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0229 Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 / Page 229 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000234
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CHAP. x.] VISIT OF KARGHALIK AMBAN   177

coins and the few fragments of Chinese manuscripts there depicted excited a good deal of curiosity on the part of my visitor. I felt more than ever the disadvantage of my ignorance of Chinese, for it was no easy task to give intelligible answers to the many queries of my visitor through an interpreter so little versed in literary matters as Niaz Akhun. He had, however, been to ` Bajin ' (Peking), and this supreme achievement gave him an air of assurance which made him, if not others also, forget the limitations of his intelligence.

On the morning of the next day there arrived the consignment of money, sent by Mr. Macartney from Kashgar in payment for my drafts on Lahore. My halt at Karghalik had been made partly in expectation of it. With the bags of Chinese silver coin and the smaller packet of newly-coined gold Rouble pieces, Mr. Macartney's ` Chaprassi ' brought home letters also. He was to return the next day and carry my own mail to Kashgar. So • I was kept busy all day with letters and with accounts that were to be despatched to Government. I sometimes wondered how the Babus of the Calcutta office would take to the currency complications reflected in my " Monthly Cash Accounts." The shady grove of walnut-trees in front of my tent made a delightful Daftar. In the evening I strolled up the bank of the stream that flows to the west of the town and got a distant glimpse of the hills towards Kökyar. They produce a great quantity of wool, and by the side of the stream I came upon a place where an enterprising Kashgar trader, who exports to Andijan, has an establishment for washing and cleaning the wool. The people I met there accounted by these exports for the reduced output of felts in the neighbourhood.

The 1st of October was the Karghalik market, and I had decided to wait for it, in the hope that it might bring to the town specimens of the curious hill-people known as Phakhpo, that live in the valley south of Kökyar. Anthropological data regarding them would be most welcome, in view of the

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