A CURIOUS SHEPHERD RACE 8ii 
winter stage. It was expected that, if the atmosphere 
remained clear and still, the ice would break up in twenty 
days’ time ; otherwise it would be longer. When the thaw 
sets in, it causes a spring-flood of considerable volume. 
After that the bed is dry for a couple of months, and 
the shepherds are obliged to dig for water for themselves 
and their flocks. To be brief, the Keriya-daria exhibits 
precisely the same characteristics as its neighbour, the 
Khotan-claria, though in volume and length it is far inferior. 
Hussein afterwards went on his way to the south and 
we to the north, marching along a dry channel which 
the river abandoned fifteen years ago, in favour of a 
new bed which it ploughed through the sand two miles 
to the east. This it now follows for a day’s journey 
and a half ; although it again exhibits a tendency to 
trend to the east. The belt of forest and reed-beds still 
remains beside the abandoned channel, living on its 
soakatfe water. But the time will come when the roots 
will fail to reach down far enough ; then the sand will 
get the upper hand, and the forest will die down, forming 
strips of kottek (dead forest), like those we observed 
near the ancient buried city. Meanwhile new woods 
will grow up beside the newly-made channel. 
On the evening of January 28th we met near Kuin'uk- 
akhin (the Dry Bed) three more shepherds, with a 
flock of 400 sheep. These men enjoyed the right of 
killing twenty sheep a year for their own sustenance ; to 
which were added as extras all those that were mutilated 
by wolves or wild-boar, or those which broke their legs, 
or in any other way became disabled. Fifteen a year 
was the average nuniber they counted upon getting m 
this way. Allowing for this, it required three years for 
a flock of 400 sheep to increase to 550; but, as the bai s 
forest joasturage was not able to support more than 400 
sheep, sixty or .seventy were sold olT every year in Keriya. 
These and the two shearings of wool in the year con- 
stituted the bai’s profits from his flock. In Keriya a first- 
class sheep cost about three-and-sixpence, and even a fairly 
good one could be bought for a little over a shilling. 
