CHAPTER LIII. 
OVER THE ULLUG-ART PASS 
O N July loth, 1895, I left Kashgar with Islam Bai, 
two servants, and six horses, and did a short stage 
to the village of Tokkuz-ak (the Nine Whites). My 
other man, Kasim, remained behind in Kashgar as 
watchman of the courtyard of the consulate. One of 
the six horses, a little piebald stallion, was one of those 
I bought at the forest-hut, beside the Khotan-daria. It 
was a splendid animal, always full of go, and yet as 
tame as a lamb. For my own use I bought a big, but 
excellent, riding-horse, and rode him over the mountains 
and through the deserts of Central Asia for more than 
a year. Horses are cheap in Kashgar. The five I bought 
there cost altogether only 124 roubles, or between £12 
and ;^i3. 
The next day, July nth, we continued our journey 
towards the south-west, to the town of Upal (2000 
houses), which is, also a fortress manned by two hundred 
men, and the place of residence of two mandarins of 
inferior rank. It poured and pelted with rain the whole 
day long, so that the ground, which was a reddish yellow 
loess, was greasy and slippery. Thoroughly wet to the 
skin, we took up our quarters in a house near the bazaar, 
and made a big fire at which to dry our wet clothes. The 
gardens, and rice and other fields, were irrigated by water 
drawn from a little stream, which flowed through the town 
after racing down the valley of Ullug-art on the west, 
and which was partly maintained from fresh springs. The 
current has scooped out for itself a deep and tolerably 
broad trench through the loess deposits. But in the 
667 
