xvf Dr. Hoernle— Antiquities from. Central Asia. \ Extra No. 1, 
were found wrapped up in a piece of woolJen cloth and buried in about 
3 feet of earth.” To judge, however, from the circumstances in which 
manuscripts were found at Kok Gumbaz and at Qara Yantaq, it is not 
impossible that the manuscripts M. 1, Set II, were actually dug out 
from the hollow of one of the two mounds described by Mr. Hogberg. 
(3) Aq Tala Tuz. The position of these 
(4) Qara Qol Mazar (Kiiojam). five places may be approxi- 
(5) Qara Tagh Aghaz!. mately determined from the 
(6) Qara Yantaq. following itinerary of Islam 
(7) Kok G-umbaz Akhun. which he gave to Mr. 
Macartney. He stated that on one of his search-expeditions he started 
from Guma which lies about 100 miles W. N. W. of Kliotan. Leaving 
that town, “ with two other men, about the beginning of January 
(apparently 1898) and travelling in a generally easterly direction, he 
came to Qara Qol (Jt* 'kj* lit. ‘ black lake ’) where there is a salt water 
lake covered with reeds. Qara Qol is reached from Guma in one march 
(say 12 miles), the intervening ground being through cultivation. 
Qara Qol itself is not inhabited. A Mazar (or ‘shrine’) may 
however, be seen there. From Qara Q51, Islam Akhun went for 
about 20 miles in a south-easterly direction through the sands to 
Qara Tagli Aghazi ( b* or £ master of the black mountain’), 
a village surrounded by sand and having about 45 houses. Water 
had to be carried on a donkey from Qara Ta gh Aghazi. After 
three days’ march (say 21 miles) in the desert, in a generally 
easterly direction, Kok Gumbaz was reached.. After another march 
of about 8 miles going in the same direction, and over sandy 
ground covered with withered reeds, Islam Akhun arrived at Qara 
Yantaq, where the remains of an ancient town were seen. The walls 
were no longer visible, but the place where they once stood was still 
distinguishable. These traces extended in all directions for a long way, 
and evidently Qara Yantaq had once been the site of a large town. 
The remains of an old canal of about two yards wide were also noticed. 
There is a tradition that Qara Yantaq was inhabited by Hindis (the 
name by which Buddhists are generally called in Chinese Turkestan), 
and that they were converted to Muhammadanism by one Mirza Aba 
Balm. A Tazkira of this person is in the hands of an Imam named 
Sadiq Akhun, now living at Qara Tagh Aghazi. From Qara Yantaq, 
Islam Akhun went about 60 miles east over sand dunes, and came to 
presents nothing to view bnt the outlines of the foundations of rampart walls and 
bastions, now mostly buried by the drifting sand. Here and there, where the sands 
have been swept away by the winds, the surface is strewed with fragments of 
pottery and glass. 5 ' (Report of a Mission to Yarkand in 1873, p. 129). 
