160 THE PULSE OF ASIA
from the bean-poles of the shrine, and the last prayers had been said. Akhmet told me that he had prayed for himself, his family, his "Sahibs " and their work, and all his friends. The effect on him resembled that of the traditional old-fashioned revival. He was very good for a few days, very ready to do more than was required of him ; but he was also more inclined to parade his religion ; and there was a shining of the eyes and an air of forced humility, which plainly showed that he felt himself to have been elevated above the plane of ordinary mortals. On the whole, I believe that the experience did him good.
In Central Asia, a shrine is almost invariably located near a ruin ; and so it was in this case. Choka, which I discovered a few miles below the shrine, is the ruin of a walled town, which must have had a population of from three to five thousand souls. It dates from about the time when Mohammedanism superseded Buddhism, in 1000 A. D. The ruins have a length of half a mile and a width of a quarter. They lie at an elevation of about 7500 feet, on a flat gravel terrace in the sharp angle between the Karatash River and the Choka brook; and are elevated from two hundred and ten to two hundred and fifty feet above the river. Evidently, the site was selected from a military point of view. It is surrounded on three sides by almost perpendicular cliffs, utterly inaccessible except at the northern end, where a massive wall protects the main approach to the town. At the southern, exposed end, the town was protected by a double wall and moat.
According to the natives, the water supply of the ruins came from the Choka brook, flowing under the ground in
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