Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 194 (Color Image)

0194	Among the Celestials : vol.1

158 AMONG THE CELESTIALS. [CHAP. VII.

country we had been passing through. It was

very beautiful. The plain, some six miles in

length from east to west, and three or four from

north to south, was covered over with trees,

beneath the shade of which nestled the little

Turki hamlets. About a mile to the south of

Pi-chan was a remarkable range of sandhills

like that I saw in the Gobi, and certainly two

or three hundred feet in height.

The afternoon was terribly hot on the

gravelly desert, and, after passing over it for

sixteen miles, we were glad enough to come

upon another oasis, and halt at a pretty village

built on the steep bank of a little stream.

There was a bustling landlord at the inn, who

came out to meet us, and attended to us more

in the Manchurian innkeeper style than in the

usual listless way they have here. But how

different these mud-hovels here called inns

were to the well-built hostelries of Man-

churia ! In the one country timber was

abundant, in the other, precious and difficult

to obtain, and so nowhere in Chinese Turke-

stan did I see the well-built inns and farm-

hous'es so characteristic of Manchuria.

We reached Turfan on July 17. As I

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books