n Tachkend and Koulja, to the north of Oriental
Turkestan.

Here, as the major told me, Sir Francis Trevellyan should have special
cause for manifesting his ill humor. In fact, an English embassy under
Chapman and Gordon in 1873 and 1874 had been sent from Kashmir to
Kachgar by way of Kothan and Yarkand. At this time the English had
reason to hope that commercial relations could be established to their
advantage. But instead of being in communication with the Indian
railways, the Russian railways are in communication with the Chinese,
and the result of this junction has been that English influence has had
to give place to Russian.

The population of Kachgar is Turkoman, with a considerable mixture of
Chinese, who willingly fulfil the duties of domestics, artisans or
porters. Less fortunate than Chapman and Gordon, Major Noltitz and I
were not able to see the Kachgarian capital when the armies of the
tumultuous emir filled its streets. There were none of those Djiguit
foot soldiers who were mounted, nor of those Sarbaz who were not.
Vanished had those magnificent bodies of Taifourchis, armed and
disciplined in the Chinese manner, those superb lancers, those Kalmuck
archers, bending bows five feet high, those "tigers" with their daubed
shields and their matchlocks. All have disappeared, the picturesque
warriors of Kachgaria and the emir with them.

At nine o'clock we are on our return to Yangi-Chahr. There, at the end
of the streets near the citadel, what do we see? The Caternas in
ecstatic admiration before a troop of musical dervishes.

Who says dervish says beggar, and who says beggar evokes the completest
type of filth and laziness. But with what an extraordinary combination
of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed
guitar, with what acrobatic swingings of the body do they accompany
their singing of their legends and poetry which could not be more
profane. The instinct of the old actor was awakened in Caterna. He
could not keep still; it was too much for him.

And so these gestures, these attitudes, these swingings he imitated
there with the vigor of an old topman joined to that of a leading
premier, and I saw him as he was figuring in this quadrille of dancing
dervishes.

"Eh! Monsieur Claudius!" he said, "it is not difficult to copy the
exercises of these gallant fellows! Make me a Turkestan operetta, let
me act a dervish, and you will see if I don't do it to the very life."

"