October 20 was the id, or festival to commemorate the sacrifice of Ishmael by Abraham (so the Koran has it, quite ignoring the Isaac of the Bible), and our servants were naturally eager to arrive at Kashgar on the previous evening, the id being an occasion of feasting as well as of prayer in the mosques.
As usual we suffered from the vague ideas of the natives concerning distances, and the so-called twenty-mile ride, that was to bring us within easy reach of Kashgar, dragged out to a thirty-mile march, which, to me at all events, was peculiarly dreary. It lay along sandy tracks crossing great stretches of crumbling salt-encrusted soil, with here and there a reed-covered lake or swamp that alternated with strips of cultivation. The grey mist hung round us, hiding villages and trees until we arrived quite close to them, and seeming to enclose us in a ghostly world with a curiously depressing atmosphere of its own. I felt as if we were in one of Maeterlinck’s plays, so heavily did a sense of impending disaster weigh upon me, in spite of vigorous struggles on the part of my common-sense. No misfortune overtook us save that the servants were deprived of the eve of their festival; for my brother decreed that, id or no id, we should halt for the night by a broad canal running parallel with the Kizil Su. It was well that he did so; for all our horses were tired out, and next day, even with the stimulus of their homes ahead of them, they could scarcely manage the twenty miles that lay between our last camp and Kashgar. Delightful as our tour had been, it was very pleasant to be in a clean, well-built house once more, and to be welcomed effusively by Bielka and Brownie. I was thankful to see them both in good condition, as well as the sweet little desert lark in its round cage.
Khotan, with its silk and jade, the desert, and the Yarkand River, receded into the background; for in about six weeks’ time we should be leaving Kashgar for good, and setting our faces towards Europe and home.
Indeed, I was not altogether sorry, for at first after our return Kashgar, enveloped in a frosty grey mist, was sunless and cold, and the revel of colour that the Kashgaris had displayed in their garments during the summer had gone. Fortunately in this part of the world the winter is short; for the houses are not designed to keep out the cold, and the people are too poor to heat them. Fuel is so dear that it is used only for cooking, and during the day the natives usually sit huddled up in sheltered spots and bask in the sunshine, which luckily does not fail them for long at a time. From December 22 to the beginning of February is called the “Forty Days of the Great Cold,” and it is followed by the “Little Cold,” which lasts about twenty days. It has sometimes happened, when a wind blew during the “Great Cold,” that peasants coming in to market on their donkeys have been frozen to death. In consequence of this the Chinese have passed a law that, if any one demands shelter at a house during this period and dies because the door is shut against him, the inhospitable owner of that house is to be tried for murder.
We had enjoyed the very best of the year, and were fortunate to leave without seeing Kashgar at its worst, graphically described by Lord Dunmore, thus: “It is as desolate, dirty and uninteresting looking a city as can possibly be imagined ... a series of yawning abysses; roads full of gaping chasms ... tumbledown mud houses, obsolete mud cemeteries.... [The town is] always either swimming in mud or smothered in dust, and what offends the eye still more is the one uniform melancholy tint of dirty drab that pervades the whole picture....”
To me it will always remain a most picturesque and interesting place, embowered in foliage, surrounded by water and gilded by sunshine, while its brilliantly clad, pleasant-mannered inhabitants greatly contributed to its charm.
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Sir George Macartney arrived in November and we again started off through Central Asia and Northern Europe, reaching home about a month later, when the War, with its urgent claims upon every man and woman, took possession of our thoughts and energies. But I shall never forget the wonderful sunsets of Kashgar seen through a haze of gold, or the glorious dome of Muztagh Ata, the immense sweep of the desert over which the moon and stars hung like lamps in a sky of sapphire velvet, and the friendly races, Turki or Kirghiz, who added so greatly to the pleasure of my last experience of the Open Road.
PART II