KUNGES TO KULDJA 137 



the Englishman, not regarding him merely as a 

 foreign devil and a nuisance. On one occasion two 

 of our men were assaulted by three Chinese soldiers 

 close to our gate, one of them being rather knocked 

 about. A sally in force resulted in the capture of 

 one soldier, who was carefully tied up pending the 

 arrival of the Shwingam's myrmidons, to whom we 

 sent word of the occurrence. When the captive 

 began to realise his position he wept bitterly, and 

 tried to purchase his freedom by offering to give the 

 names of his two companions in crime ; but he was 

 told that the Shwingam would attend to that, and 

 so he did, all three of them being satisfactorily 

 licked before supper-time. 



Morse was now on his way home, and I decided 

 to go with him as far as Tashkent to see what the 

 country was like, and get some experience of posting 

 in Russia. 



We had two sledges, one for ourselves, the other 

 for our kit and one of my own men, who combined 

 the offices of cook and Turki interpreter. These 

 sledges had to be ordered from Khargos on the 

 frontier forty miles away, where is the last regular 

 posting-house. 



On January 3rd, 1900, we started on what turned 

 out to be a nineteen days' drive, the distance being 

 about 850 miles. The road runs by Yakent, Vernoie, 

 (Al Martai), Ali-outai, and Chimkent, skirting the 



