Part 1 (2/2)

These people are in the ence that it is possible to ith and stature they are, perhaps, the most miserable objects on the face of the earth, but their social position is still usting character, and their dwellings, such as they are, are of the rudest kind and subterranean Travellers who have seen theer cities, say that all the ruerate the true facts of the case; and the most pitiable part of the raded position, that they are averse to any measure calculated to improve their existence They have been compared to the Bhots of Tibet, but these latter are quite superior beings in comparison with thehbouring peoples

Kucha is, or rather was, another very flourishi+ng city which has never recovered the loss of Chinese wealth, and the subsequent disturbances during the Tungan wars At one time Kucha had at the least 50,000 people, and it was not less faenuity of its people But now it is alreater part of the old town is athe nine years that have elapsed since the Tungani were crushed by the Athalik Ghazi, scarcely anything has been done to repair the dae caused in those very destructive wars

Korla, Kouralia, or Kouroungli, as it has been named, and Karashar, thich lie to the east of Kucha, have likewise never revived froh which the whole of this district has passed; but even the state of these places contrasts favourably with the far worse ruin wrought at Turfan Turfan, perhaps more than any other, profited by the trade with China, for, although it may not itself have been as rich as either Aksu or Kucha, it derived a certain source of inco either east or west, or north to Uruuchak Very often a delay of several weeks took place, beforethe Tian Shan to Guchen, or for proceeding on to Hareatly thereby

Now its streets are desolate, the whole country round it is represented to be a desert, and all its forhtness have co had extended his rule a short distance east of Turfan, to a place called Chightam, but Turfan iven a soaria, and in doing so we have distinctly intended thereby to convey the impression to the reader that it is only these and their suburbs that were at all productive under the late _regi has remained ly prosperous appearance of the farar; but at the sae and of blosso and surrounding country more palpable The farms are certainly not small in extent, but rather isolated from each other, and surrounded by orchards of plums, apples, and other fruit trees, in which they are coe is not a e far a very extensive area of country, and presenting to the eye of a stranger rather a thinly peopled district than a coh the soil is naturally fertile, the systericulture is of an exhaustive character, and it seems probable that only a small portion of the land on each farm is at all productive But these settlements, which present an exterior of rural happiness and simplicity, are but oases in an enormous extent of barren country If each proprietor seems to possess more land than he can require, and if the fertile soil produces bountifully that which is unskilfully sown therein, the total amount of land under cultivation is still very liradually exhausted, and as the systerain see the people, it is to be feared that it may be perpetuated without hope of recovery There is a constant difficulty to be overcoeneral aspect of the region is barren, a bleak expanse stretches in all directions, and in the distance on three sides the outlines of lofty ranges complete the panorama The scarcely hway in every direction except where the Chinese have left permanent tokens of their presence, offers little inducement to travellers to co but the most imperfect modes of communication and of supply that a backward Asiatic district can furnish If ish to i the road from Sanju to Yarkand, we have only to visit some of the wilder of the Sussex Wealds to have it before us in e may be stillon the Central Asian plain; and the ill certainly remind you that it coions; but you have the sah The hiz will alone forcibly rehts of the South Downs In the far distance you will see the cloud-crested pinnacles of the Sanju Devan or of the Guoharbrum, and then the traveller cannot but reions in the world But if these southern roads are scarcely worthy of the naar to Aksu, Kucha, Korla, Karashar, and Turfan is aconstruction It need not fear to brave comparison with those of i overnhways, but there the task was facilitated by the possession of great and navigable rivers In Eastern Turkestan no such assistance was to be found, and consequently this road, along which was conducted all the traffic that passed froar, Khokand, and Bokhara, had to be hest state of efficiency To do this we cannot doubt was asuch an exceptional work as the Muzart Pass, one that required a very perfect organization to accomplish with the success that for reat drawback in the geographical position of Kashgar, is the want of a cheap and convenient outlet by water The country itself suffers in a less degree froation, the rivers, such as the Artosh, &c, which in spring carry down the ive a ar at all events The climate is equable, and the people suffer from no very prevalent disease, except in the oitre is of frequent occurrence The people theal and honest, but indeed there are so many races to be eneral description can be given of them all The Andijanis, or Khokandian merchants, are the most prosperous class in the community, and they appear to be, froe a

The Tarantchis are the descendants of Kashgarian labourers imported by the Chinese into Kuldja in 1762, and there is still both in the ar, ere perion The other races are ill disposed towards them, and attribute all the vices they can think of to their doors But these Khitay h they for the ht of a possible danger when their brethren froari, and these two irants from the border states, particularly fro naturally th a description of the geographical features of Kashgar, and are about to follow it up with an ethnological description as well as a historical stateion It is hoped that these preliminary chapters will clear the way from some obscurity for a correct appreciation of the career of the late Athalik Ghazi

