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 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 Kashgar.

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 regarded 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 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 mapa.
Our tents and baggage were packed into covered carts termed
arabas, 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, 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.
 OUR ARABAS ON THE YARKAND ROAD.
Page 176.

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 Ili; 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 Ili.
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 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 l’oiseau aimait le roi de même.” 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 delighted 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 milestones being erected two
and a quarter miles apart. They are built of mud bricks, in form not
unlike 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 autumnal 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, nectarines 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—quenches thirst the best, but it has not the
“bouquet” of the karbuzeh 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 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 inhabitants 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.
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 unfortunate 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.
 A HUNTING EAGLE.
Page 182.

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 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 making 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, announced the Chinese reception. As I always
avoided this ceremony, 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 statement 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 if they marry Yarkandi women their children may 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 River. 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
water 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 yarn, 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 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 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 façade, 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 taels 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 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 perform 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 afflicted
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
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 endowment fund. This is called a
wakf or “trust,” and the trustees appoint a mulla, who is often a
villager with a good voice who merely calls the Faithful to prayer.
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 goblins 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 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 situation 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 appreciate, 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.

FERRY ON THE YARKAND RIVER.

Page 192.
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 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
religious 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 and colour in the
form of asters, balsams and marigolds, 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 Amban 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 specimens 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 depressing 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 on which 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 desert, which lay
between us and the Khotan Oasis. 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
reluctance 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, while the 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 arabas 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 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 green embroidery, and the 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, composed 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 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 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-tour and
picnic combined, so little of the 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 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 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 they
were startled by a large dog, which we disturbed 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, 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 courtyard, 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 unusually 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 invisibility, 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 Shrine, where all good Moslems must dismount 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, accompanied 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 photograph 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
supposed 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 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!
 THE PIGEON SHRINE.
Page 206.

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 invaded 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.
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 remarkably 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 Iusce.[3]—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 River, 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 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