round sickle-shaped wooden dish; ischömötsch = a spoon; kara-tschughun = a copper kettle, in which the water is boiled for tea; tängli = a fish-trough; sävät = a withy basket for keeping wool in; tavak = a wooden dish out of which fish is eaten, as also mutton, after being cooked in a cooking-pot (kasan); Cobra = a bag of coarse linen in which talkan, i. e. scorched and toasted flour, is preserved; kayak = a bottle made out of the rind of a pumpkin; käj5isch = hard wooden slippers or sabots, intended to protect the öttök, or softer boots. A round, flat stone, with a hole in the middle (ifi ghaschi), through which a peg (jighi) is thrust, is a very common instrument throughout East Turkestan; it is used for winding the threads (iz) on, which the people twist out of their sheep's wool, the thread wrapping round and round the peg as the little instrument revolves. Further, I observed — ghalvur = a riddle; Jaltu = an axe; kosar = soft leather shoes; kargha jigde = the berries of the Eleagnus, from which a kind of meal is made that is highly esteemed along the lower Tarim; kak-salghan-balik = fish split open and dried; and balik = the general name for fish just taken in a net. Fishing rather than sheep-breeding is the mainstay of these people of Laj-su; all the same, each household owned from
twenty to fifty sheep (koj), one or two cows (kala), and a horse (at). Sojuk-asch signifies a kind of soup, made of wheat meal dough, rolled out and cut into long strips, and then boiled in water. The people buy tea (kok-tschaj), i. e. green tea, from the nearest town. In a minor degree they are dependent also upon the produce of the chase, especially antelope flesh. The tiger is only killed for the sake of its skin, which is especially sought after by the Chinese. The wild boar is of course never interfered with in a Muhamedan country. The gun is called tufäng, or multuk. Hares and small antelopes are hunted with falcons, which are
held in especial estimation all over East Turkestan, and frequently command high prices. Several of the Turkish words which I have quoted above are pronounced differently in other parts of the country. Still one may say that in general the dialectal differences are not particularly great.
Fishing is pursued partly in the small marginal lagoons (köl), after the ends of their connecting channels have been stopped up with poles, willows, and clods of earth, or else in the elongated bays (bulung or köruk) which generally exist below every strip of alluvium. At Al-katik-tscheke fish are taken in the following way. After the bay or creek is covered with a sheet of ice 4 cm. thick, a canoe is driven against the edge of the ice, until only the stern is left hanging in the water, then the fisherman steps forward into the bow and by his own weight presses the canoe down, and so breaks the ice. Previous to this, however, a net is hung at the extreme edge of the frozen surface. After a channel has been thus broken about 1 o m. wide, and the broken pieces of ice have been pushed with the paddles out into the river, a second net is let down at the new or inner end. The depth between the two nets (their positions are indicated at A and B on the subjoined cut) is not more than
Fig. I2I. A KAMISH-HUT FINISHED.
IIIF Color HighRes
