THE CHANTOS 227
wife our present of three cents. Her glee over the money was equally to be remembered, for it meant as much as a dollar would to a poor farmer's wife at home.
Patience, contentment, and good temper are so nearly universal among the Chantos that it is hard to give concrete examples of them. They are like an atmosphere which one feels so continuously that he ceases to be conscious of it. When I forgot to dismiss men with whom I had been talking, I found that they would stand patiently waiting for an hour. The merchants in the bazaar, and even the little melon-venders in the dusty streets, sit quietly for hours with no sign of restlessness. If you forget to pay a guide to-day, he patiently waits till to-morrow. That the people are contented, as well as gentle and timid, is evident from the readiness with which they submit to any sort of government, no matter how corrupt. When the Chinese retook Kashgar, thirty years ago, after its occupation in the seventies by Yakub Beg, the Turki conqueror from Andizhan in Russian Turkestan, there was practically no fighting. " What soldiers there were," says Younghusband, " when they heard the Chinese were close to the town, hastily threw aside their uniforms, or disguises as soldiers, and assuming the dress of cultivators, walked about the fields in a lamb-like and innocent manner. The Chinese entered the town, and everything went on as if nothing had happened. . . . The shopkeeper sold his wares, and the countryman plowed his fields, totally indifferent as to who was or who was not in power." In regard to good temper, little need be said except that it is the rule among the Chantos. Quarrels, it is true, occur now and then, and the
IIIFカラー高解像度
