when I had once passed the busy Bazar under its bastioned wall with the lounging crowd of Chinese soldiers and those who live on them, I was able to pursue my way free from the bustle and dust of the high road. The village lanes along which I rode, guided by'the Beg whom the attention of the Chinese district official had provided for me, gave welcome shade from poplars and willows. At Yonduma, some twelve miles from Kashgar, I passed over one of the streams into which the Yamanyar, from Tashmalik, divides. Beyond it lay a wide tract -of fields of Indian corn and grazing lands, irrigated by a network of shallow canals. At Dangalchi I made a short halt in a shady little garden, and then at a distance of some twenty-eight miles from Kashgar reached Khanarik.
The Bazar into which we rode turned out to be only one of the five market villages which belong to Khanarik, and on inquiry I found that my camp had moved from this, the " Monday Bazar," to the " Sunday (Yak-shamba) Bazar," ten miles further east. The ride had been long and fairly hot, so this announcement was not particularly welcome. But there was nothing for it except to ride on. Towards six in the evening, after passing a strip of barren land which intervenes between these parts of the Khanarik tract, I was met to my surprise by a solemn assembly of well-dressed men.
They turned out to be the Hindus of Khanarik, Khattri moneylenders from Shikarpur, who had ridden ahead to welcome the ' Sahib.' It was strange to meet in these rural surroundings, so closely resembling those of a European village, the representatives of a class which thrives all through the Punjab. However little sympathy the calling and general character of these men can claim, it is impossible not to feel some satisfaction at the pluck and enterprise which enables them to carry on their operations so far away from their home. The connection of the Shikarpur Banias with Central Asia is undoubtedly an old one. Already in the eighteenth century Forster found them established as far as
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