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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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well cultivated, and the road good. We crossed the Aksu
river, divided into many branches, a mile wide in all, the water
in the deep channels being waist-deep. Further on we passed
the small village of Aral, and the next day arrived at Ush
Turfan.
This is a picturesque little town at the foot of a rugged hill,
with a fort on its summit. There is a good bazaar here, and
I met in it an old man who had been one of Yakoob Beg's
chief secretaries, but was now in very poor circumstances.
He could only mumble away rather indistinctly, but when he
saw me he uttered the word "Shaw," and I immediately asked
the people to question him, and found out that he had had a
great deal to do with my uncle, and had a great regard for
him. I was getting now, in fact, into country where people
were constantly met with who knew Shaw and the members
of the Forsyth Mission, and the interest of the journey increased.
In Central Asia changes of personnel are sharp and radical.
One year Yakoob Beg is unknown; the next he rules a vast
country, and is surrounded by courtiers and great officers of
state. For a short time they remain in power, and then they
are swept clean away, and Chinese rule in their place. Of the
men who were all-powerful at the time of Sir Douglas Forsyth's
Mission, and Shaw's last journey in the country, only eleven
years before my visit, but very very few remained, and those
in the poorest circumstances. But it was interesting to meet
them, and get them to talk of better days, and the state and
grandeur which they had known.
After leaving Ush Turfan, we passed through a country
cultivated at first, but afterwards relapsing into the more or less
barren condition which is characteristic of the district. The
sides of the hills which bounded the valley we were ascending
were not, however, so utterly barren as many we had passed.
There was a good deal of scrub and small bushes on them,
and, higher up, fine grassy slopes in places. At the end of
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