EXPLORATIONS IN MONGOLIA AND TIBET. 665 



Theatricals, a banquet at the magistrate's office, and merry-making 

 followed. On the morrow the cow was broken to ])ieces and farmers 

 began to till their lieUls. Tliis feast is-observed over most of China. 



Having engaged mules to carry me and my luggage to the lamasery of 

 Kumbum, or rather the contiguous village of Lusar, some 20 miles 

 south of Ilsi-ning, I left Lan-cliou on the 5th of February and follow- 

 ing up the Yellow Eiver and the Hsi-ho, a route I had taken previously 

 in 1889,* I reached my destination on the 11th, and took up my quar- 

 ters in an inn in tlie lower part of the village and at once began prei)- 

 aratious for the journey into Tibet. 



I secured the services of the men who had accom})anied me on njy 

 first journey, bought six stout ponies and a supply of provisions — 

 parched barley-meal {tsamha), rice, tlour, vermicelli, tea, etc. — enough 

 to last, if used with economy, for about five months. While my head 

 man, Yeli Chi-ch'eng, was buying pack-mules, fitting the saddles to 

 their backs, and purchasing all the thousand and one little things re- 

 quired on a long journey in a country devoid of every necessary of 

 life save a few varieties of very coarse food, I went for a tour through 

 the portion of country along the Yellow Eiver due south of Lusar, a 

 region of great ethnological interest, inhabited by tribes of Tibetan, 

 Mongol, and Turkish descent; those of the latter called Salars or 

 Salaris, being particularly interesting, as they have retained their 

 original type and language though residing on Chinese soil for the last 

 four hundred years and surrounded by Chinese and Tibetan peoples.t 

 They number some 40,000 souls and are the most fanatical Mohammedans 

 in western China. The Salar priests (ahons) began the late jMohamme- 

 dan rebellion in or near tlie little town of Bayanrong. Fortunately for 

 the Imperial Government, dissensions arose among the Mohammedans 

 and they were soon figliting among themselves. It was this way: One 

 said smoking was permissible (he was a Ho-chou teacher), another said 

 it was forbidden, and so tliey came to blows. At the town of Tankar, 

 30 miles west of Ilsi-ning, these two factions fought so savagely that 

 the authorities made use of this quarrel to rid the place of them. All 

 the male Mohammedans were invited to the mos(iue to talk over the 

 matter in the liresence of the colonel commanding the town. When all 

 had assembled in the court-yard, there came men who called them out 

 one by one, and as they issued out of the gate they were belu^aded, and 

 in this way 3,500 were made away with. Their wives and daughters 



* See "The land of the lamas," p. 41-58. 



tThe principal branch of this ]teopl6 forms now one of the Turkoman tribes un- 

 der Knssian rule residing around Old .Sarakhs. It numbers a))out 5,000 families. 

 "The three nations of the Salars are named Yalawach, Githara, and Karawan. They 

 have an evil reputation even among Turkomans, and are said to be generally hated." 

 See Lieut. A. C. Yate, Travels with the Afghan boundary coiimiission, p. 301-302. 

 See also on tlie Chinese Salar, Rob. B. Shaw, Journ. Boy. Ah. Soc, new ser. X, ]). 305-316 

 and Deniker, Bull. Soc. d'Jnth. de raria, 3e Serie, X, 206-210. 



