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

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is exported to China. Excellent melons are produced in all parts of the division, .nd its grapes and green raisins are the finest in the country. • They are exported to Kashghar and preserved in the fresh state for winter use. In the desert to the south the wild camel and wild horse are said to be plentiful. The former is described as a small, thin limbed, double humped animal with a very soft warm wool of light brown colour. Huntsmen declare it to be . a very vicious animal and extremely swift, and state that it flies at its pursuers with boldness when brought to bay, and attacks with great ferocity, biting and kicking, and when wounded vents its rage upon itself. It is always at enmity with its fellow partners in the wastes of the desert, and hunts the wild horse off its own grazing grounds.

Lob.—This is the name of a district on the banks of the Tarim River, which is formed by the union of all the rivers from Yuldûz of Ila round by the western circuit of Kashghar to Khutan and Chachan. It is a vast region of swamps which succeed each other from the junction of the united streams of Kûcha and Kûrla with the Tarim on the west, and extend thirty days' journey east and south on to the Gobi desert. On the edge of this desert, beyond the inhabited swamp tract, is. a lake five days in circuit, and from it a great river goes out to the east. The lake is quite uninhabited, and is in the midst of a desert of white salt at three days' journey from the Lob settlements.

There are no mountains in Lob, but the ground between the bends of the river and the swamps is thrown into cliffs, and banks, and ridges of sand and gravel. Between these the country is undulating sand, and near the water is covered with reeds and forests of poplar and tamarisk, but there is no willow. Some of the gravel ridges are higher than Kayragh at Yangi Hissar (about 300 feet), and higher than the Hazrat Begum ridge (about 600 feet), but they are all lower than the Kûrvgh Ugh which separates Lob from Karashahr on the north, and lower too than the hills which separate it from Chachan on the south ; but these last are a great way off on the desert, and nobody ever goes there or knows anything about them. Why ask what they consist of ? Everything here is sand, and salt, and nothing else." Such in substance is what I learned from a Kalmak of Karashahr who knew Lob well. I shall quote him and a fellow tribesman, and two officers in the Amir's service, who visited the country during the Turfan campaign, as I proceed with this brief notice of the district

C' Lob is reached from all directions along the course of the several rivers flowing to it. Thus from Khutan by the Khutan Darya; from Maralbashi by the Yarkand Darya through Dolan settlements nearly all the way ; from Aksû to Ara Mahalla by the Aksû Darya ; from Kûcha to the same settlement by the Mûzart Darya, and so on. From Kûrla I know the road well, as I have travelled it several times. It is four days' journey. The first stage is Yirkûrûl, four task, over a sandy waste with reeds, pools, and poplars here and there on the route. Second stage Konchi, five gash, across similar country to the Tarim river below where it is joined by a river coming from Kûcha and Kûrla. Third stage, four task, on the desert of sand hills, salt wastes, reeds, and pools. Fourth stage, Karhkochun, five tash, across similar desert to the reed huts of Kalmak and Kirghiz Musalmans on the river bank. Here Lob begins, and goes east and south along the course of the Tarim. It consists of many settlements on the marshy lakes and their connecting channels. The whole tract is called Lob, but this is Lob Proper. The other settlements to the west form distinct districts and are called Karhkochun, Lyso, and Ara Mahalla. There are others, but these are the principal seats of population. Everywhere the river banks are low, hardly raised above the river stream, and are covered with broad or narrow belts of jangal. This consists of a tall reed called comu8k, and a shorter and different reed called thigh, and of the poplar or toghrdc, and the tamarisk or yûlghûn; the willow or sûgat is not seen here.

C' Lob was only peopled a hundred and sixty years ago by emigrant families of the Kart Kalmak, Koshot, Tûrgut, &c., to the number of a thousand houses. They are now all professedly Musalmans, and have Mulld and Imam priests amongst them, but they don't know much

about Islam. We look on them with contempt as only half " Musalman."   " No, I am,

not a Kalmâk, thank God."   "Yes, my ancestors were, but I am a Musalman, God be

praised ! And my father was before me.' "   " Yes, there were other people in Lob before these

Kalmak emigrants came, but nobody knows who they are or anything about them. They are

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