RETURN TO KASHGAR 
435 
future of East Turkestan, to the crackling of the fire and 
the singing of the samovar — when a breathless Cossack 
courier entered the room without knocking, and going up 
to Mr. Kobeko handed him a telegram from Gulja, the 
last station of the Russian telegraph system. It contained 
news of the death of the Emperor Alexander III. All 
present rose to their feet, and the Orthodox Russians 
made the sign of the cross. Deep sorrow was depicted 
on every countenance, and for a long time there was a 
dead silence in the room. It had only taken the short 
space of five days for the sad news to penetrate into the 
very heart of Asia. 
The day after the arrival of the telegram the Dao Tai 
3-nd Tsen Daloi came to offer their condolences to 
Consul Petrovsky. With their many-coloured ceremonial 
costumes, their gongs and drums, their parasols and 
standards, and with all their pomp and state, they 
presented a strange contrast to the silent sorrow of the 
Russians. 
The result of the violent changes of climate that I 
had been exposed to was an attack of fever, which came 
on in the middle of November, and kept me a prisoner 
in bed for a month. 
Another misfortune overtook me in the Russian bath, to 
which I went accompanied by two Cossacks and Islam Bai. 
The bath was heated and everything arranged ; but after I 
had been in a considerable time, the Cossacks imagined 
that I ought to have had enough of it, and came to see 
what I was doing. On their entrance they found that I 
had fainted. Some pipe in the heating apparatus had 
sprung a leak, and the fumes nearly did for me. The men 
took me to my room at once, and I gradually came round ; 
but for two days afterwards I had a splitting headache. 
Then came Christmas. Christmas! what a host of 
memories, of regrets, of hopes lie in that one word I 
Yes, it was Christmas in Kashgar. The snow fell softly ; 
but evaporated immediately in the arid atmosphere, so that 
it did not even make the ground white. There was a 
sound of bells in the streets and market-place ; but they 
