132 TO YARKAND AND KARGHALIK CH. XI
requiring attention before his departure on our travels. Chinese officials big and small are accustomed to carry all their worldly possessions about with them while in Central-Asian exile, and the amount of Chiang-ssû-yeh's proposed baggage in consequence looked distinctly alarming. That in spite of my inability to give adequate expression to my motives, I succeeded in convincing him of the need of great reductions in the baggage and in making him part even with the bulk of his cherished little library, was a first proof of his practical reasonableness. But I need not disguise the fact that, as he grew more experienced in the conditions of travel before us, he found scope for further reductions thereafter. On the other hand I managed to obtain for him at Yarkand a small tent of very light Indian make, and to improvise for it that warm inner lining without which it could not have given him adequate protection against the bitter cold of our winter campaigns in the desert. As an illustration of the influence exercised far away in Central Asia by modern facilities of travel I may mention that the most useful of our Yarkand craftsmen was a young tailor of local birth but Kashmiri extraction, who had already done his Mecca pilgrimage and by a year's residence in Stambul had also profited in his professional training.
Friendly intercourse with Pén Ta-jên, the Amban of Yarkand and a dignitary of prominent rank, also absorbed a good deal of time, but proved instructive and profitable owing to the keen interest shown by him in things historical. The search for old Chinese local names of these regions, in the works of Hsüan-tsang and other pilgrims of which I could show him the texts, lengthened not inconsiderably his return visit. I was duly rewarded for this when at a small dinner-party next day the Amban presented to me an interesting batch of old Chinese coins, chiefly of the early Sung dynasty (tenth to eleventh century), which had recently been found in digging foundations close to the ' Yangi-shahr ' of Yarkand. They supplied the first definite indication that Yarkand occupies approximately the site of the ancient So-chê with which Chinese official nomenclature nowadays identifies it. But antiquarian
IIIFカラー高解像度
