CHAPTER IX
THE ANCIENT CITY OF YARKAND
The Turki have long-shaped faces, well-formed noses and full beards....
These facts show that the modern Yarkandees are not pure Tartars like the Kirghiz ... but rather Tartarized Aryans, if I may so express myself.—Robert Shaw, Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand and Kashgar.
It was the beginning of September when we set off on the tour which had Khotan as its goal and which was in reality a passing from oasis to oasis along the edge of the Takla Makan Desert. This sahara may be regarded as the western extension of the immense waste of the Gobi that stretches for more than a thousand miles to the east, a very abomination of desolation.
Golden autumn was on the land as we rode out of Kashgar along the broad tree-shaded road that leads to the New City, and turned off after a couple of miles to cross the imposing-looking Kalmuck bridge. Along the river bank the rice was being cut and then threshed by means of a stone roller, which bullocks and donkeys were pulling round and round over the heaped-up ears, the handsome millet crop was turning yellow, the big leaves of melons, pumpkins and gourds were withering, and only the lucerne kept its vivid green.
Jafar Bai and Humayun rode behind us, Iftikhar Ahmad and the Doctor were escorted by their own attendants, and Sattur, with the lunch and tea-box, kept up with us fairly well in a blue-tilted mapa. Our tents and baggage were packed into covered carts termed arabas, drawn by three, and later on by five, ponies apiece, Daoud finding a seat in one of them. These waggons have very high wheels, with only one horse between the shafts, the others being harnessed in front, pulling at the side. The drivers shouted “Oo—ah! Oo—ah!” to their horses all the time, but I noticed that riders called out “Choo! Choo!” to stimulate their mounts, and without that magic exclamation I should never have got my pony along, as the whip made no impression upon him. The donkeys in this part of the world were urged by a peculiar sound reminding me of one of the symptoms of mal de mer, while a series of sharp whistles answered the same purpose with the sheep and goats.
In the East, travellers like to attach themselves to the caravan of any one of position, partly for the sake of protection and partly for the prestige which it gives them among the natives. As highway robbery is practically unknown in Chinese Turkestan the men that joined us did so for the latter reason, and among them the Master of the Horse of the Rajah of Punyal and his groom were picturesque figures, always riding as if they were showing off the points of their wiry ponies to would-be purchasers. They were in search of a couple of Badakshani stallions for their chief, and throughout the entire journey their eyes were riveted on the handsome grey and the chestnut that my brother and I rode. At each town where we halted they searched for horses, even making a purchase once or twice, which they sent back as unsuitable before the expiration of the three days during which either side has the right to break a bargain. They were unsuccessful in their quest, so that when we returned to Kashgar they purchased our Badakshanis, and we felt glad to know that the animals that had carried us so well and had given us so much pleasure were in the hands of horse-lovers, whose methods were far more enlightened than those of the Kashgaris.
OUR ARABAS ON THE YARKAND ROAD.
Page 176.
Another interesting personality was the Chief Falconer of the Mehtar of Chitral, who was engaged in a search for a pair of white hawks. These birds, which are extremely rare, if indeed they exist as a species, are said to be found in the district of Ili; but our fellow-traveller, having heard that one had been offered for sale at Kashgar and another at Khotan, determined to throw in his lot with us, as we were bound for the latter city. Truth to say, he was a timid man, entirely devoid of the love of adventure that is part of the equipment of the true traveller, and moreover he had no knowledge of the Turki language. He found no white hawk in Kashgar and probably expected none in Khotan, but I fancy he joined our caravan to pick up the language and so fit himself more or less for the still longer journey to Ili.
When we were at Tashkurghan during our visit to the Pamirs, we heard that a pair of white falcons had been procured in the valley for presentation to the Agha Khan. Unluckily one of the birds died, but the Sarikolis, not to be foiled, stuffed it and offered it to the Head of their faith together with its live mate.
This admiration for white falcons is old, and in the annals of the crusades it is mentioned that Philip of France owned a white falcon to which he was greatly attached. According to the chronicle, “Le roi aimait beaucoup cet oiseau, et l’oiseau aimait le roi de même.” But one day it made a long flight and came down among the Saracens, who refused to give it up until Philip had paid a huge ransom for its recovery.
