THROUGH ASIA 
476 
and pleasant room, covered with carpets, and with niches 
in the walls. 
Counting in the surrounding kishlaks (winter villages) 
Merket numbered a thousand dwellings, of which 250 
were in the immediate vicinity of the bazaar. The 
village of Yantak, a short distance farther north, had 300 
houses. Yantak, together with Anghetlik and Chamgurluk, 
constitute a beklik or beglik (administrative division under 
a beg); while Merket has its own beg. In the latter 
place dwelt two tax-collectors, two Chinese merchants, and 
four Hindu money-lenders from Shikarpur. It was a 
fruitful region, producing wheat, maize, barley, beans, 
turnips, cucumbers, melons, beetroot, grapes, apricots, 
peaches, mulberries, apples, pears, and cotton. In good 
years the crops are so plentiful that large quantities of 
seed-corn are exported to Kashgar and Yarkand ; but in 
bad years the reverse is the case, and grain is imported 
from Yarkand. 
Although Merket is so close to the banks of the 
Yarkand-daria, it does not derive its irrigation water from 
it, but from the Tisnab-daria, the river of Kargallk, which 
flows parallel with the Yarkand-daria. When the current 
is low, this river does not reach further than Yantak; but 
at other times it advances a considerable distance farther 
north, and forms two small lakes, which however are dry 
at all other seasons. Its right bank too is bordered by 
a belt of forest, but not more than twelve and a half miles 
broad at the outside. The winters are cold, though the 
fall of snow Is small, and the snow melts directly ; the 
summers on the contrary are hot. The rainfall is dis- 
tributed equally over the whole of the warm season, and 
sometimes is so heavy that It destroys the flat roofs of the 
houses. North-easterly winds prevail ; and the storms 
last from two to four days, loading the atmosphere with 
dust, and occasioning a “rain” of dust, which settles on 
the vegetation in the form of a thick greyish-yellow down. 
Strange to say, Merket has never before been visited 
by any European. The name appears for the first time, 
though in the form Meket, In General Pievtsoff’s account 
