are indicated in red on the accompanying sketch map. The oases, towns, and villages form compact masses of red dots, especially numerous between Jarkent and Karghalik, between Chotan and Kerija, and around Ak-su. Along the rivers they form a faint, narrow shading beside the water and the belts of vegetation. The population is therefore distributed at certain points and along certain lines, which run spider-like across the otherwise blank spaces of the map.
Fig. 272. MOSQUE AND MARKET PLACE IN AK-SU.
In the comparison which I have just made between the population of East Turkestan and the population of the Scandinavian peninsula, I have for the sake of simplicity proceeded upon the assumption, that the former amounts to two millions. Nevertheless I take it, that the total which I have arrived at in the table given above, namely 1,800,000, approaches nearer to the actual figure, and this conclusion is further corroborated by a consideration of the more reliable of the other estimates which have been made. Grigorieff, in his excellent history of East Turkestan, quotes from Chinese sources of various periods some estimates of population, which for the sake of curiosity I will now quote. The History of the Older Hans states that the population of the 31 districts of East Turkestan amounted to 39,455 families or 314,22o persons. Grigorieff asks, with justice, whether it really is possible that so extensive an area as East Turkestan could in the first century B. C. possess no more than 300,000 inhabitants, and concludes that for some of the districts the estimate is five times too small.
For the year 1812 Grigorieff quotes the following table from Chinese sources as giving the population of East Turkestan at the date mentioned.
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