130 STAY AT KASHGAR [CHAP. VIII.
supplied an equally welcome complement to my " Chota Hazri." As I sat at work I could see and hear the little cavalcades of cultivators and their women-folk as they gaily rode along the road between the river and the garden, bringing their produce to the city markets. Only beggars seemed to walk on foot, and even they were often provided with donkeys. Breakfast assembled us as the morning wore on, in a stately little arbour, where rows of tall poplars planted in a square, after the fashion of all Turkestan gardens, gave grateful shade at almost all hours. There were luckily no morning papers and daily mails to delay attention to the work of the ` Ustads,' who had in the meantime leisurely settled down to their several tasks. A- short stroll taken round the courtyards after breakfast, usually in Mr. Macartney's company, enabled me to control the progress—or otherwise—that their labours of repair or construction were making.
Then my friend retired to his ` Daftar ' to write his reports or to go into the cases of his polyglot clientèle from across the Indian borders. Punjabi traders, Hindu moneylenders from Shikarpur, Ladaki carriers, Kanjuti settlers in Raskam, and hoc genus omne—all had occasion at one time or other to seek the presence of the ` Mulki Sahib ' (Political Officer) whom the ` Sirkar's ' paternal care had planted far away in the Turkestan capital to protect their persons and interests. I myself, though plentifully provided with writing work, ordinarily managed to give an hour or two about midday to the study of Turki texts with grave Mullah Abdul Kasim, a shining academical light of the chief Madrasah of Kashgar. Muhammadan learning, such as the country knows in these days of infidel rule, is purely theological. I have no doubt that the good Mullah would have preferred a discussion on a knotty passage of some Arabic manual of religious law to our readings of vulgar Turki, even though they concerned the exploits of that royal champion and martyr of Islam, holy
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