KHOTAN 
753 
The distant horizon was closed by a dark line of avenues 
and gardens belonging to the neighbouring villages. 
There were two bazaar-days a week, when the country- 
folk came in with their produce for sale. The women also 
took part in the trafficking, and even when sitting in the 
bazaars were always unveiled. But they might just as well 
have kept their veils before their faces ; for they were in- 
describably ugly and dirty, and covered with vermin, after 
which I often saw them unblushingly making chase. As a 
rule veiled women were an exception. The moral standard 
of the place was deplorably low, and infectious diseases 
very common. 
Some forty odd West Turkestan merchants lived in 
Khotan and exported wool, carpets, felts, etc., and imported, 
as also did the Afghans, woven materials and a variety of 
colonial produce. Tobacco and opium are cultivated in 
pretty large quantities. The cultivation of silk too has 
reached a high level. The produce is sent partly to India 
and West Turkestan, and is partly worked up on the spot 
for further manufacture into carpets. Hides and sheep’s 
wool are also important articles of export, and are for the 
most part sent to West Turkestan, by way of Kashgar and 
Narinsk. 
An old Tatar, Mohammed Rafikoff, from Orenburg, 
who had lived ten years in Khotan, having built himself a 
comfortable house close beside the bazaar, owned a factory 
for tanning and for cleansing wool. It consisted of an 
enormous magazine tent and a small temporary house built 
in the Russian style, both standing beside the Yurun-kash. 
The old man told me, that he pulled the whole thing down 
every February, to make the people of Khotan believe 
that he was about to give up business and return home ; 
with the result that they hastened to sell their skins as 
quickly as possible and at low prices. But when May 
came, he built the factory up again ; and he had gone 
on doing this for ten years. When I expressed my 
astonishment, that the people of Khotan had not yet 
discovered the trick, he answered, that they were too 
stupid and too indifferent. 
