254 
THROUGH ASIA 
he sent offering to supply me with guides. Then, finding 
no other pretext for keeping up communications with me, 
he inquired the best way to proceed in order to make 
water run uphill for purposes of irrigation. I replied to 
his inquiry by making a paper model of a windmill, and 
adding explanations of its purpose and the way to use it. 
On the outskirts of Yanghi-hissar I noted the first 
indications of the proximity of a mountainous country, 
in certain minor irregularities of the ground. For example, 
a narrow ridge, about half-a-mile long and from 6o to 8o 
feet high, stretched away eastwards from the town. It was 
so evenly and regularly formed, that it might easily have 
been mistaken for an old fortified wall or rampart, had 
it not been built up of sand and conglomerate. On the 
north of this ridge lay the greater part of the town, with 
its houses and bazaars embowered in gardens. On the 
south of it there was nothing more than a single row of 
clay huts, with low flat roofs. Along the foot of the ridge 
was the cemetery, every tomb being surmounted by a small 
dome. When the sun was at its fiercest, the place gave 
off the offensive smell of a charnel-house. 
But the prospect from the town was both fine and 
extensive. Mus-tagh-ata shut in the south-west like a 
steel-blue wall, its white battlements inviting us to cooler 
climes. Between Yanghi-hissar and Mus-tagh-ata the face 
of the country was dotted with low hills. But in the 
opposite quarters, that is towards the east and north, there 
was nothing but the desert, as level and unbounded as the 
ocean. The town possessed nothing whatever to interest 
a stranger, its few mosques and madrasas (theological 
colleges) being totally destitute of architectural pretensions. 
One of the latter was built, I was told, sixty years ago by 
Halim Akhun. Its facade, ornamented with blue and 
green tiles, and flanked by a couple of small towers, over- 
looked an open square with a muddy pond in the middle. 
There was ahso a typical Central Asiatic mosque, small in 
size, with a colonnaded verandah along the front show- 
ing simple decorative designs, painted inscriptions, and 
streamers ; and associated with this was the masar (saint’s 
