464 
THROUGH ASIA 
the great irrigation canal of Khan-arik, which issues 
like a main artery from the Ghez-daria, and, passing 
through the villages of Tazgun and Khan-arik, stretches 
its last network of arterioles as far as Terem. But 
the supply is insufficient, irregular, and uncertain, and 
consequently the harvest often fails. 
In the case of the Khan-arik there exist special 
regulations, made by the Chinese authorities, by which 
each village is only allowed the use of the water for 
a certain time. Terem had now been furnished with 
water for three months past ; but in twelve days’ time 
the supply would be cut off, and for four whole months 
not a drop would reach it from the irrigation system. 
The inhabitants would be obliged to content themselves 
with what their wells w'ould yield. Late in the summer 
they would again have the use of the life-giving waters 
for the space of thirty-four days. 
On March loth we left Terem, and rode in a westerly 
direction through steppe, desert, and marsh. Here I 
made the important discovery of four ancient river-beds, 
now however dried up, but still very plainly marked, 
each from one hundred to a hundred and ten yards 
broad, and running towards the north-north-east. They 
could not possibly be anything but deserted channels 
of the Yarkand-daria. In Ilai-khan-kbll (the Rich Khan’s 
Lake), a salt and shallow sheet of water, with marshy 
shores overgrown with kamish (reeds), we nearly stuck 
fast altogether. The lake is largest in winter, when 
it becomes frozen ; but in summer the water evaporates 
almost entirely, despite the fact that the lake receives 
the overflow of the ariks of the Yanghi-his.sar. In the 
district of Kizil-ji we crossed by a bridge another pro- 
longation of the ariks of the Yanghi-hissar. In that 
neighbourhood there was a saint’s tomb called Kizil- 
ji-khanem, an interesting fact, for the name occurs in 
the map of Edrisi, the famous Arab geographer of the 
twelfth century. 
At the point where the desert proper began, and where 
the sand-dunes were about twenty-five feet high, stood the 
