rushing brook plunged over naked red rock between high terraces of silt and gravel. The wildness of the scenery set my Ladakhis to talking of their far-away gorges in the lofty Himalayas. When we came upon the huge ancient monastery of Tuyok, built largely in caves dug in the terraces, we felt as if we had been suddenly transported to Ladakh. The village of Tuyok itself, on the terraces at the mouth of the canyon, might well have been in the Indus valley. Turfan is crowded with the ruins of Buddhist temples and lamaseries. Each of the ancient holy places has retained its character in spite of the change from Buddhism to Mohammedanism, and the shrines of the past are the shrines of to-day. The chief of them is here at Tuyok. The head sheikh entertained me in his own house. With the freedom from fanaticism characteristic of the Chantos, he took me into the inner shrine, where ordinary pilgrims are not permitted to enter. I fear it was a case of the power of the purse. He thought I was rich because I could afford to spend three or four dollars a day. When the Sheikh first heard of my approach, he sent a hasty messenger to recall his mother, who had started that morning for Lukchun to attend the wedding of the boy Wang. I remonstrated on hearing of this, but the sheikh answered : -
" If the Wang should see her at the wedding and know that she had left great guests at home uncared for, he would be very angry. He sent a special message that we were to show the Sahib every honor."
Etiquette obliged the sheikh's wife to mortify her curios-
.
ity, and hide her face and run away whenever she saw me; but his mother, simply because she was his mother, could
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