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In general appearance and plan of arrangement all these little States bear a common resemblance. Thus each has its central fortified city or capital with its suburbs more or less extensive, its district or market towns, and its rural settlements, and around all its little `frontier outposts. In each the capital alone is fortified and surrounded by walls. The market towns or bazars are, as the name indicates; mere markets thronged on the market day and deserted for the rest of the week, except of course by the permanent residents, who are mostly tradesmen, victuallers, and handicraftsmen. Their open collection of tenements gradually expand, and in clusters of two or three or more spread far and wide along the water-courses around, and form the rural settlements. These consist of a number of scattered homesteads along the main canal or river of the settlement, and each homestead is surrounded by its own fields and orchards, and gardens and vineyards. They thus spread over a considerable tract of country which, from the willows, poplars, æleagnus, and mulberry trees planted along the watercourses, wears the appearance of population and plenty. Each of these settlements is separated from the next by an intervening strip of waste land varying in width from only a few hundred yards to twelve or more miles, in which latter case the waste becomes blank desert. The produce of these settlements is carried weekly to the market towns for barter and thence to the capital, which is the seat of trade and manufacture.
The rural settlements, it will thus be seen, are purely agricultural ; the market. towns mere centres of exchange, though not exclusively so, for some have special industries—as iron smelting. at Sizili—besides the trades supported by the market people ; and the capitals the recipients of their produce. The separation of the homesteads in the rural settlements, and the isolation of these from their neighbours proves most advantageous in respect to police and hygiene. It prevents combination for tumult or sedition, and operates to render the peasantry unusually docile and timid if not entirely peaceable ; and whilst it checks the growth of epidemics and spread of contagion, it affords the people the most favourable conditions foil maintaining good health, a blessing which they in fact enjoy as freely as most people similarly situated. On the other hand, however, this arrangement proves nugatory as regards self-defence against an organized army, or small disciplined force ; bppt rather favours the enemy who has effected his entrance by placing at his disposal just the supplies he requires for the maintenance of his troops engaged in besieging the capital. It is owing to these circumstances, coupled with the unwarlike character of the peasantry, that the country has always succumbed quickly to the arms of the invader, and in times of anarchy been the easy prey of adventurers, till partitioned off into independent little principalities under local chiefs who ruled within the limits of their own petty States as sovereign lords, or who confederated with their neighbours under an acknowledged head to repel a foreign foe, or to check the ambition of an internal rival.
With these preliminary remarks on the general characters and arrangements of all the petty States comprising the Kashghar territory, we will now proceed to describe them severally in detail. They are in the order of their sequence, on the lowland tract skirting the mountains that bound three sides of the country, Khutan, Yarkand, Yangi Hissar, Kashghar, U'ch Turfan, Aksû, Sûcha, Kûrla, Karashahr, and Turfan. There are besides the highland district of Sarigh Kû1, the desert military post and Dolan settlement of Maralbashi, and the swamp colony of Lob. And finally, there are the Kirghiz steppes of Alatagh and Pamir, and the mountain retreats of the aboriginal Pakhpulûk of Mûztagh.
Khutan.—This little State is situated at the northern base of the Kuenlun mountain, and includes the deep valleys which drain its slopes into the river on which the capital stands. It has from remote times been in more or less. continuous communication with China either as a tributary ally or a subject State, and has from the earliest ages been celebrated for its musk and its silk, for its gold and its jade.
According to Remusat, its ancient Chinese name was Kiu-sa-tan-na from the Sanskrit Kustana=" Pap of the World," and at different periods it has been described in the annals of that empire under the names of Iu-thian, Iu-tun, Iu-siun, Hou-an-na, Khiou-tan, and Hou-tan. In the tenth century, at the time of the Baghra Khan crescentade, it was called Chin or Machin by the Musalmans, and its capital Chinshahr or " Chin City." At the
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