National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

BY TONG BACK TO KASHGAR.

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temperature was 13.2° at noon. The highwater seemed to have stood 31 m. higher than the actual level. A little below the confluence there is a small tributary from the right or east called Kaurele, with a path leading to yeilaks where cattle graze. The passage is made by the help of on ordinary hand-barrow supported by

r 2 lulumns or airfilled goat-skins. The raft is called sal. A swimming pony lead by a man swimming on a lulum tows the raft across the river, the current of which sweeps it down a long way before it gets over to the right bank. At the left bank the river is shallow for a short distance, after which the depth suddenly becomes three or four meters. At the right side the mountains fall steeply down into the river which here is foaming. Lower down at the landing place the current is again quiet. From the landing place the strong current again crosses the bed to the left side, where the watermasses some hundred meters lower down foam in violence against the rocks. It may be a question of one's life to reach the right side before one is dragged into the whirls lower down. A man had been drowned there a short time before our passage. A Chinese official who came to Tong- one month before us got so frightened upon seeing the river that he returned and took the road of Kok-moinak.

When returning, the raft is driven a long way down in the direction of the

dangerous place, from where it has to be towed up by a pony along the left bank. The river now diminished in size every day, and was said to be So low in the end of October that it could be forded on camels. The place where we crossed the river was also a kechik or ford.

On the right side the caravan is again loaded and we continue along the

river. Here the rocks again fall directly into the river, and the road runs as a cornice above the water. It has been improved with stones and poles , but it is so narrow that the loads have to be carried by men. Farther on one crosses a ridge of sand at the foot of which there are two or three huts called Kunalik. At the next corner we enter the tributary valley by which the road goes up to AYfta-talakdavan. In the very mouth and at its left side is the village Kuruk-langar, inhabited by ten Tajik families and having a very picturesque situation in its luxuriant groves and gardens, and surrounded by magnificent, wild rocky mountains. The houses are built of stone or of sundried bricks, and most of them have open balconies made of the Tian-shan spruce, willow or poplar tree. The name, »The Dry Station», is said to indicate that the valley is dry if no rain falls. Now it had only a little rill. In some years of drought the wheat harvest is lost. As a rule there is not much precipitation in summer. The amount of snow in the winter is also insignificant, though all the mountains around are snow-covered.

In the end of December the Raskan - darya freezes and the ice remains for 21 or 3 months. Only at that time is there direct communication over the ice with