hen comes a Moses in the land;" and it cannot be
doubted that in the year 1720 the people of Kashgar had suffered much
and for so long, that relief, so that it came effectually from some
quarter or another, could not be otherwise than welcome. But the Moses
who had been, for centuries almost, expected, had as yet not proved
forthcoming, and as "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," so had the
Kashgari lost the courage even to look forward to a period when their
life of misery, under oppressive tyrants and exorbitant taxation,
aggravated by every form of peculation in its levy, might be changed for
a more favourable state of being. There can be no doubt that if the
chaos which reigned throughout Jungaria and Kashgar had continued much
longer those vast regions would have been completely exhausted. As it
was the population decreased in alarming proportions, and the wealth and
general resources of the country disappeared with no apparent means of
supplying the gap. What is, perhaps, most surprising of all is that all
these later rulers seem to have lived in a sort of fools' paradise with
regard to the resources of their state. The thought never seems to have
occurred to them that there must be an end some day or other to a realm
distracted by continual wars and sedition, and that subjects who have
been tyrannised over for centuries will at last rise up in arms and
teach their tyrants, in the words of the poet, "how much the wretched
dare." These Khans or Ameers of Central Asia are not worthy of one
moment's consideration for their own sake; but, as some account of them
is a proper preparation for the modern history of Kashgar, they have
been described in this chapter. From the disappearance of Chinese
authority in Central and Western Asia in the eighth and ninth
centuries, down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the
history of Kashgar, in common with that of its neighbours, was a series
of misfortunes. There is nothing to attract our sympathies in any of the
rulers, with the exception perhaps of Yunus; and all our commiseration
is monopolised for the unhappy races who peopled that region. We
therefore have arrived at this crisis in a fit state to appreciate the
feelings of the Kashgari at the changes that occurred in the eighteenth
century; and before we consider, in a fresh chapter, those alterations
we may close this without regret at the disappearance of a long line of
Central Asian Khans, who possessed scarce