44 CHINESE TURKESTAN 



zero, the low temperature is not much felt, as 

 there is hardly any wind in the jungle at that time 

 of the year, and plenty of firewood. 



At Maralbashi we camped in a garden outside 

 the town, and in the evening sallied out to shoot 

 geese, which were said to come to a stubble near. 

 Of course, on this occasion they went elsewhere ; 

 at least, we only saw one small lot, out of which we 

 got one. A small boy brought us two fish which 

 he had caught with melon seeds in the river near ; 

 they weighed about seven pounds each, and were, 

 I suppose, some sort of carp. 



Being now on a good main road, we hired three 

 carts to come as far as Aksu to relieve our ponies of 

 their loads. Several of them had begun to get sore 

 backs, which the hot weather was not good for, but 

 which were probably partly caused by the change 

 from barley to Indian corn, the latter being a very 

 heating food. We managed to leave Maralbashi 

 on August 25th, so were only there the one night, 

 and had not to call upon or dine with the amban ; 

 the difficulty of course was to get the carts in so 

 short a time. 



All cultivation was soon left behind us, and we got 

 into a scrub-covered plain, which gradually became 

 more and more swampy till the village of Charbak 

 was reached. Next day we pursued our way over 

 much the same sort of country, except where a spur 

 of hills runs down from the north, and the road for a 



