless uninhabited tracts of pine. Soldiers
in blue-grey or navy-blue uniforms, with white sheep-
skin caps or picturesque three-cornered cloth hats,
stood about on the platforms up and down which we
tramped in our snow-boots whenever the train halted.
As there was no restaurant car we obtained our meals
at the station buffets, halts of about half an hour
being made at 10 a.m., 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. In the
absence of waiters the hungry crowd of passengers
helped themselves, selecting from a tray laid out with
different kinds of fish, cheese, pickles, etc., or piling
their plates with hot pork or veal. I made invariably
for the big cauldron of excellent soup with vegetables,
and there was always coffee and milk, bread and cakes
in abundance, and no pushing or hustling on the part
of those travelling.
At last we reached Karimgi, the frontier between
Sweden and Russia, and scores of sleighs were in
waiting at the station to convey the passengers the
short distance to the Russian Karungi. The fine-
looking Russian Consul, clad in a splendid fur coat
and cap to match. Was most obliging, and cheered us
greatly with the news — alas, quite inaccurate, as we
found out later — that the Allied fleets had silenced
all the forts in the Dardanelles ! My brother went
off to pass our heavy luggage through the Swedish
Customs, and I had some difficulty in collecting our
small possessions on to one sleigh, because half a
8 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
dozen men and boys, clad in nondescript garments of
fur and leather, hurled themselves upon hold-alls and
dressing-cases and bore them off in all directions,
utterly regardless of my remonstrances. The only
thing I could do was to follow the most responsible-
looking of my self -constituted porters, and when he
deposited his burden on a sleigh I induced him to
accompany me in a hunt among the lines of shaggy
little ponies, finding the tea-basket in one place, a
hat-box or a bundle of sticks and umbrellas mixed up
with another passenger's luggage, and so on. The
Consul told me to come and drink coffee in the buffet,
exclaiming reassuringly, " You can leave everything
safely, for in this part of the world the people do not
know how to steal."
At last we drove off in the keen air across a level
waste of snow, traversing a frozen river which forms
the actual boundary, and in half an hour, with many
a bump and jolt, we reached a gate through which,
after we had shown our passports, we were admitted
into Finland.
We had now a wait of some six hours, which we
spent in walking on the crisp snow or sitting in the
little station buffet, w^here I observed that coffee had
given way to tea, the Russian national beverage,
drunk in glasses with a slice of lemon and much
sugar. From now onwards the jpiece de resistance of
our chief meals was sturgeon. I liked it fairly well
when stewed or fried, but it was usually tough when
served cold. Some of these enormous fish are said
to weigh two or three tons.
When the train made a tardy appearance it could
not accommodate all the passengers, and many were
perforce left behind to follow the next day. The first
OH. I ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 9
halt was at Tornea, to whicli point travellers used to
drive until the extension of the line to Karungi after
the outbreak of the War, and, though we were in the
Arctic Circle and it was early in March, the air seemed
quite mild as we rushed across Finland, our wood-fed
engine belching forth immense whorls of smoke. At
Vyborg we entered Russia, and at midnight of the
second day reached Petrograd.
In the Astoria Hotel it was remarkable to see
every one drinking kvass, a somewhat mawkish
beverage made from bread or from cranberries, in
lieu of wine or spirits. In Finland alcoholic refresh-
ments were obtainable in the restaurant car, but now
we found ourselves in a country which the will of an
autocrat had made so strictly teetotal that we were
unable even to purchase methylated spirit for our
tea-basket !
Some of our Russian acquaintances spoke with
enthusiasm of the beneficial effect of the Tsar's edict,
one competent observer pointing out that the Russian
women were just beginning to take to drink, which
would have meant the ruin of many thousands of
homes. On the other side, there were murmurs among
the well-to-do, who were deprived of their favourite
beverages unless they could obtain a doctor's cer-
tificate of ill-health, which did not, however, seem
difficult to arrange. I was asked more than once
whether King George was about to follow the lead
given by the Tsar, Russians not being very clear
as to the limitations of a constitutional monarchy.
Soldiers were to be seen everywhere, sometimes
drilling near the great red Winter Palace, sometimes
as reservists, with numbers chalked upon their backs,
or again as small parties of wounded in charge of
10 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
kind-faced hospital nurses. I heard pathetic accounts
of the extreme poverty of the men who were being
nursed back to health in the English Hospital
directed by Lady Georgina Buchanan, who had had
the kindly thought of fitting them out when they were
dismissed to their peasant homes ; the totally disabled
being trained in basket-making. Both at Petrograd
and at Moscow, our next halting-place, those actively
engaged in nursing spoke highly of the courage and
gratitude of their patients. In the latter city an
English girl of only nineteen and a Russian lady of
the same age, neither of whom had had any training
in nursing, were in charge of a hospital containing
forty-five wounded soldiers. They did all the band-
aging themselves, assisted at every operation, and
supervised the peasant women who performed the
more menial share of the work. My devoted com-
patriot told me that the men called her " Little
Sister," and were marvellously brave when operated
upon, saying that her presence gave them courage.
Owing to the absence of the great majority of the
trained nurses at the front, these capable amateurs
were of the utmost service. We heard that the
Russian medical faculty disapproved of inoculation
for typhoid, giving the somewhat inadequate reason
that " there were so many worse diseases," and
consequently the soldiers suffered terribly from this
scourge.
My brother and I did the sights of Petrograd,
with its many gold-covered domes, cupolas and spires,
but I will refrain from describing the gorgeous interior
of St. Isaak, the pictures of the Hermitage, or even the
deeply interesting house in which Peter the Great lived
while building his '' window opening to the West."
ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 11
Moscow, with its hundreds of gilt-domed or purple
or blue or green cupolas, that bizarre orgy of colour
and fantastic design called the Church of Ivan the
Terrible, and the ancient Kremlin built to resist
Tartar inroads, gave me, as indeed it does to most
travellers, the impression of a semi-Oriental city.
We were in the very heart of Russia, and no one
could fail to be struck by the intense devotion —
I refrain from calling it superstition — of the people.
In the dim magnificence of the small but lofty Corona-
tion Chapel, which has its walls literally encrusted
with jewelled icons, crowds were kissing the hands
and feet of the sacred pictures all day long, in defiance
of every hygienic principle. Long-haired priests in
embroidered copes were chanting services, and as the
body of a saint, dead centuries ago, had just been
exhumed, it was confidently expected that many
miracles of healing would be wrought by the remains.
Gilded and jewelled banners to be carried in procession
stood in the ornate chapels, which had gorgeous doors
through which no woman might pass. On the great
day of his coronation the Tsar passed through these
portals, anointed and crowned himself, then issued
forth, the Father of his people, to perform the same
ceremony on the Tsaritsa.
The monarch, in common with the humblest of
his subjects, uncovers himself as he passes under one
of the entrances to the Kremlin, above which stands
a particularly holy icon. Indeed in every room of
every Russian house, even in the hotels, hangs some
pictured saint with a little lamp in front of him,
while the railway stations and waiting-rooms are all
provided with sacred guardians.
To these people the War was then a holy one.
12 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
The chambermaid of our hotel, who spoke German —
a language it is forbidden to use in public — told me
with tears that her only son had been killed at the
front, that his father had died of grief when the news
reached them, and that her daughter, working at a
hospital, had had no news of her soldier-husband for
three months and naturally feared the worst. ' ' But we
must not grumble," she ended bravely ; " it is terrible
for all of us, but with God's help our Tsar will conquer
his enemies and we shall have peace once more."
Eussians struck us as being somewhat silent in
the streets, and we never heard any one whistle. It
was explained that they have the same superstition
about whistling as have the Persians, and look upon
it as " devilish speech." In connection with this we
were told that on one occasion an American bishop
and his chaplain were visiting a monastery in Moscow,
and to the horror of the monks the chaplain kept on
bursting into snatches of whistling. But one of the
holy men was equal to the occasion and, walking
close behind the unconscious offender, made the sign
of the cross repeatedly in order to avert any evil
consequences !
The lack of efficiency in Eussia was very noticeable.
For example, to cash our letters of credit in a bank
was a tedious business, the money being slowly
counted with the aid of an abacus. The shopkeepers
also depend greatly on these aids to arithmetic.
It was moreover a land of tips. In every private
house the servant who helped you on and off with
your fur coat and galoshes expected a pourboire, and
on leaving a hotel we were surrounded by a throng
of waiters, porters of different grades, and a bevy
of small boys, all intent on fees.
OH. I ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 13
During the next section of our journey to Tashkent
the trains were by no means as comfortable as before.
Our only light was a guttering candle in a lantern
placed high above the carriage door, and, what was
worse, the double windows were screwed up for the
winter, all the air we breathed passing through most
inadequate ventilators in the roof. After some thirty
hours of semi -suffocation it was a relief when the
train stopped at Samara, and its great bridge over
the Volga. Before we crossed, soldiers with fixed
bayonets filed into the corridors and lined the train,
and henceforward sentries stood with fixed bayonets
on all the platforms. Instead of going through to
Tashkent, our train stopped for eighteen hours, so
we drove perforce to the best hotel in the place.
There I was ushered into a bedroom which had
only a mattress on the bedstead ; but a cheery
maid soon produced sheets, pillows and towels,
these articles from now onward being charged
separately in the bill : she also filled up the water-
tank which discharged itself into the basin by a kind
of squirt, liable to drench the unwary. A hot bath
is an expensive luxury in Russia, costing from three
to five shillings ; but I never appreciated it at its
proper value. The bath, filled with water too hot
for me to plunge my hand into, was invariably taken
in a tiny room without ventilation in which a stove
was fiercely burning, and the attendant, armed with
a thermometer, was always greatly astonished when
I demanded a copious admixture of cold water. Half
the room would be occupied by a divan covered with
a sheet on which to repose after the bath, and once
or twice I had some difiiculty in getting rid of the
maid, so anxious was she to wrap me in a second
14 THROUGH DESERTS AKD OASES pt. i
sheet, with which Russians drape themselves before
they step into the water.
Samara is an important provincial town, but the
whole place looked poor and shabby, partly because
the coloured plaster coating of the houses was
dropping off in unsightly patches. The wide streets
radiated from a small public garden in which stood
a statue of Alexander II., the Liberator, and, as it
was Sunday, all the world was promenading in
its best clothes along the slush-covered pavements,
the thaw having set in. The peasants looked pic-
turesque in short sheepskin coats, worn with the wool
inside, fur caps with lappets to protect the ears, long
leather riding-boots, putties tied up with string and
thick leather gloves. The shaggy hats of black or
white sheepskin made their wearers look like brigands
in opera, and beside them the women, in long black
coats much kilted at the waist, with their heads tied
up in woollen shawls, appeared decidedly tame.
We made our way down to the Volga and walked
on the frozen river, which was a mile wide, watching
the drinking-water of the town being drawTi from
various holes in the ice.
At the railway station that evening we found a
large crowd on the platform assembled to give a
hearty send-off to a trainload of soldiers evidently
hailing from the neighbourhood. The men were
travelling to the front in horse-boxes, and leant over
the wooden barriers wildly cheering and waving their
caps, full of health and spirits, and one could hardly
bear to think that many would never return, or,
sadder still, would come home incapacitated for the
rest of their days.
Owing to the War there were no restaurant-cars
ACEOSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 15
attached to the trains, and as the time-tables were
unaltered we had halts of only ten or twelve minutes
three or four times a day, when the passengers made
a frenzied rush to get what they could at the inferior
station buffets. We usually bought something in the
way of meat, cheese and bread, and carried it back with
us to our carriage, after we had gulped down plates
of the excellent cabbage soups called stchee or borsch.
The only long halt we made — one of forty minutes —
was at a station with no buffet whatever. The farther
east we went the less food could we procure : some-
times packets of inferior Russian biscuits were the
only stock-in-trade of the buffet, and if it had not
been for our soup-packets we should have been half-
starved. As it was, we were often unpleasantly
hungry, hot water being the only thing that we could
be sure of obtaining.
In spite of this the journey was full of interest.
We were travelling across limitless steppes, and the
melting of the snow in patches showed that spring
was at hand, when the sun would break forth from
the grey, lowering skies. Near Orenburg we noticed
many tons of hay ready to be despatched to the
front, and as we halted at Alexis I suddenly saw the
ungainly forms of camels. Nearer and nearer they
came, padding across the snow, drawing sleighs laden
with hay, and with a leap of the heart I realized that
we were once again in the East, that Europe was left
behind, and that we had entered that vast mysterious
continent of Asia, cradle of the human race and
birthplace of its great religions.
The following day we passed the Sea of Aral, with
masted ships riding at anchor in its port ; and by
now all traces of snow had gone, and the sandy
16 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
steppe was scantily dotted with coarse grasses. Some-
times we traversed stretches of salt-encrusted ground,
and in places the rolling sand-dunes were planted
and bound together with rushes in order to prevent
them from encroaching upon the railway, or long
lines of fencing answered the same purpose for the
snowdrifts.
We saw few signs of life, and the loneliness of the
steppe made me realize something of those vast
empty spaces of Asia which from lack of water will
for ever be dreary wastes forsaken by mankind. Yet
a picturesque crowd was usually assembled at the
stations. Hairless-faced men with high cheek-bones
were clad in long padded coats reaching to their
heels, or wore sheepskins, their rope or straw-soled
shoes being tied with leather thongs criss-cross from
knee to ankle over thick woollen stockings. Among
a variety of headgear the quaintest resembled early
Victorian coal-scuttle bonnets tied under the chin.
They were made of brightly coloured velvet, with
broad fur-lined brims, a fur-lined flap behind and
lappets over the ears, and looked most comical when
worn by brawny Kirghiz, who strode up and down
the platforms trailing long whips in their hands.
The warm weather was now beginning, and the
Russian women who sold tea and hot water from big
brass samovars had discarded their winter clothes and
appeared in flowered cotton dresses with gaily coloured
handkerchiefs over their heads. Their children were
running about barefoot, and I was amused at watch-
ing an encounter between a lightly clad urchin and
a smart little boy who was travelling in our over-
heated train. This latter, who had a long fur-lined
coat, a fur cap and galoshes over his boots, held up
ACROSS THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 17
his foot for the admiration of the platform youngster,
who laughed good-humouredly, and stretched out his
dusty toes in response.
In spite of the warm sunshine, ours were the only
windows open in the whole train, and when, after
leaving Samara, my brother had obtained fresh air
by freely tipping a most reluctant conductor, an
official higher in rank came to enquire whether it was
not a mistake and whether after all we did not wdsh
to be screwed up again ! I could not imagine why
our fellow-passengers did not follow our example,
because, before we reached Tashkent, the sun flamed
down from a cloudless blue sky ; the hoopoe, harbinger
of spring, chased its mate ; the crested larks sang, and
the children offered big bunches of the little mauv^
iris. Ploughing was visible in places, and a faint
green flush was spreading over the vast plain, which
near Tashkent gave way to grassy downs on which
cattle grazed.
At the imposing-looking station of Turkestan we
made enquiries respecting the flags that we noticed
hanging out on all the platforms, and to our joy were
told that they were in honour of the taking of
Przemyzl. An officer of military police with whom
my brother talked, said that this victory had come
at an opportune moment, as there was considerable
unrest among the native population.
We were sorry not to see the tomb erected by
Tamerlane in the old city of Turkestan to the memory
of a Kirghiz saint, for M. Romanoff, an authority on
Mohamedan art, who has visited a large proportion
of the mosques and shrines of Central Asia, considers
this splendid building to be a masterpiece.
CHAPTEK II
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN TO KASHGAR
Farghana is a country of small extent, but abounding in grain and
fruits ; and it is surrounded with hills on all sides except on the west.
. . . Andijan is the capital. The district abounds in birds and beasts
of game. Its pheasants are so fat that the report goes that four persons
may dine on the broth of one of them and not be able to finish it. —
Memoirs of Baber.
After three days and nights in the train it was
pleasant to make a halt at Tashkent, the capital of
Russian Turkestan, though the sudden change of
climate was somewhat exhausting. It was towards
the end of March, and the whole town, famous for its
fruit trees, was embowered in pink and white blossom,
and the avenues of magnificent poplars, willows and
beautiful Turkestan elms were shaking out their fresh
green leaves.
The Russians, under General Kaufmann, took Tash-
kent about fifty years ago, and have laid out the new
town with broad roads planted with fine trees that
are watered by irrigation. There are churches, public
parks, tram-lines and imposing-looking shops, the
considerable Russian population appearing to mix
freely with the Sarts, as the inhabitants are termed
by the dominant race. In India a white woman of
whatever class has a position with the natives, but
here the ordinary Russian woman is seemingly on an
equality with them, and not infrequently marries
18
CH. n BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 19
them. In tlie best confectioner's shop, served by
Russian girls, natives came in and bought and ate
cakes and sweets on the premises, side by side with
smart officers or elegant ladies evidently belonging to
the upper circles of Tashkent society.
Even in this remote part of the Russian Empire
the War was brought home to the inhabitants by the
presence of fifteen thousand prisoners, Germans and
Austrians. The latter, who were mostly Slavs, had
the privilege of shopping in the town, and we heard
that they were on excellent terms with their captors,
whereas the Germans were permitted no such relaxa-
tion of their captivity.
A long narrow street led from the Russian city
straight into the native town with its mud-built
houses, its little stalls of food and clothing, its mosques
and shrines, and above all its gaily clad populace.
But for the people I could have imagined myself to
be in a Persian city; but here, instead of men in
dingily coloured frock-coats and tall astrakhan hats,
and women shrouded in black from head to foot, the
inhabitants of both sexes revelled in colour. All wore
smart velvet or embroidered caps, round which the
greybeards swathed snowy turbans. The men had
striped coats of many colours, the brighter the better,
the little girls rivalling them with bold contrasts, such
as a short, gold-laced magenta velvet jacket worn
above a flowered, scarlet cotton skirt, or a coat of
emerald green with a vivid blue under-garment. For
the most part they were pretty, rosy-cheeked, velvet-
eyed maidens, with their hair hanging down their
backs in a dozen plaits, and I felt sorry to think
that all their charm would shortly have to disappear
behind the long cloak, beautifully embroidered though
20 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
it might be, and the hideous black horsehair veil
affected by their mothers.
One fascinating little figure adorned with big ear-
rings and bracelets came dancing down an alley into
the street, holding out the ends of a scarlet veil which
she had thrown over her head, her cotton dress and
trousers being in two shades of rose. She pirouetted
up to a tall man in a rainbow-coloured silk coat who
was carrying a tin can, and had paused at the steps
of the mosque to let the children gather round him.
To my surprise he began to dole out ice-cream in
little glasses, and boys and girls had delicious " licks "
in exchange for small coins. I remembered how en-
vious I had felt in early youth when I saw English
street urchins partaking of what seemed to me to be
food fit for the gods, although my nurse allowed me
no chance of sampling it, and in a moment the East
and the West seemed to come very near, the ice-
cream man acting as the bridge across the gulf.
After leaving Tashkent we travelled through a
rich alluvial country watered by the Sir Daria, the
classical Jaxartes, and halted on our way to Andijan
at the ancient city of Khokand. As at Tashkent, the
Russian and native towns are separate, and we hired
a moon-faced, beardless Sart, attired in a long red
and blue striped coat and with an embroidered skull-
cap perched on his shaven head, to drive us round.
He raced his wiry little ponies at a great pace
along a wide tree-planted avenue ending in a church
of preternatural ugliness set in a public garden. Near
by were Russian houses and shops, while small vic-
torias containing grey-uniformed officers or turbaned
Sarts dashed past, and native carts laden with bales
of cotton creaked slowly by. Many of these carts
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 21
had big tilts, the wooden framework inside being
gaudily painted, and the horses themselves were
decked with handsome brass trappings.
The old town, with its high mud walls, flat-roofed
squalid dwellings, a bazar closely resembling those
to be found in any Asiatic city, and comparatively
modern mosques, had little of interest, though a
well-known traveller speaks of its thirty-five theo-
logical colleges : its roads, as usual, were bad and
narrow, and must be rivers of mud in wet weather.
Many women were unveiled, others wore the ghoul-
like horsehair face coverings, and some of their em-
broidered coats were so charming in design and
colouring that I longed to do a " deal " with the
wearers. Many of the people were squatting, eating
melons which they store during the winter, or drinking
tea, a Russian woman being evidently a member of
one family group. We had one or two narrow shaves
of colliding with other carriages, as our coachman
threaded his way far too fast for safety and exchanged
abusive epithets with his brother Jehus, among whom
were Russians in black, sleeveless, cassock-like gar-
ments worn over scarlet cotton blouses. The harness
of the little horses was adorned with many tufts of
coloured wools, giving a pretty effect as these tassels
nearly swept the ground or waved in the air. The
life on the roads, the spring sunshine, the fresh green
leaves, the white and pink of the blossom, and the
orgy of colour furnished by the inhabitants, made
the drive an unforgettable experience.
A few hours later we reached Andijan, where the
railway ended, and here we had our last clean resting-
place until we arrived at Kashgar. I noticed that
the native women wore long grey burnouses with
22 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
black borders ending in two tails that were always
trailing in the dust, and all hid their faces in the
mask-like horsehair veils. It was the day before
Palm Sunday, and as we strolled in the evening up
the cobbled street of the town a large congregation
was issuing from the church, every one carrying a
small branch and a little candle, which each had lit
in the sanctuary. In the darkness the scores of tiny
lights looked like fire-flies, and I observed how care-
fully the sacred flame was sheltered from any draught,
as it is considered most important to convey it home
unextinguished. Our hotel was fairly good, but I
was not pleased on retiring to find that my door did
not lock, and that my window, opening on to a public
balcony, had no fastening. To supplement these casual
arrangements I made various "booby-traps" by
which I should be awakened if any robber entered
my room, but luckily slept undisturbed.
It may give some idea of the vast extent of the
plains of Russia which we had crossed by train, when
I mention that there was not a single tunnel on the
hundreds of miles of rail between Petrograd and
Andijan.
It was the end of March when we set out to drive
the thirty miles from Andijan to Osh. We packed
ourselves, our suit-cases and the lunch-basket into a
little victoria, while Achmet, the Russian Tartar cook
we had engaged at Tashkent, accompanied our heavy
baggage in the diligence. The sky was overcast with
hesbvy clouds, so there was no glare from the sun, and
the rain of the previous night had laid the dust on
the broad road full of ruts and holes. Ploughing
was in full swing, barley some inches high in the
fields, fruit blossom everywhere, and the poplars and
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 23
willows planted along the countless irrigation channels
made a delicate veil of pale green. Beyond the
cultivation lay bare rolling hills, behind which rose
the lofty mountain ranges which we must cross before
we could reach our destination.
The whole country seemed thickly populated, and
we passed through village after village teeming with
life, the source of which is the river, which ran at
this time of year in a surprisingly narrow stream in
its broad pebbled bed, and was so shallow that men on
foot or on donkey-back were perpetually crossing it.
Tortoises were emerging from their winter seclusion,
the croak of the frog filled the land, hoopoes and
the pretty doves which are semi-sacred and never
molested flew about, and the ringing cry of quail
and partridge sounded from cages in which the birds
were kept as pets.
The men, if not busied with agriculture, were
usually fast asleep or drinking tea on the mud
platforms in front of their dwellings, and the gaily
clad women slipped furtively from house to house,
or, if riding, sat on a pillion behind the men. In
fine contrast to her veiled sisters was a handsome
Kirghiz lady following her husband on horseback
through the Osh bazar, and making a striking
figure in a long green coat, her head and chin wrapped
in folds of white that left her massive earrings
exposed to view. She rode astride every whit as
well as the man did, exchanged remarks freely with
him, and was moreover holding her child before her
on the saddle. Other women were carrying cradles
which must have made riding difficult, and often a
child stood behind, clinging to its mother's shoulders.
On entering the native town of Osh, mentioned in
24 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Baber's Memoirs as being unsurpassed for healthi-
ness and beauty of situation, we passed a mosque
with such a badly constructed mud dome that it
looked like a turnip, and made our way along a broad
tree-planted Russian road to the nomera. This was
a house with '' furnished apartments to let," and
the small rooms, by no means overclean, were
supplied with beds, tables and chairs. We set to
work to unpack our camp things, and sent Achmet
out to buy bread, butter, meat, eggs, etc., for our
two hundred and sixty mile ride to Kashgar.
Our host made no pretensions to supply food,
but exactly opposite our lodgings was the officers'
mess ; with true Russian hospitality its members
invited us to take our meals there, and next day at
lunch we met a dozen officers, with their jovial, long-
haired chaplain in black cassock with a broad silver
chain and crucifix round his neck. Luckily for me
there were a couple of officers who spoke German,
though the others threatened them with heavy fines
for daring to converse in the language of the Huns.
In spite of the Tsar's edict, vodka and wine flowed
freely (the doctor had evidently given medical cer-
tificates liberally to the mess) and numerous toasts
were drunk, every one clinking his glass with my
brother's and mine as the health of King George,
the Tsar, our journey, and so on were given. All
were most kind, though I could have wished Russian
entertainments were not so long — that luncheon
lasted over three hours — and we left in a chorus of
good wishes for our ride to Kashgar.
We were roused early next morning by the arrival
of our caravan of small ponies, and with much
quarrelling on the part of their drivers the loads
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 25
were at last adjusted. We had our saddles put on
a couple of ill-fed animals and started off beside the
rushing river on our first stage of twenty miles. The
ponies were very inferior to the fine mules with
which we had travelled in Persia, and our particular
steeds would certainly have broken down long before
we reached Kashgar if we had not dismounted and
walked at frequent intervals throughout the whole
journey.
At first the road was excellent as we left pretty
little Osh nestling under Baber's '' mountain of a
beautiful figure," and made our way up a highly
cultivated valley towards the distant snowy peaks.
We were escorted by a fine-looking Ming Bashi or
*' Commander of a Thousand," who had a broad
velvet belt set with bosses and clasps of handsome
Bokhara silver-work. He wore the characteristic
Kirghiz headgear, a conical white felt with a turned-
up black brim, and four black stripes, from the back
to the front and from side to side of the brim, meeting
at the top and finishing off with a black tassel. We
were to see this headgear constantly during the next
eight months, as it is worn throughout Chinese
Turkestan and the Pamirs. Owing to the presence
of these Ming Bashis we met with extreme consider-
ation, village Begs and their servants escorting us at
every stage and securing the right of way for us with
caravans. This was a privilege that for my part I
keenly appreciated, as the track, when it skirted the
flanks of the mountains, was hardly ever wide enough
for one animal to pass another, and I had no wish to
be pushed out of my saddle over the precipice by the
great bales of cotton that formed the load of most
of the ponies we met. These officials usually secured
26 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
some garden or field, a place of trees and running
water, where we could lunch and rest at mid-day, and
often they brought a silken cushion which they offered
to my brother. They were surprised when he handed
it on to me, for in Mohamedan countries the woman
is considered last — if at all.
In the Osh district horses, camels, donkeys, cows,
goats and sheep were in abundance, the sheep having
the dumha or big bunch of fat as a tail, which nourishes
the animal when grass runs short during the winter
months. They had long hair like goats and rabbit-
like ears, were coloured black, white, brown, grey or
buff, and looked far larger in proportion than the
undersized cattle and ponies. On the road we saw
many of the characteristic carts that had immensely
high wheels with prominent hubs. The driver sat on
a saddle on the horse's back, supporting his feet on
the shafts, thereby depriving the animal of half its
strength for pulling the load and proving that this
nation of born riders has not grasped the elementary
principles of driving. These carts had no sides, but
carried their loads in a curious receptacle of trellis-
work, as shown in the illustration.
We reached our first night's lodging about four
o'clock, and I was glad to dismount, as riding at a
foot pace on an animal that is a slow walker is a
tedious business. All these halting-places in Russian
territory were much alike — a couple of small plastered
rooms, often with bedsteads, table and stools, some-
times looking into a courtyard where the ponies were
tied for the night, but often with no shelter for the
animals and their drivers. Jafar Bai, the chuprassi
from theKashgar Consulate sent to escort us, was of the
utmost service to us on the road. I noticed that many
OH. n BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 27
of the men we passed saluted him by throwing their
whips from right to left across their chests, and their
deference made me realize the high esteem in which
he was held. He put up our camp beds, tables and
chairs, and found water for our folding baths. It
was usually cold at night, and besides warm under-
clothing I had a sleeping sack, rugs and my fur-lined
coat. We always got up at 5.30 a.m., and I did a
hasty toilette in the dark with the aid of my torch-
light, Achmet producing coffee, eggs, bread, butter
and jam for our early breakfast, while Jafar Bai
packed our bedding.
Once or twice we were accommodated in the house
of a village Beg, and found the floors covered with
felts and carpets, and a table spread with bread,
sweets, raisins, almonds and pistachios. One of our
hosts kept his treasures in a wonderful gilt, red and
black chest, from which he produced a handsome
watch given him by the Eussians. This chest emitted
a loud musical note when opened or shut, in order, I
presume, to warn the owner if thieves attempted to
rifle it. At night his servants removed his bedding
of Bokhara silken quilts, but with touching confidence
left the box in our charge !
Our second day's march found us approaching the
mountains, and we rode to the top of a low pass
where hills slashed with scarlet, crimson and yellow
rose one behind another, to be dominated by the
glorious snow-covered Tian Shan peaks clear cut
against a superb blue sky. Walking down the passes
was certainly preferable to sitting on a stumbling
pony, but I found it rather hard work, as the track
was usually very steep and littered with loose stones,
on which one could easily twist an ankle or tumble
28 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
headlong. Every now and again it looked as if we
had reached the bottom, when lo, after turning a
corner, the track zigzagged down beneath our feet
seemingly longer and steeper than ever.
During this march we passed a party of Chinese
bound for Kashgar, consisting of an official and a rich
merchant with their retinues. The ladies of the party
travelled in four mat-covered palanquins, each drawn
by two ponies, one leading and one behind, and I
pitied them having to descend these steep places in
such swaying conveyances. They were attended by
a crowd of servants in short black coats, tight trousers
and black caps with hanging lappets lined with fur,
the leaders being old men clad in brocades and
wearing velvet shoes and quaint straw hats. As
seems usual with upper-class Chinese, they were very
indifferent horsemen, and sat on bundles of silk quilts,
not attempting to guide their ponies in any way, but
letting the burly Kirghiz lead them by the halters.
In striking contrast to them was a fine-looking man
in a long green and purple striped coat, from the
handsome girdle of which hung a silver - sheathed
knife. His boldly cut aquiline features were sur-
mounted by a black fur cap, and as he rode down the
pass on a beautiful Badakshani horse the pair made
a delightful picture.
Caravans laden with bales of cotton toiled uphill
towards us, and sometimes we met a string of camels ;
but ponies did most of the work here, their small
heads peering out from between their bulky loads.
They had bells hung round their necks, enabling the
approach of a pack-train to be heard at a considerable
distance, and specially favoured animals wore collars
of blue beads to avert the evil eye.
OH. n BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 29
Besides caravans we met gangs of Kashgaris going
to work at Osh or Andijan during the summer, in
order to earn tlie money on which they live throughout
the winter. They were sturdy men, their white teeth
flashing in faces tanned almost black by the sun, and
they wore long padded cotton coats of all colours,
the most usual being scarlet, faded to delicious tints.
As these coats were turned back to enable them to
walk more freely, we had the contrast of a bright
turquoise blue, or an emerald green or a purple lining.
Some walked barefoot, others in long leather riding-
boots or felt leggings, and all had leather caps edged
with fur. Each man carried a bundle of his belong-
ings, out of which cooking -pots often peeped, and
some one in the gang was certain to have a tar, a kind
of mandoline, with which to amuse the party, or
perhaps a bagpipe or a small native drum ; it was
pleasant to come across a group of these wayfarers
beguiling their long march by listening to the music
that has so strong a fascination for Orientals.
The farther we left Osh behind us the more barren
became the country, until we marvelled how the
flocks and herds could support life on the scanty
vegetation. At one point the hills were a bright
scarlet and it was strange to see a red mud-built
village with sheep grazing in this brilliantly coloured
setting. We crossed rivers and streams many times,
but they were not deep, for the mountain snow had
not yet melted, and we found the bridges formed of
rough poplar stems, with big holes into which boulders
were stuck, far more dangerous than the water. It
was during this march that my pony nearly ended
our joint careers by backing with me to the edge of
a precipice. We were passing a donkey laden with
30 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
brushwood, an ordinary sight, of which my brother's
horse on ahead had not taken the smallest notice,
when my animal made a big shy, and if Jafar Bai
had not seized the rein I held out to him and hauled
at it manfully while I urged my mount with whip
and voice, we should both have fallen into the river
rushing far below.
The crux of our journey was the crossing of the
Terek Da wan or Pass, 12,000 feet high, and the night
before we lodged in akhois, at its foot, in place of the
usual rest-house.
It was my first experience of the bee-hive like
homes of the Kirghiz — " a dome of laths and o'er it
felts were spread " — and, as we had ridden through
heavy rain and hail the last part of the way, I was
extremely thankful to pass behind a felt curtain and
find myself in a snug circular room lined with felts
and embroideries. A fire was lit on the ground in
the centre, the smoke escaping from a large hole in
the roof, and by squatting on the floor we could more
or less avoid the acrid smoke that made our eyes
water.
In the morning we started at seven o'clock, anxious
to reach the top of the pass before the sun, now hot
during the day, could melt the snow. To our intense
relief it was a superb day, a few fleecy clouds sailing
across a deep turquoise sky. I was clad in a mix-
ture of arctic and tropical attire, wearing a leather
coat under my thick tweed habit, woollen putties and
fur-lined gloves, along with a pith hat, blue glasses
and gauze veil. We soon came to the snow and
zigzagged upwards on a narrow track moving in
single file, any animal trying to pass another being
liable to fall headlong in the soft deep snow on either
OH. n BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 31
side, a fate that befell two of our party early in the
day. After a while, as we advanced, the great peaks
towered on all sides, sharply silhouetted against their
blue background — nothing but white as far as eye
could reach; and here and there skeletons stick-
ing out of the snow bore eloquent witness to the
terrible annual toll paid by the hundreds of horses
and donkeys that have to cross this cruel pass. I
could hardly believe that it was possible to ride over
these mountains, so steeply did they rise above us ;
and at the worst part of the ascent some sturdy
Kashgaris coming down towards us had much ado to
keep their feet, even though they carried long staves,
one man falling headlong and rolling a considerable
distance. The last pull to the crest is almost per-
pendicular, and is noted for accidents — here my
brother's pony nearly went over — but finally, caravan
and all, we reached the summit of the pass in safety,
and dismounted to enjoy the fine view. Before us
lay the great Alai Range, peak towering above peak
of boldly serrated mountains. Over us hovered a
huge vulture, and as I looked down the track in
front where the snow was partly melted, hideous
heaps of bones were revealed, and I felt that the ill-
omened bird knew that it would never lack food so
long as Eussia did nothing to improve this execrable
road.
In books of travel the writer frequently '* swings
down " such places, but my experience was very
different, as we crept down the worst parts on foot.
The snow on the farther side was rotten, and our feet
broke through it to water running imderneath and
big boulders. It was the kind of path on which one
could easily break a leg, and for a loaded pony was
32 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
a cruel ordeal, if not almost impossible. Even where
the snow had entirely melted near the foot of the
pass the way lay through a mass of boulders and
slippery mud most trying to any baggage animal.
For ourselves we had nothing to complain of, and
a march of seven hours found us at the little rest-
house enjoying some lunch; but our caravan fared
very differently. The distance was only twelve miles,
but so bad was the going that the ponies, though
lightly laden, were about thirteen hours on the road,
and four poor animals stayed out all night. We had
no evening meal till nine o'clock, and our hold-alls
when they arrived were encrusted with ice that had
made its way inside and soaked our bedding. We
had no means of drying it in the serai, and so were
obliged to sleep in our clothes. We were too thankful
to be safely over the pass to heed such minor dis-
comforts, and were indeed most fortunate; for the
road was closed for some days after our journey in
order that a fresh track might be trampled down by
driving unloaded animals across it.
On the morrow our caravan had a much-needed
rest till mid-day, while we unpacked our boxes and
dried our wet belongings in the sun. I was concerned
about my face, as in spite of all my precautions I
found that my cheeks, nose and lips were terribly
swollen, and besides being burnt a bright scarlet, all
my skin was coming off in patches, making me most
unsightly in appearance. On my mentioning this ex-
perience not long ago to an eminent geographer and
traveller, he assured me that, if I had thickly powdered
my unlucky visage before encountering sun and snow,
it would have got off scot-free, and I insert the hint
for the benefit of future travellers.
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 33
Our next stage was Irkeshtam, situated at the
junction of the Osh-Kashgar and Alai routes. In the
time of Ptolemy it was an important centre on the
great trade route which ran from Kome across Asia
to China, the " Stone Tower " mentioned by the Greek
geographer being either here or in the vicinity. To-
day it consists of a small fort garrisoned by Cossacks,
with customs and telegraph offices all set down in
hopelessly barren surroundings.
We were hospitably welcomed by the customs
official's wife and sister, but were sorry to find that our
host was ill. After the nine o'clock supper we retired,
my brother sleeping in some outhouse, and I in a little
room which my hostess's sister had kindly vacated
for me, where I had a queer experience. As the
window was hermetically sealed up for the winter,
and the stove was lit, I had perforce to leave the
door open in order to escape partial suffocation. A
large carpet was suspended from the ceiling above the
bedstead, across which it was carried, and hung down
to the floor, and upon the bed were a sheet, a velvet
bedspread and a couple of lace -covered pillows.
Slipping into my rugs I put out the lamp, and as I
was composing myself for slumber I became aware of
a stirring under the bed, and a breathing. Thinking
it must proceed from the dog or cat, with both of
which I had made friends, I tapped the carpet and
said '' Ssh ! " reflecting that if I troubled to drive
the animal out it would be sure to return again by
the open door, and as all was quiet I thought no more
about the matter and went to sleep.
Some time in the middle of the night I was suddenly
roused by feeling the bed violently jolted and to my
horror heard loud and unmistakably human snores
D
34 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
proceeding from under it. Considerably startled, I sat
up in tlie pitch darkness and listened to heavy breath-
ing while I summed up the situation. The intruder
could not be a burglar, as there was nothing to steal,
and of course I was in no danger, as I could rouse the
house in a moment, my door being open. I felt it
would be wrong to make a disturbance as our host
was so ill ; I could not communicate with my brother,
for I had no idea where he was, and it would have
been impossible to leave the house and search for him
in the wind and darkness, with savage dogs roaming
about. Another alternative would have been to light
the lamp and turn out the intruder myself ; but I
feared that my lack of Russian and Turki would
make this difficult, and it would certainly rouse the
establishment. All things considered, I decided to
lie and watch for daylight, my matches being to my
hand. After the unknown had turned over again I
heard the regular breathing of deep slumber, and
soon, contrary to my intention, I dropped off to
sleep myself.
When I woke about seven o'clock it was quite
light. Examining my bed with some trepidation,
I found a space between it and the wall at each
end. Behind my pillows was a heavy red felt, and
pulling this up I came upon a makeshift bed with
pillow and bedding underneath mine. The occupant
had gone, and I discovered the place at the end of
the bed where '' it " must have crept out noiselessly
through the open door !
I said nothing to our hostesses, who came straight
from their beds to give us bread and coffee before we
started. They rode with us for a couple of miles to
speed us on our way, and I was somewhat surprised
BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 35
to see that they merely pulled long coats over their
night attire and muffled their heads in shawls before
they mounted their horses. It was not until we had
bade them farewell that I was able to relate my
adventure to my brother and discuss this curious
example of primitive Russian customs.
We parted from the ladies at the Kizil Su, the
river that waters Kashgar, which we found very
difficult to cross owing to the floes of half-melted ice
in the middle of the stream and the broad ice shelves
that protruded from either bank. We were now in
Chinese Turkestan, and our halting-places changed
considerably for the worse ; indeed, the animals were
relatively better housed than the human beings.
Usually we rode into a small yard, two sides of which
were given up to the ponies, while only dark rooms
lit by a hole in the roof were reserved for travellers.
The ceilings were unplastered, the interstices of the
poplar beams being stuffed with hay, which as the
weather grew warmer would be a haunt of scorpions
and tarantulas. There was no furniture of any kind
in these " hotels " with their crumbling mud walls
and uneven floors, and I was always thankful when
I slept in them that the " insect season " had not
begun. It was not easy for me to sleep in these
places, for the servants seemed to talk all night
long ; moreover, as my room was merely wattle-and-
daub I could hear every movement of the animals
on the other side of the thin walls, as they munched
their fodder, fidgeted, and now and again screamed
and tried to kick one another. I was also often
roused from my slumbers by some cat that would
leap down through the hole in the roof and would
prowl about until my angry " Ssh ! " frightened it
36 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
into departing, though it would probably return later
and disturb me again.
At the first of these unprepossessing stages we
were greeted by a ya-yieh or " yamen runner/' who
had been deputed by the Chinese authorities to escort
us for the remainder of the j ourney . He was a striking
figure, with a scarlet and yellow plastron on his chest
denoting his official position.
Our onward route lay across many low passes, one
I remember being crowned by a deserted fort, a
memento of Yakub Beg, and clustered round this
stronghold were many shrines — spiles of stones adorned
with wild sheeps' horns and with poles on which
fluttered countless rags, the idea being to remind the
buried saint to intercede for the giver of the scrap of
cloth or cotton. After this we traversed a district
strewn with conglomerate rocks which assumed the
most fantastic and weird shapes, and we wound
through a long defile where the loess hills were crimped
and frilled, looking much like rows of ballet skirts
flung one upon another.
The ranges decreased in height as we proceeded,
the sandy detritus moving down on barren valleys in
which we saw very little sign of life. There were the
pretty snow pigeons, the ubiquitous crows, and occa-
sionally magpies standing on the backs of a few goats,
pecking the ticks from their hair as the animals fed
on almost invisible herbage or gnawed the bark from
branches of willows that were cut down for the purpose.
Ever since we had crossed the Terek Dawan the
weather had been cold and windy, with frequent
dust-storms, the sand driving in great red clouds
across the treeless wastes, and enveloping us and our
caravan in grit that made the eyes smart.
c«. n BEYOND THE TIAN SHAN 37
Farther and farther the hills receded until we
emerged on to the great Kashgar plain, where at
Miniol, our last halting-place, the irrigated fields were
green with crops, the trees in leaf, clumps of irises
about to burst into flower, lizards darting among the
stones, and frogs chanting loudly from the water-
courses. To give some idea of the size of the Tian
Shan Kange it may be mentioned that nine out of the
twelve stages of our journey lay through mountains.
On April 10, the thirty-sixth day after leaving
England, we rode across the stony plain towards a
' long green line on the horizon that indicated the goal
of our journey, passing on our way an old watch-
tower erected in bygone days on the edge of the
Oasis to give due warning of Kirghiz raiders. Some
miles out of the city a fine saddle-horse and a rickety
hooded victoria met us. My brother mounted the
one and I got into the other, to be jolted over stones
and in clouds of dust towards Kashgar. As we
entered the Oasis with its avenues of willow, poplar
and mulberry that surrounded the town for miles,
Sir George Macartney and his children appeared to
welcome us, and we also had a greeting from the
Indians, when we entered a garden and sat down at
a table on which a lavish meal had been spread. We
halted farther on to exchange greetings with the
Swedish missionaries, then drove in the red dust to
where the Russian Consul - General and his staff
hospitably entertained us, and afterwards to the
Chinese reception, where more tea had to be sipped.
This was the last stopping-place, and it was with joy
that I heard the children who shared my carriage
say, as we skirted the castellated city wall, that we
were at last nearing the British Consulate.
38 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
We drove into a large garden planted with trees,
where Lady Macartney came down the steps of a
big, pleasing house and, giving us the kindest of
greetings, led us into the dining-room. Here it
was so delightful to be once more in an English
atmosphere and to talk to a countrywoman that I
could not resist partaking of afternoon tea, though
it was for the fourth time since we had entered the
Kashgar Oasis.
CHAPTER III
LIFE AT KASHGAR
For stalking about the streets (of Leh) or seated in silent rows
along the bazaar, were men of a different type from those around.
Their large white turbans, their beards, their long and ample outer
robes, reaching nearly to the ground and open in front showing a
shorter undercoat girt at the waist, their heavy riding-boots of black
leather, all gave them an imposing air ; while their dignified manners
so respectful to others, yet so free from Indian cringing or Tibetan
buffoonery, made them seem like men among monkeys compared with
the people around them. — Visits to High Tartary^ Yarkand and Kashgar
— Robert Shaw.
On the second day after our arrival the Macartneys
and their children left for England, but, busy though
my hostess was, she found time to show me everything
in the house and offices, giving me all sorts of hints
that proved invaluable later on.
I was delighted with Chini Bagh (Chinese Garden),
as the Consulate was called, the well-planned, airy
house being set on low cliffs above the river.
The large garden was full of fruit trees in blossom,
its most charming feature being a terrace shaded by
lofty poplars, from which we had a fine view of the
river winding away to our right and could look down
upon fields green with spring crops and watch the
gaily clad people moving along the network of roads
and paths. In fact we were so far above the world
that I was sometimes reminded of the '* Lady of
39
40 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Shallot " and lier magic mirror, the busy life passing
below seeming almost like a vision wlien viewed from
this post of vantage, where we ourselves were quite
unobserved.
Another point that pleased me greatly about our
new home was the fact that we could walk on the flat
roof of the house, and every now and again, when the
air was free of the all-pervading dust, we could enjoy
a wonderful mountain panorama. The snow -clad
monarchs rose up, peak behind peak, in indescribable
grandeur, Kungur, as the natives called it, dominating
the whole, and I little thought that a few months
later I should be privileged to stand at the foot of
these superb mountains and have an unforgettable
glimpse of the " vision splendid." The Russians
always insisted that the great dome of Muztagh Ata
(Father of the Snows) could be seen from Kashgar,
but Captain Deasy definitely settled by his survey
work that this mighty giant was hidden by Kungur.
However, there was far more prose than poetry in
my life at Kashgar, particularly at first, when I was
occupied in coping with the details of housekeeping.
I laboured under the disadvantage of being unable
to speak Russian to the cook, or Turki to the other
servants, but fortunately old Jafar Bai, who was
entrusted with the purchases of supplies in the bazar,
spoke Persian, and as I have a working acquaintance
with that language he could act as my interpreter.
To counterbalance my lack of tongues I had a fair
knowledge of cooking and a good deal of energy, a
quality useful in dealing with the slackness of the
Oriental, particularly in Mohamedan countries, where
a woman is obliged to hold her own, as her sex is of
so little account. I speedily discovered that Achmet,
DAOUD AND SATTUR.
Page 41.
LIFE AT KASHGAR 41
a Russian engaged at Tashkent for the high sum of
five pounds a month, was hardly a cook at all and
could only make two or three soups and prepare the
same number of meat dishes; his bread, moreover,
was uneatable, and not a single pudding or cake found
a place in his repertory ! This was bad enough ;
but his unwillingness to learn, his lack of respect and
his ceaseless wrangling with Jafar Bai, whose office
he wished to usurp, made housekeeping a tiresome
business. Before long it dawned upon me that to
pay the wages of a chef and to be forced to do most
of the work myself was not good policy, and when I
discovered that Achmet had a weakness for alcohol
I made up my mind to dispense with his services.
The kitchen-boy left by Lady Macartney had all
the qualities that my late cook lacked, and I now
entered upon a peaceful existence as far as the
kitchen was concerned. Daoud Akhun (David, the
Reader of the Koran, as his name implied) was a
burly intelligent youth, and speedily grasped my
Persian interlarded with Turki words. But he had
no claim to his title of Akhun, as he could neither
read nor write, and consequently I had to prepare
every dish two or three times before he could remember
the right quantities and be trusted to make it alone.
My little Colonial cookery-book gave all the recipes
in cupfuls or spoonfuls, a method that might with
advantage be followed in England, as it is a great
saving of time and trouble.
Sattur, the butler of the establishment, was a
gnome-like little man, perfectly honest, but with the
mind of a boy of twelve. The others called him
Mulla Sattur, his title, like that of my cook, being
due to the fact that his father had been a mulla or
42 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
priest, though he himself was entirely devoid of
education.
He and his underling kept the house fairly well
when looked after, but Orientals are incurably slack
according to Western ideas, and it was a constant
struggle to maintain a very moderate standard of
cleanliness and order. At first I tried to teach him
to sweep the painted floors by means of a damp
cloth tied over a broom, instead of whisking the dust
from one place to another ; but he nearly wept, saying
at intervals, '' Not good, not good," so averse was
he to innovations. As a waiter he had a tiresome
habit of stretching his arm across us when serving
food or drink, and he had a constitutional inability
to put on the lid of a biscuit-tin or close a door. It
was a proud moment when, after many a reprimand,
he knocked at my bedroom door instead of bursting
in without notice ! Apart from these small failings
he was very likeable, most conscientious, and some-
what resembling a dog in his desire for praise if he
did anything well.
With all his virtues, he, on one occasion, nearly
caused a disaster, as the following anecdote will show.
Some years before our arrival, a British officer was
in temporary charge of the Consulate, and as he was
a bachelor the servants soon took advantage of the
fact that there was no mistress. One day he found
them going of! to their respective homes laden with
provisions from his store-room, and in righteous
wrath he dismissed every one save Sattur, who had
not joined in the depredations. The little fellow
then united in his person the offices of cook, butler
and housemaid, and apparently did so well that his
master was emboldened to give a tea-party. The
CH. m LIFE AT KASHGAR 43
guests arrived, but the piece de resistance in the shape
of rock - cakes was so long in appearing that the
amateur cook was summoned. Sattur then explained
with some perturbation that he was sure something
was wrong with the baking-powder, because, although
he had mixed in a double quantity with the flour,
the buns utterly refused to rise. The captain de-
manded to see this curious baking-powder, and he
and his guests had a shock when he discovered that
it was the arsenic which he kept to cure the skins
of the animals and birds that he shot !
One of the great drawbacks of the Turki is that
they never wash. There are no public baths, as in
Persia, nor does the rule of a weekly bath on Friday
before going to the mosque hold good here. The
only thing I could do was to insist firmly on clean
garments and well washed hands and faces. All the
servants wore very long sleeves in which they hid
their hands to show respect to superiors. They were
in the habit of using these sleeves as dusters, but had
to roll them up when they did any work.
Jafar Bai, the head chuprassi, willing and trust-
worthy, was my marketer, but variety in diet was
difficult to obtain when we had only the toughest
of mutton and the stringiest of fowls on which to
depend. We were warned that the beef was usually
diseased, and as many cases of illness had occurred
from eating the fish caught in the river — some
being diseased and others apparently having a
poison -gland — we never ventured upon that form
of food, and no game was to be had until the
autumn.
Fortimately eggs were abundant, and we obtained
some butter and milk from our two cows, attended
44 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
by their calves, whidi took about Half what their
mothers yielded. As the small quantity of butter
produced was barely sufficient for the table, I tried
to supplement it by procuring cream from the bazar,
but unluckily the Kashgaris do not practise cleanli-
ness in any form. The cream was always distressingly
dirty and had to be passed through muslin and then
brought to boiling-point before it could be made into
butter, and even then had an unpleasant smell and
a dingy appearance. After various trials I resorted
to suet for my cooking, and bought dumba, the big
bunch of fat that forms the tail of the Central
Asian sheep. On our arrival we found that owing
to the War no white flour could be purchased in
Kashgar, and we were obliged to have recourse to
the native article, with its large admixture of grit
and dust, before we could procure Russian flour from
Osh.
