people to-day. They were in such bad condition that, when I tried to dig them up after photographing them, they fell to pieces. In addition I found a few coins, some fragments of clay vessels and nothing more. In the village I bought a small vase that had been dug up at the same place and in an old woman's house I saw a large clay vessel with the same design at the top, also discovered in the ground. It was in perfect condition and was used in the house for holding water. Halfway between the village and this place there is a whole layer of earth, full of human bones, about 3 feet below the surface at a spot where an ariq had dug itself a channel about 14 feet deep. I saw parts of a skeleton in a half sitting, half standing posture. The skull was well preserved except for a hole at the top, but when I began to remove the fairly loose earth from it, the teeth fell out and the bones fell to pieces in several places, which indicated great age. The ground is damp all round here and the process of decay must be comparatively rapid.
According to later information the road from Aqsulaq to Tsangme-Dagit does not present any great difficulty. The ground is very broken, but grassy the whole way. A horseman does the journey in 2 days, with pack-horses in 3 days.
Accompanied by A. A. Diakoff I paid a visit to-day to the ruins of the former summer May znd. residence of the Kalmuk Khans, Inj din sy, as the Chinese call the place. Translated, it Kainak village. means (the Khans') palace or temple with the gold roof. The Tarantchis call it Sumbe, which seems to indicate a temple or monastery. Kainak lies about 15 — 20 miles S of Qulja, between the river Ili and the chain of mountains that divides it from the valley of the Tekes. We crossed the Ili at the same spot as when I last came from the south, which makes the road slightly longer. The rain of the last two days had made the Ili swell considerably and many water channels that were then practically dry were now full to the brim. The current to-day was 5/3 to 2 metres a second. It was no easy matter to tug the empty ferry against the current to a suitable spot with horses, to whose tails ropes had been tied.
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