252 ANTIQUARIAN PREPARATIONS CHAP. XV.
him favour for my interpreter told me that he was still a long way from the sum that might take him back to Peking, apparently the life ambition of this exile. I found in Wang-Daloi an intelligent guide to the old sites which extend from Jamada to the south along the left river-bank, and also genial company, as he talked a little Turki. Next morning I passed over the eroded old site known simply by the general designation of ` Tati,' forming an area of about a square mile covered with fragments of pottery. Chinese coins up • to the time of the Tang dynasty are also found, but of structural remains there was no trace.
Some six miles beyond we entered the region of the j ade-diggings. On the flat plain, from half a mile to one mile broad, which extends between the left bank of the river and a gently sloping ridge of gravel westwards, the precious stone is found among the beds of rubble deposited by the river at earlier periods. Jade is the produce that has made Khotan famous all over the east since ancient times. In China it has ever been valued more than anywhere else, and most of the information which the Annals of the Celestial Empire give about old Khotan, we owe mainly to the interest attaching to its jade.
It was therefore with a good deal of interest that I examined the burrows crossing the barren plain in all directions. For the first mile or two they seemed to have been deserted long ago, as sand had partly filled the great hollows. But higher up we came upon diggings of more recent date not far from the old site known as Chalmakazan. A vast quantity of pottery fragments, mixed here and there with bits of broken glass and slag, strews the plain for about a mile and a half, from the river to the foot of the ridge. In the middle of this area a low mound, covered with large stones from the river bed, attracted my notice. Its round shape suggested a Stupa, and a closer examination proved this to be true. Unfortunately, others before me had guessed the nature of the structure, and a large trench run down into the very centre of the mound showed that " treasure-seekers " had been at work. The mound in its present condition has a diameter of about ninety-eight
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