The Swedes told me that when their mission was
started in Kashgar some twenty years ago the prices
of food were very low, there being practically no
money in the country. In those days trading was
done " in kind," but prices had trebled or even
quadrupled in the last few years. Even so, I did not
consider them exorbitant when I could purchase a
small leg of mutton for Is. lOd., soup-meat at 2|d. a
lb., a fair-sized fowl for 8d., and eggs at about four
a penny. Sugar, Russian bacon, cheese and suchlike
imported things were naturally expensive owing to
the difficulties of transport. The weights were a jing
(ll lbs.), IQjings making a charak (21 lbs.), while the
Russian jpoud was 36 lbs.
The prices were usually computed in tangas,
a coin worth about 2d., which, to my great surprise.
LIFE AT KASHGAK 46
did not exist. This mythical tanga equalled 25
darchin, while 16 tanga and 10 darchin made a seer
— a coin worth about 2s. 8d. This soimds easy enough,
but was complicated with the Chinese tael, the Indian
rupee and the Russian rouble, all these coins being
current in Kashgar.
The important question of the laundry was
settled satisfactorily by a woman who arrived on Mon-
days and installed herself imder a shelter in the yard
where were basins and a fireplace. On Tuesdays the
ironer made her appearance, the same woman being
unable to see the clothes through both processes;
and she was accommodated in a room with a long
table, shelves on which to deposit the garments, and
a supply of irons. Lady Macartney had warned me
that this woman had a fondness for doing her work
on a dirty cloth, and I soon found that she lived up
to her reputation and would lay aside the clean sheet
that I provided unless I looked in upon her at frequent
intervals. Though she was a fair ironer she had no
knowledge of starching, but we discovered a male artist
who undertook to get up my brother's shirt fronts
and collars, though he utterly declined to wash them.
I paid both women some tangas extra on condition
that they washed and ironed all the servants' cloths
and dusters, my rule being to give out clean ones
every Monday and Wednesday in exchange for their
dirty ones ; a plan that ensured as much cleanliness
as I could reasonably expect.
Shortly before we left Kashgar for England our
lady ironer departed without warning to another
town, but the male artist kindly came to the rescue
and took over her job. He used to make the
most extraordinary noises, but I thought nothing
46 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. x
of them until I came into the ironing-room one day,
carrying a dress that was creased. He laid it out
on the ironing-board and to my horror began to
eject a fine spray of water from his mouth upon
it, making at the same time the noise that had
puzzled me !
There was not much social dissipation at Kashgar,
though there was a colony of fifty Russians, together
with a body of sixty-five Cossacks and their officer.
Out of these only a dozen made up '' Society," and
we met twice a week at the " Club," providing tea
and cakes in turn. Here four of the men and my
brother played tennis on a mud court, an adjoining
court being laid out for croquet, where the rest of us
played a game with wide hoops, a " cage " in the
centre and small-headed mallets that took me back
to the days of my early youth. Every one
'' spooned " and pushed the balls into position in
a way contrary to every rule of up-to-date croquet
and got quite excited over the games. It was curious
to see the thoroughly inefficient way in which the
servants swept these courts. Their method was to
kneel down and brush up the sand with little twig
brooms that they held in one hand, while with the
other they collected the dust into heaps before
piling it on one of the skirts of their long coats and
so carrying it off.
Prince Mestchersky, the Consul - General, and his
wife and staff were most friendly, and we were invited
to a round of dinners and lunches, Achmet's in-
competence giving me many an anxious moment
when we returned the hospitalities lavished upon
us. Unluckily for me, only four or five of the
Russians could speak French or German, and as I
LIFE AT KASHGAK 47
have no gift of tongues my attempts to learn
Kussian were far from successful.
Tliis was rather trying, as the Russian entertain-
ments ran to length. I always remember the first
lunch party to which we were invited. It was given
in a garden at some distance from the Consulate,
and I drove there well swathed in cloak and veils,
to avoid arriving with the complexion of a mulatto
from the clouds of suffocating dust that rose up from
the road. Driving was also a penance, owing to the
rough roads along which one was bumped and jolted
until one ached all over. Our goal was an enclosure
full of fruit trees in blossom and planted with flowers,
in which two long tables, placed on mud platforms
covered with carpets, were spread with different kinds
of wine, fruit, sweetmeats and so on. The Russian
colony, including the three ladies in their smartest
dresses, was assembled on a third platform hung
round with Chinese embroideries. Scarlet awnings
were stretched above the tables to keep off the sun,
and when all the guests had arrived we sat at the first
table for an hour and a half, while many zaJcousJcas
and course after course of meat were handed round
and interminable toasts were drunk.
I am a water-drinker, but soon found that I should
give offence if I refused to return the toasts in wine ;
so I did at Rome as Rome does, held my glass up,
clinked it with other glasses, and sipped as occasion
required. The Tsar's Prohibition Act had not found
its way into Chinese Turkestan, and never have I
seen such a bewildering array of bottles. The first
toasts led off in vodka, after which different wines
and liqueurs were served in unending succession.
Among the guests was a savant who had spent some
48 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
years in tlie Gobi Desert copying ancient inscriptions,
and had halted at Kashgar on his return to civiliza-
tion. His exploits with the bottle were so remarkable
that my table-companion said he must be slaking
his two years' thirst at one go !
When we had sat till three o'clock at one table
we were requested to adjourn to the second, where
ices, sweetmeats, champagne and coffee, and of
course cigarettes, were served. After an hour of this
our host proposed that we should take a little
promenade de digestion ; so ofi we all went along dusty
paths bounded by high mud walls and round freshly
irrigated fields. To compass these latter we had to
walk carefully on the top of the irrigation banks, the
ladies finding this somewhat difficult owing to their
heels of abnormal height. At one place we came to
a ditch where the gentlemen insisted on helping us
across, though it was a very small jump, but my
companions had such extremely narrow skirts that
they could not have done it unaided. On our return
to the garden the Princess wished to wash her hands ;
so soap and towels were provided and in turn we
held out our hands for a servant to pour water over
them, our gallant host waving a bottle of eau-de-
Cologne, with which he besprinkled the ladies.
My heart failed me when I saw tea in readiness,
with cakes, biscuits and sweets galore, and I had to
wrestle for some time longer with linguistic diffi-
culties, thankful that three of those assembled could
talk French fluently. When a surreptitious peep
at my watch told me that it was half-past six, we
took our leave amid many exclamations as to the
extreme earliness of our departure from the lunch
party 1
LIFE AT KASHGAK 49
Nice and friendly as the Russians all were, my
brother and I led lives of such a different kind that
we could not well coalesce. If we dined with them
we could never leave before midnight, and they them-
selves said that they liked to stay on till five o'clock
in the morning, the domestics serving up a supper,
or rather an early breakfast, from the remnants of
the dinner, and possibly they would stroll out to see
the sun rise before they repaired to their homes.
Owing to their love of late hours they did not rise till
mid-day, and as they could not enjoy the cool of the
mornings as we did, they used to '' take the air "
by moonlight.
They did not play bridge, and we could not learn
their difficult card-game, nor was it possible to play
a kind of loto with them, owing to ignorance of the
language.
Those forming " society " lived apparently in one
another's houses all day long, never liking to be alone,
and the little colony reminded us of the Florentines
rendered immortal by Boccaccio, who, when the
plague was raging, left their city and went to a
lovely garden outside its walls, caring nothing for
the misery and death they had so skilfully avoided.
In this case it was not a plague, but the World War,
that our neighbours appeared to ignore, except now
and again when the Germans approached some place
where they had relatives or friends.
I cannot refrain from giving the menu of one of
the dinners we gave the Russians, in order to show
what Daoud and I could accomplish when working
together :
E
50 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
MENU.
Hors-d^cBumes.
Caviare on toast. Salmon mayonnaise. Fried sausages.
Tomato Soup.
Meat Courses.
Chicken aspic. Steaks a la tournados. Indian curry. Vegetables.
Trifle. Jam tarts. Ices.
Savoury — Cheese straws.
Dessert.
A dinner sucli as this required my presence in the
kitchen the greater part of two mornings, and the
food had to be arranged with an eye to Daoud's
capacities ; for I fought stoutly against the Oriental
habit of long waits between the courses. On these
occasions I hired an assistant who did all that my
cook would permit, and Sattur was supported by
Jafar Bai and another chwprassi resplendent in
scarlet and gold uniforms and snowy turbans. The
clerk of the office, who spoke English and Turki,
always read over the menu more than once to
Daoud, and I insisted that the latter should repeat it
in his turn, in order to be sure that he had memorized
it correctly. When we were seated at table my
anxieties were by no means over ; for, in spite of
my coaching beforehand, the waiters were fond of
getting into one another's way, and occasionally
there were unseemly wrangles between Sattur, who
considered that he was the head, and masterful
Jafar Bai, who would sometimes wrench the bottles
LIFE AT KASHGAR 51
of wine from him as he was endeavouring to fill up
the glasses of our guests. But on the whole our
dinners were not inferior to those given by the
Russians with their larger and more experienced
staffs, and our guests enjoyed coming to us, as some
of our dishes, such as curry, were more or less a
novelty to them.
I have always liked entertaining, but in this case
the language difficulty used to leave me quite ex-
hausted at the close of the evening, and with the
depressed feeling that I could not make things go
briskly. Both my brother and I took lessons from a
young girl, the companion of the Princess, but as
she was imeducated and knew no language save her
own, I confess I did not get much benefit from her
instruction, although I tried to make her teach me
by the Berlitz method. She was, however, a help to
my brother, who had studied the language at Meshed,
where he had had a good deal of social intercourse
with the Russian Consulate, and who only needed
practice to talk easily.
The other Europeans consisted of a small body
of Swedish missionaries, men and women, headed by
Dr. Raquette, who, besides his medical work, has
published a Turki grammar and dictionary. All
the Swedes talked English and gave us much informa-
tion about Kashgar and its inhabitants, in particular
Mr. Bohlin, who accompanied us on many of our
rides. They had a hospital and dispensary, doing
most useful medical work, and had the only printing-
press in Chinese Turkestan, from which they issued
books printed in Turki for use in their schools through-
out the province.
A medical missionary in the East may be of
52 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
incalculable benefit to thousands, and Dr. Eaquette's
successful operations for cataract, in particular,
brought him patients from far Khotan. Unfor-
tunately the Kashgaris were much under the influence
of their mullas and of the native doctors, who, not
unnaturally, objected to foreign methods, the result
being that they often came to the Swedes only when
they were at the point of death. Moreover, though
they looked robust they seemed to have little strength
to resist the inroads of disease, and any serious illness
carried them off very speedily.
The mission was started a quarter of a century
ago. Dr. and Mrs. Hoegberg, whom we met later at
Yarkand, being its oldest members. At first it met
with persecution, the Chinese stirring up the Kash-
garis to besiege the little community in their house,
but fortunately Mr. Macartney, as he then was, rode
to the rescue with his chuprassis, and some Russian
Cossacks aided him in the work of driving off the
mob.
The Kashgari roughs then wreaked their vengeance
on the new hospital that was being built on the site
which it now occupies, and every kind of threat was
used to induce the missionaries to leave Kashgar ;
but they stood firm, and finally the Chinese official
who was their enemy was recalled, and forced to
rebuild the hospital at his own cost. His successor
announced the change of policy by inviting the
members of the mission to a great banquet, at which
the much-esteemed swallows' -nest soup was served,
and so the hatchet was buried for good.
I always thought that the apple-pie order of the
mission buildings and the excellent fruit and vege-
tables grown in the garden were a good object-lesson
CH. m LIFE AT KASHGAR 53
to the Kashgaris, and indeed they were not insensible
of this, as the following anecdote shows. When one
of the missionaries had engaged a servant he heard
an old retainer remark to the new recruit : " You must
be sure not to be dirty, because these people are so
clean that if they are forced to say an unclean word
they go immediately and wash out their mouths ! "
My informant also told me that a servant of one of
the lady missionaries, being short of cash, took all
her plates to the bazar and sold them. When she
turned upon him in righteous wrath, he remarked :
" Oh, mistress, you are not blaming me properly,"
and he actually poured out a string of most abusive
epithets, inviting, nay imploring her to use them
upon him !
Our days soon fell into a routine broken by the
English post with its month-old newspapers, which
we devoured eagerly. The Renter sent across the
passes from Gilgit gave us somewhat later information
about the War, and the Russians received occasional
telegrams ; but their knowledge of geography was
so limited that my brother had much difficulty in
eliciting any clear statement as to what was going on.
Riding was our chief amusement, and we pur-
chased two fine Badakshani horses of the breed
described by Marco Polo, and were usually in the
saddle by half-past seven. The morning air was
delightfully cool, and the rides were wonderfully
varied, a fresh one for each day of the month we used
to say. There was also the sound of running water
in the numberless irrigation channels as we rode
under the trees along sandy tracks free from stones
and ideal for cantering. An added charm was the
fact that the walls enclosing gardens and fields were
54 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
quite low, and as a rule tlie crops were not fenced
in at all, save by low banks of earth.
At first we used to be accompanied on our walks
and rides by Bielka and Brownie, the dogs that the
Macartneys had left in our care. Bielka was
a powerful white animal rather like a wolf, and
unluckily had such an unconquerable dislike to
Europeans that he had to be chained up whenever
visitors came to the house. On our arrival Lady
Macartney " introduced " us to him by providing
us with bits of meat to give him as a peace-offering,
and we became excellent friends.
It was amusing on our walks to watch him and
Brownie, the fat, easygoing spaniel ; for the latter, an
arrant coward, would pick quarrels with the pariah
dogs and then call his comrade to his aid, the enemy
fleeing in confusion as soon as Bielka appeared.
But when we found that, if a Cossack rode past, the
great dog would rush at him like a fury and try to
tear him from his horse, and when on the same walk
we had to race to the rescue of a young Eussian
couple, the edict went forth that our would-be
guardian must be left at home. It went to my heart
to refuse him when he implored me to let him escort
us ; for he was most charming to his friends and kept
the Consulate free of thieves, as he roamed about the
place all night.
Though the Consulate was close to the city wall,
we could turn almost at once into shady lanes,
bordered with irrigation channels, along which
willows, poplars and mulberries grew luxuriantly ;
while on either side stretched fields green with lucerne
and springing wheat, barley and maize. But all
the growth and prosperity of the Oasis was entirely
LIFE AT KASHGAK 55
dependent upon the water, and should this source of
life fail great would be the devastation. One day
we came upon a district where a big network of
irrigation channels had run dry owing to the bursting
of a dam, and hundreds of men were labouring
against time to repair it and thereby save the trees
and crops. The corvee system is in force in Chinese
Turkestan, and although tyrannical according to
Western ideas, it is certainly for the public benefit
in such a case as this. The villagers are forced to
repair all roads and water channels in their own
districts, but the hardship comes in when their
Chinese rulers undertake to reclaim land from the
desert and commandeer men from considerable dis-
tances. They are supposed in such cases to be paid
threepence a day for their food, but it is rumoured
that this money usually goes into the pockets of
the headmen.
The Kashgar Oasis is watered by the Kizil Su (Eed
Eiver, so called from its colour) and its branch the
Tuman Su, wliich make the city and its environs an
island. In April there was little water in either
stream, so we could ford them easily on horseback ;
but during the summer it was a difierent matter.
We were warned to be on our guard for quick-
sands in these rivers. Mr. Bohlin was once nearly
caught in one, but feeling his horse sinking beneath
him he threw himself off in haste and wading waist-
deep he pulled the animal ashore. On another
occasion he observed several men trying to extricate
a horse that had sunk so deeply that it took the whole
day to free it. These quicksands are less to be
feared in deep water which buoys the animals up.
The Kashgaris always hurry their horses over any
56 THROUGH DESEETS AISTD OASES pt. i
suspicious place, but as the dangerous areas are
constantly changing, it is impossible to be sure of
their whereabouts.
Charming as spring is in Chinese Turkestan, it
has a serious drawback in the violent sandstorms
that are particularly frequent during March and
April, in fact it has been computed that there are
only a hundred really clear days during the year.
For several days after our arrival the air was thick
with dust that veiled the sun and accounted for the
strictures passed by travellers on the " grey atmo-
sphere " and depressing climate of Kashgar. Either
by day or by night a furious wind would arise,
bringing clouds of sand from the desert and coating
everything in our rooms with a layer of reddish grit
that hurt our eyes if we chanced to be caught in the
open. I was told, however, that the inhabitants
liked this haze that enshrouded their city as being a
welcome change from the brilliant sunshine, and also
as tempering the heat that was beginning to be con-
siderable during the middle of the day. We noticed
great changes in the temperature, sometimes experi-
encing a drop of as much as twenty degrees from one
day to another. This I found out to my cost when I
had a tiresome attack of rheumatism caused by riding
on a cold morning in the thin linen coat that had
been just the thing on the previous day.
These sandstorms raging through the centuries
are supposed to have made the loess formation which
is so characteristic of Chinese Turkestan, and so
amenable to the spade of the cultivator when irrigated.
The countless layers of compressed sand are capable
of producing splendid crops, and the apparently
lifeless desert of Central Asia is able to support large
f I
LIFE AT KASHGAR 67
populations if the beneficent agency of water be
provided.
The loess is also most useful in another way ;
for, when mixed with chaff and water, it forms the
staple building material of Chinese Turkestan, and
edifices of sun-dried loess bricks will endure through
the centuries, if repaired at intervals. I have often
seen a peasant mending a wall in most primitive
fashion by filling the breach with wet mud, which he
slapped into position with his hands. Naturally
this style of building is suitable only in a dry climate,
and a prolonged period of heavy rain, such as some-
times occurs in winter, works havoc with it, the
flat roofs of houses staving in and walls frequently
collapsing. To the traveller, the loess, though
picturesque when broken up into crevasses and
castellated forms, has its drawbacks. Unless culti-
vated it is inexpressibly dreary, in dry weather
the traffic stirs it up into clouds of suffocating dust,
and in wet it turns into a sea of slippery mud, in
which the surest-footed horse may come down. If
the rain be of long duration the soil is apt to turn
into a veritable morass, which engulfs many a poor
little donkey and chokes it to death.
I was fond of riding through the bazar on a
Thursday, the day of the weekly fair, when crowds
of people poured in from the many hamlets in the
Oasis, making a feast of colour. Among the men
there was a great mixture of types, the upper-class
Kashgaris usually having handsome features and full
beards and moustaches ; a group of Afghans with
hawk -like profiles and proud bearing would catch
the eye, reminding me of birds of prey when contrasted
with the flat-faced, ruddy-cheeked, hairless Kirghiz ;
58 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
and the lower classes with the high cheek-bones of
the Mongol seemed a link between the Iranian and
the Chinese.
The men wore long coats, purple, red, green, or
striped in many colours, with gay handkerchiefs
serving as waistbands. Snowy turbans denoted
mullas and merchants, but the others in fur-edged
velvet hats or prettily embroidered skull-caps made
gay splashes of colour as they rode by on spirited
stallions or donkeys. The women were, if possible,
more brightly clad than the men ; their under shirts
and trousers contrasting with their coats and hats.
One belle, for example, had an emerald green coat
lined with a flowered pink cotton ; her under-
garment was a vivid orange, and her hat purple,
with a spray of blossom coquettishly stuck under
the brim. It seems almost incredible, but she fitted
in well with her surroundings in the brilliant sunshine
and the spring green of foliage and crops.
The only visible differences between the dress of
the men and of the women were the long white
cotton shawls of the latter which they wore over their
heads, and the small face -veils usually made of
hand-embroidery, sometimes with a handsome border
and fringe. These coverings were fastened to the
brim of the hat, and were usually flung back over it,
only to be hastily pulled down by some very orthodox
dame at sight of my brother ; but if I happened to
be riding behind him it would usually be pushed
aside to enable its wearer to have a good look at the
English hhatun. Girls of good family veil and are
kept secluded ; but there were few '' gentry " in
Kashgar, for when the Chinese retook the province
on the death of Yakub Beg nearly all the upper-
KASHGAR WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
Page 58.
LIFE AT KASHGAR 69
class Kashgaris fled to Andijan. Both men and
women wore abnormally long sleeves, answering the
purpose of gloves in cold weather, and long leather
riding - boots. The latter were often made of scarlet
leather and were more like stockings than boots, and
over them was worn a shoe with stout sole and heel.
Indeed these long boots were seen everywhere and
constituted a special feature of the country, being
worn by men, women and children alike.
On one occasion I was invited to the house of a
Turki lady who was kind enough to display her
wardrobe for my benefit. All her dresses were
beautifully folded and kept tied up in large cloths.
A woman of fashion wears five garments visible to
the eye, the first two being the long gown and the
trousers under it. The gown is made of Bokhara or
Chinese silk, brocade, Russian chintz and so on,
and over it is worn a waistcoat, often of cloth of gold
or silver, edged at the neck with the handsome gold
thread embroidery made at Kucha. Then comes a
short coat with long sleeves, usually of velvet woven
in Germany and decorated with a broad band of gold
embroidery. One black brocade coat that I saw
was embroidered round the neck with big tinsel
butterflies set with artificial stones. The fifth
garment is a long velvet or brocade coat covering
its wearer to the heels ; I noticed a handsome one
of magenta velvet, the buttons being big bosses of
scarlet coral set in gold filigree and small pearls, a
product of the Yarkand bazar. Draped on the head
is a big white shawl, often of pretty gauzy material,
that falls to the heels, and upon this are set the
dainty skull-cap and the big velvet fur-edged cap.
To this latter is attached the face- veil of fine-drawn
60 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
thread edged all round with gold embroidery, the
very handsome broad band of needlework at the top
being concealed by the brim of the hat. This seemed
a waste to my practical English mind, but the lady
to whom I pointed this out explained that such was
the fashion.
Many of the young Kashgari women were most
attractive in appearance, and some of the little
girls quite lovely, their plaits of long hair falling
from under a jaunty little embroidered cap, their
big dark eyes, flashing teeth and piquant olive faces
reminding me of Italian or Spanish children. One
most beautiful boy stands out in my memory. He
was clad in a new shirt and trousers of flowered pink,
his crimson velvet cap embroidered with gold, and
as he smiled and salaamed to us I thought he looked
like a fairy prince. The women wear their hair in
two or five plaits much thickened and lengthened by
the addition of yak's hair, but the children in several
tiny plaits.
The peasants are fairly well off, as the soil is rich,
the abundant water-supply free, and the taxation
comparatively light. It was always interesting to
meet them taking their live stock into market.
Flocks of sheep with tiny lambs, black and white,
pattered along the dusty road ; here a goat followed
its master like a dog, trotting behind the diminutive
ass which the farmer bestrode ; or boys, clad in the
whity- brown native cloth, shouted incessantly at
donkeys almost invisible under enormous loads of
forage, or carried fowls and ducks in bunches head
downwards, a sight that always made me long to
come to the rescue of the luckless birds.
It was pleasant to see the women riding alone on
WATER-CARRIERS AT KASHGAR.
i
Page 60.
LIFE AT KASHGAK 61
horseback, managing their mounts to perfection.
They formed a sharp contrast to their Persian sisters,
who either sit behind their husbands or have their
steeds led by the bridle ; and instead of keeping
silence in public, as is the rule for the shrouded
women of Iran, these farmers' wives chaffered and
haggled with the men in the bazar outside the city,
transacting business with their veils thrown back.
Certainly the mullas do their best to keep the fair
sex in their place, and are in the habit of beating
those who show their faces in the Great Bazar. But
I was told that poetic justice had lately been meted
out to one of these upholders of the law of Islam,
for by mistake he chastised a Kashgari woman
married to a Chinaman, whereupon the irate husband
set upon him with a big stick and castigated him
soundly.
Market day at Kashgar presented an ever-chang-
ing kaleidoscope. Here a turbaned grandfather
bestriding a tiny donkey, his grandson clinging on
behind him and holding tight to his waistcloth,
would cross the imposing-looking bridge, a favourite
haunt of the numerous beggars. On the river bank
the dyers would be beating long pieces of cloth in the
shallows ; horses would be drinking standing knee-
deep in the water, and at the ford loaded asses could
be seen staggering across, and men and women with
their garments kilted high wading to the opposite
bank. Donkeys carrying covered tubs were ridden
by children who scooped up the water in gourds and
filled the receptacles that were to supply their house-
holds for the day. Small mites hardly able to do
more than toddle, were fearless riders, sometimes
two or even three children being perched on the
62 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft.i
same animal. The excellence of tlie river brand
accounts for the fact that cholera is unknown in
Kashgar, and the inhabitants do not suffer from the
goitre that is so prevalent in other cities of Chinese
Turkestan.
The little stalls in the bazar exposed all sorts of
commodities for sale. Melons that had been stored
all through the winter ; horseshoes or murderous-
looking knives laid out on benches ; here were small
piles of almonds, walnuts and pistachios, there
macaroni of native make and rice ; and at one corner
of the road the dyers hung up their blue and scarlet
cloths to dry. As far as I could see the vendors made
no effort to press their wares, and there seemed to
be no fixed hours of work, men apparently sleeping,
gossiping or drinking tea at any time of day. In the
bakers' shops the ovens were big holes flush with the
floor of the shop, and the baker stuck the flat cakes
of dough against their sides and pulled them off
when ready, with the aid of a long-handled iron
instrument. The bread, the little be-glazed rolls in
the form of rings, and the heaps of flour were all
plentifully besprinkled by the dust of the traffic ;
and during the cold weather the children would squat
all day close to these ovens and frequently tumble in
and get terribly burnt, poor little things. There was
always business doing at the forge, where the horses
being shod were lashed so tightly to an ingenious
wooden framework that they could not move. Un-
luckily the Turki farrier is more inclined to make
the hoof fit the shoe than vice versa, and as a result
often cuts away the wall in most unscientific fashion,
as we sometimes found to our cost.
Partridges and the pretty little desert larks kept
SHOEING L\ THE KASIIGAR BAZAR.
Pagi 62.
LIFE AT KASHGAR 63
in small round cages called and twittered, but their
notes would be drowned by the performance of a
group of professional singers who had drawn a crowd
round them. The leader in turban and silk attire,
with a huge silver buckle on his belt, sang, or rather
shouted, a solo with many a trill and tremulo, making
excruciating facial contortions, the monotonous
chorus being taken up by the rest of the troupe.
Some of these were greybeards, others mere boys,
but all had the appearance of undergoing acute
torture as they yelled at the top of their voices, and
brought to mind my old maestro who was in the habit
of suddenly holding a mirror in front of me if I wore
a pained expression as I sang.
Yet the Kashgaris have the reputation of being
very musical, and even to my western ears there was
considerable charm in many of their songs ; but try
as I might, I could never pick up any of their airs,
probably owing to the fact that their notation is quite
different from ours. They do not understand part-
singing, but play several instruments, such as sitars,
drums, pipes and tambourines. In the spring and
summer men and boys would sing up to a late hour
at night, and with the first glint of dawn I was often
roused by cheerful peasants chanting on their way
to work in the fields.
The people say that travelling dervishes bring
fresh tunes to the towns, and that when the spring
repertoire, for example, has been learnt by the
inhabitants it will be succeeded by new tunes for the
autumn and winter. There are sometimes no words
to these refrains, each singer supplying his own, in
the fashion of the Italian improvisatori. No woman
of good repute may sing in public, and only once did
64 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
I hear a little girl of some eight or nine years old
singing away to herself and evidently much enjoying
the exercise. Whistling is not allowed even to
children, but I could not find out whether the Kash-
garis believed, as do the Persians, that it summons
the demons.
As the Kashgari woman is spoken of as hhatun,
mistress, and sometimes as khan, or master, of the
house, I thought that she had a far better position
than her Persian sister ; yet the law of Islam presses
heavily upon her in many ways. Owing to the
emigration of men from the Oasis there is a large
surplus of women, and marriage is consequently
cheap for a suitor. Parents often sell their daughter
to the highest bidder in the matrimonial market
without allowing her any freedom of choice. True,
divorce may be had for a couple of tungas (about
fourpence), but as the woman may not re-marry until
a hundred days have elapsed, she often has difiiculty
in keeping herself meantime, although the man is
supposed to return the dowry that he received with
her at her marriage. If she has children she must
take charge of any under seven years of age, but if
they are above that age the husband looks after the
sons and the wife has the daughters, the husband
paying a maintenance allowance.
There is a law that, if the husband divorces his
wife, the latter may take all the movables in the
house, and as in the case of a merchant much of his
wealth consists of carpets and brass utensils, he often
finds it cheaper to take a second wife rather than
divorce the first, who would make a clean sweep of
the household plenishing. I confess that this law
rejoiced me, as I always resented the state of
LIFE AT KASHGAR 66
inferiority to which Islam subjects my sex, and was
glad that it gave them the advantage for once.
Kashgar is a great resort of traders, and the de-
grading custom of temporary marriages is in full
force, a man often marrying a woman for a week or
even a couple of days, the mulla who performs the
ceremony arranging for the divorce at the same time.
The missionaries told me that most of the women in
Kashgar had been married several times, and this
constant divorce leads to the wives taking whatever
they can from their husbands and secreting it against
a rainy day. And one cannot blame them ; for, if a
man wants to get rid of his helpmate, especially if
she be old, he often ill-treats her in order to force her
to divorce him and thus free him from the necessity
of restoring her dowry. If she does this she may
find herself in evil case without means of subsistence,
and possibly unable to remarry.
How the children fare in all these matrimonial
complications must be left to the imagination.
Fortunately marriage is a far more stable institution
in the villages, where monogamy is the practice
and divorce uncommon. Here the women are more
on an equality with their husbands, though on one
occasion Mr. Bohlin saw a man guiding a plough
to which he had harnessed his wife and a donkey !
The Chinese also practise polygamy; but they
never divorce a wife if she be the mother of a son,
and I understand that they do not approve of the
practice at all, regarding it as the ruin of family life
and as full of evil consequences to the children.
CHAPTER IV
ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR
Arabic is science, Persian is sugar,
Hindustani is salt, but Turki is Art.
Turki Proverb,
As soon as we had settled down at Kasligar we were
anxious to explore the city and its environs, and Mr.
Bohlin proved an invaluable guide in our various
expeditions.
From its position the capital of Chinese Turkestan
was a commercial centre from very early times. The
town as we knew it is built on high ground above
the Tuman Su and surrounded by a mud wall and
a dry moat, but there are ruins of old Kashgar close
by, and the Oasis has changed hands many times.
The small traders and peasant proprietors, who
form the bulk of the population, are by no means
a warlike race, and have apparently accepted with
equanimity the rule of whatever master fate might
send them. Throughout the centuries it never seems
to have occurred to the cities of what is now Chinese
Turkestan that they might with advantage have
combined against a common foe, instead of letting
themselves be subjugated piecemeal.
Perhaps the earliest mention of Kie-sha, as it
was then called, was when the famous Chinese
PRIEST AT THE TEMPLE OF PAN CHAO.
Page 67.
OH. IV ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR 67
general Pan Chao in the first century of our
era conquered the Oasis and marched his armies
ahnost as far as the Caspian. Accordingly we
made our first expedition to the picturesque
temple erected by the Chinese to this hero, who,
we were told, defended the city most valiantly
against fierce attacks from the Kirghiz tribes. This
monument is quite modem, the Mohamedan con-
queror Yakub Beg having destroyed the original
temple during the 'sixties, and the legend that places
the remains of the great soldier in the high mound
on which the temple stands is open to doubt.
^^jThe dirty, black-clad priest in charge of the
building pointed out to us the gods in their ill-
kept shrines, life-size plaster figures clad in gorgeous
silken robes with finger-nails of monstrous length.
The god of war was a jet-black deity of peculiarly
repulsive appearance, and all had stands before
them in which worshippers could bum joss-sticks.
There was an upper story to the temple, which
we reached by means of a rickety wooden staircase
not fastened to the wall in any way, and giving me
the impression of being a most insecure mode of
communication, and here I remember the quaint
figure of the god of schoolboys, appropriately armed
with a formidable cane. But the view was what
held us enchained. From our post of vantage we
could see over the entire town, with its shrines and
mosques standing out from the thousands of mean,
flat-roofed, mud dwellings, and as the sky was clear
that morning the serrated peaks rose up grandly,
ramparts, as it were, of the Roof of the World, that
we were to visit later on.
We looked down upon the castellated city wall,
68 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
which is some eighteen feet wide between its high
parapets, and I was told the legend according to
which it was built by half-starved slaves who were
urged to their task by overseers armed with whips.
If one of the labourers died, as frequently happened,
his fellows were not allowed to remove the body,
but were forced to build it into the wet mud in order
that it might form part of the fabric, and the narrative
haunted me when I stood upon the wall itself.
Though modem artillery would bring down this
defence of the city, and the outer moat is always
dry, as water would undermine the ramparts, the
wall with its square bastions has nevertheless an
imposing appearance : so also have the four great
bronze-covered gates giving entrance to the town,
which are shut at sunset to the accompaniment of
Chinese crackers.
The centre of Moslem veneration is Hazrat Apak,
the shrine where the Priest-King of Kashgar, who
died at the end of the seventeenth century, is buried,
together with many of his descendants. Apak not
only ruled over Chinese Turkestan, but had disciples
in China and India. He was credited with powers of
healing, and even of bringing the dead to life, and the
Kashgaris regard him as second only to Mohamed
and count him equal to Hazrat Isa (Jesus Christ) :
he is said to have converted many thousands from
Buddhism to Islam. The road leading to the shrine
is a vast cemetery, about two miles in length and
stretching some distance inland on either side, and
along this Via Appia, as Sir Aurel Stein has named
it, burial is a costly affair and can be afforded only
by the well-to-do. The domed mud tombs have an
underground chamber in which are four niches, and
c
a
S
< 0)
c
I
WOMEN AT THE SHRINE OF HAZRAT APAK.
Page 69.
OH. IV ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR 69
here the principal members of a family are buried,
each body being laid in turn in the receptacle that
faces Mecca. As we passed along the road we heard
women weeping loudly at some of the graves, in
reality performing a kind of ancestor worship in imita-
tion of their Chinese masters and not in accordance
with Moslem practice. The idea is that deceased
relatives will take more interest in the welfare of the
survivors than do the saints, and accordingly the
graves of the former are visited on holidays, and in
this particular city of the dead also on Fridays and
Saturdays. If any special blessing has been vouch-
safed to a family, such as recovery from illness or a
safe return from a journey, its members go in a body
to express their gratitude at the tomb of parent or
ancestor.
A number of beggars ran after our horses along
this road ; some of them dwell in small houses in the
cemetery and are paid to keep certain graves in order.
It is hinted that when the tombs crumble away these
men are in the habit of turning them into dwellings,
in order to sell the land again for burial plots after a
decent interval has elapsed.
We dismounted at the imposing-looking gateway
leading to the shrine, and were received by the
miUawali bashi, or chief custodian, who takes a
third of the large revenues, and a couple of turbaned,
green-robed shaykhs. These escorted us up a poplar
avenue past a big tank of water to a large building
with a fa9ade covered with blue and white tiles bear-
ing Arabic inscriptions, the dome and the borders of
the fa9ade being in green, which contrasted curiously
with the main colour scheme.
This was the famous shrine, and we were invited
70 THEOUaH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
to step inside, where we saw a crowded mass of blue-
tiled tombs, that of the Saint-King being draped with
red and white cloths. There were numbers of flags
and banners before the tombs, and on one side was
a palanquin in which a great-grandson of Apak had
travelled to and from Peking. While there he had
married his daughter to a Chinaman, and at the date
of our visit a Celestial had arrived in Kashgar accom-
panied by a band of relatives, to demand his share
of the great wealth of the shrine. His credentials
were unexceptionable, and during a century and a
half his ancestors had been given pensions by the
Chinese Government ; but owing to the revolution
these subsidies had been stopped. Hence his appear-
ance, which was causing much perturbation among
the managers of the shrine funds.
We were shown the pool where the saint was
wont to make his ablutions before praying, and close
by was a great trophy of the horns of ovis poU and
other wild sheep, the offerings of many huntsmen.
There were two wooden mosques in the enclosure,
the roofs and pillars of the verandahs being carved
and brilliantly coloured in the characteristic native
fashion. Between them once lay the grave of
Yakub Beg, but when the Chinese recovered Turkestan
they destroyed the tomb and flung away the ashes
of that masterful ruler.
On another occasion we visited the Chinese ceme-
tery, which was very small when compared with the
acres round Hazrat Apak that are covered by Moslem
tombs. But the rulers of Chinese Turkestan are
conspicuous by their absence in Old Kashgar and,
moreover, they are always anxious, if possible, to
have their remains interred in their native land.
BOUND ABOUT KASHGAR 71
The enclosure, surrounded by a high wall, had
usually a custodian of most hideous appearance
standing at the open gateway, and the place had a
tragic story attached to it. It was called Gul Bagh
(Flower Garden), and was formerly the canton-
ment of Chinese troops in Kashgar. But when
Yakub Beg wrested Turkestan from China he killed
many soldiers of the Celestial Empire, and their
remains were left unburied within this enclosure
until the Chinese regained the Province in 1877.
Then all the scattered bones were collected and placed
under three big mud domes, the site of the former
barracks being turned into a graveyard for Celestials.
Just inside the entrance was a temple with a wall
on which was an inscription to keep off evil spirits,
and at the end of each long, low, mud tomb was a
tiny door facing south, through which the spirit of
the dead man was supposed to emerge. In the
mortuary chambers near the gate were placed the
corpses of rich men who wished to be buried in
China and whose coffins were awaiting fitting escort
for the long journey.
I was told that when a Chinaman of importance
dies, or, as it is put poetically, " drives the fairy
chariot on a long journey," the body is kept in
the house for several days, during which a priest
offers up prayers before it, music being played and
crackers let off. At the funeral a cock is brought to
the cemetery on the cofl^ and killed at the moment
of burial, in order that the spirit of chanticleer may
be ready to waken the spirit of the dead man in the
next world. Paper houses, attendants, soldiers,
horses, carriages, beds, boxes, money — in fact every
kind of thing pertaining to the daily life and use of
72 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
the deceased — are burnt before the coffin, in order
that the spirit may have all these in the next world
and may thus be enabled to take its proper position
there. In the case of a wealthy man this ceremony
is repeated on the three anniversaries following his
death, and in front of a temple outside Kashgar a
small pagoda-like tower was pointed out to me in
which masses of paper prayers were burnt for the
benefit of the deceased founder.
The Chinese are not considered particularly brave,
but, though a man will avoid death by any possible
means, yet he will meet it calmly when inevitable,
and suicide is looked upon as rather a meritorious
act than otherwise. If a man is condemned to death
he is strangled ; but for serious crimes short of
murder the culprits are beaten severely on the legs,
and men who have expiated their misdeeds in this
way have frequently been brought into the Swedish
hospital with their leg-bones broken in two or three
places, and in some cases so badly injured that death
ensues.
'' There is something of a baby and something of
an old man in every Chinaman," quoted Mr. Bohlin
on one occasion, and I was naturally interested when
we were entertained at a lunch given by the Taoyin,
or Governor, of Kashgar. The invitation, written
on a strip of scarlet paper, described my brother as
Sa Ta-jen (the Big Man), while my title Gu Ta-tai
(Sister of the Big Man) appeared below.
I had hoped that we were bidden to a real Chinese
dioner where sharks' fins, swallows' nests and such
like delicacies would figure in the menu, though I
was somewhat staggered at being told that a first-class
dinner would comprise no fewer than a hundred and
ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR 73
twenty courses, second and third class banquets
having sixty and thirty courses respectively. No
wonder that after such orgies the yamen is wont
to remain closed for three days. But in this case,
though the dinner lasted with an interlude from
one o'clock to four, it was, as far as the food went,
an inferior Russian repast. It began with many
zakushas, consisting principally of dubious-looking
tinned fish, followed by soup, several meat courses,
jelly, ices, tea and champagne. The Russian Consul-
General and his staff were present, and all the Euro-
peans were placed on one side of a long table under
an awning, while their Chinese hosts sat opposite.
These latter amused me by getting up at intervals.
Some would take the Governor's children on their
knees — ^he was the proud father of four sons — and
give them tit-bits from the table ; others smoked
opium in curious pipes and had choking fits, during
which they retired into the garden to cough in peace ;
while others would leave the table to give instructions
to the servants in charge of two gramophones that
discoursed popular European airs all the time.
The commander-in-chief, a quaint-looking figure
with grey locks, a putty-coloured complexion and
claw-like nails that made me shudder, strolled up and
down in a khaki uniform and made amiable remarks
to the guests ; other officials rose to ply all and sundry
with vodka and wine, and the only one that kept his
seat was a small boy clad charmingly in blue and
purple silk and wearing a sailor hat woven in blue
and mauve straw. He ate manfully of every course,
and even demanded a second helping of some of
the more indigestible of the delicacies, but looked
so strong and rosy that I suspected he was not
74 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt.i
accustomed to indulge liis appetite in this way very
often.
There is a great mortality among Chinese babies
if their mothers are unable to feed them ; for Celestials
have the strongest repulsion to cows' milk. " We do
not wish to become calves," they say, and if a mother
dies her offspring is nourished on rice and sugar.
There was a crowd of soldiers at this party, some
quite aged men, clad in black cotton uniforms, their
heads bound up in handkerchiefs and holding curious
weapons, such as steel prongs at the end of long
sticks, and all having a highly unmilitary appearance.
The army is looked down upon in China, it being a
common saying, " We do not make nails from good
iron or soldiers from good men," and in consequence
of this strong pacifist feeling no man of decent standing
would enter the profession of arms, except in the
higher ranks where successful generals have temples
built in their honour.
Our host gave the European ladies fans and silk
handkerchiefs as souvenirs, showing us how to unfurl
a fan to its full extent with a movement of the wrist,
and then escorted us to the house to visit his wife,
who met us at the entrance. She was a pleasant-
faced lady, with well-oiled hair brushed back from
her forehead, and was dressed in a black silk coat and
tightly-fitting trousers. As she clambered with diffi-
culty over the extremely high door-step, and tottered
towards us on the tiniest of feet, I was unkind
enough to reflect that my Russian friends with their
narrow skirts and heels of abnormal height did not
progress much better.
We were invited to drink tea in a room adorned
with a couple of charming Chinese pictures, together
CHINESE SOLDIERS AT THE KASHGAR YAMEN.
Page 74.
OH. IV ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR 75
with a mass of European photographs and knick-
knacks in bad taste, and afterwards passed into two
large bedrooms, where we were received by the
daughter-in-law, and inspected huge bedsteads hung
round with curtains and furnished with long silk-
covered bolsters and neatly-folded piles of silken
quilts. My entire ignorance of the language pre-
vented me from enjoying this glimpse of a Chinese
home in the way I might otherwise have done, and
my thoughts centred on the neat little " hoofs " shod
in black satin that served our hostesses for feet. I
had heard Mrs. Archibald Little lecture on this
fashion, and her account of the tortures inflicted on
so many thousands of tiny girls to bring about the
repulsive mutilation which the Chinese euphemisti-
cally call " golden lilies " had filled me with an
abiding indignation. And yet a recent traveller in
China says that these crippled feet possess for him a
" quite extraordinary exotic charm," and he exhausts
himself in conjecture as to which mistress of an
Emperor's heart introduced a custom that " entailed
a new charm on her sex." I have no theory to
offer as to the origin of the custom, but from the
position of women in China it seemed to me that
some man must have been responsible for a plan
that would firmly tether his womankind to their
homes, just as the veiling of Mohamedan women was
a masculine device.
During our visit to his house the Governor, who
could talk Russian, kept the ball rolling with Princess
Mestchersky while we sipped our tea. He had met
her some years before in China and afterwards she
quoted to me one of his remarks, of which she had
not entirely approved. He had said, *' When we
76 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
were in China we were young, but now in Kashgar
we are old ! " I thought the Governor distinctly
lacking in tact, but how easily can one jump to wrong
conclusions through ignorance. Later on I heard
that there is such reverence for age in the Celestial
Empire that it is a high compliment to impute
many years ; an aged man, even if poor and blind,
being regarded as a fortunate being. To this
veneration for age is united an intense respect for
parents, especially for the head of a house. No son
would retire to rest before his father, nor would he
sleep upon the roof if his parent occupied a room
below.
The death of a father is one of the greatest calami-
ties that can befall a man, and Sir Aurel Stein
illustrated this by an incident that occurred when
he was returning to Kashgar from one of his long
desert expeditions. It became known that his
Chinese interpreter's father had passed away, and
all along the road there was a friendly conspiracy
to keep all letters from Jongsi until his journey was
at an end and he could indulge his grief at home.
When we said good-bye to our host we drove off,
as we had arrived, to the accompaniment of three
loud detonations, and this time the crackers were
exploded so close to us that I marvelled that our
horse did not smash the carriage and its occupants in
its terror.
Later on my brother attended real Chinese feasts,
where the procedure was quite different from that I
have just described. He would drive into the outer
courtyard of the yamen, where musicians would be
discoursing weird music from a latticed gallery, and
the great doors of the inner courtyard would be
JAFAR BAI DISPLAYING THE VISITING CARD.
Page 77.
CH. iv EOUND ABOUT KASHGAE 77
flung wide to the deafening sound of crackers. The
etiquette was to leave the carriage and proceed
across a stage with an altar on one side, Jafar Bai
walking ahead waving his master's red visiting-card,
and calling out his name and title, while the Amban
met his guest half-way and escorted him to the repast.
My brother's name, as rendered in Chinese, was
Si-Ki-Su, and we were told that it is considered
chic to have a name of two or three syllables, whereas
a name running into four is not good and a five-
syllable name would expose its bearer to derision, as
the slip of paper on which it was written would be
so long. The custom of visiting-cards is supposed
to have originated in the Celestial Empire centuries
before the coming of Christ.
As is the habit in Persia, the Chinese spend about
half-an-hour before the meal in discussing fruit, nuts,
tea, wine and native spirit, this last being served
hot and poured from a kettle. The host takes the
lowest seat at table, helps his guests to tea, putting in
the sugar with his fingers. Later on he serves them
to the various dishes and is full of attentions towards
them. The dinner proper is placed on the table in
bowls, from which every one supplies himself by
means of chopsticks, fishing out what he fancies and
transferring it to the small saucer placed before him.
Sharks' fins, turtle fat, a jplat prepared from the
stomach of a fish, fried fowls' livers, year old eggs,
edible seaweed and preserved duck were some of the
numerous dishes. My brother always carefully
avoided this last, as the Consulate interpreter had had
an illness which resulted in deafness from partaking
on one occasion too freely of the delicacy, and perhaps
it was this comestible that caused Captain Deasy to
78 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
write so feelingly of the ill-effects that he experi-
enced from Chinese banquets. Swallows' -nest soup is
almost unprocurable nowadays and prohibitive in
price ; bread is seldom served, and if it appears it is
rather like dough.
When the meat courses are concluded the servants
bring in a basin of water in which they wash all the
chopsticks and spoons, and then the sweets appear,
beans in syrup and a kind of plum-pudding being
among them. The last course is a bowl of rice, the
national dish ; when it makes its appearance it is a
sign that the feast has reached its close, and after
partaking of it the guests depart.
Sir George Macartney told me that the Chinese
are very fond of playing games with their fingers at
their dinner-parties. One game is for a man to put
forward a certain number of his fingers, his opponent
doing the same, and he who first guesses the total
correctly is the winner, the whole being done at
lightning speed. The guests do not call out five,
six or seven as the case may be, but there are elegant
titles for each number, such as Mandarin of the First
Empire, and so on. Another curious game is as
follows : The hand, when clenched, is supposed to
represent a stone, two fingers protruded stand for
scissors and two hanging down for a sack. The
point of the game is that a stone cannot be cut by
scissors but can be put into a sack, but on the other
hand, a sack can be cut by scissors. If, therefore,
a player responds with scissors to his adversary who
has clenched his hand for stone he loses ; but if he
replies with sack he wins. It sounds a childish
amusement, but the Chinese will play the game for
hours at a time with tremendous zest.
OH. IT EOUND ABOUT KASHGAR 79
I have omitted to mention that there is usually
a length of wall placed in front of the gateway leading
to any yamen, temple, rest-house, or graveyard, its
purpose being to prevent evil spirits from entering.
Most fortunately these can only go straight forward
and cannot turn comers, so the wall brings them
to a full stop and foils them in any malignant
design.
The " name day " of the Tsaritsa fell early in May
— ^Russians keep the baptismal day, and not the
birthday, as we do — and the Cossacks attached to
the Russian Consulate gave in her honour a display
of horsemanship known as jigitofJca, It was held on
their sandy parade-ground close to the river, where
the Russian colony assembled in full force. The
men went through quite a military tournament pro-
gramme, springing off and leaping on to galloping
steeds, riding at breakneck pace facing the tails of
their mounts, and leaping across kneeling camels.
The " ships of the desert " strongly objected to this
particular feat, and with loud roarings struggled to
rise, until the men who held them bound cloths over
their eyes. There were the usual V.C. races, and
we had a glimpse of the war in watching the exciting
rescue of a Cossack attired as a woman from the
hands of a troop masquerading as Huns. The most
sensational item was when the soldiers galloped their
horses through a big barrier of flaming bundles of
reeds, firing off blank cartridges, the sight of the
flames and the noise of the rifles driving the animals
almost mad.
The Princess gave away the prizes, chiefly money,
daggers, and huge silver watches, and the simple-
looking, fresh-faced youths rode past in a body when
80 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
all was over, singing beautifully. They had a natural
gift for song, taking parts as if by instinct, and on
quiet evenings I used to listen for their hymn.
The Kashgaris had assembled in hundreds to see
the spectacle, and opposite to where we sat the high
loess cliffs were crowded with brilliantly clad spec-
tators, who climbed with the agility of monkeys to
apparently inaccessible points of vantage. Horse-
manship naturally appeals strongly to a nation of
riders ; but the Kashgaris, though as it were born
in the saddle, never appeared to use their horses
otherwise than as a means for getting about, in
contrast to the young Persian or Arab, who is for
ever racing his steed. Later on we saw much of the
" goat game " as practised by the Kirghiz, but the
only horses which were galloped in Kashgar were
ridden by Cossacks, who occasionally ran riot in the
narrow public roads, to the imminent danger of
passers-by.
Our Russian friends drove instead of riding, and,
as my brother and I much preferred our saddles to
being jolted in a carriage, we never organised any
joint-picnics. To be perfectly frank, a dinner or a
garden-party always left me quite exhausted in my
efforts to play the hostess, talking French to this
one, helping out the inadequate German of that one,
and cudgelling my brains for some Russian sentence
of welcome to those guests, alas, in the majority,
who knew no language save their own. The Russians
enjoyed coming to our garden, especially when the
strawberries were in season, and I always took them
over the house, winding up with the roof for the sake
of the view. The ladies were specially interested in the
kitchen arrangements, and the Princess declared that
OH. IV ROUND ABOUT KASHGAE 81
the Consulate was far more convenient in every way
than the grandiose building that was in course of erec-
tion for her future residence. When my brother and
I went over it later I was struck with the difference
between British and Russian ideals. We love com-
fort and privacy in our homes, but our Slavonic
friends appeared to need constant social intercourse.
