CHAP. WI] RIDE INTO KASHGAR 119
bright yellow and brown looked singularly neat in this setting of gardens and orchards. Here and there a cemetery with tombs of sun-dried bricks and a crumbling mosque or Ziarat built of the same material added a picturesque touch to the rural landscape. The high-pitched songs of my pony-men as we moved at a rapid amble through the lanes always brought the children and women before the doors of their homesteads.
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The men were busy in the fields, and until we got to the Bazar, of Tokuzak I saw scarcely any . grown-up person that was not occupied in some way. We had so far suffered little from the dust, for the route we had followed was not the highroad from Tashmalik, but a more circuitous track connecting hamlet with hamlet. But at last we emerged on the road and found it as dusty as it was broad. High lumbering carts or ` Arabas ' dragged along by little ponies and droves of donkeys kept up a continuous cloud. I was getting eager to reach the end of the journey and too readily gave credence to Sadak Akhun, who about 5 p.m. assured me that Kashgar was now within one ` Tash's' distance. I had not yet learned that, away from the main caravan roads where the Chinese administration has marked the distances of ten ' Li ' (approximately two miles) by small mud-built towers popularly known as ` Tash' (stone), this measure in Turkestan conveys only the vaguest estimate of distance.
It was disappointing when after an hour's ride there was still no sign of the river-bed which I knew we should have to cross before approaching the town. At last at a turn of the road a broad nullah came in sight, with a shallow stream. But beyond it no trace of walls, Minars or other tokens of an Eastern city. The river was not the Kizil-su which flows past Kashgar, but only a branch of it known as Ak-su (" White Stream ") or Telwichuk. Another three miles or so of endless rice fields seemed a long distance in the failing light and on the tired ponies. But at last they too came to an end, and we forded the truly red water of the Kizil-su (" Red Stream ")
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