426 EXPEDITION TO KARADONG RUIN CHAP. XXVIII.
as to my discovery of coffers full of gold, &c., seemed to have run through all the Bazars far away to Khotan and beyond. But I could see that Huang-Daloi had quite sensible notions of what I was looking out for, and of what I had found. So we parted once môre in the friendliest fashion, and with mutual confidence.
Thanks to : the Amban's energetic assistance, I was able to set out on the 7th of March for my next objective. It was the ruined site of Karadong, situated in the desert some 150 miles north of Keriya, to which Dr. Hedin had paid a short visit in 1896, on his memorable march down the Keriya Darya. I knew from the accounts given by Turdi, whose "treasure-seeking" expeditions had twice extended to this place, that the remains of this so-called " ancient city" (which he called Aktiken) were very scanty. Yet I felt that my duty demanded a personal examination of the ruins. For the loss of time which their great distance implied I decided to make up by hard marching.
With the baggage lightened and my camels partially relieved by the hire of fresh animals, I was thus able to push on in three days to the point where I had first struck the Keriya Darya from DandanUiliq. The aspect of the river-banks was still as bleak and bare as two months before, but in place of the glassy sheet of ice there now rolled a muddy current, fed by the melting of the ice that had covered the marshes and pools about Keriya. It was a regular spring flood from the ' Kara-su ' (" ` black water ") feeders of the Aver, while months would yet pass before the flood of ` Ak-su ' (" ` white water ") would bring down the melting snows of the mountains. At the Burhanuddin Mazar I was cheerfully welcomed by the ` Sheikhs,' who evidently remembered the handsome offering made at my first. visit ; and I spent there pleasant hours, busily writing in the sheltered little loggia of the mosque. When I left to catch up my caravan, Ghazi Sheikh, the senior of the priestly fraternity, insisted on accompanying me. He was a jovial old man and quite looked the ` Bai,' or capitalist, which he was according to local notions, having at least a thousand sheep grazing along the river. He knew, of course, every. living soul of the little
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