158 THE PULSE OF ASIA
even more apathetic than most Orientals: a dull day is scarcely noticed ; a clear day inspires them but little; every vicissitude of life is received quietly; and nothing moves them greatly from the even tenor of their way.
The people of the Karatash valley are shepherds at the upper end, gold-miners in the middle, and farmers lower down, below an elevation of 8000 feet. The gold occurs in the gravel of terraces, just as in California. The cut (page 76) shows how the women and children bring the gravel in bags on their backs to the stream, where it is "panned" by the men in subconical wooden bowls eighteen inches in diameter. The man in the photograph told me that the sluice where he was working was the common property of twelve men, belonging to five or six families, every member of which, from six years old upward, is engaged in the work. The men own a few fields, but by no means enough to support their families. Their only live-stock is a few donkeys. The profits of the united labor of the twelve and their wives and children during the preceding month had amounted to two hundred " tengehs," or ten dollars, and during the month before that to eight dollars. According to the Chinese regulations, all the gold must be turned over to certain native officials, who pay for it what they choose, often only half the real value. The slight return from gold-mining is credible only when one sees the clumsy method of work, the frequency with which a pan of gravel yields nothing, and the deliberation of the movements of the miners. Yet, with the help of their fields, the people manage to live on a dollar a month for each man and his family.
Below the gold-mining district, we found along the Kara-
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