a Buddhist monk. On his way home among many difficulties and dangers he regained Kashgar once more through Shughnan, just in time before the final collapse of Chinese rule closed the passage through the Tarim basin.
When nearly nine centuries later the Chinese had again established their power over Eastern Turkestan, it was on the Alichur Pamir that a Manchu force overtook the last Khoja ruler of Kashgar and his retainers on their flight to Shughnan and Badakhshan and defeated them with great slaughter. Nor would Süme-tash, the point where this victory was gained in 1759, have become again in 1892 a scene of bloodshed had its position at the eastern end of the Yeshil-köl not marked it out to the Chinese and then to the Afghans as a suitable place for watching the important route to Shughnan as it leads along the northern shore of the lake.
On the cliff of Stime-tash, which we reached at the end of a day's march along the winding lake, there rises a small shrine. It once sheltered a stélé with the Chinese inscription commemorating that victory of i 759. The inscription had been removed to the Tashkend Museum, after Colonel Yonoff's Cossacks, on June 22, 1892, had wiped out the small Afghan detachment which held out to the last in a post close by. But the massive granite base of the stélé was still in situ, an emblem of that Chinese power which during the last two thousand years had made itself felt again and again even beyond Mount Imaos.
Two marches up the wide grassy trough of the Alichur Pamir brought us to Bash-gumbaz-aghzi, the chief summer camp of the Kirghiz grazing on this Pamir. Then after a day's halt, needed for anthropometrical work and securing
IIIF Color HighRes
