212 KULJA. 



Kulja in the 'Sixties, is to be traced in the antagonism 

 existing between the Mohammedans and the Chinese, 

 thouo-h often obscured, it must be admitted, beneath a 

 cloud of intrigue and civil strife among the parties 

 themselves, carrying with it its inevitable concomitant 

 of bloodshed and atrocity. For a time the Russians 

 preserved the attitude of interested spectators along 

 the border-line of their recently acquired territories ; 

 but the time at length came when it appeared to them 

 that their turn for creating a diversion had arrived. 

 Marauders were plying their trade along the borders 

 with unabashed audacity, while the stormy petrel, 

 Yakub Khan, was engaged in a promising war against 

 the Dungans — the descendants of a race settled in very 

 early times in the provinces of Han-su and Shen-si, 

 Chinese in all save religion — of Urumtsi and Turfan, 

 which would in all probability result in his eventual 

 occupation of Kulja. So wrote the Russian oiEcials, 

 determined on acquisition, in a specious despatch to 

 St Petersburg. 



An affray between a Russian outpost and a body of 

 Tarantchis — Mohammedan natives of Kulja — presented 

 an opportune excuse for an immediate advance, and in 

 the course of eleven days an army of 4000 Tarantchis 

 had been defeated, two cities occupied, the submission 

 of the Tarantchi sultan accepted, and the capital en- 

 tered by General Kolpakofsky. 



But the Tarantchis were determined upon one final 

 holocaust, and, despite the proximity of the Russians, 

 succeeded in drenching the grave of their supremacy in 

 a veritable sea of blood. Enrag'ed at the surrender of 

 their chief, they fell upon the wretched Dungans and 

 Chinese in the city and its neighbourhood, and massacred 

 upwards of 2000 of them in the course of a single night, 

 no less than 500 corpses being found next morning in a 