They had crowded many buildings on to a small
piece of ground, each house raked by the windows of
the others, and at the end of a long avenue stood the
imposing-looking Consulate. I was surprised at its
internal plan ; for there were four very large recep-
tion rooms, but only three fair-sized bedrooms and a
couple of small servants' rooms. There was appar-
ently no pantry, scullery, larder or storeroom ; and,
as there was no central passage in the house, all
the rooms opened one into another, an intolerable
arrangement according to English ideas.
We were also shown over the Cossack barracks
close by, big rooms with rows of grey blanketed
beds, the long tables and benches for meals being in
the same apartments, and the icons in a prominent
position. The Cossacks all looked healthy and hardy,
replying to their officer's salutations with a formula
of greeting that they chanted with precision, but I
fancy that Kashgar must be a place of exile to men
who have left their farms on the Don at the bidding
of the Tsar, and they must look forward to settling
down upon them for good when their term of service
is ended.
Shortly after our arrival we had an interesting
guest in the person of M. Romanoff, a young Russian
archaeologist whom my brother had met both in
London and Bokhara. He was studying the Moslem
G
82 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. i
art of Central Asia, and showed us carvings,
pottery, carpets and embroideries that lie had bought
at Kashgar and Yarkand, and was consequently able
to help us with our own purchases.
The old Khotan carpets, their colours made from
vegetable dyes, were attractive, and the silk carpets
are highly prized and very difficult to obtain. One
belonging to our guest had a pale yellow colouring,
but was terribly damaged. The best woollen Khotan
carpet that I inspected had a pattern in a series of
panels ; indigo, a faded-looking madder and yellow
being the chief tints. There were Chinese vases in
the design, and also the conventionalized swastika,
that symbol of good luck which originally came from
India, and which later on I saw copied ad nauseam
in glaring aniline dyes. Certainly none of the old
carpets that I came across, whether woven of wool or
of silk, could compare in design, colouring or texture
with the beautiful Persian works of the loom with
which I was familiar. The modern Khotan carpet,
with its aniline dyes, is rarely pleasing to the eye.
A favourite subject is a row of magenta, purple and
orange pots, with flowers stiffly protruding from them,
the whole design being thrown upon a scarlet back-
ground and making one wonder how the artistic
Chinese can descend to such depths.
The pottery brought to us for sale and sold in the
bazars was rough and not particularly good as to
pattern, while the tiles on the fa9ades of mosques
and those that covered a few of the tombs were
practically all white and blue, comparing unfavour-
ably with the fine work of much of Central Asia.
What specimens of jewellery I saw were heavy and
clumsy and to me devoid of charm. The native art
STUDY OF KASHGAR WOMEN.
(One woman is shown with face veiled. )
Page 82.
ROUND ABOUT KASHGAR 83
seemed to find its chief expression in the columned
verandahs of mosques and dwelling-houses, the
pillars and roofs of these being often profusely-
carved with charming patterns in the style known
as chip-carving; and also in the fretwork of doors
and windows, frequently carried out with a wealth of
intricate design that reminded us strongly of the art
of Kashmir, and may possibly have been influenced
by that country.
The old brass and copper utensils are often very
beautiful, with open metal work showing Persian
influence ; in fact my brother and I sometimes
thought that they must have been brought from
Iran, so much did they resemble those we had picked
up at Kashan.
It seemed to me that the embroideries produced
by the women were more t3rpical of the race than
anything else. Shaw mentions that in the 'sixties
the women wore wide trousers, the borders of which
were embroidered, and though the trousers are now
narrower and worn without adornment, we were
able to collect many specimens of the old work.
Moreover, the long gowns worn by the women were
formerly profusely embroidered, conventional flowers
appearing with charming effect on the red, green
or yellow silk of which the costume was made.
Now, alas, this beautiful handicraft seems almost
to have died out, and is reserved for the pretty
skull-caps which are worn by both sexes, and over
which both alike place the " little pork-pie hat " with
fur border mentioned by Shaw.
In spite of the Turki proverb that heads this
chapter, it appeared to me that Chinese Turkestan
had evolved no art of its own, everything of the kind
84 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. t
being influenced by its neighbours, CMna, India or
Persia.
The province is a back-water of the Chinese
Empire, and the race of petty farmers who inhabit
it cultivate the soil as if by instinct. The so-called
cities are comparatively small towns, where the trade
is not on a large scale. They are separated one from
another by the Takla Makan desert, and have been
conquered and re-conquered during their whole
history at bewilderingly short intervals, an experience
which does not make for progress in art.
We rode all over Kashgar and its environs, and
also visited every building of any pretensions in
Yarkand and Khotan, but found nothing of real
architectural merit ; nor could any mosque or shrine
compare with the magnificent monuments of India
or Persia. As to Chinese architecture, it must be
borne in mind that the conquerors would scarcely
raise fine temples in a country which they looked upon
as a land of temporary exile ; moreover, buildings
constructed of mud crumble away in the course of
centuries, and it has been the custom of some of the
many rulers of Turkestan to destroy the places of
worship erected by those of another religion. For
example, Yakub Beg, when he made himself ruler of
Turkestan, set to work to raze all Chinese monuments
to the ground, and perhaps the two ruined Buddhist
stwpas to the north and south of the Consulate owe
their dilapidated condition partly to the fury of
the early Mohamedan conquerors. At present these
Tims, as the Kashgaris call them, are shapeless
mounds giving no idea of their original form. Sir
Aurel Stein, who has carefully examined them, believes
that they date from between 600 and 800 a.d. ; but
#,
OH. IV EOUND ABOUT KASHGAR 85
too little was left for him to have any opinion as to
what they looked like when erected. It seems curious
that, although Kashgar is supposed to be on the site
of Kie-sha, visited by Hiuen-Tsiang, yet these two
stupas are apparently all that remains of the hundreds
of Buddhist monasteries that he mentions.
CHAPTER V
OLLA PODRIDA
It is doubtful if these Central Asian towns ever change. Their
dull mud walls, mud houses, mud mosques look as if they would remain
the same for ever. In most cUmates they would be washed away,
but in Central Asia there is hardly any rain and so they stay on for
" As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, would be a
particularly appropriate motto to place over the gateway of a Central
Asian town. — The Heart of a Continent, Sir F. Yoitnghusband.
We arrived at the capital of Chinese Turkestan in the
spring, with the best of the year before us. The trees
that bordered the countless irrigation channels were
all in leaf, the jigdah, or Babylonian willow, was
bursting into flower with gusts of perfume, one
species bearing later on a yellow fruit something like
a date in appearance and called nan, or bread, by
the Kashgaris; the sickly-sweet white, and the big
purple mulberries were ripening ; the fields brilliantly
green with lucerne and young corn, and the many
gardens enclosed by low mud walls pink with fruit
blossom. The picturesque loess cliffs — such a char-
acteristic feature of Chinese Turkestan — broke up
the country in every direction and the two branches
of the river added great charm to the landscape, the
frequent haze of dust giving a curious glamour to the
scene.
86
OH. V OLLA PODRIDA 87
During our rides outside the city we often came
across some little mosque with carved wooden
columns and roof, the building overlooking a large
hauz or tank of water planted round with tall silver-
stenmaed poplars, or a vacant space in some village
lane would be occupied by a huge spreading poplar,
or the beautiful elm of the country, or the rather rare
weeping-willow. There were few flowers to be seen,
save the small mauve irises that were always found
in the graveyards, where they spread themselves in
sheets of blue among the tombs ; but along the sandy
tracks big bushes of wild roses with their faint scent
reminded us of home.
There were plenty of birds, hoopoes and doves
being the commonest, if one excepts the ubiquitous
crows and sparrows ; the cuckoo was heard occasion-
ally and the swallows skimmed after flies. I was
interested in a pair of hawks that had made a rough
nest in a tall poplar in the garden, their wild '' keen-
ing " sounding all day long as they came backwards
and forwards with food for their offspring. On one
occasion they attacked M. Romanoff as he was
standing on the terrace below their nest and looking
through a pair of field - glasses. He said that they
swooped down upon him again and again, brushing
his head with their wings and uttering piercing cries,
and they even pursued him to the roof of the Con-
sulate whither he retreated to continue his survey of
the country. His idea was that the hawks must
have imagined the glasses to be a weapon directed at
the nest. Mr. Bohlin once observed one of these
birds swoop down in the midst of the crowded bazar
and snatch a piece of meat from a boy, and he had
often seen men washing the carcasses of sheep in
88 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES p». i
the river and calling to the hawks that caught bits
of offal flung into the air.
There were only harmless snakes in the Oasis, and
not many of them. The boys were fond of winding
them round their heads under their skull-caps, and
they keep them in their shirts. On the other hand,
the big six-inch-long lizards were feared, as their bite
was said to be very poisonous. We sometimes saw
the pretty jerboa, and there is a kind of small rat
indigenous to the country, called " bag-mouth " by
the natives, from its habit of filling the pouches in
its cheeks with grain that it stores away. On one
occasion Mr. Bohlin discovered that a large box of
garden-seeds was nearly empty, and setting a watch
he caught the ingenious little thief busily filling its
pouches. On killing it he recovered a surprising
quantity of the stolen goods !
The newly built Consulate was agreeably free from
scorpions, which usually come out at night and can
move at a great rate with a curious rustling noise ;
but we had plenty of spiders. The very large ones
that could run at lightning speed I was assured were
harmless ; but one of the missionaries told me that
the pain she had suffered from this spider's bite was
intense, and that her finger had had a lump on it for
many a long day after. An entomologist endorsed
her experience, saying that these were himting spiders,
and killed their prey with a bite that was poisonous.
Their size may be judged from the fact that Mr.
Bohlin once saw a sparrow try to attack one, but the
spider defended itself by waving its legs, and by this
manoeuvre apparently so much alarmed the bird that
it flew off ! I used to call Sattur to the rescue when
my rooms were invaded by one of these creatures.
OH. V OLLA PODEIDA 89
and he often had an exciting chase with the broom
before he could dislodge his agile prey from its niche,
its long leaps j&lling me with fear lest it might alight
upon my head and then wreak vengeance upon me.
Finally, it would be caught in a cloth and flung out-
side the house, my henchman refusing to destroy it,
as the world-wide superstition that it is unlucky to
kill a spider holds good in Kashgar. A comparatively
small, but very hairy spider, I was told, was extremely
poisonous. Great black bees and dragon-flies flew
about the garden, big horse-flies often attacked our
mounts as we rode, and, when the first cold of
autumn set in, we suffered from a regular invasion of
wasps crawling about on windows and floors, all in a
half-torpid condition.
During the summer it was almost impossible to
read in the evenings, because a light attracted swarms
of midges, little beetles and other insects ; but we
could sit or walk on the terrace in the darkness
unmolested, nor were we troubled by mosquitoes.
i^^Until I became accustomed to it, the noise of
Kashgar disturbed me a good deal. At dawn the
whole world was up and about, men and boys singing
lustily, or yelling at their donkeys, which from their
continual braying are nicknamed the " nightingales
of Kashgar," the bird of the poets not being a visitor
to these regions. A jingling of bells would denote
the passing of the blue-tilted Chinese mapas drawn
by sturdy ponies, or a deeper booming would indicate
that a caravan of camels was on its way across the
desert, perhaps to far Khotan, or even to Peking.
The city gun, really a Chinese cracker, went off with
a bang at sunrise to announce that the city gates
were open, and it seemed to let loose a perfect pande-
90 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
monium of sound. Women shrieked to one another,
children cried and quarrelled, dogs barked, horses
neighed and cocks crew ; the flocks of small birds
twittered unceasingly, there was an all-pervading
hum of insects, in which one could distinguish the
shrill chirp of the tree-cricket, and multitudes of
frogs croaked from the watercourses.
At intervals throughout the day would be heard
the blowing of an ibex horn, resembling the hoot of
a motor. This was a signal from one of the many
mills, to inform customers that the miller was ready
to grind their grain, or perhaps that the flour was
waiting to be carried away. These mills are ram-
shackle mud buildings on the river or on a water
channel, everything being open to the air and no
provision made to keep out wind and rain and dust.
The wheat is poured into boxes which feed the
millstones, and these cast the flour, when ground, on
to flat tables, upon one of which I noticed a dirty old
cap being used to sweep it up. The Kashgar millers
had by no means a good reputation for honesty. A
customer's grain is weighed before grinding, yet when
it is returned to him as flour it will probably be mixed
with some inferior cereal or even with sand, of which
there is enough and to spare.
With the noonday heat there always came a wel-
come lull in the concert of noise, this being the hour
of siesta for most living things. But when the sun
descended towards the west all the world awoke,
and a crescendo of sound would be reached by
sunset, all the sounds of the early morning recurring,
the legions of cocks seeming to salute the parting
day as vociferously as they greeted its appearance.
The Kashgaris, by the way, have a very inferior
OH. ▼ OLLA PODRIDA 91
breed of poultry, and their rendering of our saying :
'' To count your chickens before they are hatched "
is "To count your chickens in the autumn." They
speak of a coward as being '' chicken-livered," just
as we do.
There must be added to the noises I have already
enumerated the thudding of drums, the drone of
bagpipes, the twanging of sitars and the singing of
choruses, often most agreeable to western ears.
Nor must I omit to mention the muezzins calling
men to prayer from the minarets of the mosques,
their powerful voices ringing out over the city with
a solemn beauty as they testify that there is but one
God and that Mohamed is His Prophet.
The sunsets of Kashgar were most lovely, with a
delicacy and charm all their own. They were not
spectacular displays of scarlet, purple and gold as in
many parts of the world, but the sky was softly
flushed with pale pinks, mauves and yellows, while a
wonderful golden haze, due I imagine to the dust
particles in the air, shimmered over the whole land-
scape. The broken loess cliffs, on which stood shabby
mud hovels and tombs with no pretensions to archi-
tecture, seemed now to be crowned with castles and
domes worthy of some city of high romance, the
ruined garden-house with its columned verandah
standing high above the river was turned into a
Greek temple, and the tall poplars silhouetted darkly
against the glow resembled cypresses, transporting
me in spirit to many an Italian garden in Rome or in
the City of Flowers. The chocolate-coloured river
flowing below us was now iridescent as the breast of
a dove, and across the sands of its wide bed there
gleamed the enchanted light that cast a spell over the
92 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt.i
whole landscape. And then the sun would set, and
in an instant a grey, deathlike pallor would creep
over everything, making me shiver and turn away
with a curious sense of depression.
During the spring the Kashgaris make pleasure
expeditions to the different shrines round the city,
going rather to eat and gamble than to say their
prayers. Bands of friends are in the habit of feasting
one another in turn in some garden, meeting four
afternoons a week for the purpose, and sometimes
on our evening walks we came across these revellers
returning home. The Begs and the Sayyids, who
claim to be descendants of the Prophet, rode showy
stallions or well-fed asses and looked imposing
figures in their snowy turbans and long silk coats.
They were usually handsome men with well-cut
noses, fresh complexions and full beards. The
young men had moustaches and invariably stuck a
rose or a sprig of blossom under the brim of their
embroidered caps, and all alike presented a strong
contrast to the flat-faced, yellow-skinned Chinese.
The women, who, as in all Moslem countries, have
no social intercourse with the men, took their outings
by visiting the shrines, one of which they had all to
themselves, the Mazzar of Bibi Anna. The grave of
this female saint was situated on a bluff opposite the
Consulate, the mud tomb, on which a white flag
fluttered, being enclosed with a mud wall. Here
widows and divorced women who desired remarriage
and girls anxious for a husband were wont to resort :
putting their hands into holes built in the tomb,
they would implore the holy woman to aid them.
Try as I would, I was unable to gain any informa-
tion about the Bibi Khanum, as she was called. The
THE SHRINE OF BIBI ANNA.
Pa£-e 93.
OH. V OLLA PODEIDA 93
white flag brought her often to my mind, as I could
not stand upon the garden-terrace without seeing it,
and now and again at night I observed a lighted
lamp hanging above her last resting-place. In a
Mohamedan country where woman in theory is little
regarded, what had the Lady Anna done that a
shrine at which miracles were reputed to be per-
formed should be erected to her memory ? When
did she live ? Was she perhaps kin to Hazrat Apak
the Priest-King of Kashgar ? I can answer none
of these questions, and merely know that she was
regarded with much veneration.
On one occasion, when many women were
assembled at her grave, I asked some of them to put
their hands into the holes of the tomb and allow me
to photograph them in that position, but realized at
once how tactless I had been. With shocked faces
the women explained that such a thing would practi-
cally amount to sacrilege ; but they had no objection
to being photographed seated beside the mazzar,
^Perhaps the most popular shrine is that of Ali
Arslan, a couple of miles to the north of the city,
the road leading up -'to it being bordered on either
side by gardens, the property of the mazzar and a
great holiday resort. The lofty brick gateway is
barred to horses and vehicles by a tree-trunk, over
which we clambered, to find ourselves in a large
enclosure with a great tank of water planted round
with stately poplars, a usual and pleasing character-
istic of holy places in Chinese Turkestan. Behind it
lay the shrine, an insignificant building entered by
an old carved and fretted doorway, one of the best
specimens of this form of native art that we came
across in the country. An old dkhun — ^his office is
94 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
to read the Koran at the graves for the benefit of the
departed — was kneeling and reciting prayers before
it, and inside the small space was filled by a large
tomb covered with blue and white tiles, trophies of
flags, and horns of the wild sheep.
Sultan Arslan Boghra, the hero-saint, surnamed
the Tiger for his bravery, who is honoured here,
fought with great valour against the Buddhist
inhabitants of Khotan, who did not wish to change
their religion for the tenets of Islam. He was one
of the earliest Mohamedan conquerors of Kashgar,
and it is recorded by Bellew that the pagan ruler of
Khotan, who led his force against the Moslems,
offered a large reward to the man who could compass
the Sultan's death. At this time the Nestorian
Church had its adherents throughout Asia, and the
story runs that one of its priests counselled the
Buddhists to fall upon their opponents at dawn, as
they would then be engaged with their devotions
and so would be taken unawares. The advice was
followed, and in a great battle on the desert plain of
Ordam-Padshah, some fifty miles south-east of Kash-
gar, the adherents of the Prophet were utterly routed
and their gallant leader slain.
Ali Arslan's head was carried in triumph round
the walls of Kashgar, into which the Moslems had
retreated for the time, and it is supposed to be
buried in the shrine that we visited. His body,
however, rests at Ordam-Padshah, and Sir Aurel
Stein writes that a mound covered with poplars from
which flutter rags is all that marks the grave of the
saint, although it is a peculiarly holy spot and is
annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.
There are various shrines outside the city that
OH. y OLLA PODRIDA 96
claim to cure particular diseases.- A relative of Ali
Arslan is interred in one of these, and before tlie
fretted windows of his mazzar is an ancient willow
that leans over nearly to the ground. If a patient
afflicted with rheumatism will go round the tree
seven times in a believing spirit, bending nearly
double in order to rub his back against the bark, it
is said that he will be freed from his complaint. Old
Jafar Bai tried the treatment one day when we were
there, but I never ventured to question him as to the
result. The so-called Tombs of the Mongols outside
the city seemed to me to be somewhat of a fraud, as
the mud-domed graves were quite modern. But they
are visited annually by thousands of the Faithful,
who gamble, feast and have a day's outing in the
neglected cemetery, many, I was told, omitting to
say their prayers.
To turn to another subject, although Kashgar is
the seat of Government, the entrance of the yamen
being marked by the masts, some seventy feet high,
and the grotesque stone lions that signify authority,
yet the Chinese troops are in barracks at Yangi
Shahr (New City) some six or seven miles distant.
This town is surrounded by high parapeted mud
walls in good repair ; two sally-ports have to be
passed before the big bazar can be entered, and, as is
customary, these entrances are crooked in order to
foil the evil spirits. Just inside the Pai-fang, or
roofed gateway, there is a Chinese temple, and over
the gate a building in which paper prayers are burnt
on fete days and the ashes flung to the heavens.
The stalls in the bazar, with their wooden shutters
and matting awnings, seemed much the same as those
in the Old City, but in Yangi Shahr the Celestial was
96 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
at home instead of looking like an intruder, and
soldiers in khaki uniforms and forage caps of German
appearance were everywhere to be seen. Black, the
royal colour of the Manchus, was still affected by the
inhabitants, and most unsuitable wear it was for such
a dusty place, but the flag of the Republic, with its
five colours, flew over every yamen. It interested
me to hear that the yellow stripe stood for China,
the black for the Manchus, the red for the Mongols,
the blue for Tibet, and the white for the Moslem
subjects.
The Chinese seem to hold the province more by
bluff than by force, the troops being few, of all ages,
and not troubled by overmuch drill. Certainly the
Governor and the Commander-in-Chief always go forth
in considerable state with detonations of crackers in
order to impress the populace, but as, owing to
Chinese arrogance, the officials decline to learn any
foreign language, they never get into touch with the
people they are supposed to govern. Being intensely
proud of their old civilization, they utterly decline
to move with the times or absorb new ideas, and so
are, as it were, petrified.
The upper classes are brought up to despise
manual labour and are admirers of the pen, holding
the sword in contempt, and as a result are often
incapable of defending themselves if attacked. Social
distinction goes by learning, a literatus being the
equal of any one and invariably accorded a seat of
honour at the yamen. Probably their unhealthy
lives — for they take no exercise, love darkened rooms
and are addicted to drink and opium-smoking — have
brought them to this ignominious pass; and one
Governor said that the long nails he affected were
CH. V OLLA PODRIDA 97
an excellent aid to self-control, for he could never
clench his hand to strike any one in anger ! They
rule the province easily, because the inhabitants are
a mild unwarlike race, accustomed for centuries to
be under the heel of a conqueror and preferring the
tolerant domination of China to that of Russia.
Liu-Kin-tang, the general who reconquered the
province after the death of Yakub Beg, has a big
temple erected to his honour outside the New City,
and one afternoon we made an expedition to see it.
It is just off the broad tree-planted road, always full
of traffic, which is spanned by imposing -looking
painted bridges that cross the Kizil Su. On our
arrival we rode into a large courtyard, where we
dismounted to pass through a fantastically decor-
ated gateway into a second courtyard, and were met
by the Governor of the City, whose robes of black
and blue were crowned by a panama hat. One of
his attendants wore a black felt ''billy-cock" that
looked oddly out of keeping with the rest of his
costume, as did the caricatures of English straw hats
that were affected by the others. The Governor
escorted us to the temple, the fa9ade of which was a
blaze of gold, blue and scarlet mingled with Chinese
inscriptions. The tomb of the famous general was
under a carved canopy, over which gilded dragons
careered, and before it was the hero's portrait, an
enlarged coloured photograph. An old bronze tripod
for burning joss-sticks, and a great bronze bell that
the Governor struck in order that we might hear its
wonderful tone, stood in front of the photograph,
and on one side of the tomb was a fresco of a black
and white tiger. Formerly there were large paintings
on the walls depicting the general's career, but
H
98 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES px. i
unluckily all these had been destroyed by a recent
earthquake, and the temple had practically been
rebuilt and was shorn of much of its original
decoration.
I wondered whether Liu-Kin-tang at all resembled
the general of an amusing story told us by Sir Aurel
Stein. This Chinaman set out with an army of
twelve thousand men to conquer an enemy that
inhabited a very hilly country, and he was obliged to
negotiate an extremely difficult pass in order to get
into touch with the foe. His soldiers clambered to
the crest of the ascent and, as he had foreseen, were
seized with fear and refused to go farther, but took
heart of grace when a body of the recalcitrant tribes-
men came forward and tendered their submission.
In reality these were devoted followers of the general,
who had commanded them to disguise themselves,
and on their appearance the army, with its moral
restored, streamed gaily down the pass into what
they imagined to be a conquered country. And so
in effect it was ; for the tribesmen, terrified at the
great host, hastened to surrender, and thus fully
justified the astute plan of the general.
The priest in charge of the temple, clad in black
and wearing a curious cap, was a weird object, with
long greasy hair standing out from his face, and I did
my best to reproduce his Cheshire-cat grin with my
kodak. When we had seen everything we were
invited to partake of tea, and seated ourselves at a
small table covered with a cloth badly in need of
the wash. Our host put huge chunks of dingy-
looking sugar into our glasses with his fingers, and
with the same useful members helped us to little
sponge cakes and thin biscuits made of toffee and
OLLA PODKIDA 99
meal. He himself had the usual little china bowl
in which the tea is seethed ; a small inverted bowl
is placed on the top to prevent the escape of the
leaves, and the tea is drunk through the crack between
the two.
In common with most upper-class Chinese, the
Governor looked ill and had bad teeth, and certainly
the fondness of Celestials for turning night into day
and carefully avoiding fresh air makes them look
very different from the robust Kashgaris, who are
at their best on horseback and are essentially an out-
door race. A Celestial is proud of his half-inch-long
finger-nails, which show that he has never con-
descended to manual labour, and if he lives abroad
he will send his parents a packet of nail-parings in
order to assure them that he is one of the literati,
who are treated with such consideration throughout
the Empire. When forced to travel a Chinaman will
not ride, but will go in a mapa. This is a painted
cart having a blue and black awning and a tasteful
dash of scarlet at the back, on which a charm is
inscribed, and there are jingling bells on the horses
to ward off evil spirits. But the lower classes are
very different ; strong, hardy and uncomplaining, and
seeming to bear out the saying — *' A Chinaman is ill
only once in his life, and that is when he is dying."
There were not many Chinese women at Kashgar,
and I was told that the conquering race does not
look upon any marriage as legal unless it is contracted
with a girl of their own country, whom they practi-
cally buy. The amount that a would-be husband
must pay for a wife is fixed by go-betweens according
to her looks and her position in the world. When
this is settled, the couple, clad in their best clothes,
100 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
enter a room where their friends are assembled,
bow low to each other, and then carry round a tray
of bowls of tea, which they offer to their guests.
This ceremony completes the marriage, and when
the bridegroom has lived several days in the house
of his parents-in-law he takes his bride to his own
home, where she is henceforth under the rule of her
mother-in-law.
Although according to English ideas the China-
man makes but an indifferent husband, he is very
proud of his sons. The Celestials carry the Oriental
regard for the male sex to extremes. For example,
an Englishwoman who had lived in China told me
that when she bade her Chinese nurse chastise her
little boy if naughty, the woman looked at her in
horror, saying in shocked tones, " Him piecee man —
I no touch piecee man ! " I was told that parents
like a boy to be headstrong and uncontrolled,
because they think that he is likely to make his
way in the world ; and they are pleased if he steals
cunningly, saying to one another, " Our son is
beginning to help the house early." Lying is a fine
art among both Chinese and Kashgaris, and there is
little shame at being found out.
There is no need f or a " Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals " among the Chinese, for they
are trained to be considerate to the " brute creation,"
— a very pleasant trait in their characters. They
certainly live up to their own saying, " Be kind to
the horse that carries you, to the cow that feeds you
and to the dog that guards your possessions," and
they are an example to the Kashgaris, who are
callous if not actually cruel in their treatment of
animals.
CH. V OLLA PODRIDA 101
The frequently over -fat horses, mules and dogs
belonging to Celestials presented a strong contrast
to the usually overworked and underfed Kashgari
donkeys, that were beaten by their owners on the
slightest provocation. And yet these little creatures,
sometimes almost hidden under piles of brushwood
or staggering along imder loads of sun-dried bricks,
or perhaps a plough, the handles of which scraped
the ground at every step, keep their independence
strangely. They do not obey the voice of their
masters, as do the horses ; each donkey in a drove
picks his own path and does not, like the caravan
ponies, follow a leader slavishly. Surely an animal
so strong and intelligent deserves a better fate than
blows and semi-starvation.
Every one who has travelled in Mohamedan
countries knows that the dog is looked upon as an
imclean animal, and the starved and mangy pariahs
of Kashgar merely filled the position of town-
scavengers, though others that were kept to guard the
houses were somewhat better treated. These watch-
dogs used to rush out and leap at our horses in most
unpleasant fashion, until my brother taught them
better manners with the lash of his hunting-crop.
Fortimately for the cat, the Prophet made a pet of
this animal, and it is therefore held in high favour.
At the end of May we had a most interesting
visitor in the person of Sir Aurel Stein, on his return
from two years in the desert, where he had made
fresh discoveries of great importance and extent,
his finds filling a hundred and fifty packing-cases.
Owing to the wonderful preservative power of
sand he had found some specimens of very
ancient paper, in connection with which Sir George
102 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Macartney drew my attention to the following passage
in Chavannes. The French scholar wrote of two
particular documents found by Sir Aurel Stein,
" qu'ils paraissent bien remonter au deuxieme siecle
de notre ere, et sont ainsi les plus vieux specimens
de papier qu'il y ait au monde."
Although Sir Aurel liked the Chinese so well, he
said that he was glad to return to Turkestan, where
the inhabitants are most hospitable and always
ready to place houses and gardens at the disposal
of strangers. In fact they are so open-handed that
they offer food to any one who comes to the house
at any hour ; the well-to-do apparently eating at
short intervals all day long. But in China, with its
old civilization, the custom is very different, the
people allowing no one to enter their doors unless he
be armed with introductions. Fortunately, the gods
are always ready to receive guests, and Sir Aurel
has spent many a night in temples full of hideous
idols. Such quarters, however, though pleasantly
cool in summer, are icy cold in winter.
Another thing that makes travelling in China
disagreeable to Europeans is that the inhabitants
crowd round any stranger to observe him. They
consider that in so doing they are showing attention,
and the luckless man renders himself unpopular if
he resents it. This behaviour is in strong contrast
to that of the Turki, w^ho are most polite, in the
English manner, to travellers, and though my brother
and I rode and walked through the whole Oasis we
never once had a disagreeable look or word ; in fact,
the only curiosity about us was shown by the women,
and that in most unobtnisive fashion.
CHAPTER VI
ON THE WAY TO THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS
This Central Asian scenery has a type of its own, quite different
from the Swiss or Caucasian mountain scenes. . . .
Here, though the mountains are higher, the glaciers, owing to the
small snowfall, are much more puny, while below there is a picture of
utter desolation that would be hard to match in any other part of the
world. — St. George Littledale.
At the end of May we found it unpleasantly hot at
Kashgar, with a temperature close on 100 degrees ;
so, early in June, we decided to start off on our tour
to the Russian Pamirs, that hitherto jealously guarded
district. It was a journey needing a considerable
amount of forethought and preparation, because, once
away from the Kashgar oasis, we should have to
depend on what we had brought with us, save in the
case of meat and milk. My brother inspected the
tents, saw that a good supply of tent-pegs and horse-
shoes was laid in, and arranged for some eighteen
ponies to carry the loads, which included large amounts
of flour and barley. I had to calculate what quantities
of tea, sugar, rice, tinned foods, compressed vege-
tables, dried fruits, jam, biscuits, candles, et cetera,
would be required for seven weeks, had to make stout
calico bags in which to put them, and had, moreover,
to pack my store-boxes with judgement. For one
thing, they must not be too heavy for the baggage
103
104 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
animals, and for another, each box must contain a
complete assortment of stores, in order that only one
should need to be opened when we halted. The
question of supplies haunted me for weeks, so afraid
was I of forgetting some indispensable article ; but
my method of marking the boxes A, B, and so on,
and then entering their contents in my note-book,
proved my salvation later on, and made me realize
that the more trouble one takes beforehand, the more
successful a journey is likely to be. The fruit season
had just begun with the apricots, and I had baskets
of these stoned and laid out to dry in the sun on the
roof, while Daoud made jam, salted and potted down
butter, and baked bread and cakes to last for the first
ten days. As we should camp at heights of ten to
fourteen thousand feet, I took my warmest winter
clothing, a thick astride habit, leather jacket and fur-
lined coat, and ordered an addition to my bedding in
the shape of a thick cotton - padded sleeping sack.
To complete my equipment, Sir Aurel Stein insisted
on giving me a pair of double-lined native boots, a
gift that proved invaluable in camp at night, and
my pith helmet and blue gauze veils were equally
necessary to ward off sunstroke and to keep my face
from being skinned when we rode during the heat of
the day.
To be perfectly frank, I was by no means easy
about this expedition, to which my brother looked
forward with the eagerness of the sportsman. I have
never had a good head for heights or for walking along
the edge of precipices, and from the various books
of travel that I had read it seemed that one ought
to be possessed of unusual nerve and agility to
negotiate the passes by which the Roof of the World
THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS 105
must be reached. But I try to make it a rule to see
only one lion in my path at a time and not to waste
strength and courage in picturing what may after
all turn out to be imaginary dangers, and naturally
my blood was stirred at the thought that I was about
to start upon an adventure vouchsafed to very few
women. The Pamirs had always been a name to
conjure with, and evoked visions of high uplands,
galloping Kirghiz, wild sheep with great curled horns
and an almost complete isolation from the world, and
made me ashamed of my twinges of faint-heartedness,
which, indeed, vanished for good and all when once
we were on the road.
At last the day of our start arrived. The Russians,
who interested themselves considerably in what they
thought was a mad enterprise, were shocked that we
had fixed on a Monday to begin our journey, and
prophesied disaster. I made enquiries as to why this
day should be regarded as a jour nefaste, and was
told that, as it was the custom, among the lower
classes at all events, to have a drinking-bout on Sun-
day, there were usually accidents in plenty on the first
day of the working week. As our servants were all
Mohamedans, bound by the tenets of their religion
to touch no alcohol, we were not in danger from this
cause, and the prognostications of our friends did
not depress us in the slightest.
Besides ourselves and the servants, the party
included Khan Sahib Iftikhar Ahmad the Head of
the office, who was an Indian gentleman possessed of
much varied information, and the sport-loving Indian
Doctor.
Sir Aurel Stein, Mr. Bohlin and a group of
Aksakals, or British Agents, whom my brother had
106 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
just been entertaining on the occasion of the King's
birthday, rode out with us for two or three miles,
their fine stallions squealing and trying to attack
one another at intervals. When these men, who were
clad in brilliantly coloured silk coats and snowy
turbans, left us, we stopped on the banl<: of the Kizil
Su to have a last cup of tea with our guest, who was
staying behind in the Consulate in order to re-pack
his priceless treasures and dispatch them to India.
With the fording of the river I felt that we were really
off, and all my housekeeping anxieties dropped from
me like a garment ; for, whatever might be my faults
of omission or commission, it was useless to trouble
about them, as I could now do nothing to repair
them.
Our way led due south, and there was cultivation
during the whole march, the barley turning yellow,
the wheat in ear, and ploughing going on busily for
the autumn crop of Indian corn. I rode astride on
a native saddle. " Tommy," as I called the sturdy
white pony which was to be my second mount, had an
unpleasant trick of stumbling that detracted from his
merits as a steed; yet, to do him justice, he came
down only once, and that was on the last march
of the journey, and on a sandy road without a
pebble.
A couple of days of riding and camping brought
us to the oasis of Tashmalik, where we were separated
from the cultivated area of Kashgar by a strip of
stony desert varied by sand-dimes. In spite of the
planting of tamarisks and reeds the sand was en-
croaching on the oasis, and a house and garden had
been lately overwhelmed by this insidious foe, which
the prevailing winds piled up in lofty mounds. Seeing
CH. VI THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS 107
this we could better understand Sir Aurel Stein's
explorations of cities that had been buried for
centuries in the sand, which had also choked up the
rivers by which their inhabitants had supported life.
The Beg of Tashmalik offered us tea, roast fowl,
bread and hard-boiled eggs. The eggs had been
coloured red, because white is the emblem of mourning
in China, and the inhabitants of Turkestan copied
this as well as many other customs from the dominant
race. Our old host partook of tea with us, and I
noticed that, when his bowl required refilling, his
servant obligingly drank up what was left and then
poured in fresh liquid and handed it to him.
That night we camped on an open space sur-
rounded by trees and irrigation channels, and as it
was hot we slept a la belle etoile outside our tents. It
was delicious to feel the cool night breeze as I dropped
off to sleep, but not so pleasant to wake suddenly in
the dark with the horrible sensation that something
large was creeping over my face. By the dim starlight
I saw crawling forms on my bed, and my torchlight
revealed the largest beetles that I have ever seen —
and I have a considerable experience of the cock-
roach — some reposing on my pillow and others flying
round with a booming noise. How I regretted my
mosquito net ! But luckily I had a head-net in my
hold-all, and after shaking off the unwelcome in-
truders I composed myself to sleep again as best
I could, knowing that I had none too long a night,
as I must rise at four o'clock.
On the third day we rode towards low con-
glomerate hills with a background of snowy peaks,
and were soon painfully stumbling among the smooth
boulders of the wide bed of the Gez River, which was
108 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
the crux of the first part of our journey. In this
district no one comments upon the weather — it is
almost monotonously fine during the summer — but
travellers ask one another how high or rather how low
the water is. In our case the answer was important
because, if we had arrived too late, the dangerous
Gez River could not have been crossed and we
should have had to make our way over a series of
steep passes in the hills.
Fortune favoured us ; for the '' great water,"
which is due about the middle of June and continues
throughout July, had not yet commenced. But two
or three days later the fast melting snows would have
swollen the stream and rendered any crossing impos-
sible : as it was, it was touch and go once or twice.
The next three days were spent in the long Gez
defile, the frowning mountains rising up in many
places sheer from the river-bed and hemming the
water within narrower and narrower limits as we
proceeded. I was reminded now and again of the
gloomy canyons of the Eraser River in British
Columbia, and all the time the roar of the water
crashing over rocks and boulders rang in our ears.
During each stage we had to ford the river some five
or six times, and at first I had the queer sensation
of being carried down -stream, the land opposite
appearing to swim away from me. But, having
traversed rivers in Persia, I knew the danger of be-
coming giddy and falling helplessly into the torrent ;
therefore I kept my eyes on some fixed object and not
on the swirling water, and as I was well looked after
and had no responsibility, I enjoyed the excitement
of the crossings. Old Jafar Bai took one of my reins
and my brother's huntsman. Nadir, rode at my side
THE EUSSIAN PAMIES 109
to rescue me in case my horse fell, leaving me nothing
to do but to sit in my saddle and urge my steed
with voice and whip. The animal, unaccustomed to
deep water, would plunge and stumble as it tried to
make good its footing on the slippery boulders, and
now and again would become nervous, lose its head
and attempt to swim. All around us were struggling
horses, whose excited riders without ceasing yelled
at the top of their voices as they drove the baggage
animals before them, and shouted countless directions
that could not be heard above the tumult and hurly-
burly of the water as it poured over its stony bed.
I was advised to keep my horse up-stream at first,
and when half-way across to let it go down-stream,
and was told that I must on no account cling to it
if it lost its footing and fell, for it would probably
trample upon me in its struggles. Apparently the
best thing in case of an accident was to let myself
go with the current and trust to being rescued. The
natives are said to cross rapid rivers in safety, even
when the water reaches to their armpits, by jumping
all the time — a very exhausting method, I should
imagine.
Though our baggage ponies were lightly laden they
seemed at times almost overwhelmed, but the Beg
of Tashmalik and his men who escorted us, knew the
dreaded Gez River in all its moods, and shepherded
the terrified animals most cleverly. At the deepest
fords camels were called into requisition and with
much querulous complaining were forced into the
stream with our loads, and on these occasions the
Beg insisted that I should mount his own horse,
saying that it was an expert at negotiating tor-
rents. The lord of this district was a big, ruddy-
110 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
faced man, and could liardly take his eyes off
the first Englishwoman he had ever seen, being
particularly interested in my side-saddle, which he
thought was a most insecure perch. He looked upon
me as being more or less in his charge, and I heard
afterwards that he had deputed three of his men who
were strong swimmers to keep an eye upon me in
case my horse foundered. As a rule the early morning
is the best time to cross these rivers, because no snow
melts in the mountains during the night, when every-
thing is frozen, nor does it do so until the sun has
been up for some hours. Once or twice our baggage
animals were greatly delayed by the water, and on
one occasion only our bedding reached the camping
ground, a pasturage dotted with tamarisk scrub.
That night I was roused more than once by some
grazing pony lurching against my bed in the darkness.
The dreary Gez gorge became wilder as we
penetrated its recesses. Here and there rocks and
stones were piled one upon another in a chaotic
confusion that gave one a glimpse of the tremendous
power of ice and water, the scenery being so savage
as to seem more like a nightmare than reality. It
inspired me with a kind of awe, and I am not ashamed
to own that I should have been terrified to find
myself alone in these solitudes, shut in by the lofty
conglomerate hills, above which one gained occasional
glimpses of snowy peaks. The river, beneficent and
life-giving in its lower reaches, is here an agent of
destruction, with not a tree and hardly a plant on
its banks ; and yet at one of the gloomiest reaches,
when I was filled with a sense of impending disaster,
my mood was changed in a second by the sight of
two small birds pursuing one another in a love flight.
THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS 111
We had to cross several native bridges made on
the cantilever system, and always dismounted, for
they swayed from side to side, and our horses were
nervous at first, even when led over them. As the
raging torrent at these points was penned into narrow
limits it swirled and eddied and foamed among the
huge boulders below us, and I was thankful that these
bridges had been improved since Lord Dunmore
visited the Pamirs in 1892 and wrote that they
consisted of a couple of beams on which brushwood
and large round stones were laid.
When there were no bridges and the water was
too deep for our horses we were obliged to negotiate
various passes. In these the narrow track, with only
room for one animal abreast, was often formed of
loose shale, which here and there poured down the
mountain side in big fans, the shingle rustling as it
fell on to our path and descended the precipitous
cliffs to the torrent surging far below. I did not
appreciate my pony's fondness for treading on the
extreme edge of the track and sending showers of
tiny pebbles hurtling down ; but as it would have
been a physical impossibility for me to have walked
up all these passes — I always descended them on
foot — I used to console myself with the reflection
that our horses were by no means anxious to commit
suicide.
At the end of the gorge, dome-shaped Muztagh
Ata, with its covering of snow, stood up magnificently,
seeming to block up the end of the narrow valley,
and from that moment it entered into my life, so
familiar did it become to me and so greatly did I
admire it. Sandy tracks now led us to the shallow
Bulunkul Lake, more than half -filled with sand blown
112 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
from the hills that encircle it, and we halted on a
stretch of pasturage on which yaks were grazing, and
were glad to think that a critical part of our journey
was safely accomplished.
It may be of interest if I give some account of
how we travelled during this tour. The rule was to
rise at 5 a.m., if not earlier, and I would hastily dress
and then emerge from my tent to lay my pith-hat,
putties, gloves and stick beside the breakfast table
spread in the open. Diving back into my tent I
would put the last touches to the packing of hold-
all and dressing-case, Jafar Bai and his colleague
Humayun being busy meanwhile in tying up my
bedstead and bedding in felts. While the tents were
being struck we ate our breakfast in the sharp
morning air, adjusted our putties, applied face-crearri
to keep our skins from cracking in the intense dryness
of the atmosphere, and then would watch our ponies,
yaks or camels as the case might be, being loaded up.
These last -mentioned ungainly creatures used to
cry and protest all the time, giving their owners as
much trouble as possible before they could be induced
to lie down, and occasionally throwing off their
burdens. A baby-camel being of the party during
part of our journey, its mother greatly resented being
made to work, and all the animals were shedding
their winter coats, the fur hanging on their bodies
in loose, untidy patches. My chief objection to the
camel is its disagreeable odour, and I have often
wondered why an animal that is such a clean feeder
should smell so horribly.
When the loads were at last adjusted and the
caravan was ready to start, we would mount our
horses, or one of our men would lead them behind us
THE EUSSIAN PAMIRS 113
while we walked for an hour before we began to ride.
As we had three horses between us, I usually rode half
the stage on my side-saddle if the going were good,
and the other half on Tommy with a native saddle
which had a cushion strapped on to it, and I found
that the change of seat kept me from getting over-
tired, while my astride habit did for either mode.
We usually marched for five hours and then halted
for lunch, waiting until our caravan had overtaken
and passed us. Sattur, who accompanied us on his
pony, would unpack his tifiin basket, and we would lie
by the water, in the shade of a tree if possible, as the
sun by noon was very powerful. When the worst of
the heat was over, and our baggage animals had been
given an hour's start, we would ride another three or
four hours into camp, to revel in afternoon tea and
warm baths, I having an extra treat in the brushing
out of my hair, so hastily done up in the morning.
Then would come a consultation with Daoud as to
our evening meal, and one of the store boxes would
be opened to give out everything needed for it and
for the morrow's breakfast and lunch. After dinner
we usually strolled up and down for an hour, warmly
wrapped up — for it became very cold when the sun
went down — and then turned in to dreamless slumbers.
From Lake Bulunkul and onwards we saw a great
deal of the Kirghiz, and, though travellers differ as
to their opinion of these peaceful pastoral people, we
ourselves liked them and found them most friendly
and hospitable. Their broad hairless faces and high
cheek-bones show their Mongol descent, but though
akin to the yellow-skinned, oblique-eyed Chinese, they
look very different, and both men and women have
fresh ruddy complexions.
I
114 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
We first camped with them at a spot called " Stone
Sheep-folds," from the presence of a roughly walled
enclosure into which the flocks were driven at night
to be guarded from the wolves by the savage Kirghiz
dogs. As we rode across a wide grassy plain towards
a group of akhois, the native dwellings that look
like huge bee-hives, it was the hour of the afternoon
milking, and Kirghiz women in gaily coloured coats,
long leather boots and the characteristic lofty white
headgear, were busily at work. They had tied the
sheep and the goats and the black, brown or parti-
coloured yaks to long ropes and let the animals go
free one by one when they had been milked, a loud
chorus of bleating and grunting going on all the time.
Troops of mares, accompanied by their foals, were
feeding all round the camp, and our Badakshani
horses were excited to such an extent that the chestnut
had to be blindfolded in order to quiet him ; and
throughout the tour I had often from this cause
an unpleasantly lively time with my grey, which had
been imperturbable when at Kashgar.
It was mid- June, but a high wind was blowing and
drove the sand in clouds from the hills, invading the
little tent, in which I could not stand upright save in
the centre, and whisking up its flaps. As I could not
perform my toilet unless I fastened up the entrance,
I had to grope for everything in almost total dark-
ness, and though the space was extremely limited, it
was surprising how easily things got mislaid. My
tent was still less desirable as a residence when it
rained, as after a while tiny streams would begin to
trickle down inside at the points where my camp
furniture touched the walls, and my belongings —
most of them perforce on the ground — got damp and
THE EUSSIAN PAMIRS 115
clammy. Of course a large tent with talc windows is
very comfortable — with certain exceptions ; but we
had heard so much about the storms that sweep
over the Pamirs that we had taken only small ones
on this expedition.
At our next halt, Kuntigmas, meaning " the place
that the sun cannot reach," I was provided with an
akhoi all to myself. Indeed, I always dwelt in these
roomy '' white houses " whenever possible. They are
usually eighteen feet in diameter, the same size as the
Turkoman kibitkas in the north of Persia, and the
framework of willow-wood is a trellis about four feet
high, which pulls out and is placed on the ground in
a circle. To the upper edge of this a series of curved
laths are tied about a foot apart, the other end of
these laths being inserted into the holes of a thick
wooden hoop that forms the top of the dome-like
erection. Large felts are now fastened with ropes
over the akhoi, leaving free the opening at the top to
admit light and air — also rain and snow on occasion
— and to let out the smoke of the fires. In case of
really bad weather a felt can be drawn over the
circular opening, and again withdrawn, on the same
principle as the ventilation arrangements in some of
the London theatres. A wooden framework, often
prettily carved, is placed between the two ends of
the trellis-work to serve as a doorway, and is hung
with a piece of matting and a felt or carpet. Inside,
the framework is completely covered with felts, and
along the top of the trellis I noticed throughout our
tour an effective finish in the shape of a band of red
felt with a blue floriated pattern that passed half-
way round the akhoi, the other half being decorated
with the same design, but with the colours reversed.
116 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
These dwellings can be purchased for £7 (a Chinese
yambu), but those of superior quality often go up to
£35 in price. The earthen floor is beaten hard and
covered with carpets, a depression being left in the
centre for the fire. Some of the old carpets were
very pleasing, with their soft madders and indigoes
and greens, a favourite design being conventionalized
flowers ; but alas, most of them were badly burnt by
the sparks that had leapt on to them from the
brushwood used to start the fires. The Kirghiz of
to-day does not appreciate their velvety sheen, but
loves the modern Khotan productions, with their
crude scarlets, purples, yellows and magentas all
introduced into the same pattern in a series of violent
colour discords.
All travellers speak of the akhoi with esteem, and
I was always grateful for its space, and, in fine weather,
for its comfort, although during snow and rain I found
that it had some drawbacks. For example, the hole
at the top let in much wet, but if the felt were drawn
across it I was deprived of light, and if I rolled up my
entrance carpet I had no privacy and was exposed to
violent draughts, as the walls were by no means air-
proof. The felts that covered them were so full of
holes that on a rainy day one had to use much dis-
crimination as to where to put one's belongings in
order to keep them comparatively dry, and on more
than one occasion I have slept with my mackintosh
drawn up over my head in order to prevent the rain
from splashing on my face during the night.
There is little in the way of " furniture " in these
dwellings save picturesquely shaped copper jugs in
which water is boiled, a few copper pots and basins
used for cooking and as receptacles for milk, and
THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS 117
some rough wooden buckets. On one occasion we
were ushered into an akhoi to eat our lunch out of
the glare of the sun, and had ensconced ourselves on
a rug, at one end of which was a bundle of cotton-
padded quilts. Jafar Bai warned us that a small boy
was sleeping imder them, and it was just as well that
he did so, as we might easily have sat upon him.
The child moaned and coughed, and then, hearing
strange voices, began to cry with terror and made
violent efforts to get free of his coverings, under which
he could hardly have breathed. We sent for his
mother, but she was too shy to make her appearance,
so her eldest son, attired in a long green coat, ven-
tured in and carried off his frightened little brother.
We were now and onwards camping at a height of
eleven to fourteen thousand feet, and when there was
no sunshine it was disagreeably cold and raw, despite
the season of the year. We were held up for a couple
of days by snow soon after we left Kuntigmas, and
as a Kirghiz woman had washed our underclothing
just before the weather broke, I had a fire lit in my
akhoi both to keep myself warm and to dry the
wet garments. Nadir was an expert in lighting these
fires, and brought in an armful of wild lavender and
a basket of cakes of argon, the dried dung of the
yak, the only fuel obtainable in this part of the
world, where trees are conspicuous by their absence.
He squatted on the ground, set light to the brush-
wood, and piled the fuel in a bank round it, manipu-
lating it with a pair of tongs and coaxing the fire
to burn with the aid of an ingenious pair of bellows
made from a whole goatskin. At first the result was
a cloud of acrid smoke that made my eyes smart and
shed floods of involuntary tears ; the only way to
118 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
avoid this ordeal being to sit on the ground a la
nomade. After a while the smoke ceased and left
a clear red fire that gave out considerable heat, but
turned to ashes so soon that I wondered whether it
was worth all the trouble it took to make. Certainly
it was of practically no use in drying our extensive
wash, which had to be carried along in its wet con-
dition until the sun appeared again.
Whenever we stopped at these Kirghiz encamp-
ments, the principal women would come to visit me,
bringing usually an offering of a kind of puff pastry
the size of a plate, made with cream, very crisp and
rich, layer above layer, and about three inches thick :
my gifts in return were gaily coloured handkerchiefs
and strings of coral beads, both of which gave great
satisfaction. As my guests entered the akhoi they
would kick off the low shoes that men and women
alike wear over their long leather boots, and would
seat themselves on the floor, looking picturesque in
their flowered chintz coats padded with cotton and
their curious turban-like headgear that is formed by
winding muslin on a wooden frame and is laid aside
in the privacy of their own homes. All wore roughly
made, but effective-looking, necklaces of coral and
silver with long pendants, and had silver clasps and
buttons on their coats. Some of them had beauti-
fully embroidered caps bordered with silver buttons
and ending in bossed chains which hung over their
ears, this headgear being worn under the turbans.
