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0095 Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1
Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 : vol.1 / Page 95 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000196
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( 55 )

guests at discretion, and the shoes placed outside the door is the sign for the husband that he must not enter.

The Dolan are said to be of Kalmâk origin. I saw several of them at Yarkand. They are physically a very inferior race and their mental capacity of the meanest. They are short in stature and small in limb, with retreating forehead and repulsive features of dark complexion, and Tartar cast of countenance. In general appearance they resemble the Bot of Tibet, though, as Musalmâns, they shave the head. They talk a dialect of Turki, but amongst themselves use a language nobody understands. They are said to be a very timid and simple people, and generally shun society. This last trait may be attributed to the treatment they receive from society, for the name of Dolan is sufficient to condemn the owner to every kind of drudgery much on a par with the ass he owns, and which too he perpetually rides.

Sirikol of the maps and Sctrigh Kul or Sirikul of native writers is a small highland division on the south-west frontier of Kâshghar. Its name signifies " Yellow Glen," and the hills are described as of a light coloured rock similar to those about Shahidulla Khoja on the south frontier of Yarkand, which are of micaceous .schist, friable trap, and granite. It is separated on the west from the Wakhân District of Badakshan by the Shindu range, which is crossed by a pass or kotal of the same name down to Aktash=" White Rock " at its western base. This is the limit of Sârigh Kill or Sirikul territory in this direction and the commencement of Wakhan; and it marks the boundary between the possessions of Amir Sher Ali Khan Afghan of Kabul and Amir Muhammad Yakib Khan Uzbak of Kâshghar.

Sârigh Kill or Sirikul is an entirely mountainous district wedged in at the point of junction 1 of the Bolortagh range with that of the Hindû Kush, where it joins the great Himalaya chain. To the northward ana westward it is separated from the Pamir by the Taao~karma mountain and its emanations, and to the southward and eastward from the indepenc ént lttlé tates of Ÿas{n and Kunjud by the Mûztâgh or " Glacier Mountain " and its lofty western peaks called Taghning Bash or Taghdumbash or " Mountain Head," where meet, as in the point of section of a cross, the four great mountain systems of the Central Asian Continent, viz., the Himalaya and Hindu Kush separating Tartary from India, and the Suleman and Bolor ranges dividing those two great countries into their respective distinct geographical regions; the tablelands of Khurasan and the plains of India on the one hand, and the valley of the Oxus and the basin of the Tarim on the other.

In its central part Sârigh Kill forms an open valley of some twenty miles by five into which the glens around conduct their drainage. The several streams coalesce at different points to form the Sârigh Kill river, which winds eastward and joins that of Yarkand in the vicinity of Kosharab on the hill skirt. In this plain is settled the bulk of the population in a number of villages dotted along its mountain borders and on the course of its river. The capital amongst these is Tashkorghan or " Stone Fort" described as a small square structure defended by a turret bastion at each angle, and supported by an adjacent village of some 200 houses. It stands on the river bank and its name is sometimes used to designate the whole district.

"The population of Sârigh Kill is entirely different from that of the rest of the country, and is purely Aryan. It is reckoned at 2,500 houses, or at seven per house 17,500 souls. Their principal villages in the Tashkorghan valley are Shindi, Taghnam, Barangsâl, Kesarov, Bald{r, Armalagh, Mâryang, Wâcha, Kichik Ting, Ting, Chushmân, and Tiznif, and others in the glens around. At the foot of Taghârma mountain, about two task north-west of Tashkorghan, in a small glen, are the hot springs called Sim Kang. Though there is a great glacier—here called Pir yakhon the top of this mountain, fed annually by four months' constant snow from December to March, these springs are boiling hot and emit clouds of steam as they issue from

i the rock; they have been conducted into covered tanks a short distance off, and are used by the people as medicinal baths for the cure of rheumatism and allied diseases ; anybody can use them, and the custom is for the bathers to strip and lie in the water for two or three hours daily during several days."

The climate.of this division is very salubrious, though the winter is a long and rigorous season : during which much snow falls. Spring, summer, and autumn are one season here and

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