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Topography of the Province of Kansuh.
OCT.
"When you have rode thirty days through this desert, you find a city named Sacchion, which belongs to the khan. The province is called Tangut, and The people are idolaters, inixed with some Nestorian Christians and Saracens. The first have languages of their own; they subsist not by merchandize, but by the grain which they produce from the earth. They have many abbeys and monasteries, all full of idols of various shapes, to which they offer fre- quent sacrifices and hoinage. Every man who has children rears a sheep, and at a particular festival at the end of the year, leads them along with that animal into the presence of the god, to whom they all perform reverence. They cook the sheep and offer it very humbly before the idol, leaving it while they make their prayers for the safety of their children. They then take the meat and carry it to the house, or wherever they please, send for their relations, and eat it with great joy and respect. They afterwards col- lect the bones, and preserve them with much diligence. You must know likewise, that when any one of them dies, his body is burned, and after he is carried to the place for this last ceremony, they erect in the middle of the path a house of cane, covered with cloths of silk and gold. When the dead inan is laid before this ornamented house, they place before him wine and victuals, believing that he will be similarly honored in the other world. At the place of burning, too, they cut in paper, men, horses, camels, and coins of the size of bezants, convinced that the deceased will possess all these things in the future state. On this occasion, all the instruments in the land are sounded before the corpse. I must tell you, too, that after death the re- lations send for the astrologer, who is informed of the day, month, and year of his nativity, and then divines, by his diabolical art, the day on which the burning ought to take place. If it should be a week, a month, or six months, they keep it all that time, and never burn it till the appointed day. During this interval, they deposit it in a large box covered with cloth, and so pre- served with crocus and spices that no stench arises. Throughout this period, they daily place meat and drink, before the box and leave it there for some time, till they think he has eaten it. These sorcerers, too, often tell the re- lations that the dead body must not be carried out by the main door, but by a private one, or even through a breach made in the wall. All the idolaters in the world proceed in this nanner."-Murray's Polo, page 247.
The inhabitants of this region are still Budhists, and still observe these rites. The principal productions are melons, hides of wild horses, wild sheep, nuts, wild boars, scaleless fishes, 'great headed sheep,' liquorice 'fire foxes,' and pheasants. The town of Yuhmun, or Pearl Gate, is just beyond the Pass, on the road northwest to Hami, and is a stopping-place to refresh the caravans before they enter the Desert.
XV. The inferior department of Teh-hwá lies west of Chinsí fű on the north side of the Tien-shán, around and east of Lake Ayar. The whole formerly belonged to Songaria, and is still inhabited by various tribes of that race, intermixed with other Mongol tribes and Chinese settlers and troops. The peace which has reigned in these distant parts of the empire has been favorable to the increase of population and amalgamation of these various races, and they are now probably favorably disposed towards the Chinese rule.
The population of Kansuh is given at 15,193,125, in the census of 1812; this amount probably includes the population of the entire