nt commercial city of the province.

"Again two towns together," said I to Major Noltitz. "That I have from
Popof."

"But this time," said the major, "it was not the Russians who built the
new one."

"New or old," I added, "I am afraid is like the others we have seen, a
wall of earth, a few dozen gateways cut in the wall, no monuments or
buildings of note, and the eternal bazaars of the East."

I was not mistaken, and it did not take four hours to visit both
Yarkands, the newer of which is called Yanji-Shahr.

Fortunately, the Yarkand women are not forbidden to appear in the
streets, which are bordered by simple mud huts, as they were at the
time of the "dadkwahs," or governors of the province. They can give
themselves the pleasure of seeing and being seen, and this pleasure is
shared in by the farangis--as they call foreigners, no matter to what
nation they may belong. They are very pretty, these Asiatics, with
their long tresses, their transversely striped bodices, their skirts of
bright colors, relieved by Chinese designs in Kothan silk, their
high-heeled embroidered boots, their turbans of coquettish pattern,
beneath which appear their black hair and their eyebrows united by a
bar.

A few Chinese passengers alighted at Yarkand, and gave place to others
exactly like them--among others a score of coolies--and we started
again at eight o'clock in the evening.

During the night we ran the three hundred and fifty kilometres which
separate Yarkand from Kothan.

A visit I paid to the front van showed me that the box was still in the
same place. A certain snoring proved that Kinko was inside as usual,
and sleeping peacefully. I did not care to wake him, and I left him to
dream of his adorable Roumanian.

In the morning Popof told me that the train, which was now traveling
about as fast as an omnibus, had passed Kargalik, the junction for the
Kilian and Tong branches. The night had been cold, for we are still at
an altitude of twelve hundred metres. Leaving Guma station, the line
runs due east and west, following the thirty-seventh parallel, the same
which traverses in Europe, Seville, Syracuse and Athens.

We sighted only one stream of importance, the Kara-kash, on which
appeared a few drifting rafts, and files of horses and asses at the
fords between the pebbly banks. The railroad crosses it about a hundred
kilometres from Khotan, where we arrived at eight o'clock in the
morning.

Two hours to stop, and as t