The elder women were hard-featured and weather-
beaten, a natural consequence of their exposure to
all sorts of climatic conditions, but some of the young
girls were rosy-cheeked and attractive-looking, despite
their flat faces and rather snub noses. Old Jafar Bai
KIRGHIZ WOMEN IN GALA DRESS.
Page 1 1 8.
OH. VI THE RUSSIAN PAMIRS 119
and Nadir were very useful in helping to entertain
my guests, translating my Persian remarks into Turki,
and the ladies enjoyed drinking tea sweetened with
many lumps of sugar instead of the customary salt,
and eating European biscuits and sweetmeats. Before
leaving they would gather up any sugar and eatables
that were left, packing them away in the cloth wound
round their waists or in a breast-pocket of their thick
outer coats. They struck me as being very pleasant
and easy-tempered with one another, and when they
took their leave with profuse salaams they would
thank me most politely for the entertainment.
I believe that the Kirghiz women have a better
position than their Mohamedan sisters in other parts
of the world : vet their lives are strenuous and filled
with unceasing work. As women are in a decided
minority in the Pamirs they are valuable, and a man
possessed of several daughters counts himself rich
indeed. A suitor for the hand of one of them induces
three of the chief men of the tribe to bargain with
the fortunate father, and I was told that a hundred
sheep or five Chinese yamhus (£35) is a moderate price
to pay for a bride. At one of our camps, for example,
the headman was pointed out to me as having pro-
duced money and stock to the value of £500 for his
unprepossessing-looking wife. On the other hand, the
girl brings with her a dowry of camels, horses, yaks,
clothes and jewellery that is supposed to equal in value
what her father has received from the bridegroom.
A wedding entails but slight expense as compared
with a funeral, the father merely giving a big feast
to the whole tribe, and this does not seriously em-
barrass him as it is customary for the guests to
present gifts in kind to the bridegroom, who is
120 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
expected to hand them over to his future father-in-
law.
Miss Czaplicka writes that as a rule a man pays for
his bride by instalments and does not visit the resi-
dence of her parents until the first lot of live-stock
has been delivered to her father. On this occasion
the future husband is not allowed to see his inamorata,
and neither bridegroom nor bride makes an appear-
ance at the wedding-feast. Late at night the jinai, or
female matchmakers, conduct the young couple sepa-
rately to the aJchoi of the bride's parents, the girl
making a feint of resisting and the jinai pretending
to hinder the husband by barking like dogs. The
bridegroom goes off early the next morning and avoids
his parents-in-law for the whole day, and when he
has paid the full price for his wife he carries her off
with a show of force, which she plays up to by
pretending to resist the attempt to take her to a
new home.
It happens sometimes that a man does not possess
enough live-stock to purchase a wife, in which case
he will enter into an agreement with his would-be
father-in-law to serve him and look after his flocks
for a term of years, just as did Jacob many centuries
ago in order to gain the hand of Rachel. He is
allowed to marry the girl of his choice and lives with
her family during his service, at the end of which her
father will give him an alchoi, yaks, mares, sheep and
goats, and the couple will go off and live independently
of the old people. My brother's best Kirghiz shikari,
Shamshir by name, confided to him that he was most
anxious to marry, but so far he had only gathered
together thirty sheep towards the realization of his
heart's desire. However, his hard case. so touched
THE EUSSIAN PAMIRS 121
his employer's heart that, when we left the district,
Shamshir received a parting gift that would appreci-
ably hasten the wedding-day.
There is practically no divorce among the Kirghiz,
marriage being looked upon as permanent. A wife is
considered to belong to her husband's family and
lives with them if she becomes a widow, and in the
event of her remarriage she is obliged to forgo the
dowry that she brought to her first husband.
Mohamedans are permitted to have four wives, but,
owing to the scarcity of women, few Kirghiz can avail
themselves of this privilege, though a man occasion-
ally takes a second wife at the urgent request of his
first one.
Certainly a good wife must be " above rubies " to
a Kirghiz. She looks after the flocks and herds more
or less, does all the milking, makes cream, curds,
cheese and koumiss, cooks the food, fashions clothes
for herself and her family, and of course has to rear
her children. Besides all this, she is skilled in weaving
felts with which to cover the akhois, and the effective
embroideries that adorn them are the work of her
hands, as are also the coarse but pleasing carpets. I
have seen her staggering along under the big bundle
of laths that form the framework of the " white
house," and she lends a hand to its erection and ties
on its felt coverings. Her lord and master has often
filled me with indignation by standing idly by and
looking on at his wife's labours.
Though the women are almost as good riders as
the men, they ride only for the practical purposes of
travelling from camp to camp or herding the mares
and cattle. Recreation, as we understand it, does not
come much into their lives, and when guests have to
122 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
be entertained, or feasts are given, they liave to work
harder than usual at the cooking. In fact I was not
surprised to hear that when he recounts his possessions
a Kirghiz will mention his camels, yaks, horses, sheep
and goats first, relegating wife and children to the
end of the list.
The man's part in life struck me as being by far
the easier one. He rides about on his wiry ponies,
attends all the wedding and funeral feasts in the dis-
trict, loves to play the " goat game," and will drive
his yaks and sheep into Kashgar to sell, if he is in
need of flour, clothing or boots. He is too wise to
wed the pretty Kashgari girls, who would be utterly
useless and out of their element in an akhoi, nor do
the active, weather-beaten maidens of his tribe hanker
after the life of the city.
In the different encampments that we visited
children were often conspicuous by their absence, and
I was told that most of those born during the long
winter succumb to the rigours of the climate, a large
proportion of infants being stillborn from the same
cause. Smallpox also carries off many, and although
the health of the Kirghiz is, as a rule, excellent, they
die very easily if they fall ill, there being no doctor
on the Pamirs, or any knowledge of the rudiments
of nursing. It seems a case of the survival of the
fittest ; for I have never come across sturdier, hardier-
looking men and women than those I encountered
during our tour. They live almost entirely on milk,
curds and cheese, killing their flocks for food only
when milk is scarce or guests arrive, or for wedding
and funeral feasts. Their favourite drink is Jcoumiss,
. the fermented milk of mares. One sip of this was
enough for me, as I found it so acid and smoky that
THE EUSSIAN PAMIRS 123
I had no desire to repeat the experiment. Bread,
sugar and tea are luxuries, and, as they grow nothing
save a little barley in places, they never taste either
fruit or vegetables ; but they certainly thrive on
their milk diet. The best milk comes from the yaks.
These sturdy animals looked very dishevelled at this
season, as their shaggy hair was coming off in patches.
They are far hardier than cows, and, though their
yield is less, the milk is much richer and is yielded
over a longer period.
Neither my brother nor I derived much benefit
from the limitless quantities of milk and cream that
we saw at the encampments. The Kirghiz boil the
milk in open vessels, with the result that it always
tasted so strongly of the pungent smoke that we found
junkets and milk puddings quite uneatable. More-
over, they are in the habit of manipulating the cream
with their hands, both these and the bowls being
very far from clean. Only twice were we offered
cream that was smokeless and white, and this we
found delicious.
The yaks — black, brown, grey or black and white —
are of two species, those carrying big branching horns
and those without any. They are strong and remark-
ably sure-footed, though slow, and we used them often
for pack work. The curious single grunt which they
emit at frequent intervals earns them their scientific
name of Bos grunniens. It was frequently my fate
when camping to have a yak ensconced somewhere
outside my akhoi, separated from me only by a
felt, so that it seemed as if it were literally grunting
into my ear during the night. They appeared to
be very docile to their owners, but sometimes took
a violent dislike to Europeans, as my brother once
124 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
experienced to his cost in Ladak, when he was chased
by a black bull and escaped with considerable diffi-
culty. The Kirghiz are on the most familiar terms
with their animals. I often found a crowd of lambs
and kids behind a screen in an akhoi, or struggling
to emerge from some hole underground, and if I
rolled up my hanging door I was frequently visited
by the most engaging kids, only too ready to
make friends with the intruder. I was told that the
Kirghiz keep cocks in order that the birds may rouse
their owners at daybreak, but we ourselves came
across no poultry during our travels among these
nomads.
Washing is not a Kirghiz characteristic, and,
indeed, in a country where the rivers are partly ice-
bound in July one could hardly expect the inhabitants
to be fond of bathing. They must find the long
winter with its bitter winds very trying, even in their
lowest grazing-grounds. The flocks scrape away the
snow with their hoofs in order to find the grass under-
neath, but are in extremely poor condition before
the approach of spring, and have to be carefully
guarded from the depredations of snow-leopards,
wild dogs and wolves. These last come round in
packs and lie in wait, watching their opportunity ;
on one occasion Nadir lost eighty of his sheep in the
full daylight of a winter morning. His brother, who
was in charge of the flock, went to his akJioi for a
short time, leaving a small boy and his savage dogs
in charge. As soon as he was out of sight the wolves
set upon the sheep, killing them one after the other in a
kind of orgy of bloodshed, and paying no heed what-
ever to the dogs, which were powerless to prevent
the slaughter. Many of the sheep fled into the hills
CH. VI THE EUSSIAN PAMIRS 125
in their terror, and Nadir recovered very few of
them.
Iftikhar Ahmad related to me how once a large
and exceptionally savage dog that he possessed was
killed by a couple of wolves. They stalked the dog,
one getting in front of it and one behind, and, while
it stood undecided which foe to attack first, one of
the wolves rushed at it with tremendous force and
threw it down. In less time than it takes to relate,
the victim was torn asunder, and the conquerors made
off, each carrying half of the spoils of victory.
The tribesmen keep their akhois warm in winter by
banking snow round them, closing up all interstices
and crowding together ; for fires cannot be used
indiscriminately, the supply of argon being by no
means unlimited.
Though the Kirghiz nominally follow the religion
of the Prophet and are Simnis, they pay little
heed to its observances beyond keeping the fast of
Ramazan ; but this is not to be wondered at, since
they have few mullas to show them the right path.
When they die they are buried in a little cemetery
belonging to the tribe, and usually situated on the side
of a hill. Low mud domes, looking much like akhois
in the distance, are placed over the remains of men of
importance ; and when these latter die, their relatives
invite the tribe to great feasts and also organize horse-
races, in which the winners are awarded handsome
prizes. The idea is that the dead men are giving
these lavish entertainments in order to disperse the
wealth which they need no longer, the Kirghiz not
being concerned to " lay up riches for those that
shall come after."
Here and there we came across the tomb of a
126 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
sayyid, the mud dome enclosed by a rough stone wall,
on which were set poles hung with fluttering rags.
One such dome was erected over a mighty hunter,
and the shikaris had hung it round with horns of the
wild sheep and were in the habit of depositing
pinches of gunpowder on the grave, in order that the
departed Nimrod might give them success in the chase.
These primitive monuments are the only buildings
that we came across during our tour.
The headman of a tribe or district is called a Beg,
and in Chinese Turkestan, in the uplands of which we
travelled at first, he is put in authority by the Amban,
to whom he gives a gift for the honour, recouping
himself afterwards by taking a fortieth part of the
flocks and herds of the families in his charge. These
officials were most helpful to us, arranging for trans-
port — usually the great stumbling-block of travellers
in Central Asia — sending men on ahead to prepare
aJchois for us, accompanying my brother and treating
us as honoured guests when we passed through their
districts. One of these hosts was an officer in 'Chinese
employ, and said that he had a force of thirty-
two men under his orders. The truth was that the
Amhan drew pay for thirty-two soldiers and gave our
friend the money for eight. He in his turn economized
by paying three soldiers, his wife and children figuring
as the remaining j^i;e.
A choga or " robe of honour " was usually pre-
sented to the Beg when we left his district, and the
man would kneel to receive the brilliantly coloured
coat, and make the gesture of passing his hands across
his face, which was meant to signify his humility in
the presence of my brother. Then, calling out,
''Allah Ho Akbar,'' he would spring to his feet and
THE RUSSIAN PAIVIIRS 127
rush off in high glee to show his " decoration '' — for
so he regarded it — to the men of his tribe.
During the first days of our arrival on these
uplands we had disagreeable weather, although it
was mid-June. Sometimes there was driving rain
and snow of exceptionally melting quality, and when
it was dry the high winds blew up the sand in great
clouds. Once or twice, after starting off on a fine
morning, we were forced at the end of the march
to make a hurried rush to the encampment at which
we were to halt, in order to avoid an imminent dust-
storm, the excited horses racing across ground so
boggy that on ordinary occasions we should have
negotiated it with care. At intervals we could hear
what I imagined to be peals of thunder, but was
in reality the roar of avalanches as they slid down
the sides of the snow-clad mountains that were almost
hidden by the dust haze. We were delayed in one
place for a couple of days, as the local Beg said that
the heavy rain had made the going too bad for our
baggage-camels, and a very damp and chilly wait
it was. If we ventured outside our akhois we were
drenched to the skin, with no means of drying our-
selves save by the inadequate fires that I have
described. I was delighted when the sun reappeared,
and, as we started off, the Beg's wife came to bid me
a most kindly farewell and to wish me good luck on
the road; and throughout the journey the chief
woman of every camp always took a particular
interest in my welfare.
We left the grazing ground beside the river and
ascended a broad, barren valley leading into a range of
low bare hills which we crossed by easy passes, and for
a couple of days travelled through a stony desolation
128 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
among brown hills crested with snow. There was
barely a sign of life to be seen save once, when a
butterfly fluttered feebly among the boulders and
debris through which the track lay, and I wondered
how the poor insect could survive, as we were some
miles from vegetation of any kind. There were often
little flowers in abundance on the grassy banks of the
streams, and I noted two or three varieties of primulas,
some tiny and of palest mauve, while others, big
and lusty, were of a dark tint. The buttercups and
a small cistus spread themselves in golden patches,
crimson lousewort flushed the ground, and I was sorry
to have no acquaintance with scores of low-growing
plants that were bursting into minute cream, yellow
or purple blossoms. The whole flora was Alpine, and
reminded me of the beautiful display that I had often
enjoyed in Switzerland ; but here the gentians were
either white or a pale blue.
At times we enjoyed superb views of the great
snow-clad peaks towards which we were travelling,
and these visions of remote and unearthly beauty
compensated for the weary miles of stumbling over
rounded boulders and pebbles. We were only able
to go at a foot's pace. The horses disliked the
journey more than we did, because they got foot-
sore ; and Jafar Bai had to keep a vigilant eye upon
their shoes, as the nails had a habit of dropping
out.
On June 18 we camped, at a height of 13,000 feet,
below the Katta Dawan, or Great Pass, by crossing
which we should leave Chinese Turkestan and reach
the Russian Pamirs, the goal of our journey.
CHAPTER VII
THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
I scaled precipitous mountain crags clad with snow: found my
way through the scarped passes of the Iron Gates ; — I have traversed
the valley of Pamir. — Life of Hiuen Tsiang, Beal.
The Pamirs are both fertile and barren, both habitable and desolate,
both smiling and repellent according to the point of view from which
they are regarded. They are among the deUberate paradoxes of
nature. — TJie Pamirs and the Source of the OxuSy Hon. Geobgb N.
Cdbzon.
It was a thrilling thought that I was about to tread
in the footsteps of some of the intrepid travellers in
High Asia, such as the Buddhist monk, Hiuen Tsiang,
Marco Polo, Wood, the first Englishman to enter the
Pamirs, and many another whom the Red Gods called
to feats of daring and endurance. But my lot was
an extremely easy one compared with theirs; for,
being the only woman of the party, I was guarded
and protected in every possible way. Perhaps some
of my readers may be a little vague as to the exact
meaning of the word Pamirs. They are described by
Sir Thomas Holdich, the eminent geographer, as
** valleys reaching up in long slopes to the foot of
mountain peaks," and they are known by the Persian
term of Bam-i-Dunia or Roof of the World.
On that June morning we were up at 5 a.m. and,
although snow had fallen during the night, the day
129 K
130 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. i
was fine and gave good hopes of a successful crossing
of tlie pass. It was bitterly cold, but my leather
coat was impervious to wind, a Shetland shawl swathed
my pith-hat and neck, and I had besmeared both face
and feet plentifully with vaseline and therefore felt
prepared to meet whatever might befall.
When we had seen our baggage yaks loaded we
walked up the narrow valley, down which ran a little
stream with scanty grazing on its banks ; but before
long the stiff pull up the mountain side began, and we
were obliged to mount. Our Kirghiz guide halted
every few yards to let the panting horses take breath
— in fact, the rarefied air on these heights seemed to
try them almost as much as it would have exhausted
us had we been forced to walk. We soon reached
the snow-line, and our animals plunged and stumbled
through freshly fallen snow on the narrow track
where we moved along in single file. It seemed a
long time, but in reality we reached the crest of the
Katta Dawan in a couple of hours and found ourselves
on a little plateau some 16,000 feet high. Clouds
had been gathering during our climb and fine snow
now began to fall fast, making us fear that we might
be caught in a storm and possibly miss the track,
which it needed the practised eye of the Kirghiz to
discover. Fortunately the wind came to our rescue,
sweeping the air clear at intervals, and I saw that we
were in the midst of great white giants shouldering
one another, a glacier lying to our left, shining in the
fitful gleams of the sun. Ahead of us low green hills
scantily flecked with snow opened out to give a
glimpse of the intense blue of the Great Karakul
Lake, a soft mist half revealing the landscape, and
the whole making a picture of exquisite beauty that
CH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 131
somewhat reminded us of the Highlands of Scotland.
But it was no time to linger and enjoy the view, and
we began the descent, soon dismounting as our horses
floundered badly in the snow and I had no wish to be
shot over Tommy's head. Then followed an hour of
struggling downwards during which I was sometimes
up to the knee in the snow, and once or twice fell
headlong, my thick clothing impeding me a good deal
but saving me from hurt in my tumbles. Somehow
we scrambled down at last into a long defile, and the
falling snow turned into a chilly sleet that cut our
faces. But nothing of that sort mattered, and as we
drank hot tea from our thermos bottles I felt a glow
of pride that not only was I the first Englishwoman
to negotiate the Katta Dawan Pass, but that I was
actually on that Roof of the World, which in my
wildest day-dreams I had never imagined that I
should visit.
It seemed an auspicious omen that almost as soon
as we reached the Pamirs, Nadir discovered a small
herd of ovis poli on the side of one of the mountains
between which we were passing. Although there was
not a head among them, they held out a promise
of better things to come, and I was greatly interested
in watching them through my glasses.
From now onwards we saw much more of Nadir,
who came from the Sarikol district, and showed his
Aryan descent in his boldly cut aquiline features, his
big dark eyes, black beard and moustache. He was
strikingly handsome, and would have passed very well
for a Spaniard, except that, when he took oif his white
felt Kirghiz hat, his shaven head looked oddly out
of keeping with the rest of the picture. He was
most intelligent on any matter connected with sport
132 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES «. i
or the country, and was accustomed to the use of
jB.eld-glasses, through which his keen eyes swept the
hills unceasingly. Yet he did not understand a
watch, and our method of computing time conveyed
nothing to him ; in fact, when my brother spoke to
him of " hours " he said reproachfully that he hailed
from Sarikol, where such things were unknown. I
admired his gift of making every one work ; for,
although he was merely my brother's huntsman,
he arrogated much authority to himself and ordered
about the guides, and even our servants, in the most
masterful way. He could turn his hand to anything,
was accounted an excellent singer and was quite
aware of his fine appearance, being fond of decorating
his hat with a bunch of primulas that set off his
handsome face to advantage. He had of course the
defects of his qualities, one of his failings being that
he was so determined to pose as omniscient that he
occasionally gave us wrong information ; moreover,
his deep-rooted contempt for the peaceful Kirghiz
also led him astray, as he sometimes refused to pay
attention to their advice as to tracks and camping
grounds.
To return to the march, long boulder-strewn defiles
led us eventually into a gravelly waste where we
saw ahead of us the Great Karakul Lake, and a
group of akhois gleaming white in the distance held
out hopes of rest and food. But suddenly a violent
sandstorm, one of those " mountain devils " that
blotted out the landscape, came on so completely,
that it was quite a surprise when I found that we had
reached a stream, on the further side of which stood
the beehive-like dwellings. I was half-blinded as I
staggered into a dirty aJcJioi, smelling strongly of the
OH. ru THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 133
kids and lambs that had lately been herded behind
a prettily coloured matting ; and, with my face
swollen from the snow and sleet on the Katta Dawan,
my eyes sore from the sand and my whole person
grimy with dust, I did not feel at my best when four
gaily attired Kirghiz women with towering white
headgear came to call upon me. One was a good-
looking, rosy-cheeked girl, who said she did not know
her age, but thought it might be twenty. She had a
beautifully embroidered headgear bordered with silver
buttons and ending in bossed silver chains which
hung over her ears.
I felt too tired to play the hostess well, and found
the ladies rather inquisitive, as they fingered my pith-
hat, slipped their hands into my fur-lined gloves and
examined my habit ; in fact the manners of this
tribe were the worst I encountered, and so constantly
was I peeped at through the many holes in the felt
covering of my akhoi that I had to shorten all my
toilet operations considerably.
Although our baggage yaks had started from camp
at 7 o'clock that morning they did not arrive until
8 P.M., and of course we got nothing to eat until an
hour later, and before I went to bed I had to open
the store boxes in order to provide my brother and
Nadir with three days' supplies for a shooting ex-
pedition in the mountains bordering the lake, on
which they were to start off at dawn on the morrow.
We were now in Russian territory, and at nightfall
four Cossacks rode up to the akhois with orders to
escort us, and next day they accompanied me and the
servants to the Russian post where we were to stop.
This consisted of a series of rooms opening on to a
courtyard, the whole built of brick and surroimded
134 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
by a high wall. It had evidently been cleaned up
in our honour, and the corporal who was in authority
here ushered me into a white-washed room with a
table and a couple of stools, and was astounded at
my request that he should open the double window.
As soon as my belongings had been brought in I
mounted Tommy and went off, accompanied by Jafar
Bai and my camera, to see the lake. It is exquisitely
situated, with a background of snowy peaks pictur-
esquely serrated, the water and the great gravelly
plain being ringed about with mountains partly
covered with freshly fallen snow, the Trans -Alai
range with the magnificent Kaufmann peak rising
up into the sky. The water of the lake was an
intense sapphire blue, with broad streaks of purple
and emerald and a wide band of salt efflorescence
round its shores, the whole reminding me of pictures
of the Dead Sea.
Captain Cobbold, who visited the lake in 1896,
mentioned the sandy ridge running north and south
that divided it ; but the water has risen since
then, and at the time of my visit there was no
sign of a division. He also spoke of its fish, and it
was disappointing to hear on all sides that there was
no life in its bitter waters : it is stagnant, no animal
drinks from it, and the only birds I noted during my
three days' visit were a pair of Brahminy ducks and
an occasional vulture and raven. The salt efflores-
cence made the ground rotten in places, and once
the horses, which Jafar Bai was holding while I photo-
graphed the group, sank into, a kind of quicksand,
from which we had some difficulty in extricating them.
This district is called the Khargush Pamir (Pamir of
the Hare), and I felt that the name must have been
CH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 135
given in irony, as it is really a desert, boulder-strewn
in some parts, sand-strewn in others. The grazing is
so poor as to be almost negligible (which probably
accounted for the high charges that were levied upon
us by our late Kirghiz hosts), and the Russian post-
house overlooked a dreary waste of solidified ridges
of sand, in appearance much like the low mud mounds
raised over the dead. I thought it a most depressing
view, but fortunately it did not appear to affect the
spirits of the Cossacks ; for, on the arrival of half a
dozen soldiers who had driven from Osh with supplies,
the whole party started dancing in the little courtyard.
One man played the concertina, and another, small
and well-made, clad in buff coat, blue trousers, long
riding-boots and a grey sheepskin cap, would have
been a worthy member of the Russian ballet corps so
popular in London. He and his partner danced with
tremendous zest and agility, though their faces never
for an instant relaxed their serious expression as they
rehearsed the old themes of attraction and repulsion,
masculine boldness seeking to conquer maidenly
coyness. Then on a sudden the tender melody would
change to something wild and barbaric, and the
dancers became warlike, were enemies, exchanged
threats, feigned to attack one another and stamped
their feet menacingly, somewhat in the manner of
the blood-stirring ballet of Prince Igor.
There was much excitement at the post when my
brother's first trophy arrived ; but the head was
small, and as he and Nadir had heard that larger
rams might be found elsewhere, he decided that we
had better move on.
My readers will see that we had had some trouble
in reaching the Pamirs, but when once we had arrived
136 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
I was astonished at the ease with which we travelled
from place to place. For the greater part of our tour
we were on a high plateau which in reality consisted of
valleys so filled up with the moraines of the glaciers
of centuries ago that, as Sir Francis Younghusband
puts it, " the bottoms of these Pamir valleys are level
with the higher summits of the Alps." Owing to this,
the mountain ranges were often shorn of much of
their grandeur as we surveyed them from a height
of thirteen or fourteen thousand feet, though some
of the panoramas we were privileged to see were
unforgettable in their superb majesty.
^I have travelled among the Swiss Alps, and know
something of the Canadian Rockies, the Elburz Range
and the Caucasus, but the mountains of the Pamirs
are far wilder and more savage in appearance than
these, because of the entire lack of life at their feet.
In Switzerland, Canada and the Caucasus the foothills
of the great ranges are clad with pine and fir ; long
grassy slopes gemmed with tiny flowers give a
charm to the scenery, and there is usually bird life.
Even the barren Elburz has juniper and other
scrub on its lower slopes and there are grass and
flowers in its valleys ; but here we could travel for
days in a desolation that was almost terrifying.
Often we did not see a human being during the
whole day's march, the only signs of life being an
occasional vulture and sometimes a few snow pigeons,
crows, choughs and the ubiquitous marmot. It was
a red-letter day if I came across swallows, finches,
desert larks or the handsome but uneatable Brahminy
duck ; indeed my horse would actually sometimes
shy if we met a Kirghiz on the lonely track.
The climate during our visit in June and July was
OH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 137
one of the most changeable in the world. It was
always cold when we left camp between six and seven
o'clock, the sky often grey and cloudy and the moun-
tains veiled in mist. After a while the sim would
come out and I would throw off my overcoat, but
probably would soon put it on again, as icy blasts
were in the habit of descending suddenly from the
hills. At noon it was often extremely hot, and I
found the mid-day halt, even in such favourable spots
as on the banks of a stream, very trying, owing to
the scorching heat from which there was no escape.
There are no trees on the Pamirs, and I have vivid
memories of halts on bare hillsides where there was
not even a boulder large enough to give shade, and
where, in spite of my pith-hat, sun umbrella and thick
clothes, I felt as if I were being slowly roasted as we
lay exposed to the fierce sunshine. It was difficult
to read or write, almost impossible to sleep, and I
could appreciate the Jewish prophet's word-picture
of " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."
Our chief alleviation was hot tea from the thermos
bottles, our throats and lips being always parched
with the dry air, and every now and again we had an
unexpected shower-bath. Peals of thunder would re-
verberate from the hills, over which dark-purple storm-
clouds had gathered, and suddenly a deluge would
descend upon us. But the sky would be as blue as
ever after a few moments, though the whole atmo-
sphere felt sensibly refreshed ; and later in the day
these smart showers would descend in the form of
snow. It was always very cold when the sun went
down, and in camp I wore all the clothing I could
muster and pulled a fur coat over all ; my feet were
sUpped into my big felt boots lined with lamb's-wool;
138 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. i
and a woollen cap on my head completed the costume
in which I sat at our dinner-table. At night my
sleeping-bag lay on a thick mattress and a rug, as it
is important to have as much below as above, and
when my fur coat was thrown over me I was by no
means too warm.
We were living at a height of twelve to fourteen
thousand feet, and although the air was deliciously
keen, like that of some Alpine winter resort, per-
sonally I never felt braced up, but was always
languid and disinclined for exertion owing to the
rarefied atmosphere. Eiding did not fatigue me and
I could walk for a considerable distance on the level,
but I panted at the least effort and had a curious
sensation as if a hand were on my throat. Certainly
I slept profoundly and felt a continual wish to slumber,
both in season and out ; but in spite of all the exercise
I was taking I had no appetite, and ate only as a
matter of duty. Directly we descended to the level
of 10,000 feet I felt a different being, and life,
appetite and energy returned in a rush, as if by
magic.
I had imagined that there would be an abundance
of rich grass to support the flocks and herds of the
wandering Kirghiz tribes, and was disappointed to
find the Pamirs, as far as our tour extended, a dreary
waste, often covered with boulders and gravel from
the moraines of the mountains, with only small strips
of pasturage at intervals. In general the grazing was
scanty, and the inhabitants, who number but a few
thousands, must often have a struggle to support life
during the winter. Even during the summer they
move their flocks frequently to fresh pastures, for
the grass is soon eaten up, and a large popula-
CH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 139
tion would starve. In narratives of travel in the
Pamirs the provision of food for the baggage animals
is always mentioned as one of the difficulties to be
encountered, and it was fortunate for us that my
brother's official position saved us from anxiety on
this score. We had been obliged to carry several
loads of barley from Kashgar, but the local Begs were
able to arrange for fresh supplies of forage at some
points of our journey, and led us usually to camping
grounds where the grazing was fair.
When we bade farewell to the Great Karakul Lake
we spent three days on the Russian cart road, riding
the ninety miles to Pamirsky Post on the Murghab
River. On the morning of our start snow was fall-
ing fast, and as I dragged myself out of my warm
sleeping-bag at 3.30 a.m. I felt thankful that my lot
was not cast permanently in the Pamirs. But, when
once we were on horseback and muffled up, the
going left nothing to complain of. We rode along
a broad unmetalled track made for the most part
by the simple expedient of removing the boulders
which thickly strewed these sterile valleys, having
been brought down from the ranges bounding us
on either side. This road was marked at intervals
by piles of stones measuring it into versts and half-
versts — ^five versts being equal to three English
miles. The distances were painted on a stone on
every other heap, though often the figures were
placed upside down, and now and again were omitted
altogether. All our servants were provided with
smoked glasses, but would not use them at first,
Sattur, for example, wearing his across his lips or
hanging under his chin, until after a while he came
to understand that they were of real benefit.
140 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT.
Our Cossack escort, consisting of a corporal and
three soldiers, were cheery sturdy youths, clad in buff
uniforms with blue facings and long buff greatcoats.
Their forage-caps were set rakishly on one side, and
the corporal brushed his thick yellow hair into a
big well-greased roll which almost hid his forehead,
and was evidently proud of his personal appearance.
They wore blue glasses, a necessary precaution against
the glare of the sun on the snow, and rode handy
little ponies as born horsemen. I felt that they
must have but a dull time in these outposts of the
Russian Empire with so few of the amenities of life,
especially as their pay was at the low rate of one and
fourpence a month, supplemented by rations of meat
and flour, forage for their horses, and the provision
of a uniform and three shirts annually. Their service
lasts for three years, after which they are free to
return to their farms for the rest of their lives. Each
man has a rifle and a limited amount of ammunition,
and the corporal was for ever on the look-out for
something to shoot at.
At one part of our second day's march the road
wound over a pass in the hills, and my brother and
Nadir, who had espied game in a valley beneath us,
went off to stalk while the rest of the party rode
forward. On a cliff to our right the corporal pointed
out a large group of vultures feeding on a dead
sheep and emitted shrill whistles that made the great
birds hop about in a most ungainly fashion. I
watched them with interest, which changed to anger
when the Cossack let off his rifle at them, making our
horses shy violently. The birds, though unharmed,
were so gorged that they could hardly rise from the
ground, but my brother's quarry, startled at the shot,
CH. m THE KOOF OF THE WORLD 141
made off and escaped, and Nadir became livid with
rage as lie endeavoured to explain to the Russian
how ill-timed his love of sport had been on that
occasion. During these three days the country was
monotonous in the extreme, the stone-strewn plateaux
having hardly a sign of life. At one spot, where the
hills were formed of hardened mud. Nadir told us
that Mr. Haydon, the well-known geologist, whom he
had accompanied on a tour in the Pamirs, had found
fossils. We were anxious to see some for ourselves,
and he led us to a curiously shaped hill where, after
some groping, he disinterred two or three sea-shells,
a sight that filled me with wonder as I realized that
this mighty Roof of the World, with its valleys twelve
to fourteen thousand feet high, had long ages ago
been under the sea, and indeed sea-sand composed
much of the mountain whose side we were probing.
That afternoon, between the intermittent showers of
snow, we had the curious spectacle of a violent
thunderstorm in the range to our right, another
raging at the same time in the mountains to our left,
while overhead were brilliant sunshine and a bright
blue sky.
On the afternoon of the third day, as we neared
Pamirsky Post, we were met by a couple of Mingbashis
or Headmen, gorgeous in purple robes, broad silver-
embossed belts and snowy turbans. These officials
led us down the valley to the Murghab, one of the
head waters of the classic Oxus, and here we were
warmly welcomed by the Russian commandant with
his Cossack escort. He had most kindly ordered out
his carriage for me, and though I should have much
preferred to stick to my horse, politeness made me
dismount and do my best to scramble into what
142 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
was really a box on wheels. As tlie ponies were too
fidgety for me to mount by tlie wheel, and there was
no step, I fear that I got in with a sad lack of dignity,
and then I was hurled from side to side of the con-
veyance as the coachman whipped up his horses to a
breakneck speed. We tore along at a great pace to
a stone fort built on a spur of the mountains above
the river, and galloped through a gateway of the
high wall that surrounded it into a large courtyard.
The Cossack captain insisted on putting us up, turn-
ing out of his own carpet-hung room for my benefit,
and, as his quarters faced the barracks of the soldiers,
I had from the windows a good view of lounging
Cossacks, who spent much of their time plapng with
a crowd of thick-coated, quarrelsome dogs or shout-
ing at their ponies, which were driven in at sunset
from the grazing grounds along the banks of the
river.
We met here a colonel of engineers who was
engaged in putting up signalling posts on the hills
in the vicinity, in order that communication might
be established with the headquarters at Kharuk ; for
there was no telegraph wire connecting Pamirsky Post
with the outer world. As he and our host spoke only
their own language I could take no part in the con-
versation at supper, and, moreover, I felt very sleepy,
since the meal began at nine o'clock, an hour when
I, who had risen at half-past three, wanted to be in
bed ! A diversion was provided in the shape of a
wolf-cub, a quaint and engaging little creature, but
not the sort of animal that I should care to bring up
as a household pet.
Next morning I grasped the difference between
English and Russian meal-time^, and when at half-
OH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 143
past nine there was no sign of breakfast, my brother
and I went down to our camp, pitched by the river,
where we had a meal and I gave out stores and made
arrangements for our clothes to be washed. We were
now at a comparatively low level, and it was warm as
an English summer's day, with just a " nip " in the
air ; but the long narrow valley must be a dreary
abode in winter, as it is shut in by lofty mountains
from which the wild sheep descend to graze and then
fall an easy prey to the hunters. As we stood by
the river we spoke of Lieutenant Wood, the first
Englishman to travel in the Pamirs, who wrote of
the yak as an unknown animal. But Lord Dunmore
and Major Roche were the first to visit Pamirsky
Post after the occupation of this desolate region by
the Russians, and the former gives a description of
how in 1893 the officers and Cossacks were living in
ahhois furnished with brick stoves.
Just below the fort there was a squalid little village
of mud and stone shanties inhabited by Kirghiz,
and here were collected great bundles of wild sheep
horns ready to be sent to Tashkent, where they are
used to decorate native saddles or to make knife-
handles or combs, the hunter receiving only a rouble
and a half — ^less than three shillings — for the horns
and skin.
My brother and the commandant discussed where
we had best go in search of sport on the way to
Sarikol, and they eventually decided on a valley three
marches off, two of which lay along the Russian road
to Kharuk, and with many compliments on both sides
we left Pamirsky Post. Most of the country along
our route was absolutely sterile, except when, after
crossing low passes, we descended now and again to
144 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
the river, on the banks of which was scanty grazing
and tamarisk scrub, just enough to support life for a
few camels, yaks and ponies. As a rule the marmots
were the only creatures that broke the lifeless mono-
tony of the marches, and whenever it was sunny the
little animals sat upon their hind legs in front of
their burrows, uttering excited cries as they saw us
pass. They were larger than those with which I was
familiar in Persia, and were orange-coloured instead
of buff, their noses, paws and tails being black. They
hibernate during the long winter, and the Kirghiz
affirm that when they emerge from their seclusion
they have no hair on their bodies. They also sleep
during the middle of the day. My brother com-
puted that they must pass about 80 per cent of
their time in slumber, and had a contempt for these
sadly idle creatures. But they appealed to me be-
cause of their cheery squeakings and lively scuttling
to earth. They live on the roots of grasses, and are
apparently independent of water, for large colonies
are often situated miles from any stream. We had
to ride carefully in places in order to avoid the
entrances to their burrows, which were sometimes
in the middle of the track.
At the end of our second day's march we met
Colonel Yagello, Commissioner of the Pamirs, on his
way to Pamirsky Post, and as he spoke French I
enjoyed the conversation of a cultivated man, keenly
interested in the geology of the country, and anxious
to exploit the mineral wealth, which he said was
considerable.
At the time of our visit to Pamirsky Post there was
great excitement, because the local Mingbashi had
been dismissed from office, and in order to mark his
OH. vn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 145
resentment had collected four hundred families of his
tribe and fled with them across the Afghan border
into Wakhan. The Cossack officer informed my
brother that immediately after our departure he
intended to pursue and bring back the fugitives. As
such an action would have been looked upon at
Kabul as constituting an invasion of Afghanistan,
and would have strengthened the anti-Ally party in
that state, my brother strongly urged our host to
await the arrival of Colonel Yagello before taking
action, and finally persuaded him to adopt this course.
When we met the Commissioner my brother discussed
the Wakhan question with him, but at first the latter
said that he was determined to pursue the recalcitrant
Minghashi, exclaiming that the honour of Russia
was at stake. However, after long arguments he
promised not to cross the Afghan frontier, but to
send representations to the Governor of Badakshan,
who was also the ruler of Wakhan, and thus settle
the matter without using force.
Our camp at the shooting ground was at the
bottom of a long valley running into the mountains,
with grazing on the banks of a stream for our animals
and a clump of akhois for ourselves and the servants.
Here we halted for some days, and, while my brother
left long before dawn for the hills, I amused myself
by riding about, photographing, entertaining Kirghiz
ladies, repacking the boxes of stores and doing the
himdred and one odd jobs that accumulate when one
is travelling. I was fond of collecting the tiny, short-
stalked Alpine flora, and found edelweiss, gentians,
white and pale blue, little mauve vetches, cream and
yellow flowers of the hawkweed order, pyrethrums
and camoHiiles, while minute cream, mauve and pink
L
146 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. i
blossoms exuded from the edges of unpromising-
looking dull-green patches. Were it not for the
buttercup and the yellow or white cistus the flora
would be hardly noticeable ; but at a lower level I
found yellow poppies, large yellow labiatae, candy-
tuft that scented the air with honey, and many plants
that I could not identify.
When my brother had secured his fourth head
we left the valley, our way leading us along a river
that was ice-bound in long stretches although it was
now July, reminding me of Mr. Douglas Freshfield's
remark that the climate of the Eoof of the World is
nine months of winter and three of cold weather.
Now and again we came across fine ovis poli skulls
lying on the ground, and I chose a fine head to keep
as a memento of my visit. One day a young poli
stood in our path, allowing us to get quite close to it
before it took alarm, and even then it only trotted
along in front until a dog that belonged to the caravan
behind rushed after it, and the pretty creature made
off at once into the hills.
I had been told that the rich Kirghiz hung their
ahliois with embroidered silks and covered the ground
with beautiful carpets, but we never came across
such luxury. I was always on the look-out for
carpets, but saw few that I liked, the old ones being
either torn or covered with tiny burns made by sparks
from the fires. One woven with a modification of the
well-known pine-cone pattern in indigo on a beautiful
rose ground took my fancy greatly, but alas, it had a
huge hole in the centre. The design of one carpet
was a series of square crosses in diagonal rows ; half
of them framed a conventionalized swastika, an
emblem of good fortune, and the other half enclosed
< I
OH. yn THE ROOF OF THE WORLD 147
representations of various implements. It does not
sound alluring, yet it was an attractive product of
the loom and had fine reds, blues, browns and greens
in its colouring. Elsewhere I met a commonplace
pattern of conventionalized flowers in small blocks
linked together by lines, but the beautiful vegetable
dyes of the old carpets are imfortunately being ousted
by the crude aniline tints so much in vogue at KJiotan.
My brother often had some difficulty in arranging
the marches, for the Kirghiz have no notion of either
time or distance as we understand it, and could never
tell us how long a stage would be unless they could
compare it with that of the previous day. As a
result we seldom knew when we should arrive at our
camping ground, the distance being sometimes con-
siderably greater than we had imagined and at other
times much less. But such slight drawbacks matter
little to the true traveller who has succumbed to the
lure of the Open Road, and to the glamour of the
Back of Beyond.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL
A SARIKOLI LOVE SONG
1
Alas, my unfaithful Love !
Alas, my inconstant Heaven !
I am become thin as a blade of grass from craving for thee.
2
Oh, thou heavenly Beauty
Whose ears are adorned with gold.
Would that I might become thy closest companion.
3
Thy breasts are as a newly plucked apple.
Oh, mount thy swift steed and ride with me.
When its shoes are worn, I will replace them with silver.
We left the Russian Pamirs by a pass that seemed,
when we reached its summit, to have an almost
interminable descent, as we saw miles of a stony track
stretching out below our feet. Half-way down we
were met by a contingent of tribesmen clad in long
red, blue, yellow, or crimson coats, with the white
felt Kirghiz hats or leather and sheepskin caps, their
bedding of vividly coloured felts being strapped on
to their saddles ; and when we finally emerged from
the long winding valley, great Muztagh Ata was so
close that it seemed as if we could easily ride up to its
snow-line. We were now back again in the delightful
148
THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 149
uplands of Cliinese Turkestan, and for the iSrst
time for many days we saw what might by courtesy
be called a house. It consisted of two dark and dirty
rooms opening into a squalid courtyard surrounded
by a mud wall, and I felt that the Kirghiz akhoi was
a far preferable dwelling to this, as it can be moved
from place to place and its surroundings are thus
kept clean. In the few instances where the Kirghiz
had built a walled enclosure for their flocks, and
in consequence occupied the same camping ground
permanently, the place was quite uninhabitable for
Europeans.
We made one of our longest halts on the fime
grazing grounds of Tagharma, a broad plain with
encampments at intervals. A group of akhois had
been prepared for us, and a big crowd welcomed my
brother as we rode into camp, many Sarikolis having
ridden over from Tashkurghan, their capital, some
sixteen miles off, to greet him. We were now at an
altitude of some nine thousand feet, and the lassitude
and the '' hand -at -my -throat " feeling that I had
experienced on the Roof of the World left me entirely,
and I revelled in the delicious weather, which was
neither too hot nor too cold. It was delightful to
stroll about the valley in the evenings, my heavy
fur coat and wool-lined boots being no longer needed,
and I was charmed with the sheets of mauve primulas,
the big white cistus, white and mauve anemones,
pretty blue daisies with yellow centres, millions of
little cream flowers with a most deceptive resemblance
to a daisy, the familiar dandelion, and others. In
the hills I came across a curious plant, dark brownish-
red, the size and shape of a sheep's tongue, which
had no leaves, but pushed its way out of the sandy
160 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
soil. It was rough to tlie touch when pulled up, but
white and fleshy under the outer skin, and was heavy,
with no distinctive smell.
One day the Kirghiz gave a display of the baigii, or
"goat game," which is the national form of sport.
A goat was killed, and after its head and entrails
had been removed and all its bones broken, the skin
was stitched up and it was then thrown into the
middle of a throng of men mounted on their wiry
little ponies who constituted the melee. The first
man that succeeded in picking it up tucked it under
his thigh, holding it with one hand while he rode
off, pursued by the others eager to wrest it from
him. If he managed to keep his booty while he
galloped round a flag and returned to the goal, he
won the round and the game began afresh. The
riders often held their short-handled whips in their
mouths in order to have the right hand free when
they bent down from their saddles to seize the
goat, but owing to the shortness of their stirrups
they had not particularly good seats and seemed
to come off easily. I noticed that there was no
excitement on the part of the ponies, and their masters
could keep them at a canter only by tugging at their
mouths, using the whip and belabouring their sides
with their long boots. We watched the game from
the far side of a stream that surrounded the playing-
ground, but every now and again were obliged to
retreat hurriedly ; for some of the performers would
plunge into the rivulet with a great splashing, or even
leap it, and ride amuck among the spectators. Our
servants and the large crowd of onlookers did their
best with shouts and crackings of whips to keep the
players to their own side of the water; but the
THE GAME OF BA/GL—TllE VICTOR.
Paj^g 150(c).
CH. vm THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 151
Kirghiz were half mad with excitement, yelling,
shrieking, pulling at one another, and never ceasing
to urge their unfortunate ponies.
My brother gave a coloured silk handkerchief
to the victor of each round, a gift much appreciated,
and when these were used up, lengths of fine white
mull muslin were awarded, which would be used by
the women, who had been left in the akhois, to
wind on the framework of their headgear. After
about an hour, seeing that the grass-fed ponies were
becoming exhausted, he offered one big prize for a
round that was to be the last, and so the game closed.
The lofty mountains that ringed us made a glorious
background to an animated scene that was full of
colour, the riders fastening back the skirts of their
gay coats to get them out of the way and thus dis-
playing the brilliant linings.
Baigu did not commend itself to me when I learnt
that the ponies were often forced to play for four
hours on end, and were then tightly tied up and left
without food and water imtil the next morning, when
they were turned loose to graze. In fact, the inhabit-
ants of Chinese Turkestan struck us as very bad horse-
masters, and one might almost say that their ideal was
for their unlucky animals to have no food, no drink,
and no rest. For example : the practice was to tie
up the heads of the baggage animals when they reached
the halting-place, the poor things being left without
food and water for a period in proportion to the
length of the march. If possible their masters
never allowed them to lie down, stirring them up
if they did so during grazing, and tying them up
tightly at night, the idea being that the legs of
a horse swell if he is allowed to repose himself.
152 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Again and again I have seen horses tethered to
trees growing on high banks, the poor animals being
left in discomfort for hours owing to the uncertain
foothold.
My brother had a constant struggle to induce our
grooms to water our horses during our long mid-day
halts, old Jafar Bai asserting that they would go
lame if allowed to drink. On one occasion when
my particular mount took to limping he was very
triumphant, and told every one that it was owing to
our way of flying in the face of custom with regard
to the water question. But his triumph was short-
lived, for when the grey's shoe was removed it was
found that the farrier had cut the hoof ruthlessly in
order to make it fit the shoe — a common practice.
My brother's plan of picketing our animals with
long ropes while grazing also came in for much
censure, and was said to be the cause of any malady
that the water theory did not cover.
As we had not tasted fresh fish since leaving
Europe, we enjoyed a large but somewhat tasteless
variety that was caught in the river which meandered
through the Tagharma Valley, and thought it would
be interesting to do some angling ourselves. We had
brought fishing-rods with us, having been told that
the rivers simply swarmed with a species of trout,
and one afternoon, when the heat of the day was over,
we sallied forth attended by a horde of bare-legged
Kirghiz who carried our landing-net, and who so
scared the few fish we saw that not a single
nibble rewarded our efforts. On enquiry I found
that the natives, who evidently scorned our orthodox
methods, were accustomed to dam up the shallow
river in suitable places with clods of earth, making a
CH. vm THE AKYANS OF SARIKOL 153
cul de sac into whicli they drove the fish, which then
fell an easy prey.
It was a proud day for Nadir when we left Tagharma
to go to Tashkurghan, his native place. I was sorry
to leave the pleasant grassy valley dotted with groups
of akhois, from which shaggy dogs in charge of the
flocks of sheep and goats rushed out to bark at us.
Nearer and nearer we approached the mountains,
until we reached a gorge through which ran the
Sarikol River. This defile led us into the wide
Sarikol Valley, where we were met by a big group
of its inhabitants headed by the Ahsahal, or British
Agent, a native of Lahore. They had as usual erected
a tent, and pressed pillaus, tea, sweetmeats, and little
squares of tough native bread upon us. Nadir, who
was a kind of understudy to the Aksahal, with the
title of Watchman, proudly brought his little son
to show me. He had been met by three generations
of strikingly handsome relatives, and all round us
were Persian-speaking Aryans with no resemblance
whatever to the surrounding Kirghiz tribes. They
were handsome, well-built men and youths, with
aquiline noses, clear-cut features, fine dark eyes and
thick black beards and moustaches ; and one and all
looked intelligent and alert.
As we rode past the cemetery on our way to
camp, I noticed that the tombs were more ornate
than those of the Kirghiz, and was struck by curious
clay erections at one end of them which reminded
me of rabbits sitting up. These, I was told, were
intended to hold lights, a custom which had nothing
to do with Mohamedan practice, but probably was
borrowed from Buddhism.
Our akhois were pitched on a stretch of grazing
154 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
near a branch of the river which cuts up the valley
with its numerous tributaries and is so deep, and runs
so swiftly in summer, that every year without fail it
takes a toll of human and animal life. High above
us towered the long ridge on which Tashkurghan is
built. As the town is printed in large type on all
the maps I was surprised to find it but a small
collection of dilapidated mud houses, many of which
were in ruins. It is, however, the spot alluded to by
the Chinese traveller Hiuen-Tsiang, who visited it in
the seventh century. On the highest point stood a
large castellated Chinese fort, and not far ofi, in an
equally dominating position, was the small Kussian
fort, where an officer, his wife, and a troop of Cossacks
were quartered. The young captain called upon us,
saying that his wife had not seen a European woman
for two years, and asked us to dine with them that
evening, while in our turn we entertained them in
camp. They must have led a very dreary life as they
were cut off almost completely from the outer world,
and there are but few resources in the Sarikol Valley,
especially during the long winter. The Eussian lady
was delighted to meet me, though, as she could speak
no language save her own, conversation was very
difficult. She took me into her tiny garden, a
walled -in plot which the Cossacks had cleared of
boulders and in which a few poplar saplings and some
minute cabbages and lettuces were struggling to gain a
livelihood from the barren ground. It almost brought
the tears to my eyes when she pointed out with intense
pride a solitary bloom of mignonette, the only flower
in this mockery of a garden, though it was mid- July.
To amuse me she told the Cossacks to release a couple
of wolf-cubs kept in a den in the courtyard, and when
CH. vm THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 166
the poor little beasts made a dash for liberty I secretly
hoped that they would escape, in spite of the Persian
proverb which says, "To be kind to the wolf is to
be cruel to the lamb."
Though the Chinese Governor met my brother
when he entered Tashkurghan, providing tea for him
on the road and calling upon him, he was evidently
unwilling to admit Europeans into the fort, and gave
what I imagine must be the stock excuse, that
he had not the wherewithal to entertain an English
guest. When I read Sir Thomas Gordon's account
of his visit to Sarikol in The Roof of the World, I
was struck by the fact that the Chinese Governor
of that day — ^it was 1874 — put off Sir Thomas and
his party with the same excuse when they wished to
return his call.
