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In general appearance and plan of arrangement all these little States bear a common
resemblance. Thus each has its central fortified city or capital with its suburbs more or less
extensive, its district or market towns, and its rural settlements, and around all its little
frontier outposts. In each the capital alone is fortified and surrounded by walls. The market
towns or bázárs are, as the name indicates, mere markets thronged on the market day and
deserted for the rest of the week, except of course by the permanent residents, who are mostly
tradesmen, victuallers, and handicraftsmen. Their open collection of tenements gradually
expand, and in clusters of two or three or more spread far and wide along the water-courses
around, and form the rural settlements. These consist of a number of scattered homesteads
along the main canal or river of the settlement, and each homestead is surrounded by its own
fields and orchards, and gardens and vineyards. They thus spread over a considerable tract of
country which, from the willows, poplars, æleagnns, and mulberry trees planted along the water-
courses, wears the appearance of population and plenty. Each of these settlements is separated
from the next by an intervening strip of waste land varying in width from only a few hundred
yards to twelve or more miles, in which latter case the waste becomes blank desert. The produce
of these settlements is carried weekly to the market towns for barter and thence to the capital,
which is the seat of trade and manufacture.

The rural settlements, it will thus be seen, are purely agricultural; the market towns
mere centres of exchange, though not exclusively so, for some have special industries—as iron
smelting at Kizili—besides the trades supported by the market people; and the capitals the
recipients of their produce. The separation of the homesteads in the rural settlements, and
the isolation of these from their neighbours proves most advantageous in respect to police and
hygiene. It prevents combination for tumult or sedition, and operates to render the peasantry
unusually docile and timid if not entirely peaceable; and whilst it checks the growth of
epidemics and spread of contagion, it affords the people the most favourable conditions for
maintaining good health, a blessing which they in fact enjoy as freely as most people
similarly situated. On the other hand, however, this arrangement proves nugatory as regards
self-defence against an organized army, or small disciplined force; but rather favours the
enemy who has effected his entrance by placing at his disposal just the supplies he requires for
the maintenance of his troops engaged in besieging the capital. It is owing to these cir-
cumstances, coupled with the unwarlike character of the peasantry, that the country has
always succumbed quickly to the arms of the invader, and in times of anarchy been the
easy prey of adventurers, till partitioned off into independent little principalities under local
chiefs who ruled within the limits of their own petty States as sovereign lords, or who
confederated with their neighbours under an acknowledged head to repel a foreign foe, or to
check the ambition of an internal rival.

With these preliminary remarks on the general characters and arrangements of all the
petty States comprising the Káshghar territory, we will now proceed to describe them severally
in detail. They are in the order of their sequence, on the lowland tract skirting the moun-
tains that bound three sides of the country, Khutan, Yárkand, Yángí Hissár, Káshghar, U'ch
Turfán, Aksú, Kúchá, Kúrla, Karáshahr, and Turfán. There are besides the highland district
of Sárigh Kúl, the desert military post and Dolan settlement of Marálbáshí, and the swamp
colony of Lob. And finally, there are the Kirghiz steppes of Alátágh and Pámir, and the
mountain retreats of the aboriginal Pakhpúlúk of Múztágh.

Khutan.—This little State is situated at the northern base of the Kuenlun mountain, and
includes the deep valleys which drain its slopes into the river on which the capital stands. It
has from remote times been in more or less continuous communication with China either as a
tributary ally or a subject State, and has from the earliest ages been celebrated for its musk
and its silk, for its gold and its jade.

According to Remusat, its ancient Chinese name was Kiu-sa-tan-na from the Sanskrit
Kustanâ="Pap of the World," and at different periods it has been described in the annals
of that empire under the names of Iu-thian, Iu-tun, Iu-sun, Hou-an-na, Khiou-tan, and
Hou-tan. In the tenth century, at the time of the Baghra Khan crescentade, it was called
Chín or Máchin by the Musalmans, and its capital Chínshahr or "Chín City." At the