It Is Satisfactory To Have Elicited This Further
Proof Of The General Accuracy Of The Great Traveller's Account Of His
Journey Through Central Asia."
The Itinerary of Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon (Sirikol, the Pamirs and
Wakhan, ch.
Vi. of Forsyth's Mission to Yarkund in 1873) runs thus:
"Left Kashgar (21st March), Yangi-Hissar, Kaskasu Pass, descent to Chihil
Gumbaz (forty Domes), where the road branches off to Yarkand (110 miles),
Torut Pass, Tangi-Tar (defile), 'to the foot of a great elevated slope
leading to the Chichiklik Pass, plain, and lake (14,700 feet), below the
Yambulak and Kok-Moinok Passes, which are used later in the season on the
road between Yangi-Hissar and Sirikol, to avoid the Tangi-Tar and Shindi
defiles. As the season advances, these passes become free from snow, while
the defiles are rendered dangerous and difficult by the rush of the
melting snow torrents. From the Chichiklik plain we proceeded down the
Shindi ravine, over an extremely bad stony road, to the Sirikol River, up
the banks of which we travelled to Tashkurgan, reaching it on the tenth
day from Yangi-Hissar. The total distance is 125 miles.' Then Tashkurgan
(ancient name Varshidi): 'the open part of the Sirikol Valley extends
from about 8 miles below Tashkurgan to apparently a very considerable
distance towards the Kunjut mountain range;' left Tashkurgan for Wakhan
(2nd April, 1873); leave Sirikol Valley, enter the Shindan defile, reach
the Aktash Valley, follow the Aktash stream (called Aksu by the Kirghiz)
through the Little Pamir to the Ghazkul (Little Pamir) Lake or Barkat
Yassin, from which it takes its rise, four days from Tashkurgan. Little
Pamir 'is bounded on the south by the continuation of the Neza Tash range,
which separates it from the Taghdungbash Pamir,' west of the lake, Langar,
Sarhadd, 30 miles from Langar, and seven days from Sirikol, and Kila Panj,
twelve days from Sirikol." - H. C.]
[I cannot admit with Professor Paquier (l.c. pp. 127-128) that Marco Polo
did not visit Kashgar. - Grenard (II. p. 17) makes the remark that it took
Marco Polo seventy days from Badakhshan to Kashgar, a distance that, in
the Plain of Turkestan, he shall cross in sixteen days. - The Chinese
traveller, translated by M. Gueluy (Desc. de la Chine occidentale, p.
45), says that the name Kashgar is made of Kash, fine colour, and gar,
brick house. - H. C.]
Kashgar was the capital, from 1865 to 1877, of Ya'kub Kushbegi, a soldier
of fortune, by descent it is said a Tajik of Shighnan, who, when the
Chinese yoke was thrown off, made a throne for himself in Eastern
Turkestan, and subjected the whole basin to his authority, taking the
title of Atalik Ghazi.
It is not easy to see how Kashgar should have been subject to the Great
Kaan, except in the sense in which all territories under Mongol rule owed
him homage. Yarkand, Polo acknowledges to have belonged to Kaidu, and the
boundary between Kaidu's territory and the Kaan's lay between Karashahr
and Komul [Bk.
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