The Sarikolis are Mohamedans of the Ismaili sect,
and acknowledge the Agha Khan as their spiritual
head. They talk Persian with a somewhat uncouth
accent, and the very warm welcome they gave my
brother was partly due to their delight at hearing
him speak the Persian of Persia.
One day we crossed the many branches of the river
and clambered up a steep neck in the hills in order
to have a view of the long valley leading up to the
stony Taghdumbash Pamir. At our feet small
hamlets were dotted about, surrounded by badly-
grown crops of wheat, barley, peas, lucerne and
mustard. The plant last mentioned is grown for its
oil, which is used in the little native lamps, and I
was told that the Sarikolis show traces of their fire-
worshipping ancestry by never blowing out a flame,
thus copying the practice of the Zoroastrians. I was
much interested to find in this backwater of the world
156 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ft. i
a close connection with the bygone legends of Persia,
Nadir informing us that Mount Afrasiab was the
name of the hill behind us, and pointing out a hill of
remarkable shape just opposite across the valley,
saying that it was Besitun, the scene of Ferhad's
almost impossible engineering feat. Let me tell this
famous legend of old Persia as far as possible in his
own words:
Now King Afrasiab ^ greatly loved the fair Shirin his wife
and cared for no other woman, and his wrath was kindled
when he perceived that her beauty had cast a spell over
Ferhad the architect, who became as a man distraught.
Near the palace of the monarch lay Mount Besitun and
behind it was a stream that ran down from the hills above
and gave the mighty king an idea by which to cure the vain
passion of his servant. Therefore he summoned Ferhad to
his presence and swore to him that if he could bore a tunnel
in the mountain through which the stream could run he should
have the lovely Queen as his reward.
Afrasiab knew that the task was not in the power of man
to perform, but love increased the strength of Ferhad an
hundredfold, and at the end of a year the tunnel was nigh
completion and the king was greatly alarmed. At last he
thought of a plan by which he hoped to keep his beloved wife
and yet not break his royal oath. Therefore, one day when
Ferhad was in a perilous position on the face of the rock, a
royal servant suddenly announced to him that beautiful
Shirin was dead ; and her lover, losing his foothold from the
shock, fell headlong from the mountain and was killed on the
spot.
There was also a further proof of the work of
Ferhad in the shape of a long furrow on a rock, which
all the inhabitants believed was made by the Persian's
chisel.
While we enjoyed the wide view from our eyrie
^ The monarch in question was actually Khusru Parviz.
'H
NASlk ALl KHAN, A MUKl OF SARIKOL.
Page X56.
OH. vm THE ARYANS OF SAEIKOL 157
and listened to Nadir we became aware that an old
man in a flowered coat, snowy turban and slippers,
was struggling up the steep track, helped along
by two servants. It was the muki, the priest of the
Sarikolis, and a man of great importance in the valley,
as I grasped when our shikari hastened to meet him
and kissed his hands and those of his servants. The
old gentleman, panting with his exertions, had come
to offer us hospitality and insisted that we should
descend and drink tea in his house. We were soon
ushered into a little plastered room with an elabo-
rately carved wooden ceiling and seated ourselves at
a table covered with a red silk cloth, on which were
biscuits, raisins, almonds, and loaf sugar, three or
four lumps of which the servants tried to put into
the little Russian glasses of tea which they handed
us. The principal men of the district squatted on
the floor and listened as the muki told my brother
how he travelled every two years to India bearing
the offerings of the Faithful to the Agha Khan.
Our host was very anxious for us to wait while
his invisible womenkind prepared a feast in our
honour. Though we declined this invitation our
visit did good ; for two brothers, rich landowners who
had long been at enmity with one another, became
reconciled that morning when they met to pay their
respects to the Consul.
On our return to camp I received the AksakaVs
wife, a Kashgar woman who came gorgeously attired
in an embroidered blue silk coat and brought her
three children with her. One was a most attractive
little girl of five, dressed in a striped silk coat with
gold embroidered green velvet cap, under which hung
her four black plaits of hair. She enjoyed looking
158 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
at our illustrated papers, and where children were
depicted she pointed them out as being herself or her
brothers, according to size. When Sattur gave her
tea she was imperative about the quantity of milk
and the number of lumps of sugar that she wanted,
and I was thankful that she condescended to approve
of the strings of coral that I gave her and allowed
me to fill her pockets and those of her brothers with
fancy biscuits.
The Sarikolis are very fond of music and dancing,
and a troupe of youths led by a man who banged the
drum in masterly fashion performed for our amuse-
ment. A couple played on pipes and the others sang
many songs interspersed with dances, one small boy
doing most complicated steps and waving his arms
gracefully. All had their hands hidden by the sleeves
of their thick blue, red, buff, or striped coats, and
wore white felt Kirghiz hats with black brims, and
either leather or clumsy felt riding boots. They sang
with great entrain and some of the tunes were very
pleasing, though monotonous, while others had a
curious accompaniment of howls — I can describe it
in no other way. The performance lasted for hours,
and every now and then the troupe divided into two
groups which sang alternately to one another some-
thing in this style :
First Group : " Your cheeks are like tulips."
Second Group : " Your eyes are dark as sprrug- water."
Only the old people remember the songs of war and
fighting ; for now the young are not interested in
these and only care to listen to themes of love.
Iftikhar Ahmad kindly took down for me the words
of two of these songs, one of which forms the heading
of this chapter. This is the other :
OH. vm THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 169
The Song
Oh, my faithless Beloved whose garments are of gold
The whole world is praising you,
You are indeed the daughter of your mother.
Your silver head-dress gleams ;
Your teeth are white as pearls,
And your lips red as coral.
Oh, beautiful one with the dancing eyes !
Chori^
I praise you, but the world blames you.
You enter the feast with pomp.
Your cloak is of silk and your turban is wound twice round
your head.
My love is fairer than all other women.
A good mother has given birth to a most beautiful daughter.
On her bosom she wears pearls.
These pearls are gifts from me.
Her boots are scarlet of the softest leather.
And she is attired in a cloak from India.
Nowadays the Sarikol Valley is at peace. The
walled town on the ridge is half in ruins, while the
defences of the villages below are full of breaches and
most of its former inhabitants live outside it.
The Sarikolis make but a scanty livelihood in their
beloved valley. It is covered with snow during
several months of the year, and their meagre crops
of wheat, barley and peas were plentifully mixed
with weeds. Their women enjoy a good position
and are not veiled ; monogamy is the custom of the
country and divorce is rare. They are a hospitable
race, and when a man gives a feast he never appears
at it, and comes into the room only when it is over,
at the urgent appeal of his guests. When these
thank him he says that the collation he has set before
them is merely " a refuge beneath a rock," and when
the guests depart he speeds them on their way with
the wish that their *' road may be white."
160 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
They have a curious custom of placing a newly-
born child in a skin full of powdered cow-dung, its
head only being left outside. The contents of the
bag are changed every day, and during the winter a
hot stone is placed at the feet of the infant.
When the time came for us to leave, my chief
regret was that I must bid farewell to the particular
view of Muztagh Ata seen from our camp, its snowy
dome seeming to block up one end of the valley and
looking its grandest and most majestic, especially
in the moonlight.
Our servants were now very efficient. Jafar Bai
was an invaluable packer, and so ready to turn his
hand to any job that I always fancied he was put
upon by the other servants. He looked after our
interests in every way, and was so trustworthy that
I often handed him the keys of the store-boxes to
give out supplies if I were busy. I would not have
granted the same privilege to lusty Daoud, who
purloined all he could and always said that he had
hich, or nothing, in his particular store-box. Indeed
my old factotum once neatly summed up the con-
trast between my cook and my butler by remarking,
"Daoud always tells you that he has nothing, but
Sattur always has everything."
Daoud, however, could rise to an occasion, and he
invariably surpassed himself if we had guests ; but
honest Sattur took a pride in making our tea, sugar,
and so on, last as long as possible. He was more like
a child than a grown-up man with wife and family
dependent upon him, and at first he used to bring
one cup or plate at a time from his boxes, when lay-
ing the table or producing tiffin in the open. We
remonstrated about his slow method, and one day
CH. vni THE ARYANS OF SAEIKOL 161
he arrived carrying everything in a coloured table-
cloth and laughing softly to himself as he pictured
our surprise at his cleverness.
On the return journey to Kashgar our first camp
was at Issak Boulak, a secluded little valley high up
in the hills. The name means Hot Springs, and we
reached it by crossing a series of steep nullahs, up
and down the crumbling banks of which our horses
had to scramble, as our guide could find no track.
At last we arrived at a fold of the mountains,
within which was an orange-coloured stream fed by
hot sulphur springs that gushed out of the hillside at
a temperature of 150° Fahrenheit. My brother and
I clambered up to the source of the water, and I
dipped a finger cautiously into one of the two springs
that were bursting out of the barren rock and pouring
into a big pool below, which is visited by sufferers
from rheumatism, who sit all day in the hot water.
Sattur brought a can of almost boiling water for
my bath, bursting into giggles as he poured it in,
so mirth -inspiring did he find this labour-saving
phenomenon.
Issak Boulak was an isolated spot at the back of
beyond, and behind our camp a long twisting defile
led into the very heart of the mountains, making me
hope to come across some wild creature as we turned
comer after comer ; but the only sign of life was a
hawk that swooped so low as to brush my hat. All
the birds we saw during our tour were wonderfully
tame. Hoopoes and choughs flew close as if to
observe us, the pretty yellow wagtails merely hopped
aside as we passed, the cheery desert-larks almost
let us tread upon them, while pigeons and partridges
had little fear of the gun.
162 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
At our halt at Subashi I had my first experience
of riding a yak, or kutass. Though I had watched
these creatures with their formidable horns moving
with ungainly gait over their pastures and had laughed
at the uncouth gambols of their calves at play, I had
no wish for a more intimate acquaintance with them.
But one morning, as we looked at the tremendous
mass of Muztagh Ata, my brother proposed that we
should try to reach one of the glaciers that hang on
its mighty slopes, and accordingly we set ofi mounted
on yaks. Instead of a bridle, the animal has a rope
passed through the cartilage of the nose, and, though
this is sufficient for the experienced, in the case of
novices it is necessary to have the mount led. I sat
astride on the peaked Chinese saddle, and found the
movement of the hutass comfortable though slow, and
we were soon working our way up the flank of the
mountain without track of any kind. The ugly,
good-tempered Kirghiz who led my yak wore a padded
cotton coat striped with scarlet, blue, black and
yellow ; his long riding-boots were of red leather, and
his velvet cap both lined and bordered with fur, while
a cloth tied round his waist held his knife and various
odds and ends, among which was a hunch of native
bread. " I don't know Persian," he remarked to Ine
in that tongue, and " I do not speak Turki " was my
reply ; but in spite of the language difficulty we
understood one another quite well, and I did my part
in urging my mount when it hung back and pulled
at the nose-rope. It was a long stiff climb to reach
the glacier, and all the yaks were panting, grunting
and gnashing their teeth before we dismounted and
stumbled over the mass of big boulders that were
hurled in confusion one upon another just below the
THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 163
immensely thick curtain of ice. The altitude took
my breath away, even the hardy Kirghiz complained
of splitting headaches, and a big yellow dog, guardian
doubtless of some flocks feeding on the scanty grazing
below, made a sudden appearance and gave vent
to the most lugubrious howls. The Kirghiz never
venture into the fastnesses of Muztagh Ata, believ-
ing the " Father of the Snows " to be haunted by
fairies, by camels of supernatural whiteness, and by
the sound of drums, this last being possibly the
thunder of avalanches. It was thrilling to be on
the slopes of this great mountain, its crest as yet
unsealed by any human being, in spite of the efforts
of Sir Aurel Stein, and we were entranced with the
magnificent mountain panorama from our point of
vantage. As the descent was very steep we re-
mounted our yaks, and my brother led off along the
mountain side. But my guide was of an enterprising
nature, and to my horror we started down what
appeared to me to be a sheer precipice. Expostula-
tions were of no avail ; he turned a deaf ear to them ;
so I rammed my feet into the stirrups, leant back as
far as I could, and clung to the pommel of my saddle,
feeling that I might at any moment be flung over the
head of m.y steed. I confess that my heart was in
my mouth as my kutass accomplished the descent in
a series of long slides, always recovering itself when I
imagined that it was just about to fall headlong and
bring us both to disaster. My opinion of it as a
mount was unbounded, and it crowned its perfections
by picking its way unerringly among the boulders
that were piled up on either side of the glacier stream
along which our route lay. Wild rhubarb was grow-
ing in profusion, and I made my boy gather it,
164 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
as we had not tasted fresh fruit or vegetables for
some weeks, and the Eussian jam I had bought
at Kashgar had fermented and gone off like bombs
when the bottles were opened, though Daoud's apricot
conserve had borne the long journey perfectly.
We had had a superb view from the flank of
Muztagh Ata, but nothing to compare with that
which we enjoyed from the shore of Little Lake
Karakul that lies at the foot of this giant of the
Pamirs. Here to the north stood up in all its
grandeur the great mountain barrier separating us
from Kashgar, which we had looked upon as some
enchanting vision when seen at rare intervals from
the roof of the Consulate. The " Father of the
Snows " and its rival — the natives call it Kungur —
rose sheer from the lake, in company with peak
behind peak, all nobly serrated and wrapped in eternal
snow. Guardians of the Eoof of the World, their
proud virginal crests, as yet untrodden by the foot
of the explorer, offer an indescribable attraction to
him who has felt the lure of the Inaccessible.
Our tour was now drawing to a close. I felt a
keen regret at leaving our free life in these uplands
and exchanging an akhoi for a house, and I had also
become fond of the friendly Kirghiz. These people
are most devoted to their children. In one camp
the Beg brought his little daughter to see me, and my
guest played tune after tune on her rough home-made
sitar, her fingers working with wonderful agility.
In fact, her repertoire was so extensive that I feared
the performance would never end ; so I showed her
a string of coral, which made her stop short in a glow
of rapturous excitement. It was pretty to see her
holding out the ornament to her proud father and
A KIRGHIZ AND HIS DAUGHTER.
Page 164.
cH.vm THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 16 5
then whispering in his ear to ask him to express her
thanks, and finally putting on the necklace with shy
smiles for the donor. A sturdy boy, some twelve
years old, also rises in my memory, son of a Beg's
wife. This lady, who, I was told, practically ruled
the tribe, was most pleasant and voluble and called
upon me with her boy, bringing offerings of dirty
lumps of cheese, a skin of rancid fat, and a strip of
woven carpet. It was the fifth day of Kamazan
and she expressed much regret that the fast forbade
her to sample my tea and biscuits ; but Kuli did full
justice to everything, drinking with loud noises and
waving his teaspoon excitedly, as he had never seen
such an object and could not understand its use.
Next day I noticed that he was taking an active part
in the " goat game," a green silk handkerchief that
I had given his mother being tied round his waist.
His father was giving the performance in my brother's
honour, and the players accompanied us as we left
their encampment for a new halting-place.
The game began with a series of wild yells, and so
recklessly did the players dash about that we were
really in danger of being ridden down, in spite of
shouts of warning from Jafar Bai and our Kirghiz
guide. To our amusement Daoud joined in, forcing
his pony into a reluctant canter ; but, as he could
not bend low enough from the saddle to pick up the
goat when it lay on the ground, he was jeered at by
Sattur and our less ambitious followers. The game
finally ended on the shore of Lake Bulunkul, which
is so choked up with sand from the hills rising
close to it that, when we crossed, we found it practi-
cally dry ground with shallow streams meandering
over its bed. It was towards the end of July and
166 THEOUGH DESEKTS AND OASES pt. i
our horses were tormented by horse-flies, which we
avoided as best we could by cantering whenever the
rough ground allowed. In camp the grass was full
of mosquitoes, which as we walked rose up in swarms
and fastened upon us greedily. Luckily their bite
was mild, and as this was our only experience of
these pests we could not complain. Since we had left
Lake Bulunkul we had made, as it were, a loop and
returned again to Kuntigmas, where we halted for
two days in order to meet Sir Aurel Stein, who was
bound for the Russian Pamirs and Persia.
We could not return to Kashgar by way of the
Gez defile, as it would have been impossible to cross
the river, which was now in full flood ; therefore we
traversed the difficult Ulughat Pass, which is open
only during the summer, and is dangerous for animals
at the best of times. A long stony valley led us past
great glaciers hollowed into caves, the entrances to
which were fringed with stalactites of ice, and the
mountains seemed to close in more and more for-
biddingly. I confess that my heart almost failed
me when we reached the foot of the pass and I saw
a series of zigzag tracks faintly marked on what
seemed to me to be the face of a precipice. It would
have been impossible to negotiate such a place on
horseback; but vaks were in readiness, and I
mounted mine thankfully, with a grateful remem-
brance of the shaggy bull that had carried me up
the flank of Muztagh Ata.
But I was now to learn that there are yaks and,
yaks. The animals assigned to my brother and me
strongly objected to the job, and, looking at the path
ahead, I did not wonder. They jibbed constantly,
refused to proceed, and, what was most unpleasant,
THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 167
took to backing off the path and sliding in perilous
fashion on to the long slopes of shifting rubble. They
seemed quite callous to the pulling of their nose-ropes,
and, though I clung to the peak of my saddle and
vigorously belabojired the shaggy sides of my mount,
it returned to the track only when it pleased. I be-
came nervous on my brother's account, because the
fastenings of his saddle broke twice, and if he had not
realized in time that he was sitting on the yak's tail
instead of in the middle of its back, he would have
fallen right over the precipice. He had fastened the
thong of his hunting-crop round the branching horns
of his kutass, thereby saving himself from disaster.
To help matters both of us imitated the cry with
which the Kirghiz encouraged their animals : '^ Halbin !
Halbin ! Halbin ! Ha ! " These men felt the height
considerably and rested at intervals, holding their
heads in their hands as they were suffering from
mountain-sickness — the pass was over 16,000 feet —
and one poor boy lay down early in the ascent, weep-
ing loudly and entirely refusing to proceed. At
intervals they halted and ate yellow squares of tough
bread and dried plums, the yaks throughout panting
and gnashing their teeth instead of emitting their
usual single grunt of content. Near the crest of the
pass the track lay among rocks and crags, and I
took my feet out of the stirrups and pressed them
into my mount's neck ; for yaks have an unpleasant
habit of brushing close to any obstacle on the path,
and, owing to this, our baggage always suffered
considerably. I was riding behind a Kirghiz pony
that had been led in front of our party all the way,
when suddenly this animal lost its footing and
tumbled back right on to my mount, dragging its
168 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
master along with it. If I had been on horseback
we could not have avoided an accident, but luckily
yaks appear to have no nerves, and mine stood firm
and bore the shock right nobly.
Certainly it was a 'relief to reacli the level ground
at the top of the pass, and to dismount while the
Kirghiz knelt in prayer before a big cairn of stones
crowned with rag-laden sticks. I looked back to
enjoy the view of the immense glacier that filled the
valley and the peaks towering far above us ; but
suddenly I had a splitting headache combined with
nausea and faintness, which made me realize that I
must be experiencing a touch of the mountain-
sickness of which I had often read. I felt that I
should soon recover if I could only leave the height
on which we were standing, and a sturdy native
assisted me down the steep track of shifting shale
until my brother called to him to halt, thinking I
might faint outright. Hot tea was produced from
our thermos bottles, and after lying flat for a short
time I revived, and enquired of Iftikhar Ahmad,
who was also supported by a servant down the
mountain -side, whether he, too, were suffering from
mal de montagne ? He explained that he was merely
recovering from the effects of an opiate that he had
taken to avoid the malady ; but it seemed to me
that the remedy was almost worse than the illness.
Although we were over the pass proper, our troubles
were not yet at an end, for we had now to ride for a
couple of hours along very steep and narrow tracks,
where a false step of our ponies on the shifting shingle
would have hurled us into the yellow water of the river
roaring below, and so into the next world. At last
a breakneck descent brought us to the bank of this
THE AEYANS OF SARIKOL 169
river. We forded it and reached a group of akhois,
where we halted for the night and enquired into
casualties. Daoud and one of our grooms were quite
lame ; the chestnut had fallen and strained itself,
and all the animals were badly in need of a rest after
their exhausting experiences.
Consequently, next day's march was a short one,
but disagreeable ; for the track lay along the stony
bed of one of the dried-up watercourses that are so
common throughout Chinese Turkestan. The valley
widened out and the air became milder and milder
as we descended, until we reached the first trees that
we had seen for weeks. Willows, firs and poplars
clung to the hillsides, rising from patches of abundant
scrub, tamarisk with pink flower spikes, berberis with
scarlet and orange berries and aromatic juniper ;
wild roses were in bloom, and the swallow and a
brown bird with crimson under -wings flew and
twittered.
Our baggage yaks were now discarded for camels,
and when our caravan reached camp I was distressed
by the lugubrious cries of a she-camel that resounded
through the night. I found that her young one had
been unable to keep up on the march and had
accordingly been left on the road in the care of some
Kirghiz, but would be rejoined by its disconsolate
mother on her return. Female camels are greatly
attached to their young, and I was told that, if
deprived of them, they mourn and lament for at least
three months, so that the general idea of the camel
as an impassive and callous animal is quite wrong.
At the end of July we finally left the hills and rode
some thirty miles into the plain to Opal, our last
halt before we reached Kashgar. The march began
170 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES vt. i
down stony river-beds, valleys that widened out, and
hills that became lower and lower until on our left
they vanished altogether, while to our right they
terminated in a bold cliff that rose sheer from a
great plain shimmering with light. Silver streaks
meandering across this plain indicated rivers, and
beyond it we saw again the snowy crests of the
Celestial mountains, and the picturesquely serrated
peaks behind Miniol, while low hills, beautiful in
pink and amber, ochre and mauve, made a fairy
vision in the early morning light.
Luckily for us, the weather was cloudy and
inclined to rain, as otherwise our sudden descent
into the summer heat would have been somewhat
trying. At Opal we were in the midst of trees
and irrigation, and it was delightful to see golden
wheat and barley ripe for the sickle, waving crops
of maize and millet, fields of linseed in bloom,
cotton in flower, and one of the six annual crops of
lucerne in sheets of vivid green.
Next day we were at Kashgar, and, much though
I had enjoyed my late^ experiences, the comfort
and cleanliness of the Consulate appealed strongly
to us both, as did also the abundance of tomatoes,
cauliflowers, cabbages, egg-plants, cucumbers, pump-
kins and carrots in its well-stocked garden. We
had returned to a season of plenty ; for, although the
apricots and the first crop of figs were over, the
melons were at their prime, white, yellow, green and
pink-fleshed, while the small peaches and nectarines
were ripe, to be followed by a larger variety later,
and the splendid grapes of many kinds and flavours
were almost ready. To the servants it could not
have been so pleasant, since we arrived in the middle
c". vm THE ARYANS OF SAEIKOL 171
of the great fast of Ramazan, half of which they
had escaped owing to being on a journey. During
the following fortnight they were very slack and
tired, and, though we spared them as much as we
could, I felt ashamed to eat three good meals a day
while they might touch nothing, Daoud having to
prepare our food, and Sattur having to see us eat it.
Certainly it is more trying in the hot weather than
in the cold of winter, but at any time of year it is
not a light matter to let no food pass the lips
between dawn and sunset for a whole lunar month.
On the stretch of melon beds that lay below our
terraced garden the owners had built shelters of
leafy boughs and sang and played the whole night
through, the noise of drums, pipes and bagpipes
not being particularly conducive to our slumbers.
The flies had become a nuisance, though I did
my best to cope with them by making the doors
and windows of the kitchen and larder practically
fly-proof, and I found that carbolic sprinkled on a
hot shovel stupefied the insects with its pungent
smoke, so that they could be swept up. But, as
might have been foreseen, nothing I could do was
really efficacious, owing to the vis inertiae of the
Oriental, and to his inherent incapacity to shut doors
properly.
We found a temperature of 98 degrees somewhat
trying at first after the uplands we had left, but we en-
joyed some pleasant rides to gardens outside the city,
where we drank tea and ate fruit, and were offered
trays of pistachios. The shell of these nuts is usually
split at one end, and Mr. Bohlin quoted a Turki saying
to the effect that " a smiling man is like an open pista-
chio." In every garden there was a mud platform
172 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
covered with felts or carpets, on which the Datives
lie, and sometimes, instead of this, a large oblong
wooden table with very short legs. On these expe-
ditions, Sattur followed in the carriage carrying
our tea, and we heard that the townsfolk thought
we must esteem him very highly to allow him to
drive in state while we merely rode.
The crops of Indian corn were usually of the
variety with big heads and no " cobs," our informant
saying that both children and dogs steal and eat the
milky cobs to such an extent that it was hardly worth
while to grow them. This is the last crop to be
reaped, and there is an anecdote describing how one
year the devil entered into a compact with a farmer
who was to give His Satanic Majesty everything above
ground. The wily cultivator then sowed carrots, and
the disappointed devil accordingly stipulated that
his share during the second year should be every-
thing below ground ; whereupon wheat was sown.
Upon this, Satan demanded at the beginning of the
third year that the top and root of the crops sown
should be his. But the farmer again outwitted him
by raising Indian corn and taking all the cobs, which
grow partway down the plants.
All along the roads, mixing with the lofty durra
plants, were the fan-like hemp leaves which emitted
a strong odour. The Chinese forbid the cultivation of
this plant, for hashish has worse effects upon its
victims than opium; but the Kashgaris appear to
pay little heed to the prohibition and prepare the
deadly drug from the pollen which falls from the
flowers upon the leaves. Much flax is grown, but
only for the oil which is obtained from the seeds,
and the natives were amazed, and even disbelieving,
CH. vm THE ARYANS OF SARIKOL 173
when Mr. Bohlin showed them linen made from its
fibre. The oil is squeezed out by means of a wheel
turned by a horse in a very narrow space, and
when the poor animal gets dizzy, going round and
round, it is blindfolded, and in the end it often
goes blind in reality. On one occasion an intel-
ligent Armenian brought a machine to Kashgar
to extract the oil, but the mullas said it was
unclean, and as no one dared to buy the oil the
man was ruined. The mullas act more or less as
guardians of order. We were told that during the
summer there had been a fight about irrigation water
— a most fruitful cause of dissension in the East —
with the result that several of the townsfolk had
been wounded. The priests, anxious to prevent the
recurrence of such a scandal, had visited every house
in the city and broken the points of all the knives,
a somewhat original way of checking quarrels.
After being among the lusty, ruddy Kirghiz, the
Kashgaris seemed to us pale and underfed, and I
was not surprised to hear that any illness carries
them oS very quickly. Of course they were all
suffering from the effects of Eamazan, but their
usual food, a thin broth mixed with flour and piles of
boiled macaroni, cannot be very sustaining. It was
a great relief to me when August 12 arrived, and the
fast was over and all our staff attended a service in
the little mosque attached to the Consulate. Poor
Jafar Bai looked very old and worn out, and told me
that the torture of being unable to quench his thirst
had been terrible. He and the other servants came
to salaam us clad in new, or at all events clean,
clothes, and to show their joy they beat a little
hand-drum during the entire day. The townsfolk in
174 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES px. i
their new dresses were a feast of colour for tlie eyes,
and I remember one pretty little girl in yellow silk
witli a crimson skull-cap worked in gold, while
another in a long magenta and green-patterned
cotton held a big melon in each hand and gazed at
us mider a jaunty green cap. Many were fond of
combining magenta and scarlet, which looked quite
in place among the green trees and crops, and their
love of colour greatly added to the charm of our
daily rides.
Here are the words of one of the songs sung by
children during the month of Ramazan, which was
translated for me, its charming tune having haunted
me. The chorus, however, struck me as somewhat
ironical, for the yearly fast presses with great
severity on the poor, who are forced to work for
their livelihood, and cannot sleep all day and eat all
night as do the rich.
1
These thirty fasts are our guests,
Those who do not keep the fast are animals.
Chorus.
Ramazan, the good month of Ramazan !
Holy and welcome Ramazan is the King of Months !
2
I come to your door singing praises of Ramazan,
May God in His mercy grant you a son to adorn your cradle
Chorus, etc.
3
I shall not weary of singing the praises of Ramazan,
Nor will I leave until you have given me seven cakes of bread.
Chorus, etc.
4
On the tenth night of Ramazan Fate casts the lot of all men,
Therefore omit not to give alms to the poor on the eve of
Destiny.
Chorus, etc.
CHAPTER IX
THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND
The Turki have long-shaped faces, well-formed noses and full
beards. . . .
These facts show that the modern Yarkandees are not pure
Tartars like the Kirghiz . . . but rather Tartarized Aryans, if I may
so express myself. — Robert Shaw, Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand
and Kdshgar.
It was the beginning of September when we set off on
the tour which had Khotan as its goal and which was
in reality a passing from oasis to oasis along the edge
of the Takla Makan Desert. This sahara may be re-
garded as the western extension of the immense waste
of the Gobi that stretches for more than a thousand
miles to the east, a very abomination of desolation.
Golden autumn was on the land as we rode out of
Kashgar along the broad tree-shaded road that leads
to the New City, and turned off after a couple of
miles to cross the imposing-looking Kalmuck bridge.
Along the river bank the rice was being cut and then
threshed by means of a stone roller, which bullocks
and donkeys were pulling round and round over
the heaped-up ears, the handsome millet crop was
turning yellow, the big leaves of melons, pumpkins
and gourds were withering, and only the lucerne
kept its vivid green.
Jafar Bai and Humayun rode behind us, Iftikhar
175
176 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Ahmad and the Doctor were escorted by their own
attendants, and Sattur, with the lunch and tea-box,
kept up with us fairly well in a blue-tilted ma'pa.
Our tents and baggage were packed into covered
carts termed arahas, drawn by three, and later on
by five, ponies apiece, Daoud finding a seat in one
of them. These waggons have very high wheels,
with only one horse between the shafts, the others
being harnessed in front, pulling at the side. The
drivers shouted '' Oo— ah ! Oo — ah ! " to their horses
all the time, but I noticed that riders called out
" Choo ! Choo ! " to stimulate their mounts, and
without that magic exclamation I should never have
got my pony along, as the whip made no impression
upon him. The donkeys in this part of the world
were urged by a peculiar sound reminding me of one
of the symptoms of mal de mer, while a series of
sharp whistles answered the same purpose with the
sheep and goats.
In the East, travellers like to attach themselves
to the caravan of any one of position, partly for the
sake of protection and partly for the prestige which it
gives them among the natives. As highway robbery
is practically unknown in Chinese Turkestan the
men that joined us did so for the latter reason, and
among them the Master of the Horse of the Rajah
of Punyal and his groom were picturesque figures,
always riding as if they were showing off the points
of their wiry ponies to would-be purchasers. They
were in search of a couple of Badakshani stallions
for their chief, and throughout the entire journey
their eyes were riveted on the handsome grey and
the chestnut that my brother and I rode. At each
town where we halted they searched for horses,
CH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 177
even making a purchase once or twice, which they
sent back as unsuitable before the expiration of
the three days during which either side has the
right to break a bargain. They were unsuccessful
in their quest, so that when we returned to Kashgar
they purchased our Badakshanis, and we felt glad
to know that the animals that had carried us so
well and had given us so much pleasure were in the
hands of horse-lovers, whose methods were far more
enlightened than those of the Kashgaris.
Another interesting personality was the Chief
Falconer of the Mehtar of Chitral, who was engaged
in a search for a pair of white hawks. These birds,
which are extremely rare, if indeed they exist as a
species, are said to be found in the district of Hi ; but
our fellow-traveller, having heard that one had been
offered for sale at Kashgar and another at Khotan,
determined to throw in his lot with us, as we were
bound for the latter city. Truth to say, he was a
timid man, entirely devoid of the love of adventure
that is part of the equipment of the true traveller,
and moreover he had no knowledge of the Turki
language. He found no white hawk in Kashgar and
probably expected none in Khotan, but I fancy he
joined our caravan to pick up the language and so fit
himself more or less for the still longer journey to Hi.
When we were at Tashkurghan during our visit
to the Pamirs, we heard that a pair of white falcons
had been procured in the valley for presentation to
the Agha Khan. Unluckily one of the birds died,
but the Sarikolis, not to be foiled, stuffed it and
offered it to the Head of their faith together with
its live mate.
This admiration for white falcons is old, and in
178 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. i
the annals of the crusades it is mentioned that
Philip of France owned a white falcon to which he
was greatly attached. According to the chronicle,
"Le roi aimait beaucoup cet oiseau, et Toiseau
aimait le roi de meme." But one day it made a
long flight and came down among the Saracens,
who refused to give it up until Philip had paid a
huge ransom for its recovery.
Another addition to our party was a Hindu trader
with a wooden leg, who had a few words of English
at his command, saluted us in military fashion, and
excited my admiration at the agility with which he
mounted and dismounted from his horse. If Chaucer
could have come to life again, he would have de-
lighted in our caravan, composed of such diverse
elements, and I never tired of observing the many
gradations it contained between the Aryan and
Mongol races. For example, one youth from Gilgit
had the features and limbs of the immortal riders of
the Elgin marbles and bestrode a big grey with the
same effortless mastery, carrying my mind back to
Alexander and his Greek colonies in Asia.
Our first real halt was the town of Yangi Hissar,
which is practically a continuation of the Kashgar
Oasis, the cultivation being merely broken at intervals
by bands of salt desert and narrow stretches of sand-
dunes. The inhabitants worked the land up to the
edge of the sand, and in many cases had placed their
mud-built hamlets so close to the dunes that they
were in danger of being overwhelmed, should a violent
sandstorm occur. The whole of our route was
marked by potais, these Chinese equivalents of mile-
stones being erected two and a quarter miles apart.
They are built of mud bricks, in form not unlike
CH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 179
the castles used in chess and some fifteen feet
in height. Whenever the potai stood near a rest-
house or at the entrance of a town it was attended
by five miniature potais, reminding me of a hen and
its chickens, a device employed to show the traveller
that rest and refreshment were close at hand. It
impressed me to know that these " milestones " not
only marked the road to Khotan, but the entire
distance to Peking, a journey that would take six
months to accomplish. The Forsyth Mission speak
of tall wooden mile-posts as marking this road, placed
about five miles apart, i.e. a farsang or one hour's
journey, the same word being used as in Persia.
The autunmal weather was very pleasant, as the
nights and early mornings were refreshingly cool, and
we made, wherever possible, a long mid-day halt.
As we rose at 5 a.m. I was quite ready to rest from
twelve to three, and had a head-net wherewith to
circumvent the flies during the lazy hours spent
beside irrigation channels bordered by willows, where
the peasants made us gifts of melons, peaches, nec-
tarines and grapes, the last sometimes an inch and
a half long and deliciously flavoured. Lemons were
unobtainable, but we found that grape- juice mixed
with water made a refreshing drink. The cultivators
were always most polite, and when paid for their
offerings smiled and said, " Allah is gracious."
Throughout the tour I practically lived on fruit,
and I suppose there is nothing more refreshing in
hot weather than slices of the splendid melons that
I considered superior in taste to those I had so often
enjoyed in Persia. Perhaps the taus or " peacock"
— as the natives call the great dark-green water melon
with black and white seeds set in its scarlet flesh —
180 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
quenches thirst the best, but it has not the " bouquet "
of the Jcarbuzeh proper, and wherever we went the
peasants were devouring huge chunks of this fruit,
which they prefer to all others. Thousands of
melons were being prepared for winter storage, the
method adopted being to lay them in the sun for a
month, turning them over frequently, and then to
place them on sand in cold rooms. The natives eat
them throughout the winter and until the fresh fruit
comes round again, though we did not appreciate
them much when we sampled a last year's specimen
on our arrival at Kashgar in April.
Yangi Hissar is a small town surrounded by a
high wall and is a centre of gardens and cultivation,
the river on which it stands flowing through a deep
gorge in the loess, which is broken up into picturesque
cliffs. From the city we enjoyed superb views of
the snowy Muztagh Ata range. We camped in a so-
called garden that was really an orchard of fruit
trees planted along irrigation channels, in the middle
of which, on a large concrete platform, was a shefang,
or Chinese garden-house. It was square and had a
prettily painted wooden roof, the open sides being
partly curtained in. Throughout the tour in all our
halts we usually left the house proper to the servants
and lived in the shefang all day, sleeping in our tents
at night. One drawback to these gardens was the
myriads of mosquitoes brought by the water ; but
as we slept under our nets we avoided the malaria that
had attacked the Swedish missionaries, who have a
neat compound at Yangi Hissar: I was also always
on the look-out for scorpions after I had found one
in my tent nestling on the collar of my tweed coat.
We halted at Yangi Hissar only for a day to rest
CH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YAKKAND 181
our caravan, but my brother borrowed fresh horses
in order to visit the shrine of Agri Su, some eight
miles to the south-west. A gloomy group of old
poplars, that reminded him of the sacred groves
outside Greek temples, lay at the foot of a steep cliff,
in which steps were cut to enable pilgrims to ascend
to the small domed shrine in honour of Shaykh Ata-ul
Vali and his son Kasim. The object of my brother's
visit was to see a certain inscribed stone some three
and a half feet in diameter which the inhabitants
greatly venerated ; but he could not decipher the
inscription, and after photographing the stone and
visiting the site of an ancient city which the inhabit-
ants called by the lengthy name of Jam-i-Taghai-
Agri-Su he returned to camp.
Next day we traversed a vast marshy plain covered
with dried-up reeds, on which, to my surprise, herds
of lean cattle were browsing. The glorious mountains
were hidden by a veil of dust, and when we reached
our camp on the edge of the Yarkand Oasis thunder
rolled, lightning flashed, and the sand whirled up in
clouds, half-blinding us until our servants managed
to pitch our tents. Then the rain came down in
sheets, practically the first that we had experienced
since we reached Kashgar in April ; for on the Pamirs
we had had only snow or heavy passing showers. It
cleared the air and revealed the mountains, which
looked magnificent as we rode across the gravelly
desert, now and again coming upon a rest-house built
by Yakub Beg. At one of these a party of Hindus,
British subjects from Yarkand, entertained us with
tea, eggs, sweetmeats and fruit ; but we did not
dare to halt long, as they said that another storm
was imminent.
182 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Our camp that night was pitched among trees,
and some men brought a big horned owl to show us,
a beautiful creature, buff with dark markings, and
held by a string tied to its leg. My brother gave its
captors money to release it, and I rejoiced to see it
flap its great wings and sail off to the shelter of a tall
Turkestan elm, where I trusted that it would rest in
security.
We often saw the great golden eagles which are
trained to hunting in this part of the world. They
kill gazelles, hares and foxes, and I always wondered
how their masters could ride at breakneck pace
and mount and dismount while carrying such a
weight on their arms. The great birds seemed
wonderfully docile, and apparently indifferent as to
whether their hoods were on or off. The hunting
eagle is captured by means of a live fox tied to a
rope ; the bird, busily employed in tearing its prey,
does not observe that the quarry is being drawn
by the rope gradually nearer and nearer to a hole,
in which the hunter lies concealed with a net to
throw over the eagle. When captured the unfor-
tunate bird is confined in a dark room, its eyelids are
sewn up, and its spirit is broken by the incessant
beating of drums which allows it no sleep. It
remains morose for a time, refusing all food, but
gradually becomes tame and attaches itself to the man
who feeds it and takes it out hunting.
The British Consul - General is always welcomed
throughout Chinese Turkestan, and I will give a
description of our entry into Yarkand, which will
serve as an example of what occurred at every town
during our tour. Some miles from the city we were
met at intervals by groups of British subjects, mostly
A HUNTING EAGLE.
Pa^e 182.
CH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 183
Hindus, who dismounted to greet my brother and
then rode behind us, our escort thus becoming bigger
and bigger as we proceeded. Some of its members
were but indifferent horsemen. Now and again a
rider would be thrown and his steed gallop off, or a
horse tethered by the roadside would break loose,
agitating the procession and maldng my chestnut
scream with excitement until the runaways were
captured, usually by the men from Punyal.
Old Jafar Bai had a reception all to himself.
Though he lived at Kashgar and owned shops there,
he told me that the chief part of his property
was at Yarkand, acquired in the old days when he
owned a caravan and carried goods between the two
towns. I was interested to note the number of
acquaintances who clasped his hands warmly, and,
when we stopped to partake of the usual spread of
fowls, eggs and tea laid out in a marquee, the old
man had the joy of seeing his small grandson brought
to him by his son-in-law. He kissed the child
passionately, and then, full of pride, brought it to
me and smiled as I gave the little fellow sweets and
biscuits.
After this the whole company remounted and
swept on again, to be stopped nearer to the city by
the Russian Agent accompanied by the Russian
subjects, who were standing in a large group beside
tables laden with food, to which our servants always
did full justice, surprised that their employers did
not appreciate these incessant meals. Just outside
Yarkand the beating of drums, the squealing of pipes
and the scraping of tars, producing music most
excruciating to European ears, annoimced the Chinese
reception. As I always avoided this ceremony, I
184 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES ^r. i
was glad to be met by Dr. Hoegberg, head of the
Swedish Missions and incidentally the architect of
the Kashgar Consulate, who drove me along the broad
tree - bordered road to the new Chinese town and
through interminable bazars to the pleasant garden-
house of the British Agent.
" The people of Yarkand display an entire lack
of energy and enterprise, or indeed of any interest in
life," was the dictum of Lieutenant Etherton, who
visited the city in 1909. Though I thought the state-
ment somewhat sweeping at first, I soon noticed
how apathetic the Yarkandis were when contrasted
with the lively, laughing Kashgaris, and the reason
was not far to seek. The inhabitants of this district
are afflicted with goitre in its most distressing forms ;
and the Swedish doctor told us he believed that
about fifty per cent of the population were victims of
the complaint, which in his opinion was not the same
as the European goitre, and for which he knew of no
remedy save iodine. One theory is that it is due to
the habit of drinking stagnant water stored in tanks,
the river unfortunately being at some distance from
the city ; but the peasantry living right out in the
country are by no means exempt from the scourge.
Many thus affected become idiots, and the children
of goitrous parents inherit the disease, which Marco
Polo commented on in the following words : "A large
proportion of them have swollen legs and great crops
at the throat, which arises from some quality in their
drinking-water." The old Chinese travellers also make
mention of the complaint, but I heard that the
Celestials, who boil all their water, whether used for
drinking or for washing, never fall victims to it, nor
apparently do the Hindu traders or travellers, although
cH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 185
if thev marry Yarkandi women their children mav
develop it. Some say that all who drink from a certain
canal are sure to contract the disease, while others
affirm that it is caused by the grey water of the
Yarkand Eiver. Be that as it may, the health of
half the population is undermined, and the aged
and children alike are sufferers, some unfortunates
having their heads permanently tilted backwards by
the horrible swelling in their throats. This has
given rise to the popular anecdote of the man who
rode his horse to the wat^r but had to ask a neighbour
if the animal were drinking, as he could not himself
look down to see.
Besides goitre and skin-diseases induced by lack
of washing, opium and hashish-smoking, and the
squalor in which they live, contribute to the sickly
look of the people, and I decided that dirty, dusty
ruinous old Yarkand was a good place to live out
of. The mosques and shrines were in a state of
dilapidation, and in spite of a large body of Hindus,
who trade with India by one of the highest routes
in the world, the whole place looked much poorer
than Kashgar.
Masses of snowy-white cotton were to be seen
everywhere in the bazars, ready for the stuffing of
cushions and quilts or to be spun into yam, while
at odd corners we came across groups of children
busily removing the pods or beating out the seeds with
sticks. Here, as at Kashgar, there is no grazing for
the sheep ; hence the poor quality and the toughness
of the mutton. The animals were trying to get
some nourishment from the withered cotton bents,
and I sometimes saw a woman holding out bunches
of lucerne to her half-starved charges or letting them
186 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
munch dried maize leaves from a basket. One
must ride in single file through the narrow alleys of
the bazar, which are covered in with awnings of
maize leaves to keep off the heat. Children and
chickens get in the way ; here a goat is tied up or a
camel is lying down in the midst of the traffic : there
a horse, tethered by a rope to a stall, lashes out with
its heels at passing riders, and now and again one
gets glimpses of extremely unsavoury courtyards.
But in fairness to the inhabitants of Chinese Turkestan
I defy any one to keep clean who has to live in a
house of unbaked mud where there are no washing
arrangements, and where, in the absence of chairs,
every one must sit on the mud floor : fortunately
the brilliantly coloured flowered prints do not show
the prevailing dirt as much as might be expected.
The best shops in the bazar were near the
Hindu serai, that was hung with silks in honour
of my brother's visit, and I was told that the Chinese
are so considerate to the traders from India that
they forbid the opening of any butchers' shops near
their quarters, and orders to this effect, inscribed
on boards and stuck up on walls, were pointed out
to me. Sometimes the Yarkandis tear down these
notices and the butchers reopen their stalls, but
whenever this occurs a complaint from the Hindus
to the authorities is ultimately successful. This
praiseworthy tolerance of the religious views of other
races partly accounts for the easy Chinese mastery
over a Mohamedan population.
Quantities of beautiful fruit, such as peaches and
grapes, were on sale in the bazars, the vendors keeping
off the swarms of flies by means of horse-hair flappers,
and naked children were munching enormous chunks
cH. rx THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 187
of melon. Horses were being shod, horse-shoes
hammered out on the anvils, and near by picturesque
copper pots were being worked into shape, a noisy
operation. At intervals we came across a mosque
with the columned verandah so characteristic of the
province, its beams and pediments covered with
incised carving something in the style of Jacobean
work. The principal mosque had lost about half
the blue and white tiles that had once adorned its
fa9ade, and the city wall was out of repair to such
an extent that people could enter the town by many
a breach after the crazy-looking wooden doors had
been closed at sunset.
Among the callers on my brother was the son of
the Thum of Hunza, whose defeat by the British in
1891 is so graphically described in Knight's book
Where Three Empires Meet, The young chief, who
was a child at that time, now ekes out a penurious
existence on a small estate given to his ancestors
by the Chinese, and has a pension of a couple of tads
a month, a sum equivalent to 4s. 8d. Safdar Ali
Khan, the old Thum, after his defeat fled to Kucha,
where he still lives with an ancient retainer or two,
and earns a humble livelihood as a market-gardener.
Sic transit !
During our stay I had the pleasure of entertaining
a Yarkandi lady. She arrived accompanied by
her mother and three sons, and was clad in a
purple satin coat, while across her forehead was a
richly embroidered head -band, over which fell in
graceful folds her long white muslin shawl. When
she had removed her lace-work veil her pretty
face was set off by big gold earrings and her long
black plaits reached half-way down her back. I
188 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
photographed both ladies, together with the small
boys, who were attired in velvet. Going next day
to return their visit, I found myself in a garden
that had formerly belonged to Yakub Beg, where
the mud platform on which he was wont to per-
form his devotions was pointed out to me. On
this occasion I gained a little insight into native
etiquette ; for my hostess, after graciously accepting
a small gift which I presented, put it aside and did
not open the parcel until I had retired, it being
considered bad manners to- look at and admire a
present in the way that Europeans are accustomed
to do. Our conversation happening to turn on
scorpions, my hostess said that she had suffered
agonies for three days after having been stung by
one, and her husband related that the followers of a
certain Indian saint have the power of taking away
the pain of a scorpion sting by breathing on the
ajHicted part. Though he had not had personal
experience of this, he had met many who swore that
they had been cured instantly by this means, which
was perhaps akin to hypnotism. On our return to
Yarkand some three weeks later I was invited to
attend the feast of the " shaving of the head " of
my host's youngest son, but having no interpreter,
as men were tabooed, I declined, though I much
regretted missing the sight of some forty or fifty
ladies attired in their best and adorned with much
jewellery.
While at Yarkand we visited the little colony of
boys and girls who were being trained by the Swedish
missionaries in their large compound. These children
were taught to read and write in Turki, to weave and
to sew. The girls cooked all the food, made the bread
CH. IX THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND 189
and did the housework, wearing aprons over their
gowns of pretty Russian print. The boys were
dressed in clothes of their own weaving, and Mrs.
Hoegberg hoped that the girls might later on marry
the boys, who were being trained to be self-supporting.
In any case she trusted that they might lead happier
lives than usually befall the maidens of Chinese
Turkestan, who are practically sold by their parents
and are often handed over to old men. It is true
that the husband engages to pay a certain sum for the
maintenance of his wife should he divorce her, and
this he does in the presence of witnesses. But the
onus of finding these witnesses and bringing them
up before the Imam lies on the woman, and the man
can often persuade them to swear that he promised
to pay his wife much less than he really did. The
parents of a wealthy woman can help her to obtain
her rights, but a poor woman may have a hard fight
for bare existence before she can find a new husband
to support her.
Village life is better for the women than life in
the town, for they have fewer matrimonial adventures,
and there are none of the temporary marriages that
are common in all the centres of population. I
noticed that they veiled far less in Yarkand than in
Kashgar, the result of stronger Chinese influence ;
but here and throughout the province they were
not permitted to enter the little village mosques that
are such a characteristic feature of the country. These
places of worship are usually built by some pious
benefactor, who gives a piece of land for an endow-
ment fund. This is called a walcfor " trust," and the
trustees appoint a mulla, who is often a villager with a
good voice who merely calls the Faithful to prayer.
190 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Dr. and Mrs. Hoegberg had done missionary work
in Persia, and said that they found the Turki very
slow-witted and disinclined to discuss religion, a
strong contrast in this respect to the keen-brained,
argumentative Persians, who enjoy nothing more
than metaphysics, and, being Shias, are less orthodox
and priest-ridden than the primitive Sunnis of
Chinese Turkestan.
Whether Christianity is gaining a hold in Chinese
Turkestan or not, the high standard which it sets up
is not without its influence, as the following anecdote
told me by Dr. Hoegberg shows. A Yarkandi
merchant went with some traders to buy figs, and on
the way his friends jeered at him on account of his
leanings towards Christianity. When they reached
the market they were offered the fruit packed in
baskets said to contain a hundred, but the buyers
never dreamt of trusting the word of the vendor,
and counted the contents of the baskets, finding
several figs short in each. The merchant then
enquired of his colleagues whether, when they bought
calico or print that had come from Europe, they
found any deficiency in the number of yards that
were stamped upon each piece. ^' Never," they
answered in chorus, and he then pointed out that
this honesty was due to Christian principles of fair-
dealing.
CHAPTER X
THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN
. . . The view was boundless, there were no traces either of man
or horse, and in the night the demons and gobUns raised fire-lights as
many as the stars ; in the day time the driving wind blew the sand
before it. . . . — Travels of Hiuen Tsiang.
Yarkand is the richest oasis in Chinese Turkestan,
but we did not appreciate this fact until we had left
the city and saw the open country covered with
wide stretches of rice, maize, wheat and millet ; and
I confess that I had to revise my opinion as to the
lethargy of the Yarkandis, or at all events of the
peasantry, when I realized the ceaseless labour
required to produce such abundance.