Another addition to our party was a Hindu trader with a wooden leg, who had a few words of English at his command, saluted us in military fashion, and excited my admiration at the agility with which he mounted and dismounted from his horse. If Chaucer could have come to life again, he would have delighted in our caravan, composed of such diverse elements, and I never tired of observing the many gradations it contained between the Aryan and Mongol races. For example, one youth from Gilgit had the features and limbs of the immortal riders of the Elgin marbles and bestrode a big grey with the same effortless mastery, carrying my mind back to Alexander and his Greek colonies in Asia.
Our first real halt was the town of Yangi Hissar, which is practically a continuation of the Kashgar Oasis, the cultivation being merely broken at intervals by bands of salt desert and narrow stretches of sand-dunes. The inhabitants worked the land up to the edge of the sand, and in many cases had placed their mud-built hamlets so close to the dunes that they were in danger of being overwhelmed, should a violent sandstorm occur. The whole of our route was marked by potais, these Chinese equivalents of milestones being erected two and a quarter miles apart. They are built of mud bricks, in form not unlike the castles used in chess and some fifteen feet in height. Whenever the potai stood near a rest-house or at the entrance of a town it was attended by five miniature potais, reminding me of a hen and its chickens, a device employed to show the traveller that rest and refreshment were close at hand. It impressed me to know that these “milestones” not only marked the road to Khotan, but the entire distance to Peking, a journey that would take six months to accomplish. The Forsyth Mission speak of tall wooden mile-posts as marking this road, placed about five miles apart, i.e. a farsang or one hour’s journey, the same word being used as in Persia.
The autumnal weather was very pleasant, as the nights and early mornings were refreshingly cool, and we made, wherever possible, a long mid-day halt. As we rose at 5 A.M. I was quite ready to rest from twelve to three, and had a head-net wherewith to circumvent the flies during the lazy hours spent beside irrigation channels bordered by willows, where the peasants made us gifts of melons, peaches, nectarines and grapes, the last sometimes an inch and a half long and deliciously flavoured. Lemons were unobtainable, but we found that grape-juice mixed with water made a refreshing drink. The cultivators were always most polite, and when paid for their offerings smiled and said, “Allah is gracious.”
Throughout the tour I practically lived on fruit, and I suppose there is nothing more refreshing in hot weather than slices of the splendid melons that I considered superior in taste to those I had so often enjoyed in Persia. Perhaps the taus or “peacock”—as the natives call the great dark-green water melon with black and white seeds set in its scarlet flesh—quenches thirst the best, but it has not the “bouquet” of the karbuzeh proper, and wherever we went the peasants were devouring huge chunks of this fruit, which they prefer to all others. Thousands of melons were being prepared for winter storage, the method adopted being to lay them in the sun for a month, turning them over frequently, and then to place them on sand in cold rooms. The natives eat them throughout the winter and until the fresh fruit comes round again, though we did not appreciate them much when we sampled a last year’s specimen on our arrival at Kashgar in April.
Yangi Hissar is a small town surrounded by a high wall and is a centre of gardens and cultivation, the river on which it stands flowing through a deep gorge in the loess, which is broken up into picturesque cliffs. From the city we enjoyed superb views of the snowy Muztagh Ata range. We camped in a so-called garden that was really an orchard of fruit trees planted along irrigation channels, in the middle of which, on a large concrete platform, was a shefang, or Chinese garden-house. It was square and had a prettily painted wooden roof, the open sides being partly curtained in. Throughout the tour in all our halts we usually left the house proper to the servants and lived in the shefang all day, sleeping in our tents at night. One drawback to these gardens was the myriads of mosquitoes brought by the water; but as we slept under our nets we avoided the malaria that had attacked the Swedish missionaries, who have a neat compound at Yangi Hissar: I was also always on the look-out for scorpions after I had found one in my tent nestling on the collar of my tweed coat.
We halted at Yangi Hissar only for a day to rest our caravan, but my brother borrowed fresh horses in order to visit the shrine of Agri Su, some eight miles to the south-west. A gloomy group of old poplars, that reminded him of the sacred groves outside Greek temples, lay at the foot of a steep cliff, in which steps were cut to enable pilgrims to ascend to the small domed shrine in honour of Shaykh Ata-ul Vali and his son Kasim. The object of my brother’s visit was to see a certain inscribed stone some three and a half feet in diameter which the inhabitants greatly venerated; but he could not decipher the inscription, and after photographing the stone and visiting the site of an ancient city which the inhabitants called by the lengthy name of Jam-i-Taghai-Agri-Su he returned to camp.
