waters would allow even laden donkeys to cross ; but the slippery mud bottom would have made it unsafe for the camels.
Beyond the Tiznaf we were in Bagh-jigda, a narrow tract of cultivation between the river and the desert dunes clearly visible eastwards. The whole, though extending over eleven to twelve miles in length, is reckoned as one village, forming the domain of Nasir Beg, a rich landowner of Yarkand whom my informants credited with landed property amounting in the aggregate to some sixty thousand acres, a good deal of it, no doubt, as yet unreclaimed. At the residence of Musa Dogha (Darogha) I found a comfortable and cool shelter, worthy of the representative and land agent of so big a seigneur.
The 4th of July was devoted to a visit to K izilj ai, the locality where the Uigur manuscripts had been found. As it proved well beyond the extreme limit of the cultivated area and on the very edge of the open desert of drift sand, the excursion of some twenty miles would have been a tryingly hot affair, had not the sky shown consideration for the promptings of my antiquarian conscience. Another shower of rain overnight, preceded by a mild dust-storm, had once more cooled the air, and a canopy of greyish-yellow clouds towards the east gave protection until towards mid-day. At 4.30 A.M., when we started, the horizon westwards was delightfully clear, and the high snowy ranges north and south of the Yarkand River were clearly visible, though fully fifty miles away in a straight line.
The first five miles lay through cultivation or rather large enclaves of it surrounded by ground which Kumush and other wild plants growing in luxuriance seemed to claim as their own. Yet there were canals large and small quite equal to a full reclamation of the whole area. Liu Ta-jên's energy had pushed on irrigation here too. But disputes about the water had arisen with the colonies of Merket fringing the right bank of the Tiznaf lower down, and a great commission of the Ambans of Karghalik, Yarkand, and Maral-bashi, whose districts adjoin here, had settled that the new canal of Bagh-jigda was to receive
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