FROM AK-SU TO KASHGAR 
659 
and our astonishment may be imagined when, one day, 
whilst we were dining with him, he placed upon the table 
my Swedish officer’s revolver. It had been among the 
things in the load which Nahr, the lost camel, carried. 
The weapon had been given by an unknown horseman to 
a peasant in the village of Tavek-kel. The search after 
the thief was renewed with redoubled zeal ; but the Chinese 
mandarins never succeeded in getting' any clue to the guilty 
PART OF KUM-DARVASEH, ONE OF THE GATES OF KASHGAR 
party. I gave myself but little further trouble about the 
matter, being entirely taken up with fresh plans and projects 
for the immediate future. 
The very next day after my arrival at Kashgar I 
despatched a courier to Osh, with several letters and 
despatches, amongst others one for my teacher and friend, 
Baron von Richthofen in Berlin, asking him to send me a 
new and complete set of meteorological instruments — 
aneroids, boiling-point thermometers, etc. I telegraphed 
