5o8 THE KARLIK TAGH 



at Bardash, free of intercourse and outwardly friendly 

 with us non-Mussulmans, owing no doubt to the 

 distance which separated Bardash from Kumul and 

 placed them beyond the influence of their hard task- 

 master, the Khan. For this separation the sandstone 

 range must be accounted largely responsible. The men 

 were well-made, clad in half- Chinese, half-Chanto cos- 

 tumes, and wore moccasins over thick felt stockings. The 

 women, too, were more independent than their friends 

 " in town" ; they made no attempt to hide their faces, 

 and behaved with a freedom and natural inquisitiveness 

 which was denied to the Kumulik ladies. Their good- 

 humoured merriment was cheering after the morosity 

 and stolid indifference to amusement to which we had 

 become almost accustomed ; their hospitality and friend- 

 liness were a real pleasure after the reticence of the 

 surly Chinamen ; and their neat little houses gave one 

 some impression of a true home after the cold welcome 

 of inns and the draughty abodes of wandering nomads. 

 The Taghliks much impressed us, for we had travelled 

 for close on a year without coming across sedentary 

 mountain-dwellers ; nomads in the high mountains were 

 common enough, but only in the Karlik Tagh did we 

 find villages inhabited by a settled race. 



Later in the course of the expedition I again visited 

 Bardash and explored the valley up to its source under 

 the highest peak of the range. Cultivation and farms I 

 found extending up the valley for several miles, — as far 

 as the foot of an immense old moraine, which reached 

 for a distance of some six or seven miles below the 

 existing glaciers. This moraine choked the valley, the 

 main river and a tributary passing through deep gorges 

 on either side of it ; yet even here the natives had 



