FROM AK-SU TO KASHGAR 653 
colleg-e of Mir-arab in Bokhara. The Chine.se have two 
lanzas (a lanza consists of not quite one hundred men) at 
Yanghi-shahr. They maintain a larger garrison at Utch- 
turfan, which commands the Bedel pass over the Tian- 
-shan Mountains into Russian Turkestan. 
All over the Mohammedan world it is customary to 
celebrate the first few days of the Feast of Mairam by a 
great number of gala dinners, at which incredible quan- 
tities of ash (pillau or rice pudding) and shoi'pa (soup 
SHOP IN A BAZAAR 
made of green vegetables and macaroni) are consumed. 
Some of these feasts I shared in company with the 
aksakal Mohammed Emin. But the best entertainment 
of all was that to which the aksakal invited me, and at 
which I was the only guest. We rode out to his garden 
Sokha-bashi, situated about two miles from the bazaar. 
There a couple of gardeners live all the year round, and 
occupy themselves with the cultivation of grapes, apricots, 
melons, plums, cherries, and vegetables. We took our 
places underneath a leafy mulberry-tree, beside a canal 
