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0120 Across Asia : vol.1
アジア横断 : vol.1
Across Asia : vol.1 / 120 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000221
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

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C. G. MANNERHEIM

I received a letter written in correct English in which, affecting complete ignorance, he asks whether I will soon send the money for the books. He says that he is being worried daily and that the money I had left was intended for paying his nephew Gani for his services as interpreter. I promptly tore up a reference I was on the point of sending him and instead I despatched a letter through the Russian aksakal that will certainly give him something to think about. I also took the precaution of sending a copy of one of the »täskirs» that I had promised by the same route to its destination. In Badsuddin's hands it would, no doubt, have served as an excuse for extortions from the mullah in Duwa. Whenever it is a question of money or other possessions, the average Sart finds it hard to be reliable.

I clearly remember Badsuddin saying, just after I had bought an old »täskir» on the express condition that I would send back a copy: *Now that the book is in your possession, you certainly need not bother about your promise.» Having grown up in surroundings, in which everyone has to cringe and abase himself before the mighty and oppress those he does not need, the Sart sucks in treachery and deceit at his mother's breast and finds it difficult to rid himself of this conception.

In Kashgar I drew the balance of my letter of credit and changed my Chinese silver at a very bad rate. I hope to get a better rate in Qulja or Urumchi. Strangely enough, you can obtain no information whatever on this point at the branch of the Russo-Chinese Bank. Like true representatives of minor officialdom they take no interest whatever in what goes on around them. It is not surprising that in such circumstances I was unable to get the slightest practical advice as to my monetary transactions from the manager, who has spent some years in Kashgar. Instead of advising me to change my Russian money, because, for one thing, the Russian exchange is periodically at its lowest at Christmas, he assured me that I could change Russian money, wherever I liked. Unfortunately I was innocent enough to ask for the advice of the bank manager on money matters instead of consulting the Swedish missionaries, who would certainly have given me more valuable counsel.

The district I passed through is densely populated and seems to be fertile. Close to Yangi-Shahr the farming population seems to be Chinese along the road we followed. My interpreter says that he has been told it numbers 50,00o, mostly soldiers, who remained here after the reconquest of the country 30 years ago, or their descendants. No more recent settlement is visible. The houses of the Chinese are rather better built than those of the Sarts.

January 28th.   My proximity to Painap, a village of the Abdals, tempted me to make an excursion

Painap. in order to supplement the anthropological observations I had made in Khotan and Yarkand. The road of 7-8 paotai leads through a fertile district, though poor owing to the density of the population. In several villages, in which I made enquiries, not more than an average of r 2 mou per household can be calculated. The stock of cattle is, of course, consequently infinitesimal. The land, when sufficiently manured and watered, apparently gives up to a 6—io fold crop of wheat and 4.0 fold of maize. If well managed, land of the third category gives the same crop as land of the first category — of course, provided there is no lack of water. — The Abdals in Painap make a much more wretched impression than their brothers in Qarabagh and Tamaghil. The majority acknowledge that they are professional

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