72 A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ORNITHOLOGY 
is exactly one ‘ tash,’ or five miles, from the former place. We 
crossed several canals and marshy ‘places, neatly bridged over, 
and soon came to a broad semi-macadamized road, suffi- 
ciently wide to drive three coaches abreast on it; this part of 
the road was regularly staked off on each pide: where small 
streams of water ran. Then we crossed the Kizil River, which 
runs between the Fort and the Old City, noticing, by the way, 
some old shrines and aruined fort, built of red brick. Numbers 
of ‘arabahs,’ or carts, drawn by one horse, passed us on the 
way; these vehicles often contained a whole family of Kash- 
gharis, probably returning from a day’s fairing. Near the 
roadside, at one part, we saw a curious pounding machine, 
worked by water power: a couple of long hammer-like pestles 
were rising and falling alternately, pounding saltpetre for the 
manufacture of gunpowder. As we neared the City, rows of 
trees lined the road on each hand, and among these I noticed 
a number of Magpies (Pica bactriana) flitting about. Near 
the City the ground was uneven and much br oken up; sudden 
depressions in the clayey soil and small nullahs reminding one 
somewhat of the character of the ground in some parts of the 
Punjab (Rawul Pindi and Hassan Abdal). Kashghar i is sur- 
rounded by the ordinary thick mud wall, peeping above which 
we noticed a pagoda-roofed building at one part ;_ the forti- 
fications seem to be a good deal out of repair. Arrived at 
the north gate of the City we turned sharply to our right 
and rode for some little distance through a crowded bazar, 
a suburb outside the walls of Kashghar. 
The people of Kashghar are certainly much more healthy 
and robust than those of Yarkand; instead of the usual pale 
ancemic appearance of the Yar kandis we here see bright looking 
faces and ruddy cheeks. But the most: marked contrast be- 
tween precisely the same race of people, living only a little 
more than a hundred miles apart, is the absence of goitre. 
While in Yarkand it is rule to see the inhabitants with goitres 
of various sizes, here the disease seems to be unknown : a 
careful inquiry will prove that the few stray cases of bronchocele 
one occasionally sees at Kashghar, are referable either to natives 
of Yarkand, or to persons who have lived for some time in that 
rovince. In the Bazar I noticed several cradles containing 
chubby-faced infants; and an affectionate father, carrying 
a baby in one of these cradles, on horseback in front ‘of him. 
Passing out of the Bazar we crossed the Tuman river by a 
good bridge, and went along a road flanked on each side ue 
innumerable graves. The graves seemed to be arranged in plots, 
and many of them were covered with dome-roofed chambers, 
which a whole host of Fakirs had taken possession of as 
