MUS-TAGH-ATA 
217 
TOGDASIN BEG 
tion, and was entertained with a liqueur and the harmonies 
of a musical-box, which so enraptured him, that he 
declared he felt twenty years younger. He said he had 
never enjoyed anything so much since the days when 
the great Yakub Beg ruled over Kashgar. Somewhere 
about twenty years earlier, he told me, the Sultan of Turkey 
sent a large musical-box as a present to Yakub Beg. 
Ever since I left the Alai valley my thoughts had been 
constantly running upon the ascent of Mus-tagh-ata, and 
I neglected no opportunity of gathering from the Kirghiz 
all the information I could at all bearing upon the project. 
But every man I talked to, without exception, assured 
me that it would be utterly impossible to reach the 
top. The precipices and yawning chasms would prove 
