glacier. Owing to this circumstance I did not need to hire more than 8 pack-horses for carrying fodder for the journey of not less than 17 days. As each horse costs 14 r. 5o c., I have every reason to be grateful for their assistance.
Yesterday I received presents from the Djentai and the Taotai, from the former a piece of beautiful white Chinese silk, a tin of tea, 5 fresh wheaten loaves and a tin of thoroughly rancid fat or butter; from the latter two tins of tea and two cases of delicious Chinese teacake. To the benevolent old Taotai I assigned a steel watch with the head of a southern beauty enamelled on it and my interpreter told me that the old fellow was delighted.
After thanking the aksakal for the pleasant days I had spent in his excellent room, we started over Muzart to Qulja. I presented the kind old man with a silver watch and chain, having succeeded in setting the watch going — to my own surprise. On the E edge of the town the road leads up to the ridge of löss through an extensive mazar with its sombre tombstones of clay. About two miles further we passed the remains of houses abandoned a few dozen years ago. They formed three separate groups. There was no sign of water, all was barren and desolate for miles around. About 6 miles NE of the town there are small groups of houses with their fields on either side of the road. They are built along the sides of a number of small mountain rivers which bring down sufficient water for the ploughed fields in the spring and summer and after rain in the Mustagh mountains. We rode in succession across the beds of the Ilek, Paman, Djagde, Qizil, Tumenyng, Shatomen and Djai toghra üstangs, bone-dry at present and covered with fine sand. They are almost horizontal in position and very slightly below the surface of the land with indistinctly marked limits. Over all of them, except the Ilek and Djagde üstangs, there are very bad bridges which it would be easy to repair thanks to the wood available in the villages. The road runs uninterruptedly between rows of trees. The villages form small groups in the surrounding country, which is largely untilled. The
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