THE LAND OF WITHERING RIVERS 219
in the art of writing, and in that of wood-carving, though the latter would be hampered for lack of good material. Other arts decayed in similar fashion, especially agriculture, the greatest of all. Now, in the decadent present, it is practically extinguished. The simple peasants of Endereh, undisturbed by war or religious dissension, have reverted to the pastoral life of their remote predecessors. They build their small huts of wild poplars and unplastered reeds, here and there, as the seasons dictate. All arts are unknown to them save that of spinning the wool of their sheep.
War and the advent of Mohammedanism may explain part of the changes at Endereh. They cannot explain the decay of agriculture, nor the diminution from a population of possibly ten thousand at the beginning of the Christian era to half as much a few centuries later, and then to nothing, nor the mediaeval recovery of a rude oasis to a population of less than a thousand, and the present state of pastoralism and a population of only eighty souls. During the nineteenth century, the people of the large western oases of Chinese Turkestan pushed out to find new homes. Advancing eastward from Keriya, they occupied the oases of Oi-Toghrak, Yes-Yulghun, and Niya, and then, two hundred miles farther from their old homes, Cherchen, Tatran, Vash Sheri, and Charklik; but the waters of Endereh and Yartungaz continued to waste themselves in the sand. They had become too saline to be aught but lost.
Endereh is insignificant in itself ; it is of great importance as an example of the influence which a change of climate may have upon the habitability of a country, and upon the occupations and character of its people. In Kashmir we
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