The Yarkand River, the source of which had
recently been fixed by the Filippi expedition, was
about six miles from the town, and we crossed it in
broad ferry-boats like punts, which were some forty
feet long. We clambered over a barrier at one end
of the boat, and our nine horses, stepping in nimbly
behind us, one after the other, without any fuss,
were packed in tightly, close up to the plank
that separated us from them. Sattur's mapa was
fixed into a second boat with some difficulty as it
was too broad, but finally all our belongings were
settled, and two muscular men — one handling a long
191
192 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
pole and the other a paddle — took us across the
river, which is dangerous on account of its shifting
quicksands. Our horses seemed to enjoy the novel
experience, some of them craning over to drink as
we slowly approached the opposite bank. There
I anticipated some trouble, as the animals had
to turn round and step out at the end by which
they entered. However, they grasped the situa-
tion at once, and very soon we were mounted,
fording a couple of shallow branches of the main
stream and stumbling over a dreary waste of rounded
boulders which formed an old river bed. Beyond this
lay trees and villages and a band of British subjects
ready to welcome us with the inevitable tea, fruit
and sweetmeats ; an attention that I did not appre-
ciate, as several of our hosts were afflicted with goitre
in its most distressing forms.
At Posgam, where we halted for the night, quarters
were assigned to us in a garden that boasted a
magnificent walnut-tree, and we had our beds placed
on platforms outside the attractive garden-house,
where my room, carpeted with crudely coloured
products of the loom, had fretted woodwork windows.
Next day our twenty -four mile march led us
entirely through cultivation, along a broad highway
bordered with willows, the rice fields stretching for
many acres on either side. The River Tiznaf flowed
clear over a stony bed, in pleasing contrast to the
muddy streams we had encountered hitherto, and we
were told that those drinking from it never suffered
from goitre.
In this part of the world it is customary for the
villages to open their bazars on different days and
to name them accordingly. At the Panjshamba, or
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 193
Thursday market, every kind of article is offered for
sale, because the bazars are all closed on Juma
(Friday), the day on which the Faithful visit the
mosques, and I was told that at Khotan the Chahar-
shamba (Wednesday) bazar is held only for the sale
of milk products.
We met crowds of people coming to the Posgam
market. There were beggars galore, whole families
of them, sometimes accompanied by big dogs ; and
tramping along to gain their livelihood were the
reUgious mendicants, who were striking figures clad
in rags of many colours, wearing sugar-loaf hats and
carrying bowls and stout sticks, or sometimes gourds
and rattles. They evidently aimed at the picturesque
in their appearance, and their outward dirt was a
sign of inward holiness and conferred on them the
power to drive away demons and heal diseases.
Farther on we came across musicians carrying tars,
some having instruments resembling zithers and
others drums and pipes, while parties of Chinese laden
with gambling tables struck a sinister note. The
crowd was largely composed of women of the peasant
class mounted on ponies or donkeys and driving their
cattle and sheep to market, some clasping fowls in
their arms. Two or three wore a curious globular
hat of cloth of silver, the like of which I saw only
once at Kashgar, when I was told that it was the
headgear of a bride. All the world seemed bound
for Posgam, and as we passed through village after
village on our way to Kargalik hardly any one was
to be seen, and the little stalls under the vine-covered
trellises that roofed in the bazars were shuttered up
or bare, with the exception of the bread stalls. The
boxes of flowers on the roofs gave touches of light
194 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
and colour in the form of asters, balsams and mari-
golds, while here and there masses of golden maize
were drying in the sun.
On this occasion the Hindus had provided for
us a refection of chops and poached eggs, evidently
considering this food more suitable for a Sahib than
the usual fowls, and when we had coped with this
I left my brother to enjoy the reception given by the
Russian subjects, and, attended by Jafar Bai, rode
on to our quarters, passing the Chinese Amhan on
his way to greet the British Consul- General. This
dignitary, with a most impassive face, drove in an
elaborately painted mapa, preceded by a youth
carrying a huge magenta silk umbrella with a deep
fringe, while his escort of soldiers, in quaint black
uniforms, were carrying mediaeval-looking spears and
halberds.
The house prepared for us stood in a little garden
crammed with vegetables and with enormous speci-
mens of the misshapen and velvety crimson coxcomb.
An outside staircase led to a balcony that ran round
a large upper room with heavily barred wooden
windows, which was the ladies' abode — a very de-
pressing one to my mind, as it remained in perpetual
twilight, and from it no glimpse could be obtained
of the outside world, though its smells and noises
were extremely obvious. But, as I slept on the
balcony, it served me for a convenient dressing-room,
as well as for a retreat when my brother held the
usual receptions of British subjects and Chinese
officials in the house below.
About this time all the horses seemed to become
lame at once. The Badakshani chestnut and the
grey both took to limping, and the nice little pony
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 195
on wliich I rode astride cut its fetlock badly.
Kalmuck, our last purchase, though sound, was an
exasperatingly sluggish horse and consequently very
fatiguing to ride. Jafar Bai, as usual, persisted that
the lameness was due to my brother's order to water
the horses after they had been about an hour in
camp, and was in no way convinced when it was
proved that bad shoeing had lamed one animal, and
when the others gradually recovered in spite of
adherence to the English rules as to forage and
watering.
We were now to have our first sight of the real '""i
desert, which lay between us and the Khotan Oasis, y
On the night before our march across it we rested
in a tiny village on its very edge, some of the
mud-built houses being half-buried by the sand and
others having trenches dug round them to keep it
off. An irrigation channel ran between willows,
with patches of cultivation on either side. We
put up as best we could in the courtyard of a
serai, the building itself being too crowded with
peasants to accommodate us. Owing to the reluct-
ance which all Orientals feel to leaving a town, the
drivers of the arabas, in spite of their being drawn
by five horses apiece, arrived so late that our supper,
eaten by the light of the moon, was extremely scanty.
When we rose in the morning the desert stretched
before us vast and undulating. In Canada in the
early spring the prairie, reaching to the far horizon
on either side of the train, had reminded me of a
desert, so limitless, so barren and devoid of life did
the largest wheat field in the world appear. But
oh, the difference ! The Takla Makan kills all life
unless there is water to correct its baleful influence,
196 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES rx. i
while tlie prairie holds in its bosom food for
millions.
As we rode on our way at six o'clock the early-
morning wind was swirling up the sand, obscuring
the sky and magnifying everything strangely. At
intervals the potais, most of which were in a ruinous
condition, loomed monstrous through the haze, a
caravan that I imagined to be composed of camels
resolved itself into a group of diminutive donkeys,
while a gigantic figure draped in fluttering robes
turned into a harmless peasant carrying a staff and
water-gourd. We followed the broad track made by
arahas and the hoofs of countless animals ; but I
thought how easy it would be to lose the way, were
a strong wind to blow the sand across our route and
cover the skulls and other traces of bygone caravans.
In the days of Hiuen Tsiang and Marco Polo there
were no potais, and travellers must often have been
lost ; indeed the Chinese pilgrim tells us that when
he crossed this desert the heaps of bones were his
only means of knowing whether he was following
the right track or not. I was interested to hear that
this particular stage had the reputation of being
haunted and that no peasant would traverse it
alone at night. In fact, a Hindu trader told Iftikhar
Ahmad that he and his servants had been greatly
terrified a few days before our arrival. They were
travelling after dark and, though there was no moon,
a sudden light. in the sky revealed a broad road
bordered by irrigation channels and trees, along
which marched an army. The onlookers imagined
from their uniforms that the soldiers were Turks,
but they could not see their faces, and suddenly
they vanished, only to give place to droves of cattle
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 197
and sheep, which seemed to pour in an unending
stream past the frightened travellers. In the life
of Hiuen Tsiang mention is made more than once of
the hallucinations to which he was subject in the
desert, and the following passage occurs: " He saw
a body of troops amounting to several hundreds
covering the sandy plain — the soldiers were clad in
fur and felt. And now the appearance of camels
and horses and the fluttering of standards and lances
met his view. ..." I quote this passage because
the Chinaman's vision in the seventh century seems
strangely akin to that of the Hindu and his servants.
As we neared the large oasis of Guma the inevitable
receptions began several miles out in the desert, and
I was struck with the appearance of our host, the
Aksakal, He was a tall, handsome man, remarkably
like a high-class Persian, and wore a long mauve
coat with a magenta waistband, and a purple felt
hat with broad gold band, a purchase from India.
He installed us in his newly built house, which,
being in the middle of the bazar, was the haunt of
legions of flies. It consisted of several small rooms
opening on to a little courtyard planted with shrubs
and flowers, over which lovely humming-bird moths
were hovering ; but, as there was no exit at the back
and we were at very close quarters with our servants,
I did not altogether appreciate what was evidently
the ne plus ultra of Guma taste. Our rooms and the
verandah were painted in pink and mauve, the window
frames bright green with their shutters picked out in
blue and brown, while above the window of the
principal room was a richly coloured and gilded floral
design. The entrance door, draped with green plush,
cloth of gold and silver and a piece of purple and
198 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
green embroidery, and tlie chairs, upholstered in
orange and sky-blue velvet, made up a gorgeous
whole, in which I felt rather like a prisoner, as I
had to retreat constantly to my apartment, pull
the shutters to, and sit in a dim twilight when the
Chinese Amban and other callers arrived in state.
Guma is noted for its manufacture of paper, and
we went to see the process. The pale green lining of
the bark of the mulberry is boiled in great iron pots
and ladled out upon broad stones, to be pulped by
wooden hammers. The mixture is then spread over
canvas-filled frames which are held under water
during the operation, and afterwards set upright in
the open air to dry, when sheets of a coarse whitish
paper about the size of foolscap can be pulled off the
canvas. This paper is mainly used for packing ; if
needed for writing, it is rubbed with glass to glaze it.
As the oasis is rich in mulberry trees it produces
a considerable amount of silk; but Khotan is the
chief centre of this profitable industry. The women
tend the silkworms.
The soil of Guma is so sandy that the inhabitants
cannot build the usual mud-houses, but are obliged
to have recourse to wattle-and-daub structures, com-
posed of a framework of sticks plastered inside and
out with a mixture that is for ever dropping off in
flakes, thereby giving to these dwellings a most
unsubstantial air. I noticed that in the cemeteries
the graves were marked by tall withered saplings, to
denote the sites when they are covered up by the
all-pervading sand.
The time of our visit coincided with the Mizan
or Equinox, which is supposed to mark the close
of the hot weather, and the " kindly fruits of the
cH.x THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 199
earth " were nearly ready for the harvest. The
cotton crop was being gathered, its bursting pods
lying on the ground ; the handsome man-high maize
and millet were yellowing, and we revelled in delicious
corn cobs, boiled and then smeared with butter and
sprinkled with, salt, as I had learned to eat them in
Canada. We were also given another vegetable, the
roots of the lotus, which the Chinese look upon as a
delicacy ; but it did not appeal to my taste. The
pomegranates were a glorious scarlet and the many
varieties of grapes were in their prime ; the melons,
peaches and nectarines had passed their zenith.
On the evening before we left Guma our servants,
together with the various travellers who had attached
themselves to our party, organized an entertainment.
There was much singing, the performers yelling at the
top of their voices, accompanied by a thrumming of
sitars, a thudding of drums and a squealing of pipes.
Three of the men executed a pantomime dance, one
being disguised as a woman, another as an old man,
and the third, a handsome young fellow, having no
make-up at all. All three went round in a circle one
after the other with curious steps and much waving
of arms, the play being based on the well-known
theme of the girl-wife snatched from an old husband
by her youthful lover. I felt rather like an Oriental
woman as I watched the show from behind a curtain,
and was amused to hear later that I was considered
to be a model of discreet behaviour because I had not
attended any of the Chinese banquets.
It was rather disturbing at night to hear the
Chinese watchman going his rounds, beating two sticks
together as an assurance to the citizens that he was
guarding them faithfully, but I fancy that he and his
200 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
colleagues were of the Dogberry type and would
probably pretend not to notice were any devilry afoot.
Although we saw very little veiling after we had
left Yarkand, this Mohamedan custom prevailing
less and less the nearer we approached China, the
women were extremely nervous at our approach,
having seldom or never seen Europeans. They
would rush in all directions, hiding their faces in
the long cotton 'shawls which they wore over their
heads, and would vanish like rabbits into their
mud hovels, giving me the queer sense of being
watched by legions of eyes as we rode through the
mean bazars. There were many public eating-houses
in this part of the world, with Chinese painted screens
to hide the customers seated behind them, and with
gaily coloured pictures on the walls. The food was
cooked in big cauldrons in full view of the public, and
I was told that the restaurant-keepers, who are
Tunganis (Chinese Moslems) usually become rich,
especially in one district, where both men and women
take all their meals in public. As a rule no payment
is demanded until six months have elapsed, and then
mine host goes round to collect his debts, with the
not uncommon result that greedy folk who have
partaken too lavishly of the seven dishes provided are
obliged to sell their property in order to pay up.
Fuel is certainly a heavy item for the poor, who use
it only for cooking and not to heat their houses ;
therefore these restaurants, if used with discretion,
ought to make for economy.
During this journey the weather as a rule was
perfect — fresh in the morning and evening, quite cold
at night, and only during the middle of the day
uncomfortably hot. I felt as if I were on a riding-
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 201
tour and picnic combined, so little of tlie discomforts
of travel did we experience, the supply question being
easy and our servants doing their work with scarcely
a hitch. At night we generally slept in the open air
under our mosquito nets, and when the full moon
rode across the heavens I was often obliged to bandage
my eyes to shut out the brilliant light.
It was on our march between Sang-uya and
Pialma that the desert, for once, showed itself in an
unamiable mood. The morning was fine when we left
our comfortable quarters in a Chinese country house,
and we soon entered the region of sand-dunes, our
horses racing up and down them with much spirit,
though the loose sand made the going very heavy.
We stopped a picturesque party of wayfarers with
their donkeys in order to photograph them, and gave
them money for their trouble. They posed themselves
and their animals as my brother directed, but when we
had finished they remarked that they had expected to
be shot, as they imagined the camera to be some kind
of firearm ! Not unnaturally I thought that this was
a joke on their part, but later on we passed a company
of beggars, and my brother took a group consisting
of a wild-looking woman leading an ox and a man
wearing a red leather sugar-loaf hat. I noticed that
the latter clasped his hands in an attitude of entreaty
as he stood perfectly motionless beside the animal,
and when he received his douceur he burst into speech,
saying with many exclamations that he had verily
believed that his last hour had come. These incidents
gave me a glimpse of the docile spirit of the race,
and partly explained why the inhabitants of Chinese
Turkestan have nearly always been ruled by a
succession of foreign masters. They are small
202 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
cultivators and petty shopkeepers, taking little interest
in anything outside their immediate circle, and their
life seems to destroy initiative and independence,
thus rendering the task of their Chinese rulers easy.
The morning breeze that blew in our faces was
pleasant enough at first, but gradually turned into
a gale, which raised the sand in such great clouds
that the sun and sky were obscured with a yellow
haze. In spite of my veil and blue goggles the grit
whipped my face and eyes as we galloped our fastest
in order to reach our destination before matters grew
worse. The horses were much excited, being as
anxious as we were to escape from the whirling sand,
and it was annoying when the grey broke loose from
the rider who was leading him and cantered off until
we nearly lost sight of him in the thick haze. A
couple of men did their best to head him back, while
the rest of us waited, my chestnut screaming loudly
and plunging violently in his eagerness to join in the
chase. The grey behaved in the usual provoking
manner of horses on the loose, circling round and
round us, almost letting himself be caught, and then
galloping off a short distance before he returned to
coquet with the other horses. Finally my brother
made a lucky snatch at the trailing halter, and off
we went faster than ever, noting with thankfulness
"potai after potai as they loomed up out of the blinding
dust. Suddenly a change occurred that seemed
almost like magic. We plunged into a tree-bordered
lane with fields of maize stretching on either side,
while overhead the clear blue sky seemed free from
every particle of dust. I looked back at the whirling
yellow inferno from which we had escaped, and in a
few minutes thankfully dismounted in a large garden
en. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 203
with irrigation channels through which the water
flowed with a faint delicious splashing. Here our
tents were in readiness, pitched under shady trees,
and hot tea was brought that served a double purpose ;
for we found it a soothing lotion for our sore eyes
as well as grateful to our parched throats.
The waggons, which had done this last stage during
the night, left again at five o'clock in the afternoon,
as the horses would be forced to do a double stage
of some thirty miles, with no water obtainable on
the road. But the animals had had thirteen hours'
rest and the going was good for the first part of the
way, so we hoped they would be able to manage it.
We ourselves were to break the stage at Ak Langar,
some fourteen miles away, and rest there for four
hours before undertaking the remainder of the
march, which, we were told, was a continuous series
of lofty sand-dunes. Accordingly, after our evening
meal we mounted at seven o'clock, and leaving the
little oasis, rode off under the full moon across an
absolutely barren gravelly desert. We were told
that some years before our visit a governor of Khotan
had placed posts at intervals along this stage, upon
which lamps were hung and lighted on dark nights.
Unluckily this benefactor, a rara avis among officials,
failing to keep his finances in order, was dismissed
from his post and was now dragging out a precarious
existence in the Chinatown of Kashgar.
We of course stood in no need of lanterns, but in
spite of the moonlight the desert seemed rather eerie,
and our horses, unaccustomed to night marches, were
curiously nervous and suddenly shied at some dark
moving shapes that turned out to be camels grazing
on the scanty tamarisk scrub. A little farther on
204 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
they were startled by a large dog, which we dis-
turbed at its meal on a dead ass, and here and there
the moon gleamed on the white bones of deceased
pack-animals that lay beside the track. I am not
ashamed to confess that I should not have cared to
ride this stage alone, and I did not wonder that the
peasants whom we passed driving laden donkeys were
always in large parties.
After a while we came to a ruined potai, against
which a rough post was leaning, and learnt that this
was the boundary between the districts of Kargalik
and Khotan. We were therefore in the Kingdom of
Jade, and our horses, having become used to their
novel experience, trotted along briskly in the keen
night air, pricking their ears and hastening whenever
they espied the remains of a deserted serai sharply
silhouetted in the moonlight ; for they were as anxious
for their night's rest as I was.
With the exception I have mentioned there were
no potais to mark this particular route, so I had not
the pleasing sensation of knowing that two and a
quarter miles were accomplished whenever we passed
one, and was feeling extremely sleepy, when a black
mass of building seemed to rear up suddenly ahead
of us. It was just upon midnight, and I was most
thankful to dismount and pass into a serai built of
hewn stone, the welcome cleanliness of its rooms being
due to the fact that practically no one halted there,
owing to the lack of water. Yet the first sight that
met my eyes was a man drawing up a bucket from a
well by means of a windlass ; but Jafar Bai explained
that the water was bitter and harmful to horses.
The natives had given us such alarming accounts
of the difficulties of the latter part of the stage that,
OH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 205
tired as we all were, we were allowed to sleep for only
four hours, and it seemed to me as if I had hardly-
closed my eyes when Sattur roused me. He brought
a lighted candle by which I dressed; for my room
had no window and opened on to the public court-
yard, and a fat pigeon, disturbed by the light, flopped
down from the rafters and fluttered feebly round and
round until I let it out.
When we rode off in the crisp air of the early
morning we were surprised to find that for some
miles ahead of us the road lay across a gravelly plain
that made excellent going for horses and baggage
waggons. Close to the serai four huge vultures were
feeding on the remains of a dead camel, and the
loathsome birds were so gorged that on the approach
of our party they could only with difficulty flap or
hobble away for a few feet ; they watched us until we
had passed and then returned to their interrupted
meal. How horrible it must be for a dying animal
to be ringed about with these birds biding their time,
or even fastening on their prey before life is extinct !
Owing to the recent storm the atmosphere was un-
usually clear, and we enjoyed the somewhat rare
experience of seeing the lower slopes of the Kuen-lun
range, the existence of which was not even mentioned
by Marco Polo, presumably on account of its invisi-
bility, which is notorious.
After a while we rode among low sand-dunes
curved and ribbed by the wind, and then crossed a
high ridge that was more like a low hill than a dune
and must have meant a stiff pull for even our five-
horse arabas. Below its crest stood a couple of
wooden posts, signifying that we had reached the
boundary of the famous Kaptar Mazzar or Pigeon
206 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Shrine, where all good Moslems must dismoimt to
approach the sacred spot on foot. There in the midst
of the sand lay a graveyard marked by poles on which
hung fluttering rags and bits of sheepskin, and near
by was a tiny mosque with fretted wooden door and
window and some low buildings, the roofs of which
were crowded with grey pigeons. Legend has it that
Imam Shakir Padshah, trying to convert the Buddhist
inhabitants of the country to Islam by the drastic
agency of the sword, fell here in battle against the
army of Khotan and was buried in the little cemetery.
It is affirmed that two doves flew forth from the
heart of the dead saint and became the ancestors
of the swarms of sacred pigeons that we saw. Our
arrival caused a stir among them and a great cloud
rose up, with a tremendous whirring of wings, and
some settled upon the maize that our party flung
upon the ground as an offering.
The guardian of the shrine, in long blue coat and
white turban, left his study of the Koran and, accom-
panied by his little scarlet-clad daughter, hurried to
meet us. My brother asked them to attract their
charges to the graveyard, where he wished to photo-
graph them ; but unluckily the holy birds entirely
declined to be enticed in that direction, paying no
attention to the grain flung lavishly or to the voice
of the mulla. They merely wheeled round and round
in lessening circles until they descended on to the
roofs of the pigeon-houses ; for they were sated with
the offerings of the Faithful and extremely fat. It
might be thought that these birds, which are sup-
posed to eat their own weight daily, would be a
menace to the crops of the neighbouring Zawa oasis,
but fortunately food is so abundant at home that
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 207
they hardly leave the vicinity of the shrine. They
are certainly highly favoured ; for we were told that
if a hawk were to venture to attack them it would
fall down dead in the act !
We visited the sheds fitted with flat nests of basket
work, on many of which were fluffy yellow fledglings,
and beams were laid from wall to wall on which the
birds could perch. As may be imagined, the smell
and dirt deterred me from taking more than a glance
at this pigeon sanctuary; but our servants had no such
qualms, and probably felt that the longer they stayed
the more merit would accrue to them. Sir Aurel
Stein shows that the legend about these pigeons is
merely a variant of Hiuen Tsiang's story of the sacred
golden-haired rats, to whose burrowings the pilgrim
attributed the conical sand-dunes that lie round this
spot. The province, so the narrative runs, was in-
vaded by a barbarian host that encamped close to
the mounds thrown up by the creatures, whose aid
the King of Khotan invoked in his despair. During
the night a huge rat came to him in a vision, promising
him success, and on the morrow, when the men of
Khotan fell upon the enemy, they gained an easy
victory, because the rats had gnawed the harness of
the horses, the fastenings of the armour and the
bowstrings of the invaders. From that day the
miraculous rodents were accorded high honour: a
temple was erected in the midst of the dunes, in which
sacrifices were offered to them and where all who
passed by worshipped and brought gifts, misfortunes
falling upon those who neglected to do so. The
pigeon has now taken the place of the rat of Buddhist
legend in the minds of these primitive people, with
whom tradition dies hard.
CH. X THROUGH THE DESERT TO KHOTAN 207
they hardly leave the vicinity of the shrine. They
are certainly highly favoured ; for we were told that
if a hawk were to venture to attack them it would
fall down dead in the act !
We visited the sheds fitted with flat nests of basket
work, on many of which were fluffy yellow fledglings,
and beams were laid from wall to wall on which the
birds could perch. As may be imagined, the smell
and dirt deterred me from taking more than a glance
at this pigeon sanctuary; but our servants had no such
qualms, and probably felt that the longer they stayed
the more merit would accrue to them. Sir Aurel
Stein shows that the legend about these pigeons is
merely a variant of Hiuen Tsiang's story of the sacred
golden-haired rats, to whose burrowings the pilgrim
attributed the conical sand-dunes that lie round this
spot. The province, so the narrative runs, was in-
vaded by a barbarian host that encamped close to
the mounds thrown up by the creatures, whose aid
the King of Khotan invoked in his despair. During
the night a huge rat came to him in a vision, promising
him success, and on the morrow, when the men of
Khotan fell upon the enemy, they gained an easy
victory, because the rats had gnawed the harness of
the horses, the fastenings of the armour and the
bowstrings of the invaders. From that day the
miraculous rodents were accorded high honour: a
temple was erected in the midst of the dunes, in which
sacrifices were offered to them and where all who
passed by worshipped and brought gifts, misfortunes
falling upon those who neglected to do so. The
pigeon has now taken the place of the rat of Buddhist
legend in the minds of these primitive people, with
whom tradition dies hard.
208 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
When we left the shrine we were prepared to cope
with the gigantic dunes that we had been warned to
expect ; but, not for the first time, we grasped the
inaccuracy of most of the statements made by the
natives, there being only two or three somewhat
difficult places for waggons. At the foot of the sandy
waste in which the Mazzar stood was a stretch of
reed-covered marshy ground, watered by a wide
stream alive with water-fowl, beyond which flocks
were grazing. We soon saw ahead of us the remark-
ably lofty weeping- willows of Zawa, and fetched up
finally at a small garden beyond the village, where we
found our tents ready pitched under the trees and were
all thankful for a good rest and a general tidying up,
in anticipation of our entry into Khotan on the
morrow.
CHAPTER XI
KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE
There is no article of traffic more valuable than lumps of a certain
transparent kind of marble, which we, from poverty of language,
usually call jasper. These marbles are called by the Chinese lusce.^
— Benedict Goes, 1603 a.d.
To Mrs. St. George Littledale belongs the distinction
of being the first English, if not European, woman to
enter the town of Khotan, and I felt proud at being
the next to follow in her footsteps. We had travelled
over three hundred miles from Kashgar to this
farthest city in the East of Chinese Turkestan, and
hundreds of miles of desert lay between it and any
place of importance in the Celestial Empire. A
broad sandy road shaded by trees led to the capital,
broken only by the wide stony bed of the Karakash
Kiver, the three branches of which we forded with
ease, since much of the water had been drawn off
for irrigation purposes into a broad canal.
Khan Sahib Badrudin, the British Agent, a fine-
looking old man in a long coat of rich brocade and
a snowy turban, met us and, dismounting from his
showy horse, conducted us to the usual dasturkhwan.
We were told that he wielded great power in the
city. He was so frank and hearty that I took to
^ lusce is Yu'shih or Jade stone.
209 P
210 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
him on the spot, and after running the gauntlet of
the other receptions, we were conducted by him to
his newly built and elaborately ornamented garden-
house. During our tour we had the good fortune
to be quartered in three entirely new residences,
which any traveller who knows the dirt and squalor
of the East will recognise as no small boon.
Badrudin's '' garden," in common with all that I
saw, was intersected with irrigation channels, had no
paths, and was planted with a confused, ill-grown
mass of fruit trees, so crowded together that his
orchard produced a very indifferent crop. Flowers
are usually conspicuous by their absence in these
pleasaunces, although one sometimes comes across
zinnias, asters and marigolds, but to me their redeem-
ing feature was the shefang, and at Khotan the
open-air parlour was a particularly large and hand-
some one, curtained round with muslin that ensured
some privacy without excluding the air.
The trees surrounding it were the roosting-place of
hundreds of small birds, and about five o'clock every
evening they would appear in a large flock and a
fearful squabbling would ensue, caused, I imagined,
by their desire to take possession of one another's pet
twigs. After half an hour they settled down, and only
a few drowsy murmurs would be heard as one bird
or another made a sleepy remark.
At Khotan I was anxious to replenish our butter-
jars, but fear that no one will believe me when I say
that the united efforts of five cows during two days
only resulted in a single pound of butter ! There
is no grazing in these oases, and the animals are
allowed on the fields only when the crops have been
gathered, their usual feed being a bundle of lucerne,
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 211
fresh or dried according to the season, a meagre
dietary not conducive to a plentiful supply of milk.
My brother, as in all towns, was busy in receiving
and returning official visits and in settling cases, some
of which had been in abeyance for years. One of
these interested me particularly, as I was brought
into touch with it in a way. It was concerned with
righting a widow whose relatives were trying to de-
fraud her of property that justly belonged to her, and
the poor soul waylaid me as I was returning from a
ride and, seizing my hand, kissed it repeatedly, with
loud lamentations that went to my heart. When
justice had been done, and she was reinstated, the old
lady came to my brother to express her gratitude,
which she evinced by kissing the hem of his riding-
coat, to his great embarrassment.
I had visitors of my own, as Badrudin's three
wives, accompanied by his eldest son, wearing a suit
of would-be British cut, called upon me. The chief
wife was a handsome Afghan lady, her^ eyebrows
painted with antimony in order to make them meet
across her forehead, and as she spoke Persian we got
on well together. She had plenty of character, and
it was evident that she kept the other wives in due
subjection. Despite the heat the ladies wore rich
velvet jackets and had gold or silver braid on the
brims of their velvet hats, and long white shawls
shrouding them from head to foot. They enjoyed
sampling the cakes and biscuits that I provided for
tea, and liked seeing the curios that we had bought
in the town, some quaint jade monkeys throwing
them all into convulsions of laughter and most effect-
ually breaking the ice between my visitors and myself.
As a result I felt quite at home with them when I
212 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
went next day to return their call, merely passing
tlirougli a door in the wall of our garden into theirs,
where I found them installed in a shabby old house
very different from the gorgeous edifice in which we
had our quarters, and which I suspected would be
entirely reserved for the men of the household when
we departed. Owing to the emigration of the men,
the women, as at Kashgar and Yarkand, are in great
preponderance, and here, as throughout Chinese
Turkestan, the cheapness of marriage encourages fre-
quent divorce and so lowers the status of the wives.
/ But, on the other hand, the women mix freely
with the men, sell their wares in the bazars and
practically dispense with the face- veil. It may be
.that the superipr freedom enjoyed by the women of
/ Khotan centuries ago has been handed down to their
descendants. According to Remusat, the Chinese
. / writers remark again and again that the women
j/ mixed with the men even when strangers were
\\ present, apd rode like the men on horses and camels.
1 It is curious to note that over a thousand years ago
the women wore the long coats and trousers and
\ plaited their hair just as they do at the present day,
the hair of yaks' tails being used then as now to
hicken and lengthen these tresses, which are adorned
with gold or silver tassels.
Badrudin rode out with us one morning to see
Ilchi, as the inhabitants call their city, and I thought
that the people looked as sickly as those of Yarkand.
Goitre was very prevalent, and there were, alas, many
idiots to be seen, both the bodily and the mental
aflflictions being probably caused by the limited
supply of water, which is kept in tanks, a sure
method in the East of propagating disease.
//
\ the
\blii
BEGGARS AT THE GATE.
Page 312.
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 213
Three years before our visit a large part of the
principal bazar had been destroyed by fire, and our
host had lost many shops on this occasion ; but the
visitation was a blessing in disguise, for neat wooden
stalls with well-made shutters had been built in place
of the former dirty, imtidy booths. We were taken to
see the principal mosques and shrines, architecturally
beneath notice and all very shabby in appearance,
and beyond the bazar was the dismantled mud brick
fort erected by Yakub Beg. Separated from the old
native town was the modem China-town, walled in
and dominated by a fort, and on all sides stretched
the well-watered oasis. Maize, barley, millet, buck-
wheat, rice, cotton, hemp, grapes, peaches, melons
and mulberries were grown in abundance, while the
numberless irrigation channels were planted with
poplars and willows which serve as fuel.
Khotan is famous for its silks and felts, its cotton
cloth, carpets, paper and jade, but the modern silk
carpets with their aniline dyes are not artistic, and
the few old ones to be found command an exorbitant
price. In Rockhill's Life of the Buddha there is a
curious legend relating to the introduction of the silk
industry into the province. A king of Khotan
married a Chinese princess, who wished to benefit
the country of her adoption by teaching its inhabitants
how to make silk. She had brought the eggs of the
silkworm with her, concealed in her hat, as one version
has it; but the Chinese ministers, who were determined
that Cathay should retain the monopoly of a lucrative
trade, told the credulous king that the harmless worms
would turn into venomous serpents and ravage the
land. The monarch in a panic commanded the
rearing-house to be burnt down ; but his wife managed
214 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES px. i
to save some of the caterpillars, and later on appeared
in beautiful garments woven from their silk. Her
husband, realizing that he had been duped by the
Chinese, repented of his foolish act and thence-
forth warmly fostered an industry that greatly con-
tributed to the prosperity of his kingdom.
Silk is said to have been made in China from remote
ages, for it is recorded that to the wife of an emperor
who reigned about 21,640 B.C. (sic) belongs the credit
of inventing the loom ; but the secret was guarded so
jealously that centuries passed before the industry
took root in Khotan and Central Asia. At the com-
mencement of the Christian era raw silk was literally
worth its weight in gold, and we read that the Emperor
Justinian had a monopoly of the costly stuff and set
up weaving-looms in his palace. The story goes that
he persuaded two Persian monks to bring him the
precious eggs from Cathay at the risk of their lives,
for death would have been the penalty had the
Chinese discovered the contents of the hollow bamboo
staff which they carried to Byzantium about a.d. 550.
Khotan is believed to be the district from which those
eggs and the great silk industry of Europe actually
came, and only at the present day has it been necessary
to procure a fresh supply of the former from the East
to renew the original stock brought across the desert
so many centuries ago.
It was interesting to visit the chief silk factory of
Khotan, where thousands of pale yellow cocoons were
being boiled in big cauldrons, in defiance of the
command of the Chinese princess, who said that such
a proceeding was a sin against the light, and would be
followed by a silkworm famine during the following
year. Beside these vats women were squatting who
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 215
deftly picked a thread from each cocoon, unwinding
it until it was ready to be handed on to other women
sitting beside primitive spinning-wheels, who wound
the threads off upon a spool. From small reels the
shining silk was wound on to large ones, and finally
it was hung up in thick hanks of delicious creamy
colour, ready for export. The native-woven silk is
coarse in texture and dull when compared with that
produced from European looms, but when dyed with
deep vegetable colourings it has an indescribably rich
appearance, and much of it is exported to India.
Yu is the Chinese name for jade or nephrite, and \
Yu-tien or Khotan signifies Kingdom of Jade ; there-
fore I was naturally anxious to obtain all the informa-
tion I could about this stone, which is valued above all
others in China and is even spoken of as " the quint-
essence of Heaven and Earth." The jade of Khotan
has been known to the Chinese for over two thousand
years. Kemusat points out that there are references
to it as far back as 140 B.C., and it was often sent as .
tribute from the rulers of the province to the Emperor
of China.
One Chinese author compares a wise man to jade,
affirming that both have five of the same good qualities,
and another talks of the different colours of the stone,
saying it is red as the comb of a cock, yellow as a
cooked chestnut, and so on. Again, a third writer
affirms that it gives forth light and a perfume, and
others speak of its weight and of the way in which it
can be imitated and how easily it can be dyed.
In popular belief the Jade Kiver was separated
into three branches that carried down the white,
black and green varieties respectively from the mines
situated at its source ; and in bygone days the King
216 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
of Khotan used to inaugurate the '' Jade Harvest,"
or season of the year when his subjects began to fish
in the streams for the precious stone. This beautiful
mineral is found in veins running through rocks of
schist or gneiss, and is of almost every shade of white,
grey, green, yellow, or black. Until the recent
revolution it was worn profusely by the royalties
and their courtiers, and was buried with the dead
in the form of bracelets and amulets, a carved bowl,
screen or goblet being a choice gift for the Emperor
to send to a ruling sovereign, in which connection a
jade screen presented to Queen Victoria was valued
at £300,000 by English experts.
Badrudin took us into the town to see the jade
workers turning cups on lathes and polishing them
by means of sand. On the ground lay some small dull
green boulders, the stone in its raw state, and I was
told that, had they been white flecked with green,
they would have fetched between two and three
hundred pounds apiece. After the white, the yellow
is the most highly prized, and then comes the green and
lastly the black, for which the famous cenotaph of
Tamerlane at Samarkand is renowned. But alas,
since the revolution the royal stone is no longer
popular in China, and the export to Peking has
practically ceased. To counterbalance this there is
a small demand for it in India, where it is bought by
the British ; but so low has the industry fallen that
my brother and I could not procure nearly as many
cups as we wished. The best that we found were a
transparent black speckled with moss green, most
beautiful when held up to the light ; but only four
of these goblets could be bought, and the rest of our
purchases were in an attractive dull reseda green
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 217
that reminded me of sea-water in its translucent
delicacy.
One day we rode out to inspect the old jade pits
several miles to the east of the city, Badrudin
supplying us with horses, as our own always enjoyed
a well-earned rest whenever we halted. He and his
son escorted us through the Oasis to the broad stone-
strewn bed of the Yurungkash or White Jade River,
which we easily forded. We then trotted and cantered
along sandy paths between the high mud walls of
countless gardens. Our goal was a wide tract,
formerly a river-bed, now a series of pits ringed with
boulders, the result of digging for jade during the
centuries. The sand-dunes of the great desert had
crept to the edge of the masses of rubble, among
which our horses painfully stumbled as we examined
the so-called mines, holes about a dozen feet in depth.
It is at that distance from the surface that the blocks
of jade washed down in bygone days are to be found,
the jade obtained from the mines being soft and
inferior in quality. Few finds of value are made
nowadays, and all good pieces are sent direct to
Peking, the Khotan craftsmen being unable to
execute the carving for which the Chinese are famous. .
The glory of Khotan was its jade, and it was owing v
to the high esteem in which the Chinese held this J
stone that we hear so much about the province /{
from the early pilgrims and travellers.
When the Chinese travellers Fa-hien and Hiuen \
Tsiang visited the province, in the fifth and seventh I
centuries respectively, there were many towns in the |
kingdom which are now buried beneath the desert
sand, and according to the accounts of both pilgrims
there were a hundred Buddhist monasteries in the
218 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Oasis. It appears that tlie Khotanis were not whole-
hearted followers of the Master, for we hear that the
adherents to Buddhism were violently persecuted
towards the end of the ninth century, by those that
worshipped spirits ; but the religion lingered on until
-'' it was finally extinguished by Islam, which swept like
*^ ' a great wave through Chinese Turkestan.
On the day that we left Ilchi we made a detour
in order to visit the site of Yotkan, which was the
capital of the province a thousand years ago. Old
Badrudin led us a zigzag course round low-w^alled
fields, and after four or five miles announced that
we had reached our goal. We then dismounted and
scrambled down a muddy slope on to a stretch of
cultivated ground at the foot of a low clifi. This
latter had been cut through by a yar, or ravine
created by the action of the water which had escaped
from an irrigation canal, and this yar revealed bits
of gold and debris of all kinds on its banks. Sir Aurel
Stein, who began his famous excavations with the
investigation of this site, points out that without this
fortunate accident the city so often mentioned in
the Chinese annals might never have been discovered.
The inhabitants of the village close by immediately
began to dig for treasure, washing the earth for gold,
and by their efiorts the fields had been lowered several
feet, because the strata containing the finds were
some thirteen feet beneath the surface. Sir Aurel
Stein discovered no remains of buildings, but was
not surprised at this, for mud bricks crumble away
in the course of centuries ; and it also occurred to
me that perhaps the peasants may follow the custom
of the Persian cultivator, who uses the debris of ruins
as a dressing for his crops. Moreover, as the fields
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 219
lying on the site of Yotkan were irrigated, the action
of the water would soon disintegrate any buildings
constructed of sun-dried bricks. The fact that the
soil lies to-day some nine to twenty feet above the
old capital is due to the system of irrigation ; for
the water let in over the fields carries much silt
with it. The roads throughout all the oases in
Turkestan are from this cause much lower than the
fields, while the cemeteries, not being cultivated, are
at about the same level as the roads.
Badrudin told us the current legend that Yotkan
had been destroyed by a great flood which over-
whelmed both the city and its inhabitants, but
Sir Aurel Stein shows this theory to be imtenable,
although he apparently offers no other to account
for the desertion of what was an important city
ten centuries ago.
Our host showed us various interesting objects
found on the spot, a beautiful terra-cotta vase with
a Buddha on either side being the chief, together
with tiny terra-cotta figurines and a white jade ring.
I was told that the Chinese archers wear these rings
on their little fingers to keep them from being cut
when they twang their bows. Sir Aurel Stein bought
a tiny monkey made of gold, and says that there is
still a small but profitable yield of the precious metal
in the form of gold-leaf, which was used extensively
to decorate the Buddhist temples and statues.
Fa-hien mentions the splendour of these shrines and
their attendant monasteries in the fifth century, and
Remusat gives details of the gorgeous ceremonial
worship.
When we left Yotkan we rode to Zawa, where we
rested, in anticipation of the night march across
220 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES rr. i
the desert to tlie serai of Ak Langar. In spite of
our protests, genial old Badrudin insisted on accom-
panying us thus far on our homeward way, and it was
not till half -past eight that night that with sincere
regret we said good-bye to him. The moon, now
in its third quarter, had not risen, and our late host
did us a final good office by sending his body-servant
ahead of our party, carrying a little native lamp of
classic design with two wicks hanging from its spout.
He proved a most useful torch-bearer, for the dark-
ness under the trees of the oasis seemed impenetrable
at first, and he pointed out the many small bridges
and irrigation channels over which our horses might
have come to grief in the all-pervading gloom. Time
and again the feeble light seemed about to be ex-
tinguished by the breeze, but it held out imtil we
were free of the village, and we were then put in
charge of a Chinese runner who was to be our guide
across the sand-dunes. The British Agent's trusty
henchman now dismounted, kissed my brother's
knee in token of farewell and, to my astonishment,
actually wept, though I C3niically reflected that this
emotion must be due rather to the amount of
his pourboire than to affection for the British Consul.
Half an hour later the moon cast a faint gleam
across the desert, and we walked our horses in the
track of the tall, wiry guide who kept ahead of
us all the time, now and then breaking into a run
when he reached the crest of a dune or descending it
with great leaps. Our horses certainly walked at the
rate of four miles an hour on an average, but the
ya-yieh did the ten miles to the serai without turning
a hair and arrived in better condition than I did. I
had had a fatiguing day ; for there is always much
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 221
to do wlien setting off again after a longish halt, and,
counting the distance to and from Yotkan, I had
ridden nearly forty miles. This in itself was nothing,
as I loved being in the saddle ; but it was trying to
set off on a second march at the hour when I was
usually making ready for bed, and I felt grateful to
the pure tonic air of the desert that made me feel
as fit as ever on the morrow.
Having retraced our steps to Yarkand, we made a
detour by way of Merket, my brother being anxious
to see that part of the country and to shoot some of
the pheasants named after Shaw. We and our horses
were again punted across the main stream of the
river, and then had to ride warily, following defined
tracks in order to escape the dangerous quicksands,
and when we forded branches of the stream we avoided
places where stakes protruding from the water warned
us of holes or treacherous sands. It was rather a
relief to clamber out upon the loess banks of the
river, from which we had picturesque glimpses of
sandy islets on which duck and water-birds were
feeding, and I remember the delicious perfume of
the melons that were laid out to dry in a field close
to our encampment for the night.
It was mid-October when we reached Merket, and
my brother, who had had many disappointments as
to the duck-shooting he had been promised, felt his
hopes revive as the natives spoke of a lake some
four miles off which simply teemed with water-fowl.
I suppose it is inbred in Orientals to say what they
think will please a superior ; the peasants at all events
were seemingly unconcerned as to whether their
statements were accurate or not. On this occasion,
for example, the so-called lake turned out to be a
222 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. i
small marsh dried up by the summer heats and with
never a sign of bird-life among its withered rushes.
This was rather a blow ; but, on making enquiry
about game at a prosperous -looking village that lay
outside one of the wide belts of stunted trees through
which the sandy road led, we heard that the jungle
was swarming with pheasants. A party of beaters
was improvised on the spot, and my brother went ofE
full of hope, while I rode slowly on with old Jafar
Bai and the one-legged Hindu trader, having agreed
to halt for our mid-day meal a couple of miles farther
on. And now the Hindu began to play the well-
known game of dangling a lure before the European,
the bait in my case being water. He professed that
he knew every inch of the road and that a refreshing
stream was close at hand ; but, when we had ridden
considerably farther than the stipulated distance, I
revolted, and stopping in the shade of the trees
ordered lunch to be served as soon as Sattur and his
majpa arrived. Hardly had I finished when the sport-
ing party cantered up with the disheartening news
that they had not seen a single pheasant. It was a
day of disappointments ; for, as we were riding into
camp, a servant rushed up with the news that wild-
duck were in abundance on a lake near which we had
passed. Hope again revived, and off my brother went,
but, as usual, after a fata Morgana, This day is a
sample of many. During our halt at Merket my
brother shot only two or three of the Shaw pheasants,
and he had no luck when he rode off at five o'clock
in the morning to watch the great hunting eagles
bring down gazelle, although they made successful
flights at hares. Probably the scarcity of game is
owing to the fact that the country is comparatively
A D ULAN I SHAYKH.
Pagt 222.
CH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 223
thickly populated and well-cultivated, and that many
of the peasants are sportsmen and have no scruples
as to close seasons.
Just outside the village my brother was met by
an old greybeard who saluted in military style, and
it turned out that he had been formerly in a
Panjabi regiment, and had been sent into Turkestan
with letters for Dalgleish, whose murder resounded
through Central Asia a generation ago.
Merket is interesting as being the home of the
Dulanis, supposed to be Kirghiz who settled on the
land a couple of centuries ago when the Kalmucks
ruled the province. These people are remarkable as
being Moslems who mix freely with their women, the
latter going about unveiled, and eating, dancing and
singing with the men at entertainments which often
last the whole night long. They have a great re-
putation as singers, and one morning we were favoured
with a performance, the songster being a tall grey-
beard clad in a long red robe and a sheepskin cap.
He beat on a tambourine-like instrument, throwing
his head into the air and emitting tremendously long-
drawn notes and then taking breath in deep gasps,
much as the Germans sing their Lieder in Lutheran
churches. His songs seemed full of repetition, he
made fearful grimaces, and as he yelled at the top
of his voice, I was not surprised that after a while
he became hoarse. His companion played a rubab, a
stringed instrument much like a mandoline, the
plectrum being a bit of wood, and crowds of
villagers gathered to hear the performance, to which
they listened in enraptured silence ; for we were
told that the singer was renowned throughout the
district.
224 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
Iftikhar Ahmad kindly translated for me two of
his songs, which run as follows :
If I say that I am a Mohamedan and do not keep the commands
of Allah
How shall I escape punishment when I am laid in the dark grave ?
No young girls will dance at my bidding.
They have blackened their eyebrows with hohl and refuse to bow
down before the youths.
The second is the lament of a love-sick maiden :
1
Oh, my beloved, fresh coloured as an apple,
I entrust thee to the keeping of Allah until we meet again.
2
Oh, that I could ride to Aksu on my white horse newly-shod,
Or could see thee, my love, walking beside the river.
I am feeble as a rush, I am in the power of a giant ;
I cannot sleep at night and am forced to think of thee all day long.
Alas, my love has gone from me in anger and how shall I persuade
him to forgive me ?
I will place tea ^ before him and by dancing and smiling I will
make my peace with him.
The Merket bazar was one of the poorest and
most squalid I had seen in the course of my travels,
and was in curious contrast to the apparent pros-
perity of the large oasis. The inhabitants, who
hovered about our camp all day long, were certainly
of a lower type than the ordinary villagers of Chinese
Turkestan, but as far as I could judge they did not
merit the scathing condemnation of one writer, who
says : " These people are in the most backward state
of human intelligence that it is possible to imagine
^ To offer tea is a symbol of apology.
DULANI MUSICIANS.
Page 224.
OH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 225
human beings to be capable of. In physical strength
and stature they are perhaps the most miserable
objects on the face of the earth, but their social
position is still more deplorable ..."
When we left Merket we plunged into sand covered
with low tamarisk scrub and the toghrak tree, populus
heterophylhis, peculiar, I understand, to Chinese
Turkestan, which looks like a cross between the
willow and the poplar. When this tree is quite
young all the leaves are pinnated, like those of the
willow ; at an older stage the upper part has the
poplar leaf, and when it is full-grown there is no
trace of the narrow willow-like leaf, which has
dropped off. It was now mid-October and the
foliage was a brilliant gold, bright as the trees in a
Canadian fall, but without the flaming scarlets of the
maple and oak of the Dominion.
We and our belongings had to cross the Yarkand
River again in one of the clumsy ferry-boats, and the
vigorous-looking boatman was obliged to make such
Herculean efforts to pole his unwieldy craft round
that I was not surprised to learn that men of his
calling contract heart complaint from the strain.
The ferryman's wife, a handsome young woman,
charmingly clad in a rainbow-striped coat and a green
velvet gold-embroidered cap, watched her husband's
progress, and I was told that she was a Dulani.
Certainly she looked a credit to her tribe, as she strolled
about unconcernedly among the men, with many of
whom she exchanged greetings. Her bare feet were
thrust into the overshoes that all wear over the long
riding-boots, and her big silver earrings added to the
picturesqueness of her appearance. I was seated on
a felt beside a table heaped with grapes and melons,
Q
226 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
and smiled at her as she gradually edged up to me
on pretence of flicking tlie flies off tlie fruit. Slie held
her pretty little boy by the hand, the child all too
warmly clad in a padded red coat and fur cap, and
a small gift unsealed her lips, putting us on such
friendly terms that she was delighted to be photo-
graphed by the first European woman she had ever
seen.
And now we turned our backs on the Yarkand
River and were piloted across sandy tracks and rode
through barren spaces dotted with tamarisk, towards
the dunes of a strip of desert, the loose sand of
which made the going heavy for our horses. The
sun sank at half -past five and, as is usual in
the East, there was hardly any twilight, but by the
waning moonlight we could see the track as we
plodded along, our horses snorting suspiciously and
starting at isolated tamarisk bushes or stunted toghrah
trees. At last we surmounted a dune and saw below
us a deserted mud building and the gleam of a pool
of water, indicating the goal of our march. To me
there was something curiously eerie in the scene ; for
the moonlight cast strange shadows, and the desert
seemed as if it were listening for I knew not what,
reminding me of Meredith's lines :
I neighbour the invisible
So close that my consent
Is only asked for spirits masked
To leap from trees and flowers.
The servants and horses had disappeared round the
ruined rest-house, and I had a queer sense that things
seldom seen by mortal eyes would have revealed
themselves had I been quite alone. I remember
strolling up to a largish toghrah tree,^ under [which
A DULANI WOMAN AND HER SON.
Page 3a6.
CH.XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 227
a little tent was to be pitched for me, and what*
was perhaps a big rat ran down the bark with in-
credible speed and seemed to vanish, and later on, as
my brother and I walked back along the road to
listen for the majpa which was to bring Sattur and
our evening meal, some creature, probably a fox,
noiselessly rushed past us like a flash, giving the
impression of being a shadow rather than anything
material.
The water here was brown and bitter and smelt
so disagreeably that neither we nor our animals could
quench our thirst. When the waggons came up they
made only a short halt and went on at 2 a.m., and
we ourselves followed soon after, as we were anxious
to water our horses, not to mention our own thirst.
The usual early morning breeze changed to a wind
that blew up clouds of sand ; therefore we pushed
forward as fast as we could, in case a real sandstorm
should overtake us. This particular tract of desert is
called Karakum or Black Sand, and I imagined that the
name must be some kind of native joke, as the sand
was particularly white. We rode on hour after hour
and were thankful finally to reach a serai, before which
stood a trough full of water. My chestnut was so
impatient to quench his thirst that he kicked my ankle
as I dismounted, presumably to hasten my move-
ments. He was always a bad-tempered animal —
Shaitan (Satan) the grooms called him — snapping with
his ears laid back at any human being or animal within
reach ; but in spite of this he was my favourite on the
march, as none of our other horses could rival his
elastic walk and easy canter. I was thankful that he
had not started kicking earlier in our acquaintance ;
for on every subsequent occasion that I rode him he
228 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. I
lashed out at me as I slipped from the saddle, and in
order to save me from a broken ankle my brother
was obliged to hold up his fore-leg; so perforce I
changed to another' mount.
