take the photographs desired by the Amban. Bands of Khotanese musicians were scattered through all the avenues, and a specially large body, with guitars, tambourines, and flutes, was posted close to the front verandah of the pavilion where the table was laid for us special convives of the Amban. The noise was great at such close quarters ; yet there was rhythm and a curious captivating verve in the airs played by these ragged men. The performance, the first I had heard in Khotan, seemed to justify even to my untrained ears the special reputation which the music of Khotan has enjoyed from early days.
I am not competent to give an account of the wonderful menu to which the hospitable Amban treated us. Nor can I find time to record now all the amusing incidents which helped me to enjoy the long dinner-party. Only one must be mentioned. Ch'ê Ta-jên had courteously noted the well-deserved praise I gave at my first visit to Islam Beg's services in the mountains. He promptly showed his appreciation of my remarks by promoting my faithful local factotum to the fat Beg-ship of Kayash, and already that morning Islam Beg had brought me the great news and thanked me with an air of grateful emotion. He now approached the Amban towards the close of the dinner to receive the formal announcement of his new dignity. His threefold prostration was in conformity with Chinese etiquette as adopted by Turki officials throughout the country. Yet its performance was done with such ease and grace as befitted a descendant of that old Khotan race, the courtly politeness of which had already struck the earliest Chinese observers. But Ch'ê Ta-jên, too, knew how to rise to the occasion. The gesture with which he held out his hand to his protégé in order to raise him, was full of dignity and paternal kindness. Any dignitary of the Church, whether Western or Eastern, might have studied the pose with advantage.
That the Amban with his genial bonhomie knew all the same how to keep his Begs in their place was curiously illustrated by a little incident while I took my photographs. It was easy to get the group showing him and his Chinese staff. But when he was to be photographed with all his
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