off to Kashgar on a couple of camels, and lived in it the whole winter. With good carpets on the ground, and a stove to warm it, it made a very comfortable place to live in, and, personally, I preferred it to a house.
This tent I found ready pitched on my arrival in Kashgar, and it was very delightful to feel myself comfortably settled down again after our rough and constant travelling. It was curious, too, to note the change from the lonely mountains to this populous town. On the Pamirs at night all had been as still as death, but here we felt the town beside us ; the great gongs of the Chinese guard-houses beat the hours through the night, and at nine o'clock a gun was fired and trumpets were blown. The Chinese are always good at effect, however bad they may be in practice ; and as, in countries like Turkestan, a good deal may be done by effect alone, I think this noisy parade of watchfulness must make no small impression on the people. The deep booming of the gongs through the stillness of the night, the blaring of the trumpets, and the noise of the cannon, nightly remind the inhabitants of these towns of Turkestan that the conquerors, who have returned again and again to the country, are still among them and still on the watch.
The day following our arrival, we called on M. Petrovsky, the Russian consul, whom I had met here, in 1887, on my way to India from Peking. He and Madame Petrovsky, their son, M. Lutsch the secretary, and a Cossack officer in command of the escort, made up a very pleasant little Russian colony here in Kashgar, and it was a comfort to think that during the winter we should not be thrown entirely upon our own resources, but would have the advantage of intercourse with other Europeans.
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