This duty he very willingly undertook and efficiently carried out. Just as we were riding off down the valley a very old pink-faced Kirghiz, evidently a man of some consequence, and from his green turban a Haji, came round the corner, much surprised to meet an armed party. Before he could ask who we were, I asked him who he was and made him produce his papers, which indicated that he was a "Karaulohi," or head frontier guard, sent out by a mandarin to inspect certain outposts, and with instructions to meet an expected guest. This aroused my suspicions that the mandarin might be in touch with certain Germans, since the "guest" could not have been myself. So I told the Haji that I was the guest that he was to help, and that he was to come along with me and make himself useful. If he had any scruples in the matter, he did not mention them in the face of my thirteen bayonets, and the compelling suasion of Sowar Kalbi Mahomed, a youthful ex-bandit from Khorasan, who did most of our parleying in Turki. His speciality was the wheedling of unaccommodating Kirghiz maidens, and many were the stores of rich yak milk that found their way down our throats from the ladies' hidingplaces.

winter caravan route from the Karakoram joins in.

There was no trace of the sought-for trail here, nor any water, but a woman gave us each a small and very welcome drink out of a big gourd. We had had nothing for sixteen hours."

Kök Yar, a big village with trees and real houses, was reached in the afternoon, after a long march through a desolate valley in a blinding, tearing dust-storm. A pool of green slimy water saved the horses.

Kök Yar was barren of news, so we slept a few hours, supping on welcome melons and mealie-cobs, and went on at midnight. I intended to strike obliquely from the east, the line that I felt the enemy must have followed, down the Tiznaf valley into the plain of Turkestan. This necessitated a compass-march in the dark over a low ridge of sandy hills that separate the Kök Yar valley from that of the Tiznaf, the latter being the lower waters of the combined Shaksu Pokhpu and Kalisthan streams. Arpat Bulung was reached in broad daylight, and we found Persian-speaking British subjects predominating there. They told us that no strange party had been down the valley, and suggested that they had crossed the range separating the valley of Tiznaf and Asgansal, which would lead them into Yarkand. This was hard to believe, since it meant that they had made

single easy pass that would have taken them straight down the valley into the old oity. It might also imply that they had got wind of our pursuit, and this belief was strengthened by the behaviour of the Bulun villagers. The prospect of catching them did not seem very hopeful, but the men felt certain that we should meet in the open, and prepared for the fight they expected. The fresh mealies and melons had done us all a lot of good, and, spending a few hours to rest in Arpat Bulung, we made an immense march that lasted all the afternoon, all night, and well into the next day. At first this led down the river, forded many times, then across a howling desert, now barren and stony, now overlaid with heavy sand-drifts. As towards morning we approached Khan Langar, a big village on the banks of the Yarkand river, the plain became dotted with hamlets, which had sprung up where the map shows all blank, from the little irrigation canals started by an energetic Chinese Amban.

At Khan Langar we billeted ourselves in the Yuzbashi's big house, but the village was empty of all but women and goîtrous crétins, who appeared to be unable to talk sense. The intelligent males had all gone into Karohalik to pay their annual taxes. That evening saw us again on the road, through frequent villages, among trees, and the many channels of the Yarkand river. When darkness fell, it became

olear that our goîtrous guide did not know the road, in spite of having his head clumped. The Haji did not pretend to, so we came to a house and knocked on the looked porte-cochère of the big courtyard, around which are found the rooms of the inmates. The outside is a blank windowless wall. Much hammering at length aroused a voice, which roughly told us to go away. The old Kirghiz, who was now on the best of terms with us, ordered the door to be opened [in the name of the Chinese Republic]. The man inside said that we might kill him, but he would not open the door. This made me very suspicious, and enraged the Haji, so we agreed to break the door down. A few minutes' work with rifle butts effected an entrance, and we had the creepy feeling of stepping into an empty stableyard, where we had expected to find a hostile assembly. No one could be found, but at last one of the men olimbed a ladder to the flat roof and found a whole family in advanced stages of leprosy. We did not investigate further. A few miles on there lived a Wakhi, a British subject, who willingly got out of bed and showed us the path to Painap. This is on the main cart-road joining Kashgar, through Yarkand and Karghalik to Lanchowfu, and so to China itself. An empty sarai gave us a few hours' sleep, and early in the morning we galloped into a walled garden a mile outside the gates of Old Yarkand.

I stopped here and sent on my Kanjuti interpreter, in civilian clothes, to fetch out the Aksakal (the British trade agent), without attracting attention. He arrived an hour later; I inquired the whereabouts of a party, supposedly mainly Bajauris, who had arrived in the city, as I guessed, a day or so before, from Badakshan. He opined that the Badakshi Sarai might hold them; so under his guidance the whole patrol hastened in the growing daylight through the quaint tortuous lanes of the ancient abode of iniquity, to the gate of a large sarai.

The inrush of a dozen enthusiastic Pathans, Panjabis, Hazaras, and Kanjutis with fixed bayonets bewildered the fifty or So more or less ruffian Bajauris and Afghans in the sarai, and they put their hands up and surrendered themselves without more ado. It only remained to sort out the fifteen we wanted, search them, and relieve them of their German arms and ammunition. So happily ended a fortnight's venture through an almost untouched region of some of the wildest country that it has ever been my misfortune to cross.

WHEN daylight came, we found ourselves in net work of extraordinary valleys. Large trees grew on the rockstrewn slopes, while along the bottoms were little strips of bright red soil, sprinkled with stones, and yet suggestive of great fertility; and indeed in some parts it was clear that the ground had in a previous year been ploughed. Yet as far as human habitation was concerned the valley seemed entirely deserted; only here and there as we marched on we passed a few timbers of some ruined shelter, indicating its former occupation by shepherd inhabitants. The whole scene gave the impression that here had once been flourishing wellwatered vales, which had then been blasted by some strange upheaval of nature, by which the whole water-supply had suddenly been out off and the former inhabitants compelled to quit.

To open our eyes on such a scene did not tend to revive our spirits. We had not a drop of water in our waterbottles, and although we soon found a valley leading in the right direction, we followed it without much hope of being able to quench our thirst. After an hour or so, however, at a place where the valley widened a little, we picked up

in the soft red soil a number of goat - tracks, and noticed that several others joined them, all seeming to converge towards the same spot. These suggested water, but 800n after they suddenly ceased. About fifty yards up the hill, however, there was 8 stone enclosure, and just as Cochrane was leading on, Nobby thought it was advisable to make sure there was nothing there. This was most fortunate, for inside he found a well. Next moment we were all within the enclosure, and on lifting out the heavy timber bung which olosed the hole in the stonebuilt cover, found water not twenty feet down. It tasted slightly stale, and no doubt the well had not been used for some time; but this did not affect our enjoyment of a couple of brews of "boulgar (porridge made from crushed wheat), which were now prepared, and flavoured with a spoonful of our precious cocoa. Still more refreshing to those who could summon up the necessary energy, was a wash and a shave. Even a washhand basin was provided in the shape of a little stone trough which was built into the enclosure wall, and was doubtless intended for use in watering the flooks of sheep and goats.