Next day we traversed a vast marshy plain covered with dried-up reeds, on which, to my surprise, herds of lean cattle were browsing. The glorious mountains were hidden by a veil of dust, and when we reached our camp on the edge of the Yarkand Oasis thunder rolled, lightning flashed, and the sand whirled up in clouds, half-blinding us until our servants managed to pitch our tents. Then the rain came down in sheets, practically the first that we had experienced since we reached Kashgar in April; for on the Pamirs we had had only snow or heavy passing showers. It cleared the air and revealed the mountains, which looked magnificent as we rode across the gravelly desert, now and again coming upon a rest-house built by Yakub Beg. At one of these a party of Hindus, British subjects from Yarkand, entertained us with tea, eggs, sweetmeats and fruit; but we did not dare to halt long, as they said that another storm was imminent.
Our camp that night was pitched among trees, and some men brought a big horned owl to show us, a beautiful creature, buff with dark markings, and held by a string tied to its leg. My brother gave its captors money to release it, and I rejoiced to see it flap its great wings and sail off to the shelter of a tall Turkestan elm, where I trusted that it would rest in security.
We often saw the great golden eagles which are trained to hunting in this part of the world. They kill gazelles, hares and foxes, and I always wondered how their masters could ride at breakneck pace and mount and dismount while carrying such a weight on their arms. The great birds seemed wonderfully docile, and apparently indifferent as to whether their hoods were on or off. The hunting eagle is captured by means of a live fox tied to a rope; the bird, busily employed in tearing its prey, does not observe that the quarry is being drawn by the rope gradually nearer and nearer to a hole, in which the hunter lies concealed with a net to throw over the eagle. When captured the unfortunate bird is confined in a dark room, its eyelids are sewn up, and its spirit is broken by the incessant beating of drums which allows it no sleep. It remains morose for a time, refusing all food, but gradually becomes tame and attaches itself to the man who feeds it and takes it out hunting.
A HUNTING EAGLE.
Page 182.
The British Consul-General is always welcomed throughout Chinese Turkestan, and I will give a description of our entry into Yarkand, which will serve as an example of what occurred at every town during our tour. Some miles from the city we were met at intervals by groups of British subjects, mostly Hindus, who dismounted to greet my brother and then rode behind us, our escort thus becoming bigger and bigger as we proceeded. Some of its members were but indifferent horsemen. Now and again a rider would be thrown and his steed gallop off, or a horse tethered by the roadside would break loose, agitating the procession and making my chestnut scream with excitement until the runaways were captured, usually by the men from Punyal.
Old Jafar Bai had a reception all to himself. Though he lived at Kashgar and owned shops there, he told me that the chief part of his property was at Yarkand, acquired in the old days when he owned a caravan and carried goods between the two towns. I was interested to note the number of acquaintances who clasped his hands warmly, and, when we stopped to partake of the usual spread of fowls, eggs and tea laid out in a marquee, the old man had the joy of seeing his small grandson brought to him by his son-in-law. He kissed the child passionately, and then, full of pride, brought it to me and smiled as I gave the little fellow sweets and biscuits.
After this the whole company remounted and swept on again, to be stopped nearer to the city by the Russian Agent accompanied by the Russian subjects, who were standing in a large group beside tables laden with food, to which our servants always did full justice, surprised that their employers did not appreciate these incessant meals. Just outside Yarkand the beating of drums, the squealing of pipes and the scraping of tars, producing music most excruciating to European ears, announced the Chinese reception. As I always avoided this ceremony, I was glad to be met by Dr. Hoegberg, head of the Swedish Missions and incidentally the architect of the Kashgar Consulate, who drove me along the broad tree-bordered road to the new Chinese town and through interminable bazars to the pleasant garden-house of the British Agent.