Kashgaria reat advantages of position and very considerable resources, but by a singularly hard fortune, except for the brief period of Chinese rule in modern times, it has been so distracted by intestine disturbances that it has retrograded further and further with each year It is quite possible that its natural wealth has been too hastily taken for granted, and that it does not possess the necessary ree to its former position This is quite possible, but the best authorities at our disposal see conclusion, and to justify us in assueneral condition of Kashgar will enable a strong and settled rule to raise it into a really i confederacy

CHAPTER II

ETHNOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF KASHGAR

In the extensive region stretching from the Caspian and Black Seas to the Kizil Yart and Pareat families, the Aryan and the Turanian, have in past centuries striven for supre in its bosom in this part of the world thethose who claimed the same parent stock as European nations The Tajik or Persian is the chief representative in this region of the Aryan family, and he has now for many centuries been the subject of the Turk rulers of the various divisions of Western Turkestan These latter are the personifiers of Turanian traditions The Tajik appears to have been subdued, not so much by the superiority of his conqueror in the art of war, as by his own inclination to lead a peaceful and harmless life The pure Tajik, hardly to be met with nohere in Asia, except in the mountainous districts of the Hindoo Koosh, is represented to us to have been of an i beard, aquiline nose, and large eyes He is generally tall and graceful; yet in Khokand and Bokhara the Tajik is at present viewed much as the Saxons were by the Normans In those states, too, a , a Kipchak, a Kirghiz, or a Tajik, as the case es is to some extent preserved down to the present time It is the dissension spread, or rather the destruction of any sympathy between the various races caused, by these outward tokens of diversity in origin, that has made Western Turkestan the familiar home of intestine disturbance, which has in its turn led up to the easy disue and by Russian force In Eastern Turkestan the rivalry of races has beco is this better manifested than in the fact that there a man is described by his native town He hiz, or a Kipchak, too, but he is only known as a Yarkandi, or a Kashgari And while we are at once struck by this broad and salient difference in popular custom, and consequently in popular sentiment also, between the Western and Eastern divisions of Turkestan, a slight inquiry is sufficient to show that the antipathies of the various races towards each other have becoaria than they have in the Khanates of Khokand and its neighbours At all events, the antipathies that still prevail in that state are clearly traceable to other causes than Aryan-Turanian hostility, and are undoubtedly produced either by religious fanaticism, motives of personal ambition, or the hatred roused by Chinese pretensions on the one hand, and Khokandian on the other, to the supre these facts clearly in raphical descriptions will not make the political relations of the peoples of the state ible; yet, as ether passed over in silence

The inhabitants of the little known regions now variously known as Jungaria and Eastern Turkestan were, until recent years, considered to be of pure Tartar origin, and consequently members of the Turanian family There are some still who believe that this definition is the rounds, and with inal inhabitants, historically speaking, were the Oigurs, or Uigurs, and these people were certainly Tartars But frequently the Tajik ar in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, took up their abode in the country, and by degrees a large colony of Tajik iur stock These Tajiks gradually became Tartarised, but they still retained the unmistakable characteristics of the Aryan fa in their footsteps, were the first to enerally accepted We have, therefore, in Kashgar the strange spectacle of a Tajik people beco not only unidentifiable froled; but we have also a race tolerance that is unknown in any other portion of Asia Undoubtedly the hostility of the settled and peaceful Andijani ihiz is deep-rooted, and, so long as the latter continues a source of danger to all peaceful coious hatred that has at various epochs marked the political intercourse of Buddhist and Mahoreater improvement in the future, than the race antipathies that see the tribes of Western Asia The vast majority of the inhabitants of Alty Shahr are of Tajik descent In the course of centuries the purity of their lineage has been leavened bywith Tartar blood, both at the tiol subjection and of the Chinese In addition to these two great divisions, there are han and Badakshi+ settlers, who have flocked to Kashgar whenever the progress of events seemed to justify the expectation that agement Many of these remained, and they have also left a clear impression on the features of the inhabitants It is, however, to pre-historic times, or certainly to a period lost in the eneral exodus of the Aryan family from the Hindoo Koosh and the plains of Western Asia into the ar, which took place when the Turanian nations first spread like destroying locusts over the face of that continent It was at this period that Khoten, which in its nareat nohiz, as the Russians call thehiz of the various hordes who, by the way, are not true Kirghiz at all, has at all times played a fitful, yet iaria, and Eastern Turkestan Preserving their independence in the inaccessible region lying west of Lake Issik Kul, and along the Kizil Yart plateau and range, this tribe has always been a source of trouble to its neighbours, whosoever they ht be On various occasions, too, they have joined the career of conquest to their usual avocation of plunder, and under the few great leaders that have arisen ast them they have appeared as conquerors, both of Eastern and Western Turkestan But their achieveular undisciplinedforce, their chief strength lay in a sharp and decisive attack They had not the organization or the resources necessary for the accomplishment of any conquest of a permanent kind Their incursions, even when , were essentially hts Their object was plunder, not e secured the former, they recked little of the value of the latter At one time they were able to carry their raids in alovernments arose around their fastnesses, and curtailed their field of operations, what had been a life of adventure through sile for sheer existence The region where they das far too barren to support throughout the year even the lihiz, and yearly they had to issue forth against prepared and disciplined enemies in search of the sustenance that, to preserve their existence, had to be obtained But for the intestine quarrels that were sapping the life strength of the Asiatic states sloay, there is no doubt that the Kirghiz would have been gradually exterminated Soon, however, they had the skill to avail thereehest bidders; and although they were not equal to the Kipchak tribes in valour, their alliance was considered of importance, and on many a dubious occasion sufficed to turn the fortune of the day By such measures of policy their existence has been preserved, and at the present tiarded in hbours, as in the past

