116
Woul's Journal to the River Orus.
MARCH,
The Musselmen say, that its inhabitants resemble Europeans, in be- ing possessed of great intelligence; and lieut. Wood adds, that from all he has seen and heard of them, he conceives that "they offer a fairer field for missionary exertion than is to be found anywhere else on the continent of Asia. They pride themselves on being, to use their own words, brothers of the feringi; and this opinion, of itself, may hercafter smooth the road for the zealous pioneers of the gospel. Culike the Hindús and Mohammedans, they have no creed purport- ing to be a revelation; but, as far as I could discover, simply believe in the supremacy of a deity, and that men who have been good and hospitable on earth will be rewarded in heaven." Pag c237.
On newyear's day, 1838, our traveler visited Ahmed Shah, the pír, or head inullah of Jerm, who, after emigrating from Hindustan in 1809, had traveled much and made a long abode in China. He enter- ed this country by the way of Wakhan, and left it by that of Kokan. The difficulties of the first of these routes he described as great, aris- ing chiefly from the height of Pamir, the severity of its climate, and the almost total absence of inhabitants. Of that of Kokan he spoke more favorably. Ile was in China when the lamented Moorcroft's messenger arrived in Yárkand to request permission for his master to visit that city, on which occasion, an officer of Ahmed Shah's acquaintance, told him that the Chinese had determined not to admit Moorcroft, "for," added the officer, "we are persuaded were a forin-
to enter the country some dreadful evil would befall us.' IIc told many anecdotes of the Chinese, illustrating their distrust and jealousy with regard to foreigners; "while," so writes lieut. Wood, “like every other native of these countries, with whom I conversed on the subject, he praised their probity and good faith." Yárkand, he said, was neutral ground, where neighboring nations are privileged to meet the subjects of the Celestial empire for purposes of traffic; and “no onc except its governor is permitted to enter China, and he visits the frontier town of Ecla once a year. Before Kashgár and Yarkand were wrested from the Mohammedan family, their inhabitants traded with Ecla, or I'lí. The occasion of their expulsion, and the subsc- quent advance of the commercial entrepôt to Yárkand, was thus related to lieut. Wood by his friend Ahmed Shah.
"A foreign merchant informed the magistrates of Ecla that he had lost his Loorgeen, or saddle-bags. The man was required minutely to describe them, and to make oath to their contents. He swore to the value of one hundred silver yambos, and was then dismissed after being told to come back on a given day, when, if the saddle-bags were not recovered, the state would