There are many advantages in travelling officially,
transport and supply being thus made easy, but never
before had roads and bridges been mended in honour
of our arrival, as was the case in the Merket district.
The highway was dotted at intervals with parties of
peasants who were piling earth over the many holes
in the bridges, and driving rows of stakes into the
ground along the irrigation channels where the road
had broken away. These stakes would then be
padded with maize -bents, reeds or tamarisk scrub,
and plastered over with thick lumps of wet mud.
This method of road-making, which prevails through-
out Chinese Turkestan, is by no means an ideal one,
for when the earth and padding fall away the points
of the props stick out in a manner most dangerous
to horses if going at any pace.
The glorious weather we had had on the whole
was now changing, and, after a gale so violent that
our tents that night seemed to be in danger every
moment, we became aware of the approach of winter.
The sun had vanished, a grey veil lay over the land-
scape, and there was black frost in the air. The villagers
had donned their padded red, black or blue long
winter coats, those of the women being often striped
in many colours, and all wore their pork-pie hats of
velvet or cloth edged with fur or sheepskin and looked
cold and miserable. Jaf ar Bai amused us by pointing
out a shady spot where we could eat our mid-day
lunch, with his usual formula, "Here you will find
shelter from the sun," although he himself had told
CH.XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 229
us that it was now the season of the storms that
herald in the winter.
October 20 was the id, or festival to commemor-
ate the sacrifice of Ishmael by Abraham (so the
Koran has it, quite ignoring the Isaac of the Bible),
and our servants were naturally eager to arrive at
Kashgar on the previous evening, the id being an
occasion of feasting as well as of prayer in the mosques-
As usual we suffered from the vague ideas of the
natives concerning distances, and the so-called twenty-
mile ride, that was to bring us within easy reach
of Kashgar, dragged out to a thirty-mile march,
which, to me at all events, was peculiarly dreary.
It lay along sandy tracks crossing great stretches
of crumbling salt-encrusted soil, with here and there
a reed-covered lake or swamp that alternated with
strips of cultivation. The grey mist hung round
us, hiding villages and trees until we arrived quite
close to them, and seeming to enclose us in a ghostly
world with a curiously depressing atmosphere of its
own. I felt as if we were in one of Maeterlinck's
plays, so heavily did a sense of impending disaster
weigh upon me, in spite of vigorous struggles on the
part of my common-sense. No misfortune overtook
us save that the servants were deprived of the eve
of their festival ; for my brother decreed that, id or
no id, we should halt for the night by a broad canal
running parallel with the Ejzil Su. It was well that
he did so ; for all our horses were tired out, and
next day, even with the stimulus of their homes
ahead of them, they could scarcely manage the twenty
miles that lay between our last camp and Kashgar.
Delightful as our tour had been, it was very pleasant
to be in a clean, well-built house once more, and to
230 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. i
be welcomed effusively by Bielka and Brownie. I was
thankful to see them both in good condition, as well
as the sweet little desert lark in its round cage.
Khotan, with its silk and jade, the desert, and the
Yarkand River, receded into the background ; for in
about six weeks' time we should be leaving Kashgar
for good, and setting our faces towards Europe and
home.
Indeed, I was not altogether sorry, for at first
after our return Kashgar, enveloped in a frosty grey
mist, was sunless and cold, and the revel of colour
that the Kashgaris had displayed in their garments
during the summer had gone. Fortunately in this
part of the world the winter is short ; for the
houses are not designed to keep out the cold, and
the people are too poor to heat them. Fuel is so
dear that it is used only for cooking, and during
the day the natives usually sit huddled up in
sheltered spots and bask in the sunshine, which
luckily does not fail them for long at a time. From
December 22 to the beginning of February is called
the '' Forty Days of the Great Cold," and it is
followed by the " Little Cold," which lasts about
twenty days. It has sometimes happened, when a
wind blew during the " Great Cold," that peasants
coming in to market on their donkeys have been
frozen to death. In consequence of this the Chinese
have passed a law that, if any one demands shelter
at a house during this period and dies because the
door is shut against him, the inhospitable owner of
that house is to be tried for murder.
We had enjoyed the very best of the year, and
were fortunate to leave without seeing Kashgar at
its worst, graphically described by Lord Dunmore,
OH. XI KHOTAN THE KINGDOM OF JADE 231
thus : "It is as desolate, dirty and uninteresting
looking a city as can possibly be imagined ... a
series of yawning abysses ; roads full of gaping
chasms . . . tumbledown mud houses, obsolete mud
cemeteries. . . . [The town is] always either swim-
ming in mud or smothered in dust, and what offends
the eye still more is the one imiform melancholy tint
of dirty drab that pervades the whole picture. ..."
To me it will always remain a most picturesque
and interesting place, embowered in foliage, sur-
rounded by water and gilded by sunshine, while
its brilliantly clad, pleasant - mannered inhabitants
greatly contributed to its charm.
Sir George Macartney arrived in November and
we again started off through Central Asia and
Northern Europe, reaching home about a month
later, when the War, with its urgent claims upon every
man and woman, took possession of our thoughts and
energies. But I shall never forget the wonderful
sunsets of Kashgar seen through a haze of gold, or
the glorious dome of Muztagh Ata, the immense
sweep of the desert over which the moon and stars
hung like lamps in a sky of sapphire velvet, and the
friendly races, Turki or Kirghiz, who added so greatly
to the pleasure of my last experience of the Open
Koad.
PART II
CHAPTER XII
THE GEOGRAPHY, GOVERNMENT AND COMMERCE OF
CHINESE TURKESTAN
Le Turkestan est pour les Chinois une position strat^gique et un
excellent d6bouch6 pour 1' aristocratic mandarine qui ne trouve plus
assez de places disponibles dans la vieille Chine. C'est tout simplement
une bonne terre de pature pour engraisser une portion notable du
troupeau administrateur — Grenabd, La Haute Aaie, ii. 273.
Hsin-Chiang, or " the New Province," as the Chinese
term it, includes the province now generally known
as Chinese Turkestan, together with Urumchi and
other districts situated to the north of the Tian Shan
which lie outside the scope of this work. The
province we are dealing with has had many names,
such as Lesser Bokhara, Moghulistan, Tartary, High
Tartary, Eastern Turkestan, the Six Cities and
Kashgaria, the last four names having been in use
until quite recently.
The country is a vast plain, measuring about 1000
miles from east to west and about half that distance
from north to south. Its altitude is some 4000 feet
in the west, and decreases steadily as it stretches
eastwards, until at Turfan an area lying below sea-
level is found. The physical boundaries are definite,
being formed by some of the loftiest mountains in
the world. To the north runs the Tian Shan ; to
235
236 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
the west lies the Kizil Art, holding up the Pamirs,
those elevated valleys of High Asia ; on the south
are the lofty Kara Koram and Kuen Lun ranges,
the latter being the Kasia Mountains of Ptolemy,
bounding Serindia, as he termed the province. The
eastern boundary is the vast Gobi • or " Desert,"
where Sir Francis Younghusband travelled for nearly
one thousand miles without seeing a house.
The Takla Makan desert, distinct from the Gobi,
occupies the centre of the country. From east to
west this paralysing waste stretches for 500 miles,
while its greatest breadth from north to south is
half that distance. It is indeed a Land of Death,
covered with monstrous sandhills, which overlie the
ruins of great cities and dense forests and represent
the triumph of the wind, combined with desiccation,
over the patient industry of man. There are also
smaller deserts, such as that lying between Merket
and Kashgar, which we crossed on our journey.
Chinese Turkestan may be described as a desert,
or series of deserts, fringed by oases forming a horse-
shoe, with the toe pointing west. In Persia, except
in the heart of the Lut, there are villages at intervals
all over the country, depending mainly on the
underground irrigation channels termed Jcanats,
whereas in Chinese Turkestan, outside a few large
oases, more fertile than any areas in Persia,
the desert is of a more intense type, and rarely
supports even a scanty covering of bushes such as
are usually found in Persia. Indeed the desert,
with its waves of sand advancing in regular lines
and rising to the height of perhaps one hundred
feet, is the most noticeable feature of the country,
which is full of legends of the destruction through
il
cH.xn CHINESE TURKESTAN 237
this agency of many famous cities. The description
of Hiuen Tsiang, the great Chinese traveller, is worth
quoting : " These sands extend like a drifting flood
for a great distance, piled up or scattered before the
wind. There is no trace left behind by travellers,
and often-times the way is lost, and so they wander
hither and thither, quite bewildered, without any
guide or direction. There is neither water nor herb-
age to be found, and hot winds frequently blow.
When these winds rise, both man and beast become
confused and forgetful, and there they remain
perfectly disabled. At times, sad and plaintive notes
are heard and piteous cries, so that between the
sights and sounds of this desert men get confused
and know not whither they go. Hence there are
so many who perish on the journey. But it is all
the work of demons and evil spirits." ^
It has been calculated that the area of the oases
is rather less than 1| per cent of the whole, so that
if the deserts were taken away we should have to
deal with a very small stretch of habitable country.
As it is, we see oases, generally separated by miles
of desert, all producing wheat, barley and other
essentials within their own limits, and therefore
needing but little commimication with their neigh-
bours, from whom they want nothing and to whom
they sell nothing. The result is a state of general
well-being, unprogressive in character and tending
to stagnation. The more one travels the more one
realizes how the progress and prosperity of a country
depend upon good communications and an abundant
rainfall.
There is another point of view from which the
» Si'TuKi, by S. Beal, ii. pp. 324, 325.
238 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. n
detached oases have affected the history of the region.
They have never possessed enough resources to
support a powerful army ; but, owing to their isola-
tion and proximity to the mountains, they were
doomed to become the prey of every powerful force
which swept down from the undefended frontier and
took the cultivated areas in detail. The inhabitants
have at no time displayed military virtues, and are
to-day singularly unwarlike.
Of the rivers of the province, the Yarkand, known
in its upper reaches as the Zarafshan, and lower
down as the Tarim, is the most important. It
frequently changes its course, and is perhaps respon-
sible for the proverb, " A river, like a king, obeys no
law." Its chief tributaries are the Ak Su from the
north and the Khotan Eiver from the south. The
Kizil Su or "Eed Eiver," which flows through
Kashgar, was also in past times a tributary of the
Yarkand Eiver, but it now fails to reach the main
stream, for its water falls into the Lalmoi marsh
below Maralbashi. Other rivers do not even
approach the Zarafshan, but lose their waters in
the sands.
It is a far cry from Egypt to Chinese Turkestan,
but they are alike in this, that both countries
depend absolutely and entirely on rivers for their
life. As in Egypt, so in the basin of Chinese
Turkestan, there is no rainfall which counts ; every-
thing therefore depends on a full river. The snow-
fall on the ranges affects the volume of water, which
on the whole is decreasing. " The Land of Withering
Eivers " is the appropriate title of a chapter dealing
with this question in Huntington's The Pulse of Asia,
Apart from this, a cold summer in the Pamirs, such
CHINESE TURKESTAN 239
as occurred in 1915, may hinder the melting of the
snows to such an extent that very little water
reaches Maralbashi, below Kashgar, during the entire
summer ; and even in the Kashgar Oasis there was in
that year a distinct deficiency of irrigation water.
The climate of Chinese Turkestan is intensely
continental. The province is surrounded, as we have
seen, by some of the highest ranges in the world ;
we therefore find extremes of heat and cold. Kash-
gar, where alone meteorological observations are
taken, lies at an altitude of 4277 feet, and it might
be thought that in consequence of this altitude,
together with a latitude which is that of Central
Spain, and the proximity of snow -covered ranges,
the summer would be short and cool. Yet, mainly
owing to the almost total absence of rainfall, the
three summer months have a mean maximum of
90° with a mean minimum of 62°. On the other
hand, the three winter months have a mean maximum
of 38° with a mean minimum of 17°, but it is to be
noted that, owing to the dryness, the cold is not
severely felt. The scanty rainfall of only 3*34 inches
is distributed over the whole year and is irregular.
During the spring and summer of 1915 no rain fell
in Kashgar beyond a few showers which were too
light to record, but in the mountains the falls of
snow and rain were frequent, especially in June.
The Kashgar Oasis certainly merits the epithet
of " windy " during the spring. The storms blowing
mainly from the west, or from the Takla Makan, are
generally accompanied by clouds of dust which
envelop the Oasis in a haze, and so prevalent is this
condition that there are, as already mentioned,
only one hundred clear days in the year. This
240 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
FT. II
disagreeable plienomenon was noted by Mirza Haidar,
who, in the early part of the sixteenth century,
wrote: "But Kashgar has also many defects. For
example, although the climate is very healthy, there
are continual storms of dust and sand, and violent
winds charged with black dust." ^
The population of Chinese Turkestan is estimated
at about one million and a half. It is almost entirely
:;a confined to the oases, chief of which are Kashgar
i with 300,000, Yangi Shahr with 200,000, Yarkand
f with 200,000, and Aksu and Khotan each with 190,000
I inhabitants. The population may also be grouped
\ into two main classes as '* settled " and " nomadic,"
\ . ....
with a small semi -nomadic division. The nomads,
together with the semi -nomads, do not aggregate
more than 125,000 in all. They inhabit the cold
highlands, moving about in summer and winter
alike as their flocks exhaust the grazing, which is
rich in summer and scanty at other seasons. The
Kirghiz, who are the leading nomads, estimated to
number 50,000, implicitly believe that their ancestor
was a Kazak Prince, Saghyon Khan by name.
According to the legend, his forty daughters were
walking by a river one day when they remarked foam
covering its surface. From curiosity they all dipped
their fingers into the water, and thereby became
pregnant, and the Kirghiz claim to be the descendants
of these "Forty Maidens" or Kirk Kiz. This
tradition evidently rests on a poor pun, but it proves
that the Kirghiz regard themselves as a branch of
the Kazaks, or " Cossacks," as we write the word.
They furthermore believe that the same Prince had
thirty sons, IJtuz Ughul, whose descendants inhabit
^ Tarikh-i-Bashidi, p. 303.
0H.xn CHINESE TURKESTAN 241
the Alai and the country between it and the Ili
province. In Chinese Turkestan the principal Kir-
ghiz tribes inhabiting the uplands between Kashgar
and the Taghdumbash Pamir are the Naiman, the
Kapchak and the Tait. The Kirghiz are all Moslems
of the Sunni sect.
The Dulanis, whom we met in the Merket Oasis
below Yarkand, are another tribe of importance in
the province. Their origin is called in question, but
they are akin to the Kirghiz, although they differ in
appearance owing to their sedentary life in a forest-
covered country. Their name is said to have been
given them by a Khoja monarch, who termed them
his dulan or " two shoulders." They live in miser-
able shanties made of wood and are poor cultivators,
relying more on their flocks than on the produce of
their land.
The semi-nomads include the Taghliks or " High-
landers," who herd the flocks belonging to the
sedentary population. They spend the summer in
the mountains, but occupy huts or caves in the
foot-hills during the winter ; these " Highlanders "
are all Sunni Moslems. On the other hand, the
Mongols of Karashahr, who in numbers are about
equal to the Kirghiz, are all Buddhists.
In addition to the tribes already mentioned, there
is a strong colony of five thousand families of Tun-
ganis, mainly immigrants from Central China, Kansu
and Shensi. As Sunni Mohamedans converted in
the early days of Islam they were hostile to the
Chinese, and have rebelled more than once; but
during the recent Revolution they changed their
policy and supported the local authorities. In
consequence they are now being given posts in the
R
242 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pr.n
government, and at the time of my visit the com-
mander of the troops at Khotan was a Tungani.
To conclude this enumeration, the Tajiks, who are
Aryans from Farghana, numbering 13,000, the Chinese
6000, the Indians 5000 and the Abdalis 1000, make
up the population of Chinese Turkestan. The
Abdalis claim kinship with the Abdalis of Khorasan
or Herat, now the Durranis. They are locally
believed to be the descendants of Yezid, the slayer
of the Imam Husayn at Kerbela, and until the time
of Yakub Beg's rule are said to have acted a play in
which the Shias are reviled. Grenard,^ who studied
this mysterious people, came to the conclusion that
they were the descendants of a Persian Shia colony,
but Stein, whose authority is superior, believes that
they are Gipsies.
The province of Hsin-Chiang is ruled by a Chiang
Chun 2 or Provincial Governor, who resides at
Urumchi. Under him are Taoyin, or Governors, of
Urumchi, Tarbagtai, Hi, Aksu and Kashgar. The
situation is complicated by the fact that the com-
mander of the troops in the districts south of the
Tian Shan is independent of the Governor of Urumchi,
taking orders direct from Peking. Under the Taoyin
of Kashgar, with which we are especially concerned,
are Hsien Yin, or Sub-Governors, of Khotan, Yar-
kand and other districts ; there are also officials
appointed to deal with foreign afiairs. The term
Amhan is applicable to all Chinese officials, and
is used especially as a mark of respect. The
above-mentioned officials, constituting the superior
civil service, are all Chinese, but their subordinates,
^ La Haute Asie, ii. 308.
* Most of these terms are new, the old titles having been abolished
after the Revolution,
0H.xn CHINESE TURKESTAN 243
known as Begs, Ming Bashis and Yuz Bashis, are
usually Moslems. The Begs are the local landowners
and are generally men of considerable influence, and
to them is entrusted the collection of the taxes, the
administration of justice so far as minor cases are
concerned, and the arrangements for forced labour.
The irrigation system is also in the hands of the Begs,
whose subordinates are elected by the cultivators of
the district.
The nomads are administered quite independently
of the provincial governors, by an official generally
known as the Hi Tartar General, who is the acknow-
ledged head of the various tribal organisations.
Their taxes are one-fifteenth of the crop in the case
of those who are engaged in agriculture, and about
the equivalent of three shillings per 100 sheep, or
10 horses, or 5 camels ; cattle are not taxed.
The system sketched above, by which there are
three independent authorities in the province, is bad
enough ; but it is made infinitely worse by the cor-
ruption which prevails, especially in the collection
of the revenue. On the other hand, the taxes are
generally light, and the condition of the people is
one of acquiescence in Chinese domination.
The chief tax levied from the "settled" popu-
lation is on land, which for this purpose is divided
into ' ' well - irrigated ' ' and ' ' white ' ' land. The
survey on which the revenue is raised was that
fixed after the final expulsion of the Khokandis and
Andijanis, when less than one-half of the land now
cultivated was occupied. The tax is light, amounting
to one-tenth for the good land and one-fortieth for
the bad land. It is payable in grain ; but, as the
Chinese officials demand money, the Begs fix the rate
244 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. n
high, and share the difference with their superiors.
By this and other means the land tax is now increased
to about one-fifth of the crop ; but prices have risen
considerably of late years, and when prices rule high
the farmer makes money. Apart from the land tax
revenue is raised from registration of sales of land,
from likin or internal customs, and from taxes on
wine, salt, mills, etc. Labour has also to be pro-
vided for public works and transport for the use of
troops. For the assessment of this impost the unit
of fifteen houses termed a choJca is taken, and each
choha provides a labourer and a cart ; building
material, if required, is partly paid for. Artisans,
who are organized into guilds, are obliged, if required,
to work for Government on five days in each month,
and receive the equivalent of fourpence a day. In
1913 the revenue levied by the Taoyin of Kashgar
was as follows :
Taels.
Land Tax 570,000
Tax on registration of land sales . . . 200,000
Tax on sale of live stock 250,000
Likin . 180,000
Miscellaneous taxes on wine, salt, flour mills 100,000
Taels . . 1,400,000
This sum, with the tael reckoned at 2s. 8d., is equiva-
lent to £186,666. The revenue is all ear-marked for
local expenditure, 800,000 taels, or rather more than
one-half of the entire amount, being absorbed by the
inefficient army, which exists mainly on paper.
The administration of justice is fairly good,
although bribery is not uncommon. As a rule, civil
cases are tried by the Kazis and criminal cases by
the Begs, The Chinese authorities merely supervise,
CH. xn CHINESE TURKESTAN 246
and prefer that all cases, whether criminal or civil,
should be settled out of court. By Chinese law no
punishment can be inflicted without confession of
guilt, and torture is freely administered to secure
this confession. Punishments include beating on
the back of the thighs above the knees, and the
cangue, a board two feet square and weighing thirty
pounds, which is worn round the neck ; and also
imprisonment. Death sentences (which have to be
confirmed at Urumchi) are carried out by hanging,
strangling or beheading.
In this system as a whole, as in the administration
of justice, the Chinese work as far as possible through
the leading inhabitants, while retaining a general
supervision. They are very greedy for money, but
are acute enough to avoid causing too much discon-
tent, and they remove any official who becomes
unpopular. In short, although their system may be
inefficient and aims at no improvements in adminis-
tration or communications, it is believed that the
natives, with their memory of Yakub Beg's tyranny,
would not care to exchange their Chinese rulers for
Moslems.
We come now to the trade of the province, con-
cerning which my remarks refer mainly to the three
cities of Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan. Kashgar,
the residence of the Governor, is not only the chief
town, but the centre of Russian trade. Owing to
its favoured position with regard to the railway at
Audi j an and the wealth of its rich oasis, the city is
increasing in population, which is now estimated at
80,000. Land is rising in price and there is hardly
a vacant house. Yarkand, with 70,000 inhabitants,
is also rich and prosperous, but in a less marked
246 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. n
yy degree, and is the chief centre of the trade with
f India. Khotan, with a population of 50,000, is the
i , centre of the manufacturing activity of the province,
"^ being celebrated for its jade, silk and carpets.
The mainstay of the export trade with India is
the drug known as charas in India, prepared from
the hemp which is planted round the fields of maize ;
raw silk is the next most valuable export. The chief
articles of import from India are muslins, longcloths,
and red cotton prints ; while spices from Southern
India are in great and increasing demand, and
penetrate even to the western provinces of China.
Surat brocades are imported for covering caps and
for women's cloaks, and I have seen some good
specimens of the beautiful cloth of gold.
In no part of Asia are communications more diffi-
cult. The route to India, via Leh, perhaps the highest
and roughest trade route in the world, runs across
range after range of stupendous mountains, culmi-
nating in the Kara Koram, which is crossed by a pass
at the immense height of 18,550 feet. This track is
open for not more than six months in the year, and
the difficulties from storms, avalanches and flooded
rivers are increased by the scantiness of the grazing,
and for some six stages by the entire absence of
villages. This trade with India via Leh is of small
amount, showing a total value of about £200,000 for
1913.
By treaty Eusso-Chinese trade via Irkeshtam or
Narin is free of customs dues. Its value in 1913
was two and a half million roubles, or rather more
than the British total at the pre-war rate of ex-
change, cotton tissues being the most important
article. The Eussian flowered prints with which the
oH.xn CHINESE TUEKESTAN 247
natives are chiefly clothed — only the poorer classes
wearing the dingy white native calico — are artistic,
and make the crowds in the bazar delightfully
picturesque. As may be supposed, the chief articles
of export are raw materials, such as cotton, sheep-
skins, silk and wool ; but there is also a considerable
trade in the local white cloth, which is worn on both
sides of the frontier, and in carpets.
The trade with Afghanistan is local and is mainly
with the province of Badakshan, the imports being
almonds, pistachio and gall-nuts, and the horses which
were famous even in Marco Polo's day. Opium, too,
is smuggled in considerable quantities ; the lapis
lazuli mines are not worked regularly, but occasional
blocks are brought for sale. The Badakshani traders
carry back Eussian piece goods, carpets and the local
white cloth. The route, which runs across the
Wakhijir pass, is open during the summer only, and
the pedlars — for those who use it are little more —
must be a hardy race to withstand its rigours.
CHAPTEE XIII
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CHINESE TURKESTAN:
THE EARLY PERIOD
L'histoire des Turcs occidentaux est comme la clef de voute oh
convergent et se rencontrent pendant quelques ann6es les histoires
particulieres de grandes nations qu'on regarde trop souvent comme
isol6es les unes des autres ; elle nous rappelle que la continuity est la
loi de I'univers et qu'il n'est pas d'anneau qu'on puisse ignorer dans la
chaine infinie dont toutes les parties sont solidaires. — Chavannbs,
Documents sur les Turcs Occidentaux.
The history of Chinese Turkestan presents the
difficulty that until mediaeval times it filled but a
small part on the stage of Asia. On the other hand,
it lay on the highway of the nations, and migrations
from the Far East to the West, which have so deeply
influenced the history of mankind, generally traversed
the Tarim basin, the country to the south being
almost impracticable, and the country to the north
presenting a longer and a more difficult line of
advance. Holding firmly to the belief that history
should be studied as a whole rather than in water-
tight compartments, I have attempted in this sketch
to give some account, not only of events afiecting
Chinese Turkestan but also of their connection with,
and reaction upon, neighbouring states of Asia.
The earliest recorded connection of China with
what is now the province of Chinese Turkestan is the
248
cH.xm CHINESE TUKKESTAN 249
progress of Mon Wang, one of the emperors of the
Chow Dynasty, to a province in the vicinity of the
Kuen Lun mountains which may be identified with
Khotan. This tour is alleged to have taken place
about 1000 B.C., but is possibly legendary, and we
reach firmer ground at the beginning of the third
century B.C., when China, under the Han dynasty,
became a world power. At this period the chief
concern of the ruler was the powerful tribe of the
Hiong-Nu or Huns, which occupied Mongolia. These
ambitious nomads attacked the Yue-chi (known later
as the Indo-Scythians) then inhabiting the north-west
parts of Kansu, Kokonor and the southern half of
the Gobi, and not only defeated but expelled their
enemy, thereby setting in motion a series of human
avalanches, with far-reaching consequences. The
dispossessed Yue-chi crossed the desert to Kucha
and, advancing to the Ili river, subsequently broke
up into two divisions, the Little Yue-chi who moved
into Tibet, and the Great Yue-chi who occupied the
Ili valley and drove the Sakas from Kashgar in
163 B.C. But the Huns, some fifteen or twenty years
later, followed up and again defeated the Yue-chi,
and the latter, fleeing westwards and driving the
Sakas before them, invaded Bactria and, in 120 B.C.,
destroyed its Greek dynasty. They then crossed the
Hindu Kush and carved out an empire in India with
Peshawar as their capital.
The wide outlook of the Han dynasty is demon-
strated by the fact that, between 120 B.C. and 88 B.C.,
missions were despatched across Chinese Turkestan
to distant Parthia, known in China as An-Sih, from
the Chinese form of the name of the royal house of
Arsaces. It is worthy of mention that Mithradates II.
250 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt.h
of Parthia, who received tlie earliest of these missions,
and thereby initiated an intercourse with China
which was invariably peaceful, was also the first
Parthian monarch to receive an embassy from Kome.
Wars with the Huns were a constant preoccupation
of the Chinese until, in the first century B.C., they
began to take most vigorous action in Chinese Tur-
kestan. By 59 B.C. the entire province was conquered
and a strong government was established. In 51 B.C.
the nomads of Central Asia, exhausted by internecine
strife, appealed to China, whose supremacy — so
Chinese historians declare — was acknowledged in
some form, however slight, from the province of
Shensi to the Caspian Sea. Owing to the wide range
of nomadic tribes the statement is not as fantastic
as at first sight it would seem to be.
This vague authority was consolidated in the first
century of our era by the famous warrior Pan Chao,
who in the course of his earlier campaigns steadily
annexed provinces and districts lying to the west of
China. In a.d. 70 he defeated the ruler of Khotan,
and six years later he conquered the entire province
with which we are dealing. According to a local
legend, on one occasion Pan Chao was besieged in
Kashgar and access to the river was cut off, but the
great general rose to the occasion and stamped on
the ground, whereupon springs, still known as '* the
Springs of Pan Chao," gushed out and the army
was saved.
In 88 the Yue-chi, who had assisted Pan Chao
in a campaign against Turf an, sent a tribute of jewels
and lions to China, and demanded a princess of the
Han dynasty as a consort for their ruler ; but this
proceeding was viewed with disfavour by Pan Chao,
CHINESE TURKESTAN 251
and lie arrested the ambassador. The Yue-chi, to
avenge the insult, despatched an army estimated
at 70,000 men across the Pamirs. Broken down by-
hardships, it was defeated with ease, and as the
outcome of further negotiations the Yue-chi con-
tinued to pay tribute to China.
In 91 Pan Chao was appointed General-Protector,
and according to the Chinese historian not only
crossed the Pamirs, but conquered fifteen kingdoms
lying between Kashgar and the Caspian Sea.
Probably what occurred was that he received envoys
from the various nomadic tribes, who agreed to
recognize Chinese suzerainty ; for it is unlikely that a
Chinese army actually marched to the Caspian Sea.
In 97 Pan Chao despatched a certain Kan Ying
on an embassy to visit Parthia and Rome ; but
the envoy, after safely reaching Ctesiphon, was
deterred from the long voyage down the Persian
Gulf, across the Indian Ocean, and up the Red Sea
and the Gulf of Akaba to Aelana, by exaggerated
reports that on the return journey, if the winds were
adverse, the ocean might take two years to cross !
According to the local belief. Pan Chao is buried
inside the present city of Kashgar, on a high mound
which is surmounted by an artistic temple and over-
looks the springs already mentioned.
In time the power of the Celestials waned in
Chinese Turkestan, and we learn from the annals of
the later Hans that at the beginning of the second
century a.d. the ruler of Su-le (as Kashgar was then
termed) was forced to send as a hostage to the king
of the Yue-chi at Peshawar one of his relatives, who
was subsequently placed on the throne of Kashgar.
This piece of history is corroborated by Hiuen Tsiang.
262 THROUGH DESEETS AND OASES pr.n
Under Kanishka, the most celebrated ruler of the
Yue-chi, the tribe regained Kashgar about a.d. 125,^
more than two centuries after their first seizure of
the province — ^truly a remarkable cycle of conquest.
The Huns had recovered their strength at this
period, and in 138, the Chinese Emperor sent a
certain Chang Kien, with a suite numbering one
hundred persons, to open up relations with the
Yue-chi, whom he wished to enlist as allies. Chang
Kien was unfortunately captured by the Huns and
kept prisoner for ten years, after which he escaped
with some of his followers and reached Farghana,
where he was well treated. The Yue-chi had
recently conquered Tokharistan, situated in the
great bend of the Oxus, where the undaunted Chang
Kien at last gained touch with them. As was to
be expected, he found them unwilling to quit their
new conquest in order to undertake a campaign in
the interests of China. Chang Kien finally returned
home with the two surviving members of his mission
and drew up a valuable geographical and ethno-
graphical memoir ; he also introduced the vine into
China. He will ever be famous in the annals of his
country as the first Chinaman who " pierced the
void."
The Yue-chi introduced Buddhism into China
after the conversion of Kanishka to that faith ; they
also undoubtedly brought to India a knowledge of
Chinese civilization, together with the peach and the
pear tree. Moreover, they had intercourse with
Rome both from India and from Central Asia, and
in various ways played a distinguished role until
^ There is considerable uncertainty about this date, which good
authorities give as some decades earlier.
OH. xm CHINESE TURKESTAN 253
they finally succumbed before tlie onslaught of the
White Huns.
About the same time that the Prince of Kashgar
recognized the paramountcy of the Yue-chi the
Uighur tribes in the Turfan and Hami districts re-
volted from China, and for five centuries Chinese
control over the entire province was lost.
Buddhism reached Khotan and Kashgar from
India and thence spread to China. In 399 the
Chinese monk Fa-hien, " deploring the mutilated
and imperfect state of the collection of the Books of
Discipline," set ofi on a long and successful journey
to India, and to him we owe the first detailed
account of the province of Khotan, which was at
this period an important centre of Buddhism.
In the middle of the fifth century, not long after
the journey of Fa-hien, the reigning member of the
Toba Wei dynasty of China despatched an envoy to
Po-sz, as Persia was then termed. The Persian
monarch sent a return mission with a gift of trained
elephants, which the independent Prince of Khotan
detained, but in the end released. In all, ten missions
are recorded as passing between Northern China and
Persia between 455 and 513 ; and reading between
the lines we find clear indications that at this period
there was considerable intercourse between China
and Persia via Khotan.
In 509, envoys from Khotan presented them-
selves at the Chinese Court bearing tribute. In the
annals they are described as follows : " The people
are Buddhists, and their women are in society as
amongst other nations. They braid the hair into
long plaits, and wear pelisses and loose trousers.
The people are very ceremonious and polite, and
254 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pr.n
curtsey on meeting, by bending one knee to the
ground." Except that Buddhism has given place to
Islam, this description, generally speaking, stands
good at the present time.
The next great wave of invasion was that of the
Juan Juan, a tribe newly appearing on the stage of
Manchuria. Gathering Turks and Mongols to their
banners, the Juan Juan destroyed the Hiong-Nu, who
were probably weakened by emigrations westward,
and about 460 swept across Chinese Turkestan
like a devastating tornado, without making any
attempt at permanent conquest. The Hoa or White
Huns, a vassal tribe, subsequently threw off their
allegiance to the Juan Juan and founded an em-
pire on the ruins of that of the Yue-Chi, embracing
most of Chinese Turkestan to the east, but having
its centre in the middle Oxus, whence for many
generations it seriously threatened the existence of
the Persian Empire.
In the middle of the sixth century the empire of
the " White Huns " in its turn succumbed to the
attack of the Western Turks, the Tu-chueh of the
Chinese, who were organized in a confederacy of
ten tribes. From the centre of this new power,
which lay in the rich valleys to the north of the
Tian Shan, the Paramount Chiefs ruled over a vast
empire, leaving the states subject to their sway to be
governed by their hereditary rulers, under the control
of Turkish collectors of tribute.
Such was the state of the province we are dealing
with when the great traveller Hiuen Tsiang passed
through the empire of the Western Turks in 630.
His meeting with the Paramount Chief is described
by his biographer. In that very year this chief was
CH. xm CHINESE TUKKESTAN 255
assassinated. His death was a signal for the break-
up of the confederacy of the ten tribes, and for
Chinese Turkestan it was the end of a well-defined
period.
A new epoch opened with the establishment of
the Tang dynasty in China early in the seventh
century, and during the reign of its founder the
invasions of the Northern Turks made him in the
first instance seek the help of the Western Turks.
The Chinese dynasty, however, rapidly became
strong, and the year 630 not only marked the
downfall of the Western but also the subjugation
of the Northern Turks, and China once again
found herself in a position to recover her lost
western provinces. With this end in view a Chinese
army crossed the great desert in 640 and occupied
Turfan, and later on Karashahr and Kucha. The
King of Khotan, presumably alarmed by these
successes, returned to his allegiance, the tradition of
which had probably not been forgotten, and the
annexation of the entire province to China was
secured in 658 by a victory won on the banks
of the Ili over the revolted Paramount Chief. By
this final triumph the existence of the Western Turks
as a power came to an end, and China succeeded to
their vast empire, which extended southwards across
the Hindu Kush to Kabul and westwards to the
borders of Persia.
At this period Chinese Turkestan was known as
the " Four Garrisons," the reference being to the
forces stationed at Kucha, Khotan, Karashahr and
Kashgar, because Chinese power was based on this
quadrilateral. Not that it remained unchallenged;
for the Tibetans seized the province in 670 and
256 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pr.n
retained possession of it until 692, wlien the Chinese
reoccupied it in force.
The consolidation of Chinese dominion in the west
opened the way for the almost simultaneous intro-
duction of Christianity and Zoroastrianism into
China and Chinese Turkestan. The first Nestorian
missionary reached China with sacred books and
images in 635 ; and Yule ^ shows how the Nestorian
sees of China formed part of a wide -spreading
ecclesiastical system controlled by the Patriarchal
see in Persia. The recent discovery of Nestorian
cemeteries west of the Issik Kul, with dates ranging
from 858 to 1339, throws interesting light on the
fact that Kashgar is shown as a Nestorian see in the
middle of the thirteenth century. In 621, a few
years before the introduction of Christianity, the
first Fire Temple was erected in China, and we learn
from Chavannes that the Zoroastrian cult existed at
Kashgar, Khotan and Samarcand.
A new and bewildering factor had now to be
reckoned with in the rise of Islam ; for its conquering
spirit, which so profoundly affected the Near and
Middle East and Northern Africa, even approached
the confines of the distant Chinese empire. Yezdi-
gird III., the last Persian monarch of the Sasanian
dynasty, implored China for aid against the invading
Arabs, but received the reply that Persia was too
distant for help to be sent. Subsequently a son of
the hapless Sasanian took refuge with the Chinese,
but his attempt to win back the throne of his ances-
tors failed utterly. In 655, three years after the
murder of Yezdigird at Merv, the Arabs despatched
an embassy to China and thus opened up direct
^ Cathay and the Way Thither, vol. i. p. 101 (Cordier edition).
CH. xm CHINESE TURKESTAN 257
communication with the Celestial Empire, whose
frontier officials must have watched their advance
with apprehension.
The great Arab conqueror of Central Asia was
Kutayba ibn Muslim, who made his headquarters at
Merv, and, in a series of campaigns waged for a
decade, subdued Bokhara, Samarcand and Farghana.
About 715 he actually raided as far as Kashgar,
described by the Arab historian as " a city near the
Chinese frontier." A curious legend of this campaign
has been preserved, according to which Kutayba
swore to take possession of the soil of China, and the
ruler enabled him to fulfil his oath by the gift of a
load of soil to trample on, a bag of Chinese money to
symbolize tribute, and four youths to be stamped
with his seal. Two years later the Arabs and
Tibetans, taking advantage of the rebellion of the
Western Turks, again penetrated into the '' Four
Garrisons." This was the farthest east reached by
the Arab armies, and the exploit is a signal proof of
their marvellous initiative and warlike prowess.
Based on their garrison in Chinese Turkestan, the
Chinese mainly devoted their energies to preventing
the Tibetans from stretching out their hands to the
Arabs through Gilgit and Yasin, in which districts
the Celestials built forts ; and we read of more than
one campaign successfully conducted in these ice-
bound highlands in pursuance of this policy. But
the power of China in this distant province was
short-lived. One of her generals, who had success-
fully conducted two campaigns to the south of the
Hindu Kush, treacherously seized and put to death
the tributary King of Tashkent. Under this king's
son the country rose, the Arabs were called in, and the
258 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES px. n
Chinese, owing to the defection of their native allies,
were annihilated. A few years later internal troubles
broke out in China, and the Tibetans, taking full
advantage of them, overran the province of Kansu
and interrupted communications with the heart of
the Empire. About this time, too, in 751, a Chinese
army 30,000 strong was annihilated in the Gobi,
The deserted officials with consummate skill main-
tained Chinese authority for a whole generation after
being thus cut off from China, as the Chinese
traveller Wu Kung testifies. Returning home by
way of the " Four Garrisons " after a long residence
in India, he reached Kashgar in 786 ; and, remaining
in the province for a considerable period, noted that
everywhere he found Chinese governors. By 791,
however, the Tibetans had destroyed this paper
government, and their own, which took its place,
and at one time even threatened their old allies the
Arabs, lasted until, in turn, it was broken by the
Uighurs. The complete disappearance of China from
the scene marks the end of another period in the
history of the province.
The Uighurs, whose ancestors claimed descent from
the Huns, originally lived in north-west Mongolia
and, when they were expelled by the Hakas from
their homeland, two of their sections founded states
in the eastern Tian Shan. A third section, with
which we are more especially concerned, broke the
power of the Tibetans about 860 and became the
masters of Kashgar, although Khotan remained
independent for some years. The rulers of this
section of the Uighurs — known also as the Karluks
or Karakhani — were termed the Ilak Khans, and
the part they played on the stage of Central Asia
CH. xm CHINESE TUEKESTAN 259
was important. The career of these Uighurs was
chequered, as in 840 Karakoram, their capital, was
captured by the Kirghiz and their Paramount
Chief was killed. This led to the dispersal of the
tribe but not to its downfall, as Bishbaligh, the
modern Urumchi, was occupied about this period
and remained one of their chief centres for many-
centuries. They held sway under the designation of
the Arslan or '' Lion " Khans for many generations,
and in the notices of the various embassies exchanged
with China there is evidence that a comparatively
high stage of civilization was reached in the country.
Indeed their culture influenced Central Asia more
than that of any other race, the script of the Mongols
being adopted from the Uighurs, who in their turn
had learnt it from the Manichaeans, or perhaps from
the Nestorians.
The remarkable growth of the Persian creed of
Manichaeism in Central Asia is closely connected
with the Uighurs, whose chief became a convert to
this faith in the eighth century. Among the manu-
scripts discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in the course
of his excavations is a book of their omens, which
makes curious reading : "A gambler staked his son
and his servants. He went away after having won
the hazardous game. Without losing his son and his
servants, he won again ninety stray sheep. His son
and his attendants all rejoice. Know ye this. This
is good." And again : '' An old ox was being eaten
by ants, by their gnawing around its body. It stands
without being able to move. Know ye this. This is
bad." Manichaeans took part in the Uighur embassy
sent to China in 806 and their religion existed in
Chinese Turkestan until the thirteenth century.
260 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
FT. n
The movement in favour of conversion to Islam
began in Chinese Turkestan in the middle of the
tenth century of our era, Boghra ^ Khan, a scion of
the Karluk stock, being the first convert. The legend,
as given in the fantastic hagiology known as the
Tazkirat or " Chronicles of Boghra," runs that the
young Satok Boghra Khan, at the age of twelve,
was secretly converted by a certain Abu Nasr,
Samani. His stepfather, who was the reigning
monarch, suspected this, and, in order to test his
fidelity to the old religion, invited him to help in
laying the foimdation-stone of a new idol-temple.
In despair the young prince sought the advice of
Abu Nasr, who replied that, if he worked with the
intention of building a mosque, he would obtain
merit in the presence of Allah and be delivered from
the evil designs of the infidels. Having escaped this
danger, the young convert decided to make an end
of his stepfather, and breaking into his apartment by
night, he awoke him, being unwilling to kill a sleeping
man. The monarch refused to accept Islam at the
point of his nephew's sword, but upon the prayer of
Satok the earth opened and swallowed up the infidel,
whose fate resembled that of Korah. As the chronicle
runs : '' The earth devoured Harun Boghra Khan,
and he was not."
Satok Boghra Khan enjoyed considerable power
and captured Bokhara. His last campaign was
undertaken against Turfan, where in 993 he fell ill and
whence he was carried back, a dying man, to Kashgar.
His son and successor, Hasan, is known to history
^ Boghra signifies a male camel — ^names of animals being used by-
Turks as tribal names. It is an interesting form of totemism ; vide " La
Legende de Satok Boghra et I'histoire," Journ. Asiat, Jan.-Fev. 1900,
pp. 24 et seq.
OH. xm CHINESE TURKESTAN 261
as having ended the Samanid dynasty by the capture
of Abdul Malik. In Chinese Turkestan he is still
better known for having waged a desperate campaign
with the " infidel " Prince of Khotan, whom he
defeated ; not, however, without first suffering a
disaster, in which Ali Arslan, his nephew and the
Kashgar champion, was killed. The body of the
latter is buried on the field of battle at Ordam
Padshah, to the east of Yangi Hissar, but his head
is preserved at a shrine, in the Dolat Bagh, near
Kashgar. A few years later both Hasan and his
brother were killed by the Princes of Khotan, but
this province, after a series of campaigns lasting
twenty-four years, was ultimately annexed to Kash-
gar. From this period what we now call Chinese
Turkestan was definitely occupied by the Turks.
Turki became the universal language ; and Grenard
aptly draws attention to the fact that the oldest
Kashgar book which has reached us, and which dates
from 1068, is written in a pure Turki dialect.
In 1125 a new dynasty made its appearance
in the Tarim basin. Yelui Tashi, a near relation of
the head of the Kara Khitai or Leao dynasty of
China, realizing that his position in the homeland
was hopeless in view of the military superiority of
the Nuchens, who subsequently founded the Kin
dynasty, decided in that year to seek his fortune
elsewhere. Collecting a force in Shensi, he marched
into the valley of the Tarim and annexed it, thereby
ending the dynasty of the Ilak Khans. He next
invaded Western Turkestan, upon which he imposed
an annual tribute of 20,000 pieces of gold, and later
he assumed the title of Gur Khan or '' Universal
Lord." He died in 1136. His successor, in alliance
262 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
with Atsiz of Khwarazm or Khiva, inflicted a crushing
defeat on the great Seljuk, Sultan Sanjar, in 1141.
The Seljuk losses were estimated at one hundred
thousand, and the Kara Khitai temporarily occupied
Merv and Nishapur.
It is of special interest, as illustrating the wide
range of Sadi's travels, to note that the great Persian
poet visited Kashgar at this period. He commences
one of his stories as follows : " In a certain year
Mohamed Khwarazm Shah, for some good reason,
chose to make peace with Cathay. I entered the
chief mosque of Kashgar and saw a boy with beauty
of the most perfect symmetry," etc.
In 1200 the tables were turned on the Gur Khan by
Mohamed of Khwarazm, who was joined by Guchluk
son of the Naiman chief whose defeat by Chengiz
is recounted in the next chapter. Escaping from the
field, he arrived, after great privations, at the court
of the Gur Khan, where he was treated kindly,
received a daughter of the monarch in marriage,
and was converted to Buddhism. But, with base
ingratitude, he gradually collected a force of his
tribesmen, and with Mohamed of Khwarazm and
the Prince of Samarcand formed a plot against his
benefactor. The nefarious scheme was successful,
and by 1212 the Gur Khan was a prisoner, and
the usurper ruled over the Tarim basin. During
the few years of his power he persecuted the
followers of Islam and massacred the mullas at
Khotan, hanging their leader head downwards from
a tree in front of the chief mosque. But the reign
of this detestable traitor was short, and the avenger
of the Gur Khan was at hand.
CHAPTER XIV
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CHINESE TURKESTAN:
THE MEDIAEVAL AND LATER PERIOD
Cascar constituted a ELingdom in former days^ but now is subject
to the Great Kaan. The people worship Mohamed. There are a
good number of towns and villages, but the greatest and finest is Cascar
itself. The inhabitants live by trade and handicrafts ; they have
beautiful gardens and vineyards, and fine estates, and grow a great
deal of cotton. . . . There are in this country many Nestorian Chris-
tians, who have churches of their own. — Marco Polo.
The rise of the Mongols from the position of despised
tributaries of the Kin dynasty to that of lords of
Asia and Eastern Europe is among the greatest
events in history. Chengiz Khan, the organizing
genius who welded tribes, with their constant feuds,
raids and petty wars, into a single vast, obedient
army, was born in 1162. When a boy of thirteen
he succeeded to the confederacy built up by his
father Yissugay, and for many years he suffered the
vicissitudes of fortune that were usual in those times
and circumstances ; among them being capture by
his enemies. After these early difficulties, we hear
of the youthful chieftain serving the Kin Emperor
and attacking with success the Buyr Nur Tartars
who had killed his father.
Among his allies were the Keraits, a Nestorian
Christian tribe whose chief, Toghril, better known as
V
264 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
PT. n
the Wang Khan, was probably the original subject
of the stories associated with Prester John, the
fabulous monarch renowned in mediaeval Europe.
In 1199 the two chiefs attacked the powerful Naiman
tribe of Christians which occupied the country to
the north of the Tian Shan, but the campaign
was unsuccessful owing to the treachery of the
Kerait leader, who drew off his troops at a critical
moment. Three years later Wang Khan actually
attacked and worsted the Mongols, but this defeat
was avenged by Chengiz, who surprised him by a
night attack. Wang Khan fled to the Naiman, by
whom he was put to death. The results of this
encounter were important, since it gave Chengiz
control of the southern part of the present province
of Mongolia.
His next campaign was directed against the
Naiman. The two forces met to the north of the
Tian Shan, and the result was a decisive victory
for Chengiz, who thereby subjugated the Naimans
and their allies. The Naiman king was carried out
of the battle mortally wounded, but his son Guchluk
escaped to Chinese Turkestan and took refuge with
the Gur Khan, whose hospitality he abused as men-
tioned in the previous chapter.
In 1218 Chengiz invaded Chinese Turkestan and
detached a force of 20,000 men from the main body
to attack Guchluk. The latter fled without attempt-
ing to fight for his throne, but was overtaken in the
wilds of Badakshan and put to death. The Mongol
general proclaimed freedom of worship, which was
one of the few benefits conferred by these nomad
rulers. Through their influence, too, the position of
Moslem women was considerably raised in Central
CH. XIV CHINESE TURKESTAN 265
Asia, where it is still relatively high. Later on
commerce prospered, owing to the removal of the
boundaries of states, and during the second half
of the thirteenth century the illustrious Venetian,
Marco Polo, traversed the province from the Pamirs
to Kashgar, from that city to Yarkand and Khotan,
and thence to China.
Chengiz Khan divided his dominions among his
four sons. To Chagatai, his second son, was assigned
Transoxiana as a centre, with appanages in every
direction ; Eastern Turkestan, Hi, Tibet, Ladak,
Badakshan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Bokhara
being all included in his wide-spreading kingdom.
Chagatai was a follower of Buddha, and his rule was
both vigorous and tolerant. His capital was at
Almaligh, near the modern Kulja, where he led a
nomad's life remote from the great cities of Samar-
cand and Bokhara. He bestowed Eastern Turkestan
on the Dughlat family, and its chiefs became heredi-
tary rulers of the province. Early in the fourteenth
century a permanent division was made, Moghulistan ^
being separated from Transoxiana. For the former
kingdom a Mongol prince, Isan Bugha, was elected
and set on the throne, which he occupied until his
death in 1330. His successor, after an interval of
anarchy, was his son Tughluk Timur, whose mother,
while pregnant with him, had, on account of the
jealousy of the head wife, been married to a noble-
man and sent away from the Court. Owing to
this it was not even known whether a son or a
daughter had been born to the Khan until the
head of the Dughlat tribe despatched a confidential
^ This province generally signifies the country lying to the north of
the Tian Shan, but, as used in the text, the term includes the whole of
the eastern division of the Khanate,
266 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
servant, who ascertained the facts and brought back
the youth, then sixteen years of age.
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi, the sole important literary
work produced in Eastern Turkestan,^ opens with
the following sentence, which merits quotation :
'' One day, when Tughluk Timur Khan was feeding
his dogs with swine's flesh, Shaykh Jamal-u-Din was
brought into his presence. The Khan said to the
Shaykh, ' Are you better than this dog or is the dog
better than you ? ' The Shaykh replied, ' If I have
faith I am the better of the two, but if I have no faith,
this dog is better than I am.' The Khan was much
impressed by these words, and a great love for Islam
took possession of his heart." His conversion did
not take place during the Shaykh's lifetime, but was
accomplished by a Maulana or " Master," a small,
weak man in appearance, who, when challenged,
smote the Champion of the Infidels senseless. This
seemingly miraculous blow resulted in 160,000 persons
becoming Moslems, and by the end of the fourteenth
century Islam had supplanted Buddhism generally
throughout Eastern Turkestan.
Tughluk Timur's first capital was Aksu, but later
he selected Kashgar, and his chief claim to distinction
is his connection with the great Tamerlane. At this
period the western division of Chagatai's kingdom,
which was ruled by puppet Khans, had fallen into
a state of anarchy. Tughluk Timur accordingly
determined to annex it, and in 1360 crossed the
frontier at the head of an army. The chief of the
Barlas tribe was defeated and fled to Khorasan, but
his nephew Timur, destined to become famous as
^ The writer was Mirza Haider, Gurkhan, who wrote a history of his
ancestors, and also graphically described the events in which he some-
times played a leading part.
