LEH TO YARKAND 33 



garden, and situated well away from the town. 

 The few European travellers who have been here 

 have nearly all stopped at the same place, and 

 a bridge in the garden has several names and 

 initials, most of them familiar, carved on its balus- 

 trades. 



The aforesaid Hindus are nearly all money- 

 lenders and appear to make rapid fortunes out 

 of the guileless Yarkandis ; they are indeed an 

 enterprising lot, and in pursuit of their profitable 

 calling some of them have even penetrated as 

 far as Tashkent in Russian Turkestan, where I 

 am told that a small crowd of them may usually 

 be seen round the law-court, but there I should 

 imagine that Russian bureaucracy takes a good 

 deal of the gilt off their gingerbread. On the 

 whole perhaps these money-lenders, whose num- 

 bers are rapidly increasing, are not an unmixed 

 evil, credit being the life of trade, at least theo- 

 retically ; and the Mahommedans, being by their 

 religion forbidden to take interest for a loan, are 

 not unnaturally averse to lending large sums, 

 though among themselves they are very charit- 

 able in a small way. 



The present amban of Yarkand is a cheerful old 

 Chinaman who. apparently rather prides himself 

 upon his knowledge of European ways and absence 

 of ceremony ; anyway he came to call on us the 

 morning after our arrival and took us quite 

 D 