The Kipchaks, another great tribe, who however are scarcely represented at all in Kashgaria, pride thes, but their day of power has passed by, for the present at all events Thirty years ago they were at the height of their success, but they incurred the jealousy of other Usbeg tribes and of the Kirghiz

Owing to the abilities of their great chief, Mussul in Khokand a powerful state, which was able to restrain the encroachreat eneainst them in 1853, in conjunction with the advance of Russia on the Syr Darya, were croith success, and with the execution of Mussulman Kuli the Kipchak poas completely broken Since that date, however, several of the uished leaders who have appeared on the scene, such as Alim Kuli and Abdurrahman Aftobatcha, have been members of this clan The eastern portion of the do is almost exclusively inhabited by Calreat aria are of Calmuck descent, and even in Russia in Europe there are a and the Don None of these, however, possess any political importance except those who inhabit the country north of Gobi and between Eastern Turkestan and China, and the chief of these are the Khalkas The Calmucks are attached by old associations to the Governainst, and often caused trouble to, the Central Governed their culpability and submitted to the Chinese authorities

In the revolt of the Tungani the Calmucks remained true to China, and performed very opportune service on various occasions The Chinese ar these tribes, who becaion and fidelity

The origin of the Tungani, or Dungans, as the Russians call them, is much in dispute; and as they played so iar and Ili by China, as well as in the history of the rule of Yakoob Beg, it th before the reader There is no question, we believe, that the Chinese in applying the ter thereto of Maho that the ter sieneral usage If we acknowledge the validity of these two assumptions--and, so far as we have been able to ascertain, the best authorities have adopted theani were Granting these, they would simply be the Mahomedan subjects in the eastern portions of China But others believe that the Tungani are a distinct race, presenting peculiar ethnological features According to this version, the tribe of the Tungani can be traced back as a distinct community to the fifth and sixth centuries, when they were seated along the Tian Shan range, with their capital at Karashar The ations, under Colonel Prjevalsky, are believed to show no signs of there having been any important cities in this quarter It may be convenient to mention here, that at that time they were Buddhists; but when Isla the first to adopt the new tenets This defection froht them into collision with the Eani were deported into Kansuh and Shensi, where we are to suppose they continued a race apart, with their own religion and their own code ofthe possibility of such a consistency to a new religion, which history informs us was thrust upon them at the point of the sword, it seems scarcely credible that we should not hear more of this troublesome tribe in Chinese history

Frequent allusions are made in iani, but always in reference to their religion, and not in any way as if they were any other but heretic Chinamen

Besides, even in this way little is heard of the Tungani until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when very sharp ainst theandists fro as eneani were a people and not a sect is new, but it is possible that it may be a true discovery On the other hand, it is far enious atte what appears on the face of it to be a sih The reader ani are to be considered a distinct race, then the majority of the inhabitants of Eastern Turkestan are not Calani; if the view taken here is adopted, then they are Calmucks who have at various times adopted Mahomedanism These are the chief tribes of this portion of Central Asia; and in the following pages it may be as well to bear in overning class, and Tungani to the Maho dependencies As race antipathies have not entered during recent tiions iions, the difference as to the true significance of the tereneral question

CHAPTER III

HISTORY OF KASHGAR