Chapter 16 - Page 2

of Kachgaria; it
is a station on the Grand Transasiatic, the junction between the
Russian and Chinese lines, and the strip of iron which stretches for
three thousand kilometres from the Caspian to this city runs on for
nearly four thousand more to the capital of the Celestial Empire.

I return to the double town. The new one is Yangi-Chahr: the old one,
three and a half miles off, is Kachgar. I have seen both, and I will
tell you what they are like.

In the first place, both the old and the new towns are surrounded with
a villainous earthen wall that does not predispose you in their favor.
Secondly, it is in vain that you seek for any monument whatever, for
the materials of construction are identical for houses as for palaces.
Nothing but earth, and not even baked earth. It is not with mud dried
in the sun that you can obtain regular lines, clean profiles and finely
worked sculptures. Your architecture must be in stone or marble, and
that is precisely what you do not get in Chinese Turkestan.

A small carriage quickly took the major and myself to Kachgar, which is
three miles round. The Kizil-Sou, that is to say the Red River, which
is really yellow, as a Chinese river ought to be, clasps it between its
two arms, which are united by two bridges. If you wish to see a few
ruins of some interest, you must go a short distance beyond the town,
where there are the remains of fortifications dating from five hundred
or two thousand years ago, according to the imagination of the
archaeologist. What is certain is that Kachgar submitted to the furious
assault of Tamerlane, and we will agree that without the exploits of
this terrible cripple the history of Central Asia would be singularly
monotonous. Since his time there have been fierce sultans, it is
true--among others that Ouali-Khan-Toulla, who, in 1857, strangled
Schlagintweit, one of the most learned and most daring explorers of the
Asiatic continent. Two tablets of bronze, presented by the Geographical
Societies of Paris and Petersburg, ornament his commemorative monument.

Kachgar is an important centre of trade, which is almost entirely in
Russian hands. Khotan silks, cotton, felt, woolen carpets, cloth, are
the principal articles in the markets, and these are exported beyond
the frontier between Tachkend and Koulja, to the north of Oriental
Turkestan.

Here, as the major told me, Sir Francis Trevellyan should have special
cause for manifesting his ill humor. In fact, an English embassy under
Chapman and Gordon in 1873 and 1874 had been sent from Kashmir to
Kachgar by way of Kothan and Yarkand. At this time the English had
reason to hope that commercial relations could be established to their
advantage. But instead of being in