On descending into the open valley over fertile slopes where adequate rain and snowfall permit of cultivation without irrigation, I noticed that harvesting was just proceeding from about 8000 feet downwards. Taken in connexion with the fact that in Wakhan crops at elevations more than 2000 feet higher had been cut a month earlier, this illustrated the effect of far moister climatic conditions. In Kara-tegin I found myself once again among Turkispeaking people of Kirghiz stock settled in comfortable villages. But there is good reason to believe that the fertility of the land combined with the easy access to rich grazing-grounds must have attracted there invaders of Turkish race long before the last wave of migration brought these Kirghiz there.
This early Turkish occupation of Kara-tegin is proved by its present designation and the prevailing local names, which are Turki. It was hence of special interest to observe how the Kirghiz settlers, who had no doubt gained this desirable territory by conquest, just as their predecessors of Turkish stock, were now being slowly ousted again from the land by the steady reflux of Tajiks from Darwaz and from tracts to the west. The Kirghiz of Kara-tegin, who invariably still observe their customary semi-nomadic migration to summer grazing-grounds, are obviously unable to extract from their land as much produce as their industrious if meeker neighbours.
The process here observed makes it easier to understand how the original Iranian population of ancient Sogdiana has also in the plains of the present Samarkand and Bukhara managed to regain a prevalent share in the land that had been wrested from it again and again by nomadic invaders.
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