carry weight at Urumchi, whither he was shortly to retire, and would secure him some comfortable appointment, maybe the Taotai-ship of Kashgar.
On my way back I treated myself to a last long ride through the Khotan Bazars. It was the Saturday market of the " Old Town," and its long central street was overflowing with buyers and sellers. A glorious sunshine, pouring through the shaky tattered awnings that connect the houses and shops flanking the street, gave brilliancy to all the gaudy wares exhibited in the booths from which I selected mementoes. The old skill of the Khotan workmen still shows itself in the quaint articles of dress which form a prominent feature of the Bazar stores. But the universal use of aniline dyes seems, here as elsewhere in the East, to have destroyed the old sense of colour harmony. The capital of Khotan is indeed a small place, . and in the course of my ride I revisited almost every picturesque lane and quaint mosque I knew from my stay in the autumn. After the long months in the desert I found a strange pleasure in seeing humanity again surging around me. But more than anything else the beautiful green of the young foliage which intruded everywhere into the lanes and the deep blue sky helped to throw lustre on my last impressions of Khotan.
On the following morning I said goodbye to Nar-Bagh. I had started off my heavy baggage under Ram Singh's charge four days earlier for Yarkand. So the final departure was not so troublesome an affair as starts on new journeys usually are in Turkestan. All the same I was kept hard at work with leave-taking from local acquaintances who came to see me off, with the distribution of medicines for cases actual and prospective among my friends' families, and—last but not least—the dispensing of " tips." Chinese Turkestan is a country where services whether large or small must be compensated by " tips " just as much as in the best-conducted hotels of European centres of civilisation. Attendants of the Yamen who had been deputed to look after my camp .; visitors who had helped in collecting information or antiques ; Yüzbashis who had arranged for supplies, et hoc genus ovine, had
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