326 



Selections. 



[No. 8, NEW SERIES. 



rungkdsh Pass. [We ourselves have also passed with Mohammed 

 Amm through Sikander Mokam on the 18th of August 1856. It 

 is a small now deserted fort ; it seems never to have been anything 

 else -but a fortified place and was never permanently inhabited. 

 Alexander the Great after whom it is named, is well known to the 

 inhabitants of Turkistan, partly in historical, partly in more fabu- 

 lous form ; his name appears several times in geographical termi- 

 nology]. The other fort lay on the banks of the Karakash which 

 is one of the streams that flow through Khotan. 



Travelling along the Karakash river, [and after having crossed 

 the Kiienlun] we came down the main stream of Khotan and pass- 

 ed through Shaidulla Kohja which was intersected by two roads 

 one connecting Yarkand with Tibet, and the other leading to Tash- 

 korgan, Osh and Kokand. 



We halted at Shaidullah Khoja for five days. It was 20 days' 

 journey from this to Osh via. Tashkorgan, and 5 days' journey to 

 Yarkand. 



Mr. Schlagintweit told me that the way through Tashkorgan 

 and Osh was very long, and that to Yarkand comparatively short, 

 and that he would take the latter. I remonstrated that the latter 

 was a dangerous, and the former a safe way. He then sent Murad 

 the Jew to bring information from Yarkand. The Jew returned 

 after 8 days in the company of eight caravans, and reported that 

 the Khan of Kokand had wrested from the people of Khatais 

 [Chinese] the provinces of Kashgar and Yarkand. 



I however discredited the report, and said to Mr. Schlagintweit 

 that the real Khan of Kokand would never undertake such a dis- 

 tant expedition ; but that since 12 years some of the Bara Sahibs 

 [great men] of Kokand, who were Sayads by birth, having collect- 

 ed vagabond outlaws, and all sorts of ragamuffins, made frequent 

 inroads on Kashgar, and sometimes succeeded in defeating its Go- 

 vernors, and occupying their throne, and at other times were re- 

 pulsed by the Chinese army, and obliged to retreat, that one of 

 them Chikchik Khoja had once fallen into the hands of the army 

 of Khatais, and was since in confinement ; and that, I added, if 

 wars were going on at Kashgar, they must have been waged by 

 these Sayad fanatics, and not by the Khan of Kokand. 



