rmur the fair demands of
Mr. Pupyshef, and if there was some delay in the refunding of the money,
it must be attributed to the poverty of his exchequer, and not to any
want of goodwill. The burden of his complaint was, "I am a poor prince;
my country is impoverished by the wars that have occurred since the
departure of the Chinese; and you will find little therein to repay you
for your trouble and expense in entering it. Why therefore will you
persist in coming to it? You can do neither yourselves nor my people any
good by doing so, and you only cause me anxiety and trouble in
preserving your countrymen from insult and injury, which you must admit
I have ever done." There was an under-current of truth in this statement
of the case, although it was not credited in Kuldja, where everything
that went amiss was set down to the hostility of the Ameer. Yakoob Beg
had, however, succeeded in throwing cold water on the enthusiastic
preparations that were being made for exploiting Eastern Turkestan, and
his mode of doing so had been quite original and characteristic. Few
rulers would have foreseen that the best way to get rid of a troublesome
visitor was to purchase what he had brought to sell to the people; and
that the simple remedy of paying in a questionable currency would
suffice to deter hundreds from following the example of Mr. Somof.
Yakoob Beg, however, was not satisfied with leaving well alone. Having
paid the claim of Mr. Pupyshef, it might have been supposed that he
would maintain a discreet silence on his intentions in the future with
regard to Russian merchants. He might have let the question, indeed,
find, as it would have found, its own solution; but, in a weak moment,
to place his own _bona fides_ beyond suspicion, he desired the Russian
government to send another merchant to Kashgar, and then it could judge
by his reception whether the Ameer was not amicably disposed towards his
"close allies," the Russians. The Russian authorities took him at his
word, and after an interval of more than twelve months, during which
Kashgar had been unvisited by a Russian merchant, another, a Mr.
Morozof, came to put Yakoob Beg's assertions to the test. True to his
word, the reception of this gentleman was most cordial. Facilities were
placed in his way for getting purchasers of his articles, and the Ameer
bought for his arsenals such of them as seemed suitable. Mr. Morozof
returned to Kuldja, narrating how cordially he had been w