CB, xrv CHINESE TUEKESTAN 267
Tamerlane, saved the situation by timely submis-
sion, and was received into favour.
On the death of Tughluk Timur in 1363 Tamerlane
drove out his son, who died shortly afterwards, and
the throne of Kashgar was usurped by Amir Kamar-
u-Din, of the Dughlat tribe.
In 1375, hearing that Moghulistan was weakened
by disorders, Tamerlane decided to invade it. In
the chronicle known as the Zafar Nama an inter-
esting account is given of this campaign. At the
outset the weather was terribly severe : "No one
ever yet saw so much snow ; the world looked like
a morsel in the snow's mouth." But Jahangir, the
invader's eldest son, defeated the enemy, who had
taken refuge in deep ravines. Kamar-u-Din escaped,
but his wife and daughter were captured, and Tamer-
lane married the latter and ended the campaign with
festivities. He invaded Moghulistan altogether five
times, the valley of the Yulduz being the meeting-
place of his armies, and Eastern Turkestan suffered
terribly from these raids, in the course of which the
country was laid waste.
In 1392 Kamar-u-Din died, and a son of Tughluk
Timur, who had been leading a wandering life,
hidden by his attendants, at first in the Pamirs,
then in the Kuen Lun, and finally in the wild Lob
Nor region, was set on the throne, and concluded a
peace with Tamerlane.
Tamerlane's last projected campaign against China
would have led across Moghulistan, and the Khan
was much perturbed by orders to sow large tracts of
land with corn and to collect thousands of head of
cattle for the use of the army. But one day '' they
saw advancing rapidly a man mounted on a black
268 THEOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
horse and clothed in white robes. The chamberlains
ran up from every side to try to stop him in his
course, but he did not slacken his speed till he came
up to where the Khan was standing. Then he called
out in a loud voice, ' Amir Timur is no more ; he
has died at Otrar ! ' Many horsemen were sent
after him, but none could overtake him." The news
announced in this dramatic fashion was confirmed
forty-five days later. The ' ' Scourge of God ' ' had died
on February 4, 1405, and the country was thereby
saved from being eaten up by the vast armies which
he would have led on this distant campaign.
It is interesting to note that in 1420 Amir
Khudadad, the then ruler, entertained the embassy
despatched by Shah Eukh, the celebrated successor
of Tamerlane, to the Emperor of China. The outward
route of the ambassadors ran by Samarcand and
Tashkent and thence to the north of the Tian Shan by
Yulduz to Turfan, the return route passing through
Khotan and Kashgar. The autograph letters of
Shah Rukh are still extant, and the description of
the journey given by one of the envoys is delight-
fully vivid.
We learn a good deal about Eastern Turkestan
during the early part of the sixteenth century
through Mirza Haidar's description of the career
of Sultan Said, whose service he entered. This
ruler, unable to face the Uzbegs, whose power
had become formidable, decided in 1514 to forsake
Andijan and to attack Aba Bakr, of the Dughlat
tribe, who ruled at Kashgar and Yarkand. The
expedition was a complete success and re-established
the Moghul dynasty, Aba Bakr being murdered
while fleeing to Ladak. Sultan Said invaded Badak-
TAMERLANE.
Page 268.
OH. XIV CHINESE TURKESTAN 269
shan, Ladak and Kashmir during the next two
decades, and died from the effects of the rarefication
of the atmosphere on his way back from Ladak,
near the celebrated Karakoram Pass. Eashid Khan,
who gave his name to the history, succeeded to the
throne and ruled for some years with much cruelty.
After his death his sons divided their heritage, and
the country relapsed into anarchy.
Under the later Chagatai Khans, Islam recovered
from the set-back it had received from the invasions
of Chengiz Khan and his immediate successors,
thanks mainly to the influence of Bokhara and
Samarcand, which had become important centres of
Moslem learning. During the reign of Rashid Khan,
the celebrated saint Sayyid Khoja Hasan, more
generally known as Makhdum-i-Azam or " The
Great Master," visited Kashgar from Samarcand
and was received with extraordinary honours. The
saint's sons settled at Kashgar, where their father
had married a wife and had received rich estates,
and gradually established a theocracy, laying upon
the necks of the submissive, apathetic people a heavy
yoke which they still bear. In course of time two
parties were formed whose influence on the subse-
quent history of the country has been profound.
The supporters of the elder son were termed Ak
Taulin or '' White Mountaineers," from the name
of the range behind Artush, their headquarters,
whereas the supporters of the younger were known
as Kara Taulin or '* Black Mountaineers," from
the hills near Khan Arik. Both parties of Khojas.
as they were termed, aimed at political supremacy
and intrigued with any external power that appeared
likely to favour their ambitions.
270 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
In 1603 the famous Portuguese monk Benedict
Goez reached Yarkand and was honourably received
by its ruler, to whose mother he had lent money at
Kabul. The Prince repaid the debt in jade, which
the traveller sold to great advantage during his
onward journey.
We now come to the rise of the Zungars or Kalmuks,
a Mongol race which then dwelt in Hi and the sur-
rounding districts. Under Khan Haldan Bokosha,
one of the outstanding figures of the period, their
power stretched northwards to Siberia and south-
wards to Kucha, Karashahr and Kunya-Turfan ;
but Haldan rebelled against the Chinese and was
decisively beaten.
His nephew and successor, Tse Wang Rabdan,
ruled from Hami on the east to Khokand on the
west, and, until his murder in 1727, was the most
powerful of Zungarian rulers. The Torgut Mongols
from fear of him fl.ed to the banks of the Volga. Sir
Henry Howorth gives an interesting account of the
relations between Tse Wang and the Russians, from
which it appears that Peter the Great, attracted by
rumours of gold in Eastern Turkestan, despatched a
body of 3000 men up the Irtish with Yarkand as
their objective; but the Zungars assailed the column
and forced it to retire.
To return to the Khoja family, its most celebrated
member was Hidayat UUa, known as Hazrat Apak
or '' His Highness the Presence," head of the Ak
Taulins, who was regarded as a Prophet second
only to Mohamed. Expelled from Kashgar he took
refuge at Lhassa, where the Dalai Lama befriended
him and advised him to seek the aid of the Zungars.
In 1678 the Jatter seized Kashgar, which remained
CHINESE TUKKESTAN 271
in their power for many years, and Hazrat Apak
ruled as the deputy of the Khan, paying tribute
equivalent to £62,000 per annum. In his old age
the saint retired from the world to end his days
among his disciples.
Some years later internal disorders enabled Amur-
sana, one of the Zungar chiefs, to declare himself
and his tribe Chinese subjects, and to persuade other
tribes to follow his example ; he also induced Kashgar
to tender allegiance to the Chinese. It was the
policy of the Emperor Keen Lung to reconquer Hi
and Eastern Turkestan for the Celestial Empire ;
and in 1755 he despatched an army 150,000 strong,
which met with little resistance and enabled him to
consolidate the allegiance tendered through Amur-
sana, who was appointed Paramount Chief. The
Zungar soon tired of Chinese rule and massacred a
detachment of the Celestial forces ; but the Chinese
reoccupied Zungaria in 1757, and in the following
year crushed the tribe. Kulja was founded on the
site of the Zungarian capital, and the modern name of
Hsin-Chiang or the " New Province " was formally
bestowed on the reconquered countries.
The Chinese, realizing their numerical weakness,
settled soldiers and landless men in the fertile districts
of the '' New Province," to which they also deported
criminals and political prisoners, among the latter
being Tunganis deported from Kansu and Shensi.
Chinese rule was evidently less harsh than Russian ;
for in 1771 the Torgut Mongols to the number of
100,000 families fled back to the Hi valley from
the banks of the Volga, as narrated in dramatic
fashion by De Quincey.
The prestige of China after her splendid successes
272 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES px. n
was naturally very high and led to further acquisi-
tions. First the Middle and then the Little Horde
of Kirghiz, in spite of their connection with Russia,
offered their submission ; it was accepted, and the
rulers of Khokand, Baltistan, and Badakshan fol-
lowed suit.
The Khans of Central Asia were alarmed by this
display of Chinese power, and formed a confederacy,
headed by Ahmad Khan, the Amir of Afghanistan,
who despatched an embassy to Peking to demand the
surrender of Chinese Turkestan on the ground that
it was inhabited by Moslems. Receiving an unsatis-
factory reply, the Afghan Amir was careful not to
attack the Chinese, but contented himself with
holding Badakshan in force ; and soon afterwards
the confederacy broke up.
Chinese exactions both in taxation and in forced
labour for the erection of cantonments now became
very heavy, and many of the oppressed peasants
fled to Andijan, where they formed a party of mal-
contents, who awaited their opportunity.
The first attempt to expel the Chinese was made
in 1822 by Jahangir, the Khoja, who, supported by
the Kirghiz, raided Kashgar, but was repulsed, and
retreated to the country south of Issik Kul, where he
defeated a Chinese expedition. In 1826 he again
tried to win Kashgar, and this time with success.
Enormous forces were organized for its recovery, and
after a trial by champions, in which a Kalmuk archer
defeated a Khokandian armed with a musket, the
Chinese won the day, and Jahangir was captured and
put to death. Confiscations and executions followed,
and 12,000 Moslem families were deported to Hi
and settled as serfs under the name of Tarantchis.
CH. XIV CHINESE TURKESTAN 273
Forts, too, were built at all important centres and
Chinese authority seemed to be stronger than ever.
As a further precaution a blockade was declared
against Khokand. The Khan, resenting this policy
and using Yusuf, the brother of Jahangir, as a
puppet, invaded the province in 1830, but was
forced to return to defend his own country against
an invasion from Bokhara.
In the following year the Chinese made peace
with Khokand, bestowing valuable privileges on the
Khan, including a yearly subsidy of £3600, in return
for which he was pledged to prevent hostile expedi-
tions ; he was also granted entire control of his sub-
jects in Chinese Turkestan, to be exercised through
Ahsakals or "Elders" of their own nationality.
The term AUi Shahr, or ''Six Cities," now began
to be applied to the western part of the province,
which was specially affected by the treaty.
In 1846, the result of the British operations against
China and the weakness of that empire becoming
known, the sons of Jahangir attempted another
expedition, headed by Ishan Khan Khoja, known as
Katta Tura, or " Great Lord," who was the moving
spirit among the brothers. Kashgar was captured
by treachery ; but the tyranny of the victors alienated
the province, and the Chinese garrison at Yarkand
was strong enough to expel the motley gathering of
Kirghiz and Khokandi adventurers, in whose wake
some 20,000 families left their homes and crossed
the Terek Dawan in mid-winter.
A decade later another attempt was made by Wali
Khan Khoja, who occupied Kashgar in 1857 and
massacred the Chinese. Surrounding himself with
fanatical Khokandis, he ill-treated and oppressed the
274 THKOUGH DESERTS AKD OASES pt. n
population, enforcing five daily attendances at the
mosques, by means of cruel punishments, and forbid-
ding the time-honoured custom of plaiting the hair ;
he also barbarously murdered the German traveller
Adolph Schlagintweit. Thanks to his unpopularity
the Chinese army which attacked the usurper met
with no resistance, and the Khoja fled back to
Andijan, followed, it is said, by some fifteen thou-
sand families. But probably all these numbers are
exaggerated.
A new figure was now about to appear on the stage,
through whose action Chinese Turkestan was opened
up to Great Britain and Russia. We may therefore
fitly end the second section of this historical sketch
before describing the kingdom founded by Yakub
Beg.
CHAPTER XV
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF CHINESE TURKESTAN :
THE MODERN PERIOD
The soldiers of the Atalik in the Six Cities were many ; gold-
embroidered turbans and silk cloaks were the instruments of death
for these dainty warriors. — From a Kashgar Ballad.
By way of introduction to this chapter some refer-
ence to the Khanates of Central Asia is called for.
Half a century ago little or no accurate information
on the subject was obtainable in England; for,
although a brilliant band of British officers had
penetrated to remote Bokhara and Khiva before the
middle of the nineteenth century, the Kianates of
the Sir Daria were beyond their ken.
With Russia it was otherwise. She was drawn
forward mainly, perhaps, by the ambitions of her
frontier officers but also by the desirability of
controlling the raiders of the steppe. The Russian
columns met with little serious opposition, being
materially aided in their advance southwards by the
Sir Daria, which not only provided drinking water,
but to a certain extent helped to solve the difficult
problems of supply and transport.
Russia reached the Sea of Aral and the mouth of
the Sir Daria in 1847 and erected two forts, one in
a harbour of that sea and the other at the mouth
276
276 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
of the river. This forward step brought her into
hostile contact with the state of Khokand, whose
rulers bitterly resented the appearance of the North-
ern Power in an area where they had hitherto been
unchallenged. But Russia was not to be denied.
In 1849 the advance up the great river was begun,
the first outpost of Khokand being captured in that
year ; and four years later Ak Masjid, situated 220
miles up the Sir Daria, was taken. The Crimean
War paralysed Russian activity for some years, but
in 1865 Tashkent was captured and the territory
lying between the Sea of Aral and the Issik Kul
was formed into the frontier province of Turkestan.
Having very briefly traced the advance of Russia
to this point, we turn to Khokand, where a move-
ment originated which profoundly influenced Chinese
Turkestan and the adjacent countries. At this
point some account must be given of Yakub Beg, an
adventurer destined to play a leading part on the
stage of Chinese Turkestan. The future Amir was
born near Tashkent in 1820, his father, who claimed
to be descended from Tamerlane, being a kazi or
judge. At the age of twenty-five we find Yakub
Beg a chamberlain in the service of the youthful
Khudayar Khan, who was placed on the throne of
Khokand by the Kapchak chief, Mussalman Kuli.
Yakub's sister married the Kapchak governor of
Tashkent, and Yakub, mainly through his influence,
was appointed Governor of Ak Masjid, which fort he
stubbornly but unsuccessfully defended against the
Russians. In 1858 Mussalman Kuli was barbarously
executed by his ungrateful master, and the Kapchak
and Kirghiz united to expel Khudayar in favour of
his eldest brother, whom they set on the throne.
CH. XV CHINESE TURKESTAN 277
Yakub tendered his services to the new Khan, who
was assassinated two years later, whereupon Khu-
dayar returned to the throne and took Yakub into
favour once again. But that treacherous official soon
deserted Khudayar in favour of Shah Murad Khan,
another claimant to the throne. He was ordered by
his new master to hold Khojand, but being threatened
by a Bokharan force he surrendered his charge and
joined the invaders. Later, Yakub Beg fought the
Kussians before Tashkent in 1864, when General
Chernaieff, after the fall of Chimkent, failed in his
attempt to capture the city by a coup de main.
At this juncture the envoys of Sadik Beg, a
Kirghiz chief, brought news of an anti- Chinese
revolt in Kashgar and asked for a scion of the Khoja
family to lead it. Buzurg Khan, last surviving son
of Jahangir, who lived in Khokand, was accordingly
approached. He readily embraced the opportunity
and appointed Yakub Beg to command the tiny
body of sixty followers which constituted his entire
military force, the Khan of Khokand being naturally
averse from parting with his soldiers in face of the
imminent Kussian menace.
The little party of adventurers crossed the Tian
Shan in mid-winter without encountering any opposi-
tion, and in January 1865 reached the neighbourhood
of Kashgar. Meanwhile Sadik Beg had repented of
the invitation given to the Khoja prince, and pointed
out that the Chinese were sure to reconquer Kash-
gar, where they would exact stem retribution. But
Yakub Beg, moulded in the school of adversity,
disregarded the warning and insisted on entering
Kashgar, where Buzurg Khan was received with
enthusiasm and proclaimed Khan. The new ruler,
278 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES
FT. n
who was cowardly, idle and dissolute, immediately
became immersed in sensual pleasures, and Yakub
Beg was left to deal with the difficulties of the
situation, which were almost overwhelming.
In the first place Sadik Beg soon changed his
attitude and, from being an ally, became an open
enemy. Hostilities therefore commenced, which,
mainly through the personal exertions of Yakub
Beg, ended in the defeat of the Kirghiz chief, who
fled to Tashkent.
Kashgar having been made fairly safe by this
action, albeit the Chinese held the cantonment with
a force 7000 strong, Yakub Beg decided to attack
Yangi Hissar and Yarkand. He reached the latter
city with a small force, leaving troops to invest
Yangi Hissar ; but the dominant Khojas were
hostile to his pretensions and were strong enough to
drive him back to Yangi Hissar. Nothing daunted,
the indomitable adventurer, with the aid of reinforce-
ments from Kashgar, pressed the siege of the Chinese
cantonment at Yangi Hissar and finally captured
and put to death its garrison of 2000 men. He
followed up this success by enlisting the services of
Sadik Beg, who had again appeared on the scene,
and also of a force from Badakshan.
But his new allies were only half-hearted, and
when he was attacked by a large force of Tunganis
from Maralbashi he could only rely on his own
followers. The action, which was fought outside
Yangi Hissar, was nearly lost owing to the defection
of the Kirghiz and Badakshanis, but Yakub Beg
stood his ground firmly and won a well-earned
victory, the immediate fruits of which included the
submission of Yarkand.
CHINESE TURKESTAN 279
The scene now shifts back to Kashgar, where the
Chinese garrison surrendered and was enrolled in the
army of Yakub Beg as " New Mussulman " ; but the
Amban, imitating the fine example of his colleague
at Yarkand, blew up himself and his followers in
the fort. Yakub Beg married the beautiful daughter
of the Chinese general, and was much influenced by
this wife, who bore him many children.
For a short time it seemed as if all would go well,
but the Tunganis who had surrendered decided on
a final bid for power at Yarkand and treacherously
attacked Yakub Beg. Buzurg Khan, too, at this
juncture deserted his general, whose position ap-
peared desperate ; but again Yakub Beg's remarkable
courage saved the situation. He imposed his will on
the Tunganis by attacking and capturing Yarkand ;
then, marching on Kashgar, he defeated Buzurg
Khan, who had declared him a rebel. As a sequel to
this victory Buzurg Khan was deposed and finally
expelled, and Yakub Beg assumed the powers of his
master. His position was recognized by the Amir
of Bokhara, who in 1866 conferred, upon him the
title of Atalik Ghazi or the '' Champion Father " ;
but, on the other hand, he had to reckon with
the constant jealousy and hostility of neighbouring
Khokand, which was continually inflamed by Russia.
The capture of Khotan, which followed in 1867,
ended his first successful period of action, during
which, in spite of inadequate means, he had accom-
plished much.
While Yakub Beg was establishing his power in
Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan, his chances of success
were being increased by events in the districts to the
north of the range. The Taiping rebellion, which
280 THEOUGH DESEETS AND OASES ft. n
raged from 1850 to 1864, had laid waste the richest
provinces of China. In 1855, apart from this con-
vulsion, a fierce Moslem insurrection broke out in
Yunnan ; and in 1862 there was a rebellion among
the Moslems of Shensi and Kansu, which gradually
spread across the desert to the Hi province, where
the Tarantchis combined with the Tunganis against
the Chinese authorities. This rebellion was success-
ful, and Hi was seized in January 1866, when a
Tungani-Tarantchi Government was formed, which
remained in power until the occupation of the
province by Eussia in 1871.
We now turn to Yakub Beg's campaigns to the
east of Kashgar. The Tunganis and Khojas of Aksu
were not supported to any material extent from Ili,
and he therefore had mainly to deal with an already
defeated force when he commenced operations in 1867.
Aksu, although naturally a strong position, offered
but slight resistance, and the Atalih marched on to
Kucha, which he also captured. After receiving the
submission of Karashahr, Turfan, Hami, and Urumchi
h^ returned in triumph to Kashgar. He subsequently
annexed the upland district of Sarikol, carrying off
its inhabitants and filling their place with Yarkandis
and Kirghiz.
It is probable that Yakub Beg was induced to
resume operations against the Tunganis as much by
the dij6fi.culty of feeding and paying his army as by
ambition. In the autumn of 1869 he passed farther
east to Korla, which fell, and the series of campaigns
was continued, generally with success, until 1873, the
Kashgar troops penetrating as far east as Chightam,
a small town to the east of Turfan. Little regard
was paid to the wretched inhabitants, who were
CH. XV CHINESE TUEKESTAN 281
plundered without mercy and sometimes massacred,
in accordance with the usual practice in Central
Asia. The Atalik thus achieved military success,
but he failed to organize his conquests against
the day when the slow-moving Chinese Government
should attempt to regain its lost provinces. On the
other hand, he probably could not control his troops,
who would have deserted had looting been forbidden.
In any case his constant military successes produced
a great impression in the neighbouring states and
spread his fame far and wide.
Yakub Beg's power was based on a mercenary
force which was remarkable for its heterogeneous
composition. Just as his palace, which was built and
organized on the lines of barracks, was full of cannon
of every description, ranging from ancient Chinese
pieces to modem artillery, so his army included men
from every neighbouring province. The most trust-
worthy and efficient soldiers were Khokandis, who,
being strangers in the land, would naturally be
loyal to their chief and fellow-countryman, whereas
the local peasantry made indifferent fighters. An*^
element numerically important, but for the most
part of untrustworthy quality, was the Tunganis,
who served mainly from fear. There were also a
number of Indian and Afghan adventurers, some of
the former being deserters from the Indian army.
The Chinese troops were never used for distant
campaigns.
The men above mentioned, who constituted the
regular troops, were divided into mounted infantry,
artillery and infantry, the force being increased
by levies of Kirghiz, Dulanis and other irregulars
of doubtful military value. It is now believed that
282 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES rr. n
Yalmb Beg liad never more than 20,000 trustwortliy
men in his service, although exaggerated accounts of
his strength were generally credited. His troops ,
owing to his somewhat remarkable personality and
many victories, were of better fighting value than
those of Khokand and Bokhara ; but, as the event
proved, they were unable to cope with Chinese troops
trained on European lines, nor would they have
withstood equal numbers of Russian troops.
His government was based on the Moslem law, and
was very onerous. It must be recollected that he
maintained a court and a large army, mainly at the
expense of perhaps a million poverty-stricken peasants,
who, in addition to paying the heavy taxes of nomi-
nally one-tenth of all produce, were ground down by
the unjust tax-collectors until their condition was
pitiable. Moreover, he kept a huge body of town
police and also a large force of secret police, whose
united activities must have added considerably to
the general misery. The fact that he was a strong
ruler implied the imposition of heavier burdens on
his unhappy subjects. Moreover, during the period
of his rule, trade with China entirely ceased, to the
great loss of the merchants, who had but little com-
mercial intercourse with Russia or India.
The relations of Yakub Beg with Russia were of
primary importance to him until the Celestial army
re-entered Chinese Turkestan, and it is consequently
desirable to summarize them briefly. The AtaliFs
defence of Ak Masjid and his action before Tashkent
have already been mentioned and were not forgotten
by the Russians, who in 1866 dismembered Khokand
and defeated Bokhara. The establishment of his
power at Kashgar caused the Russians much anxiety,
CH. xv CHINESE TUEKESTAN 283
and their frontier officials were at first instructed not
to recognize Yakub Beg, but, at tlie same time, to be
conciliatory, in the illusive hope that this line of action
would induce the Atalih to make overtures.
In pursuance of this fatuous policy the Russians
requested sanction to bridge the river Narin and to
construct a road to Kashgar ; but, needless to say,
these concessions were categorically refused. By way
of marking their displeasure the Muscovites began to
construct a strong fort at Narin ; but their hands were
tied by attempts on the part of the Central Asian
Khanates to throw off their hated domination. Yakub
Beg, openly at any rate, preserved neutrality, and for
five years the struggle continued, with the result that
the Russian yoke was riveted more firmly than
before on Khokand and Bokhara. To these pre-
occupations the Atalik probably owed his safety for
the time being, as the construction of Fort Narin was
avowedly intended as a preliminary to an attack on
Kashgar, and it appears that an expedition destined
for that task in 1870 was at the last hour diverted
against Khokand, which unexpectedly revolted.
Later on the Russian authorities exchanged their
somewhat menacing policy for one of peaceful pene-
tration and attempted to gain an entry into Chinese
Turkestan through their merchants. They also sent
a young officer to discuss various questions with
Yakub Beg, who in turn despatched one of his
nephews to Russia. As, however, his envoy was ac-
corded no official recognition, little progress was made
in developing relations, and the Atalik maintained
towards his formidable rival an uncompromising
attitude, which convinced the Russians that his
power was much greater than was actually the case.
284 THKOUGH DESEKTS AND OASES rr. n
Accordingly, in 1872, althougli military preparations
were continued, an accredited envoy. Baron Kaulbars,
was entrusted with the difficult task of opening up
official relations with the Atalih. He was received
by the gratified ruler with the extravagant expression
of Oriental h3rperbole : "Sit on my knees, on my
bosom, or where you like, for you are guests sent
to me from heaven." For the first time complete
freedom was accorded to the envoy, and two Eussian
merchants who accompanied the mission were granted
every facility for visiting Yarkand and Khotan.
Baron Kaulbars was so fully impressed with a sense
of the power of his host that he regarded him as a
potentate ranking with the Amir of Afghanistan ;
and, owing to these impressions, a treaty of commerce,
satisfactory to both parties, was drawn up, Eussian
goods being subjected to a maximum charge of 2\
per cent ad valorem. The envoy, who had learnt a
good deal about the country and had certainly scored
a great personal success, returned to Tashkent with
glowing accounts of the Atalik and his dominions.
Another nephew of Yakub Beg's, Haji Tora by
name, who had travelled widely, was next des-
patched to Eussia, where he was received with much
honour and entertained by the Tsar. From the
court of the Northern Power he went on to visit
Constantinople, where he conducted negotiations by
which Yakub Beg, in return for an acknowledgment
of his independence, accepted the suzerainty of the
Sultan and issued coins bearing his ^^gj. Further-
more, as a mark of high favour, the Atalih was
gazetted an Amir, with the title of Amin-ul-Muminin
or " The Trusted One of the Believers."
The Eussian authorities in Central Asia naturally
CHINESE TUEKESTAN 285
took umbrage at an alliance wliicli united a leading
Moslem power with their hereditary foe. Moreover,
relations with Yakub Beg were not developing
smoothly; for, realizing that his state would be
overrun by Kussian merchants, the Amir decided to
go back on the spirit of the treaty of commerce and to
discourage all Russian intruders. In the case of the
first important caravan to reach Kashgar, he kept
the owners under surveillance although he purchased
their goods at a fair rate through one of his agents.
But, as the payment was made in debased coinage the
merchant stood to lose, and finally did lose, in spite
of strenuous official Russian support. A year later
Yakub again changed his mind and invited another
Russian merchant to visit Kashgar. He received
better treatment, with the result that trade gradu-
ally increased. The chief aim of Russia was to be
permitted to appoint an Agent at Kashgar, whereas
Yakub Beg would only allow a Caravanbashi or
Superintendent of caravans (a man of little standing
or education) to reside at the capital. In 1874 a
Russian official was sent to arrange this question,
but Yakub Beg, relying on the support of Great
Britain, was entirely unyielding on the subject ;
indeed, his attitude towards Russia became almost
menacing. So much was this the case that in the
autumn of the same year the Russian authorities de-
cided to break his power. They had massed twenty
thousand troops on the frontiers, when a revolt in
Kiokand forced General Kaufmann to divert his
forces. Had Yakub Beg been a great man he would
have seized the opportunity to aid Khokand, and
would thereby, in all probability, have given a
serious set-back to the Power which had resolved on
286 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
his destruction. His inaction on this occasion stamps
him as an Oriental adventurer who kept the kingdom
he had won rather by good fortune than by signal
capacity.
The relations of Yakub Beg with the Indian
Empire were of little permanent importance from the
political point of view, but are of considerable interest
to the geographer and to the student of politics and
commerce. In the middle of the nineteenth century
the British representative in Ladak heard vague
accounts of affairs in Chinese Tartary, as it was then
termed, from merchants, but gained little or no
accurate information, although the veil was lifted
somewhat in 1857 by Adolph Schlagintweit, the first
European to travel from India to Yarkand and
Kashgar. Unfortunately for him, Wali KJian was
besieging the Chinese cantonment of Kashgar at that
time, and by his orders the German explorer was
murdered. Eight years later, in 1865, Johnson,^ an
English surveyor, crossed the Kuen Lun to Khotan,
where he was received with much hospitality by its
chief ; but to Robert Shaw belongs the credit of being
the first Englishman to explore this unknown land
and open up relations with its ruler and people.
While he was living at Ladak an agent of Yakub
Beg passed through, bound for the Punjab, under
orders from his master to report on the neighbouring
land. Shaw mentioned to this agent his intense desire
to visit Yarkand and Kashgar for the purpose of
paying his respects to its celebrated ruler. This
proposal was almost immediately agreed to, and late
in 1868 Shaw crossed the Kara Koram and reached
Yarkand safely. His courage and resolution were
1 "Journey to Ilchi Khotan (1866)," J.R.Q.8. vol. 37 (1867).
OH. XV CHINESE TUEKESTAN 287
evidently combined with considerable tact, as through-
out his journey he created an excellent impression
both on Yakub Beg and on his officials. The in-
opportune arrival of another Englishman, Hayward,
who was an explorer and also a trader, aroused sus-
picions in the mind of the Oriental, and both men were
treated for a while as honoured state prisoners ; but
in the end they were sent back to Ladak, thoroughly
pleased with their reception.
Shaw's reports excited intense interest, and created
exaggerated ideas both as to the power of Yakub Beg
and as to the richness of the prospective market.
He had suggested to the Atalik the appointment of
an agent for Chinese Turkestan at Lahore. This
suggestion was accepted, and the agent was the
bearer of a cordial invitation to the Government of
India to despatch an official for the purpose of
establishing friendly relations and opening up trade.
Forsyth, a capable Indian civilian, was appointed
to carry out this mission, and, accompanied by Shaw,
he reached Yarkand in 1870 ; but unfortunately the
Atalik had just started off to his distant eastern
frontier, and Forsyth returned to India without
accomplishing his object.,
Yakub Beg was as much disappointed as the
British envoy at this fiasco, and through the in-
sistence of his agent Forsyth was again appointed in
1873 to head a mission, which was of greater size
than its predecessor. Under him were Lieut. -Colonel
Gordon, Captain Chapman and Captain Trotter,
who have all had distinguished careers. The cara-
van, consisting of 400 animals, required elaborate
supply preparations, and great difficulty was experi-
enced in crossing one of the passes, the last hundred
288 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
feet of whicli was a wall of ice. But in due course
Kargalik was reached, and thenceforward the mission
was treated with friendliness and sumptuous hospi-
tality. In December 1873 the party reached Kashgar,
and Forsyth describes his reception as follows :
'' According to etiquette we dismounted at about
forty paces from the gateway, and walked slowly along
with the Head Chamberlain going ahead. In the
outer gateway soldiers were seated on a dais with
their firearms laid on the ground before them, their
arms folded and their eyes on the ground. We
then passed through a second gateway filled with
soldiers, and crossed another court, on all sides of
which soldiers in gay costumes were ranged seated.
From this court we passed into the penetralia, a small
court in which not a soul was visible, and everywhere
a deathlike silence prevailed. At the further end of
this court was a long hall, with several window-doors.
The Chamberlain then led us in single file, with meas-
ured tread, to some steps at the side of the hall, and
entering almost on tiptoe looked in, and returning,
beckoned with his hand to me to advance alone. As
I approached the door he made a sign for me to enter,
and immediately withdrew. I found myself standing
at the threshold of a very common - looking room ;
looking about I saw enter at a doorway on the opposite
side a tall stout man, plainly dressed. He beckoned
with his hand, and I advanced, thinking it must be
a chamberlain who was to conduct me to ' The
Presence.' Instinctively, however, I made a bow as
I advanced, and soon found myself taken by both
hands and saluted with the usual form of politeness,
and I knew that I was standing before the far-famed
ruler of Eastern Turkestan."
CHINESE TURKESTAN 289
This interesting description shows that Forsyth
took Yakub Beg very much at his own valuation,
and the fact that the British envoy agreed to dis-
mount at a distance from the gateway must, at
any rate, have raised the Atalik in the eyes of his
subjects.
At .he formal interview a few days later the
gifts, c« jnsisting mainly of munitions, were presented,
but Yakub Beg was chiefly pleased with the autograph
letter from Her Majesty, which was enclosed in a
magnificent casket. After exclaiming '' Praise to
Allah ! " several times he proceeded to declare his
friendship for the British, referring to the Queen
as the sun " in whose genial rays such poor people
as I flourish."
The mission remained four months at Kashgar, its
labours culminating in a treaty of commerce which
was concluded in February 1874. By its terms
a 2| per cent ad valorem tax was to be levied on
goods imported from India, British trade thus being
placed on the same favourable footing as Russian.^
In addition to important surveys made along the
main road, Gordon led a party to the Pamirs, which
were explored to some extent. Indeed the Forsyth
mission was a distinct success, if only because these
surveys proved beyond doubt that India could not
be seriously invaded from the Pamirs or from Chinese
Turkestan. Moreover, it enlarged the horizon of the
authorities in India, and by the establishment of
friendly relations with Chinese Turkestan inaugurated
a small but profitable trade.
Yakub Beg, however, regarded the mission far
* The text of the treaty is given in Tht Life of Yakub Beg, by
D. C. Boulger.
U
290 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
otherwise, as to him it signified an alliance, granting
British protection against Russian hostility, and, had
he retained his power, constant appeals for aid would
have been received at Calcutta. As matters turned
out, both Yakub Beg and his family w^ere destined
to disappear from the stage of Central Asia, and that
speedily.
While the Atalik was entertaining the Forsyth
mission the Chinese Government, having restored
order at home, was preparing a formidable force for
the reconquest of its lost possessions beyond the Gobi.
The task was very difficult, owing to the width of the
desert, estimated at about 1200 miles, but the Chinese
army was well disciplined, well equipped, and well
led, the difficulty as to supplies being successfully
overcome in a very simple manner. The advanced
guard sowed crops in one of the rare oases, and an
abundant harvest was thus provided in the following
autumn.
As soon as this was gathered in, an army
50,000 strong advanced without encountering any
serious opposition, until in the spring of 1876 it
reached the neighbourhood of Urumchi. The capture
of this town in August, followed by that of Manas,
fully re-established Chinese authority to the north
of the Tian Shan.
The Celestials were now free to deal with Yakub
Beg, whose position had become unenviable. His
refusal to aid Khokand in her last desperate struggle
with Russia must have lowered his prestige, while his
hostility to that power must have weakened his
position ; it was clear, too, that Great Britain had
no intention of supporting him with troops or money.
Apart from this, his heterogeneous force was no match
CH.XV CHINESE TURKESTAN 291
for the veteran Chinese army, to which, moreover, it
was far inferior in numbers and equipment.
In the spring of 1877 the Chinese main force
marched on Turfan, crossing the Tian Shan by the
Devanchi Pass ; while a second force, 10,000 strong,
moved west from Hami in co-operation. Yakub Beg
had placed his main body for the defence of the
Devanchi Pass, but while it was holding this posi-
tion news was received of the capture of Turfan by
the Hami column. A panic ensued, and, although
the Atalik fought a rearguard action to the west of
Turfan, he was obliged to retreat to Karashahr, and
later to Korla. Before this defeat Yakub Beg had
sought aid from Russia, but in vain, partly because
Kuropatkin (then a captain) had visited his camp
and reported most unfavourably on his position.
For some unexplained reason, probably from lack
of supplies, the Chinese army remained immobile
for several months, while events were moving fast
in the enemy camp, where the star of Yakub Beg
was setting in gloom. After losing the eastern
part of his territory the Atalik became morose and a
danger to his courtiers. According to trustworthy
information gained by me in Kashgar, the actual
cause that led up to his death was a savage flogging,
inflicted without any adequate reason, on one of his
officials. This alarmed Niaz Hakim Beg, one of his
principal followers, who poisoned him.
Thus died Yakub Beg, who for a period of twelve
years had played a leading role on the stage of Central
Asia. He was fortunate, as one of his titles of Bedolat
signified, inasmuch as he quitted Khokand just before
its fall and successfully founded a state only a few
marches off. He was fortunate in his dealings with
292 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. h
Russia, whicli would have crushed him, but for more
serious tasks which stayed her hand, and finally he
was fortunate in being killed just as his kingdom was
falling from his grasp. Among the chiefs of Central
Asia he was a man of capacity, and he was undoubtedly
brave and resolute ; but his outlook was narrow, as
was inevitable from his environment. He remained
alert and virile to the end, and was not addicted to
the vice or self-indulgence that ruins many members
of the upper classes in Central Asia. Although the
stage he trod was circumscribed, Yakub Beg is the
only Moslem of the nineteenth century in Central
Asia whose name will live.
The death of the Atalik was followed by a period
of confusion. One of his sons escorted his father's
corpse to Kashgar. There he was murdered by his
elder brother Beg Kuli Beg, who succeeded to the
throne, but not unchallenged, as a certain Hakim
Khan Torah was able to seize Karashahr and Korla,
and there were also outbreaks at Khotan. The new
ruler in the end overcame his rivals, but in the effort
exhausted his resources to a dangerous extent and
made the way still easier for the Chinese.
The final operations for the recovery of Kashgar
and Yarkand were conducted on somewhat the
same lines as the first. The main force assembled
to the north of the Tian Shan and, using a little-
known pass, descended in overwhelming strength on
Aksu, while a second column drove the Moslems
before it to Karashahr and on to Kucha, where a
hard-fought battle was won by the Chinese ; and
in December 1877 the campaign was brought to a
successful conclusion by the capture of Kashgar.
The Celestials showed moderation in the hour of
CHINESE TUEKESTAN 293
victory. They deprived the population of their
horses, to prevent a fresh rising, but they appointed
Moslem headmen and also recognized the religious
law of Islam. Their strong position was acknow-
ledged by Russia in 1881, when, by the Treaty of
St. Petersburg, that Power restored Kulja to the
Chinese, receiving in return the post of Irkeshtam, two
stages on the eastern side of the Tian Shan. By
the same treaty freedom of trade was secured, and
this agreement is still in force.
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century
great forward strides were made in the direction of
Chinese Turkestan both by Great Britain and by
Russia. The former Power, thanks to the energy
and activity of Younghusband (a nephew of Robert
Shaw) and other travellers, realized the importance
of exploring the passes through which India could be
threatened, if not invaded, from Russian Turkestan.
A second aim was the control of the No Man's Land
which lay between the fertile valley of Kashmir and
the plain of Chinese Turkestan. To this end British
Political officers were stationed at Gilgit and Chitral,
supported by the Imperial Service troops of the
Maharaja of Kashmir.
During this period Russia also displayed consider-
able activity in the exploration and occupation of the
No Man's Land bordering on Russian Turkestan.
One of her most active agents. Captain Gromb-
chevsky, visited the hill state of Hunza in 1888,
meeting Younghusband in the following year on the
upper reaches of the Yarkand River. In 1891
Younghusband travelled in Wakhan, and at the
stage of Bozai Gumbaz met Colonel Yonoff, who
had issued a proclamation that the Pamirs (with the
294 THKOUGH DESEETS AND OASES pt. n
sole exception of tlie Taghdumbash Pamir) were
Russian territory. That officer subsequently received
instructions to escort Younghusband back to Chinese
territory. He showed good feeling about his dis-
agreeable task, and as Younghusband agreed, under
protest, to proceed to Chinese Turkestan, he waived
the instructions relating to escort. Upon this incident
being reported, the Russian Government apologized
for Yonoff's act, and the two Powers finally decided
to despatch a commission to settle their respective
claims in a country visited hitherto merely by a
few travellers. In 1895 the commission met, and by
its findings the narrow strip of AVakhan was awarded
to the Amir of Afghanistan, with the result that the
boundary of the British Empire was drawn in this
section some thirty miles to the north of the crest
line of the Hindu Kush.
The great revolution which had broken out in
China in 1911 began to make itself felt in its remote
western provinces in the following spring. The first
outbreak occurred in the district of Hi, where a
young officer entered into a conspiracy against the
Tartar general, with whom he had a private quarrel.
The conspiracy was entirely successful, and resulted
not only in the murder of the general, but in the
capture of the machinery of government. As the
revolution progressed in China, the republic was
proclaimed in Hi, and after the defeat of a force
despatched from Urumchi the Hi rebels became
undisputed rulers of the surrounding country.
The unrest soon affected Urumchi itself, where
Chinese rowdies, members of a secret society which
existed for the sake of loot and blackmail, began
to demonstrate in favour of the republican cause
CHINESE TUEKESTAN 295
and to show their sympathy by acts of robbery
and incendiarism. The governor, however, was no
weakling, and realizing that the loyalty of the regular
troops was very doubtful, he enlisted Tunganis in
considerable numbers, through whose instrumentality
he was able to control the situation for a time.
Subsequently he dealt so mercilessly with every one
suspected of being a member of the secret society,
slowly slicing to death innocent and guilty alike,
that the Chinese population rose and drove him out
of Urumchi.
In April of this year the outward calm hitherto
maintained in Kashgar was rudely disturbed by the
murder of the Taotai and the Prefect of Aksu. Upon
the arrival of the telegram announcing this deed, the
Kashgar Taotai immediately cut ofi his queue and
issued a proclamation advising the Chinese to follow
his example. Moreover, he had a scroll prepared with
the inscription, " Long live the Chinese Kepublic ! "
which he hung up in his yamen. After some hesi-
tation the leading Chinese officials followed the
example of the governor, the commander-in-chief
of the province not only cutting off his queue and
flying the flag of the Republic, but donning a non-
descript European cap. The united officials then
solemnly changed their chronological system from
the fourth year of Hsuang-tang, the boy-emperor,
to the first year of the Chinese Republic, an act which
possessed tremendous significance in their eyes. The
soldiers were by no means ready to follow the lead of
their superior officers, but maintained a sullen and
resentful attitude, which boded ill for the safety of
the higher officials, military and civil alike.
Meanwhile Yuan- Shih-Kai had been informed by
296 THKOUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
telegram of the adherence of the New Dominion
to the Republic and had appointed the governor of
Kashgar to Urumchi, hoping by this means to end
the state of hostility which still existed between Hi
and Urumchi. The governor of Kashgar at first
refused the appointment, pleading his age and weak
health, but in the end accepted it. The actual
position, therefore, was that the Republic had been
acknowledged throughout the province, and that the
Chinese officials were all obeying the instructions of
Yuan-Shih-Kai. It might have been supposed that
the crisis had passed without bloodshed, but this was
not so. At night a band of fifty Chinese, members
of a secret society, forced their way into the yamens
of the governor and of the city magistrate. The
governor, who was awake, was greeted with the
ironical exclamation, '' Greetings to Your Excellency,"
and both he and his wife were cut to pieces. The
magistrate was also killed and the republican flags in
the two yamens were cut down and destroyed.
In the morning the gamblers, as they were termed,
were harangued by the commander of the garrison at
the head of a few soldiers. They insisted on being
armed and formed into a new regiment under the com-
mand of a ruffian, a pork -butcher by trade ; and
when this was done they appointed new officials to
succeed the murdered men. The soldiers in the New
City killed two of their officers and a panic ensued in
Kashgar, but the disturbances and looting were con-
fined to the New City. The administration was
now controlled by the gang of gamblers, who
appointed all officials and took advantage of their
power to levy blackmail, mainly on Chinese officials.
In the other centres there were murders. The gover-
CHINESE TUEKESTAN 297
nor of Yarkand, among others, was singled out for
assassination ; but an exceptionally violent storm,
which turned day into night, suggested to the Chinese
gamblers that heaven forbade the deed — and the
ojficial still lives to tell the tale.
In consequence of the unrest and lack of security
caused by these deeds of violence, the Russian
Government despatched a force 800 strong to protect
Russian subjects. For some weeks after its arrival
there was no friction or cause of alarm, but the
celebration of a Chinese rite nearly gave rise to most
serious consequences. On the day of the Festival of
the Departed Spirits it is the custom of the Chinese
to bum paper-money before the temples in order to
ensure financial ease for their deceased relatives.
One of the temples in Kashgar was the scene of this
ceremonial, and a rumour reached the Russian con-
sulate that the bazar was on fire. Help was im-
mediately despatched in the shape of fifteen Cossacks,
who, misunderstanding the situation, forcibly put
out the fires in which the paper-money was being
burnt. While this was being done some of the
Cossack horses broke loose and galloped back to the
consulate, where considerable anxiety was felt. The
city gate was shut at the usual hour of 8 p.m., and,
upon its arrival, the Russian main body, under the
impression that their detachment had been cut off,
blew it up with dynamite, and marching through the
opening found the Cossacks perfectly safe.
Not long after this the '' Gambler *' regiment was
ordered to Urumchi, and the officer commanding
the Cossacks, who was disappointed at the entirely
peaceful attitude of the Chinese, decided to attack
it, his plan being to carry out night manoeuvres to
298 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
tlie east of the city across tlie line of march — and
to create a ^' regrettable incident." But he reckoned
without Sir George Macartney, who, getting wind of
this typically Russian scheme, which received con-
firmation from the sudden departure of the Cossacks,
induced the Chinese authorities at the very last
minute to change the line of march from due east
to north-west, with a wide detour afterwards to
the north. Thanks to this action by our able
representative the trap was set in vain. The
regiment, which had obeyed its orders with deep
reluctance, finally reached Urumchi with its numbers
much diminished by desertion, and the ruffianly
pork-butcher was subsequently put to death. The
Russian troops were shortly afterwards withdrawn
from Kashgar, and that city once again settled down
to its habitual drowsiness.
In conclusion, the old-world policy of China was
to surround her fertile empire with buffer states.
At the end of the eighteenth century these included
Annam, Siam, Burma, Assam, Bhutan, Sikkim,
Nepal, Ladak, Kashmir and Khokand, together with
the maritime provinces of Siberia. But the nine-
teenth century, which saw the advance of Russia,
the rise of Japan, and also powerful strangers from
the west thundering at the watergates of the Middle
Kingdom, brought heavy territorial losses to China,
and to-day her system of buffer states has been swept
away by the new powers. Great Britain has shown
considerable activity and has occupied or gained
political ascendency over many of these states, and
at the present time marches with the Chinese Empire
not only on the confines of Burma to the south,
but also on the borders of Ladak and Kashmir.
CHINESE TURKESTAN 299
Russia, on her side, has made a great advance, and
now occupies Khokand, Andijan and the Khanates
generally, together with the Pamirs to the west of
Chinese Turkestan ; to the north the Russian province
of Semirechia, through which is being constructed
a railway that will attract much of its commerce,
overshadows the province of Chinese Turkestan.
Thus the old order of isolation, on which China
relied, is passing, and the new order, which includes
modern methods of communication, is coming into
force, hastened by the desire for progress which is
affecting large sections of mankind in Asia.
The future of Chinese Turkestan is not finally
settled, but the World War which has temporarily
broken up the Russian Empire will undoubtedly
stimulate China to move along the path of progress.
If so, there is hope that the condition of this outlying
province of her empire may benefit, more especially
by improved communications. At the same time
there are many parts of Asia which have reason to
envy the peace and plenty enjoyed by the inhabitants
of Chinese Turkestan.
CHAPTER XVI
A KASHGAR FARMER
La latitude assez basse du Turkestan chinois combin6e avec son
altitude considerable, la s6cheresse de son atmosphere et ses saisons
nettement tranch^es rendent le pays propre a des cultures tres diverses,
a celles qui se contentent d'un climat temp6r6 comme a celles qui
exigent des chaleurs fortes et prolong6es ; mais excluent les plantes
qui craignent les froids hivernaux ou r^clament une grande humidit6. —
Grenabd, La Haute Asie, ii. 173.
The cultivator, who is the backbone of Chinese
Turkestan, depends entirely on irrigated crops, as
there is no regular rainfall in the country. Rain,
termed the " mercy of Allah " in Persia, is considered
to be the opposite in Kashgar, partly because of the
utter irregularity of its incidence. If there be a
heavy fall in the spring, the soil cakes and the young
plants cannot force their way through, and this
necessitates a fresh sowing. Rain at harvest time,
or when the melons ripen, is equally unwelcome, and
when there is a heavy rainfall the farmer exclaims,
" What great crime has been committed that we
suffer such a calamity ? " Snow is regarded with less
disfavour. As a rule there is plenty of water for
every one in the Kashgar oasis, and fights for it occur
only in the spring, when each cultivator wishes to
water his land first, in order to secure an early crop
for the market.
300
A KASHGAE FAEMER 301
Owing to the abundance of water and the absence
of hail-storms or other serious climatic drawbacks,
agriculture, except for rust and blight, which are
seldom experienced, is a certainty, in complete contrast
to the reputation it bears in countries that depend on
the rainfall for their crops. The life of the oasis,
where every acre is cultivated and where the agri-
cultural population is comparatively dense, is quite
unlike that of Persia, where each village is surrounded
by square miles of uncultivated land, which furnishes
grazing, fodder and fuel. There are a few isolated
villages, or groups of villages, in Chinese Turkestan,
but the country generally consists of extensive oases
set in a lifeless desert.
The chief crops are millet, rice, maize, wheat,
barley, cotton, lucerne clover, hemp, linseed, turnips,
carrots and tobacco. Millet and rice are regarded
as the best-paying crops, the former occupying one-
half of the total area cultivated.
Of fruits and vegetables, apricots, grapes, peaches,
nectarines, quinces, cherries, figs, apples, pears,
mulberries, pomegranates and melons grow in great
profusion, and pumpkins, which are the staple vege-
table, are supplemented by carrots, turnips, onions,
cucumbers, garlic and fennel.
The upper classes are less civilized than in Persia,
partly because they do not mix socially with the
European colonies ; good fruit trees and seeds have
therefore not been introduced. This state of affairs
reflects little credit on the merchants from Andijan,
who could easily introduce the magnificent fruit
trees which are now grown at Tashkent.
The Chinese of the New City farm much better
than the native Moslems, and have introduced the
302 THROUGH DESERTS AND OASES pt. n
curious plum-clierry, with its blue, white and red
varieties of fruit, beans of various kinds, beetroot,
cabbages, including kohl rabi, lettuces, potatoes,
tomatoes and spinach ; but there is little contact
between the Chinese and Moslem farmers, so that
the latter do not learn much from the efficient
Celestials.
The trees in the Kashgar Oasis, other than fruit
trees, include the Lombardy and the spreading
poplar, the latter growing to a great size, and the
Turkestan elm, of which a grafted species grows
in a pyramidal shape. The common willow and
the Babylonian willow of two species — one with an
edible fruit resembling the Bohemian olive — are
planted along every irrigation channel and serve
as fuel.
Next to agriculture the most important industry
is the raising of live-stock — ^horses, donkeys, camels,
cattle, sheep and goats. The horses bred by the Kal-
mucks around Karashahr are the best, being stronger
than the Kirghiz ponies, because the Kalmucks do
not drink mare's milk. They are usually geldings,
standing about fourteen hands, and are ideal for
transport purposes. The Kirghiz pony is hardy and
enduring, but not strong or up to much weight. The
Yarkandi, especially a roan, was a favourite mount
in India in the last century, and is mentioned in
Anglo-Indian novels of the period ; it is still exported
in small numbers.
Donkeys are found in thousands and take the
place of the wheelbarrow and the cart in England,
besides carrying the bulk of the inte 
