THE GEOGRAPHY, GOVERNMENT AND COMMERCE OF
CHINESE TURKESTAN
Le Turkestan est pour les Chinois une position stratégique et un excellent débouché pour l’aristocratie mandarine qui ne trouve plus assez de places disponibles dans la vieille Chine. C’est tout simplement une bonne terre de pâture pour engraisser une portion notable du troupeau administrateur—Grenard, La Haute Asie, ii. 273.
Hsin-Chiang, or “the New Province,” as the Chinese term it, includes the province now generally known as Chinese Turkestan, together with Urumchi and other districts situated to the north of the Tian Shan which lie outside the scope of this work. The province we are dealing with has had many names, such as Lesser Bokhara, Moghulistan, Tartary, High Tartary, Eastern Turkestan, the Six Cities and Kashgaria, the last four names having been in use until quite recently.
The country is a vast plain, measuring about 1000 miles from east to west and about half that distance from north to south. Its altitude is some 4000 feet in the west, and decreases steadily as it stretches eastwards, until at Turfan an area lying below sea-level is found. The physical boundaries are definite, being formed by some of the loftiest mountains in the world. To the north runs the Tian Shan; to the west lies the Kizil Art, holding up the Pamirs, those elevated valleys of High Asia; on the south are the lofty Kara Koram and Kuen Lun ranges, the latter being the Kasia Mountains of Ptolemy, bounding Serindia, as he termed the province. The eastern boundary is the vast Gobi or “Desert,” where Sir Francis Younghusband travelled for nearly one thousand miles without seeing a house.
The Takla Makan desert, distinct from the Gobi, occupies the centre of the country. From east to west this paralysing waste stretches for 500 miles, while its greatest breadth from north to south is half that distance. It is indeed a Land of Death, covered with monstrous sandhills, which overlie the ruins of great cities and dense forests and represent the triumph of the wind, combined with desiccation, over the patient industry of man. There are also smaller deserts, such as that lying between Merket and Kashgar, which we crossed on our journey.
THE TIAN SHAN OR CELESTIAL MOUNTAINS.
(Taken from the West on the Osh-Kashgar route.) Page 236.
Chinese Turkestan may be described as a desert, or series of deserts, fringed by oases forming a horseshoe, with the toe pointing west. In Persia, except in the heart of the Lut, there are villages at intervals all over the country, depending mainly on the underground irrigation channels termed kanats, whereas in Chinese Turkestan, outside a few large oases, more fertile than any areas in Persia, the desert is of a more intense type, and rarely supports even a scanty covering of bushes such as are usually found in Persia. Indeed the desert, with its waves of sand advancing in regular lines and rising to the height of perhaps one hundred feet, is the most noticeable feature of the country, which is full of legends of the destruction through this agency of many famous cities. The description of Hiuen Tsiang, the great Chinese traveller, is worth quoting: “These sands extend like a drifting flood for a great distance, piled up or scattered before the wind. There is no trace left behind by travellers, and often-times the way is lost, and so they wander hither and thither, quite bewildered, without any guide or direction. There is neither water nor herbage to be found, and hot winds frequently blow. When these winds rise, both man and beast become confused and forgetful, and there they remain perfectly disabled. At times, sad and plaintive notes are heard and piteous cries, so that between the sights and sounds of this desert men get confused and know not whither they go. Hence there are so many who perish on the journey. But it is all the work of demons and evil spirits.”[5]
It has been calculated that the area of the oases is rather less than 1½ per cent of the whole, so that if the deserts were taken away we should have to deal with a very small stretch of habitable country. As it is, we see oases, generally separated by miles of desert, all producing wheat, barley and other essentials within their own limits, and therefore needing but little communication with their neighbours, from whom they want nothing and to whom they sell nothing. The result is a state of general well-being, unprogressive in character and tending to stagnation. The more one travels the more one realizes how the progress and prosperity of a country depend upon good communications and an abundant rainfall.