e but strong ferryboat
up-stream toward them. The boat is built of heavy hewn timber, and
capable of ferrying fifty passengers.

The Furrah Rood, at the ferry, is about two hundred yards wide, and with
a current of perhaps five miles an hour. A dozen stalwart men with rude,
heavy sweeps propel the boat across; but at every passage the swift
current takes it down-stream twice as far as the river's width. After
disembarking the passengers, the boatmen have to tow it this distance
up-stream again before making the next crossing. The boatmen wear a
single garment of blue cotton that in shape resembles a plain loose
shirt. When nearing the shore, three or four of them deftly slip their
arms out of the sleeves, bunch the whole garment up around their necks,
and spring overboard. Swimming to shallow water with a rope, they brace
themselves to stay the down-stream career of the boat.

A small gathering of wild-looking men are collected at the landing-place,
and my astonishment is awakened by the familiar figure of a Celestial
among the crowd. He is a veritable John Chinaman--beardless face,
queue, almond eyes, and everything complete. The superior thriftiness of
the Chinaman over the Afghans needs no further demonstration than the
ocular evidence that among them all he wears by far the best and the
tidiest clothes. In this, not less than in the strong Mongolian type of
face, is he a striking figure among the people.

John Chinaman is a very familiar figure to me, and I regard this strange
specimen with almost as great interest as if I had thus unexpectedly met
a European. His grotesque figure and dress, representing, so it seems to
me at the moment, a speck of civilization among the barbarousness of my
surroundings, is quite a relief to the senses. A closer investigation,
however, on the bank, while waiting for the guide's horse, reveals the
fact that he is far from being the John Chinaman of Chinatown, San
Francisco. Instead of hailing from the rice-fields of Quangtung, this
fellow is a native of Kashga-ria, a country almost as wild as
Afghanistan. A moment's scrutiny of his face removes him as far from the
civilized seaboard Celestials of our acquaintance as is the Zulu warrior
from the plantation-darky of the South. Except for the above-mentioned
comparative neatness of appearance, it is very evident that the Mongolian
is every bit as wild as the Afghans about him.

The people regard me with a deep and peculiar interest;