132 STAY AT KASHGAR [CHAP. VIII.
sulate, Father Hendricks and a Swedish missionary, Mr. G. Raquette, with his wife, were then the only Europeans at Kashgar, and them we saw often. Father Hendricks, whom Catholic mission labours had, brought many years ago from Holland, his native land, to Mongolia and hence to Kashgar, seemed to exemplify in his person the principles of international amity by being an equally frequent and entertaining visitor at Chini-Bagh, the Russian Consulate, the Swedish Mission, and the Chinese Yamens. The visits of the kindly Abbé, always bringing a plentiful budget of news and rumours, impartially gathered from these often conflicting sources of information, might have gone a long way to console any one likely to regret the absence of a local newspaper.
I can only briefly mention the remains of ancient structures which were the object of my first short excursions in the vicinity. Considering that the site of Kashgar in all probability corresponds to that of the capital of the ancient territory of ` Kie-sha,' which Hiuen-Tsiang describes as possessing hundreds of Buddhist monasteries, the remains of the pre-Muhammadan period still traceable above ground are scanty indeed. The most conspicuous is a much-decayed mound of sun-dried brick masonry rising over the deep-cut northern bank of the Tümen-Darya,. about a mile and a half to the north-west of Chini-Bagh, which undoubtedly represents the remains of a large Stupa. The present height of the mound is 85 feet, and the diameter of its base from east to west about 160 feet. But notwithstanding the exact survey made I found it impossible to ascertain the original form of the whole Stupa, or even to fix its centre, to such an extent have the masses of soft brickwork fallen or crumbled away. It was for me an instructive observation to find that fully 15 feet of the masonry base now lie below the level of the irrigated fields close by. I had here the first indication of that remarkable rise in the general ground level, mainly through silt deposit,
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