“The people of Yarkand display an entire lack of energy and enterprise, or indeed of any interest in life,” was the dictum of Lieutenant Etherton, who visited the city in 1909. Though I thought the statement somewhat sweeping at first, I soon noticed how apathetic the Yarkandis were when contrasted with the lively, laughing Kashgaris, and the reason was not far to seek. The inhabitants of this district are afflicted with goitre in its most distressing forms; and the Swedish doctor told us he believed that about fifty per cent of the population were victims of the complaint, which in his opinion was not the same as the European goitre, and for which he knew of no remedy save iodine. One theory is that it is due to the habit of drinking stagnant water stored in tanks, the river unfortunately being at some distance from the city; but the peasantry living right out in the country are by no means exempt from the scourge. Many thus affected become idiots, and the children of goitrous parents inherit the disease, which Marco Polo commented on in the following words: “A large proportion of them have swollen legs and great crops at the throat, which arises from some quality in their drinking-water.” The old Chinese travellers also make mention of the complaint, but I heard that the Celestials, who boil all their water, whether used for drinking or for washing, never fall victims to it, nor apparently do the Hindu traders or travellers, although if they marry Yarkandi women their children may develop it. Some say that all who drink from a certain canal are sure to contract the disease, while others affirm that it is caused by the grey water of the Yarkand River. Be that as it may, the health of half the population is undermined, and the aged and children alike are sufferers, some unfortunates having their heads permanently tilted backwards by the horrible swelling in their throats. This has given rise to the popular anecdote of the man who rode his horse to the water but had to ask a neighbour if the animal were drinking, as he could not himself look down to see.
Besides goitre and skin-diseases induced by lack of washing, opium and hashish-smoking, and the squalor in which they live, contribute to the sickly look of the people, and I decided that dirty, dusty ruinous old Yarkand was a good place to live out of. The mosques and shrines were in a state of dilapidation, and in spite of a large body of Hindus, who trade with India by one of the highest routes in the world, the whole place looked much poorer than Kashgar.
Masses of snowy-white cotton were to be seen everywhere in the bazars, ready for the stuffing of cushions and quilts or to be spun into yarn, while at odd corners we came across groups of children busily removing the pods or beating out the seeds with sticks. Here, as at Kashgar, there is no grazing for the sheep; hence the poor quality and the toughness of the mutton. The animals were trying to get some nourishment from the withered cotton bents, and I sometimes saw a woman holding out bunches of lucerne to her half-starved charges or letting them munch dried maize leaves from a basket. One must ride in single file through the narrow alleys of the bazar, which are covered in with awnings of maize leaves to keep off the heat. Children and chickens get in the way; here a goat is tied up or a camel is lying down in the midst of the traffic; there a horse, tethered by a rope to a stall, lashes out with its heels at passing riders, and now and again one gets glimpses of extremely unsavoury courtyards. But in fairness to the inhabitants of Chinese Turkestan I defy any one to keep clean who has to live in a house of unbaked mud where there are no washing arrangements, and where, in the absence of chairs, every one must sit on the mud floor: fortunately the brilliantly coloured flowered prints do not show the prevailing dirt as much as might be expected.
The best shops in the bazar were near the Hindu serai, that was hung with silks in honour of my brother’s visit, and I was told that the Chinese are so considerate to the traders from India that they forbid the opening of any butchers’ shops near their quarters, and orders to this effect, inscribed on boards and stuck up on walls, were pointed out to me. Sometimes the Yarkandis tear down these notices and the butchers reopen their stalls, but whenever this occurs a complaint from the Hindus to the authorities is ultimately successful. This praiseworthy tolerance of the religious views of other races partly accounts for the easy Chinese mastery over a Mohamedan population.
Quantities of beautiful fruit, such as peaches and grapes, were on sale in the bazars, the vendors keeping off the swarms of flies by means of horse-hair flappers, and naked children were munching enormous chunks of melon. Horses were being shod, horse-shoes hammered out on the anvils, and near by picturesque copper pots were being worked into shape, a noisy operation. At intervals we came across a mosque with the columned verandah so characteristic of the province, its beams and pediments covered with incised carving something in the style of Jacobean work. The principal mosque had lost about half the blue and white tiles that had once adorned its façade, and the city wall was out of repair to such an extent that people could enter the town by many a breach after the crazy-looking wooden doors had been closed at sunset.
