310 
THROUGH ASIA 
wise. Togdasin Beg paid me a visit, and was regaled with 
tea and Chinese brandy, the latter specially brought for 
such occasions, and was furthermore entertained with tunes 
on the musical-box, which never failed to arouse the 
Kirghiz’ intense astonishment and liveliest interest. Our 
mountain friends were most impressed, however, by the 
Husqvarna rifles. They found the mechanism so com- 
plicated, that they declared no human hands could have 
constructed it, and that it must have been made by Allah 
himself. 
“Togdasin Beg told me, that the Chinese garrison in 
the Sarik-kol valley was following all my movements with 
some uneasiness, and was kept informed daily by Kirghiz 
spies of what I was doing and where 1 was going. T. hey 
wondered, if I were a oriiss (Russian) or Ferenghi 
(European), how long I meant to stay, what my real 
motive was in making maps, and why I hacked pieces 
of stone out of the rocks. They had been ordered to 
watch the frontier towards the Russian Pamirs, and now 
a stranger, whom they supposed to be a Russian, had 
made his appearance, and was proceeding, unhindered, 
to find out how the land lay. Thanks, however, to the 
passport which the Dao Tai had given me they never 
molested us. 
“ Heavy blue-black rain-clouds swept down the many 
lateral valleys which strike off from the Sarik-kol chain 
towards the open country, in which were the two Bassyk- 
kul lakes. Everything was enveloped in a thick Scotch 
mist, darkening the otherwise magnificent landscape with 
gloom. Every now and again a fragment of the glacier 
or mountain-side became visible through the mist, which 
clung to the surface of the ground and drifted off to the 
south. The Kirghiz assured me that such continuous 
rain as that of to-day was unusual. The patch of grass on 
which we were encamped was transformed into a swamp, 
and we were constrained to dig deep ditches round the 
yurt, with branches running towards the lake, to protect 
ourselves from the wet. In the evening it cleared up, and 
the atmosphere became perfectly still. The lakes lay like 
