iest, or body of priests, or of one of the native Tungan princes, and
then the movement spread with irresistible strides to Karashar, Kucha,
and Aksu. There it stopped, and south of the Tian Shan the Tungan revolt
proper never extended west of Aksu.

In Altyshahr and Kuldja for some months longer the Chinese maintained
the external show of power, but all their communications with China were
cut off, and neither in numbers nor resources had they sufficient means
to cope with the Tungani unaided. They would have accomplished as much
as could have been expected from them if they succeeded in keeping
possession of that which they still occupied. The Tungan element in
Kucha and Aksu was not predominant. It had to share power with the
Khojas, and, as we shall see later on, the Khojas of these two cities
seized the governing power for themselves. It was the appearance of the
Tungan sedition in these cities, which occupy a middle relation to the
purely Chinese cities of Hamil and Urumtsi, and the almost totally
Khokandian cities of Yarkand and Kashgar, that roused the Kashgari to a
full appreciation of the importance to themselves of this movement, and
the Chinese garrisons and settlers to an equally just realization of
their own danger. The Kashgari, not free from the fanaticism of all
their co-religionists, and naturally elated at the successes of the
Tungani, forgot, with their well proved fickleness, all the benefits
they had received from the Chinese, and waited eagerly for a favourable
opportunity to come for them to imitate the example set them by their
eastern neighbours. Nor had they long to wait, although it was not from
them that came the first spark that lighted the firebrand of civil war
and anarchy throughout the length and breadth of Altyshahr.

It will be remembered that the Khokandian government had the right to
nominate in each city, where they received dues on Mahomedan
merchandise, an agent or tax-collector to look after the proper levy of
the tax. In some of the larger cities this official would require a
considerable staff of assistants, and thus a certain number of skilled
Khokandian officials were permanently located on Kashgarian or Chinese
territory. After the failure of the expedition of Wali Khan, in which
these officials seem to have disappeared, either having become merged in
the body of his partisans or sacrificed during the massacres of that
time, a fresh batch of Khokandians was installed, and o