Among the callers on my brother was the son of the Thum of Hunza, whose defeat by the British in 1891 is so graphically described in Knight’s book Where Three Empires Meet. The young chief, who was a child at that time, now ekes out a penurious existence on a small estate given to his ancestors by the Chinese, and has a pension of a couple of taels a month, a sum equivalent to 4s. 8d. Safdar Ali Khan, the old Thum, after his defeat fled to Kucha, where he still lives with an ancient retainer or two, and earns a humble livelihood as a market-gardener. Sic transit!
During our stay I had the pleasure of entertaining a Yarkandi lady. She arrived accompanied by her mother and three sons, and was clad in a purple satin coat, while across her forehead was a richly embroidered head-band, over which fell in graceful folds her long white muslin shawl. When she had removed her lace-work veil her pretty face was set off by big gold earrings and her long black plaits reached half-way down her back. I photographed both ladies, together with the small boys, who were attired in velvet. Going next day to return their visit, I found myself in a garden that had formerly belonged to Yakub Beg, where the mud platform on which he was wont to perform his devotions was pointed out to me. On this occasion I gained a little insight into native etiquette; for my hostess, after graciously accepting a small gift which I presented, put it aside and did not open the parcel until I had retired, it being considered bad manners to look at and admire a present in the way that Europeans are accustomed to do. Our conversation happening to turn on scorpions, my hostess said that she had suffered agonies for three days after having been stung by one, and her husband related that the followers of a certain Indian saint have the power of taking away the pain of a scorpion sting by breathing on the afflicted part. Though he had not had personal experience of this, he had met many who swore that they had been cured instantly by this means, which was perhaps akin to hypnotism. On our return to Yarkand some three weeks later I was invited to attend the feast of the “shaving of the head” of my host’s youngest son, but having no interpreter, as men were tabooed, I declined, though I much regretted missing the sight of some forty or fifty ladies attired in their best and adorned with much jewellery.
While at Yarkand we visited the little colony of boys and girls who were being trained by the Swedish missionaries in their large compound. These children were taught to read and write in Turki, to weave and to sew. The girls cooked all the food, made the bread and did the housework, wearing aprons over their gowns of pretty Russian print. The boys were dressed in clothes of their own weaving, and Mrs. Hoegberg hoped that the girls might later on marry the boys, who were being trained to be self-supporting. In any case she trusted that they might lead happier lives than usually befall the maidens of Chinese Turkestan, who are practically sold by their parents and are often handed over to old men. It is true that the husband engages to pay a certain sum for the maintenance of his wife should he divorce her, and this he does in the presence of witnesses. But the onus of finding these witnesses and bringing them up before the Imam lies on the woman, and the man can often persuade them to swear that he promised to pay his wife much less than he really did. The parents of a wealthy woman can help her to obtain her rights, but a poor woman may have a hard fight for bare existence before she can find a new husband to support her.
Village life is better for the women than life in the town, for they have fewer matrimonial adventures, and there are none of the temporary marriages that are common in all the centres of population. I noticed that they veiled far less in Yarkand than in Kashgar, the result of stronger Chinese influence; but here and throughout the province they were not permitted to enter the little village mosques that are such a characteristic feature of the country. These places of worship are usually built by some pious benefactor, who gives a piece of land for an endowment fund. This is called a wakf or “trust,” and the trustees appoint a mulla, who is often a villager with a good voice who merely calls the Faithful to prayer.
Dr. and Mrs. Hoegberg had done missionary work in Persia, and said that they found the Turki very slow-witted and disinclined to discuss religion, a strong contrast in this respect to the keen-brained, argumentative Persians, who enjoy nothing more than metaphysics, and, being Shias, are less orthodox and priest-ridden than the primitive Sunnis of Chinese Turkestan.
Whether Christianity is gaining a hold in Chinese Turkestan or not, the high standard which it sets up is not without its influence, as the following anecdote told me by Dr. Hoegberg shows. A Yarkandi merchant went with some traders to buy figs, and on the way his friends jeered at him on account of his leanings towards Christianity. When they reached the market they were offered the fruit packed in baskets said to contain a hundred, but the buyers never dreamt of trusting the word of the vendor, and counted the contents of the baskets, finding several figs short in each. The merchant then enquired of his colleagues whether, when they bought calico or print that had come from Europe, they found any deficiency in the number of yards that were stamped upon each piece. “Never,” they answered in chorus, and he then pointed out that this honesty was due to Christian principles of fair-dealing.