66o 
THROUGH ASIA 
to I ashkend for clothes, provisions, and tobacco ; and 
obtained a supply of cartridges and powder from the 
Cossack guard in Kashgar. The thing's which I had 
ordered from Europe could not arrive for three months. 
I could not possibly spend all that time in inaction ; 
especially as the heat of the summer made me long for 
the fresh cool air of the mountains. The only thing that 
detained me in Kashgar was the non-arrival of my letters 
from Sweden. During my absence Consul - General 
Petrovsky had sent them to Keriya beyond Khotan, and 
they had not yet come back again. But here the Dao Tai 
came to my assistance, and did me the very great service 
of sending express couriers all the way to Keriya to fetch 
them. 1 he men— for there was a fresh courier and fresh 
horses for each stage of the journey — took twelve days 
to g'o there and back ; and, as the distance was 870 
miles, they rode at the rate of about seventy-two miles 
a day. 
In a couple of weeks I had completed my preparations 
for a fresh start. 1 he kindness and self-sacrificing help 
I received from Mr. Petrovsky, Mr. Macartney, and the 
Swedish missionary, Mr. Hogberg, were of such a 
character as I shall never forget. They all three vied 
with one another in their efforts to assist me. The first 
and the second lent me some aneroids and hypsonieters ; 
my countryman lent me several things of practical value. 
A tailor in the town made me some clothes of Chinese 
cloth, and sewed me furs together, and a tent. I bought 
horses, saddles, and stores of provisions in the bazaars. 
When we started again, on July loth, I could scarcely 
believe that, only two months earlier, I had suffered a loss 
which at the time seemed as though it would utterly wreck 
all my plans. 
But whither should we turn our footsteps now? To 
go to the north, and explore the Tian-shan Mountains, 
would have been going over ground that is already 
tolerably well known. The time was too short to admit 
of niy going so far south as the Kwen-lun Mountains. 
1 o the west was the high plateau of the Pamirs, which 
