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.
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