the country, and by degrees a large colony of Tajik immigrants
was formed on the foundation of the original Oigur stock. These Tajiks
gradually became Tartarised, but they still retained the unmistakable
characteristics of the Aryan family. The two brothers Schlagintweit, and
Mr. Shaw following in their footsteps, were the first to maintain this
view, which is becoming generally accepted. We have, therefore, in
Kashgar the strange spectacle of a Tajik people becoming not only
unidentifiable from the Turanian stock with which it has been
intermingled; but we have also a race tolerance that is unknown in any
other portion of Asia. Undoubtedly the hostility of the settled and
peaceful Andijani immigrant and Kashgari resident to the irreclaimable
Kirghiz is deep-rooted, and, so long as the latter continues a source of
danger to all peaceful communities, abiding; but even this sentiment,
and the religious hatred that has at various epochs marked the political
intercourse of Buddhist and Mahomedan, are probably less durable, and
susceptible of greater improvement in the future, than the race
antipathies that seem perennially vital among the tribes of Western
Asia. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Alty Shahr are of Tajik
descent. In the course of centuries the purity of their lineage has been
leavened by much intermingling with Tartar blood, both at the time of
the Mongol subjection and of the Chinese. In addition to these two great
divisions, there are many Afghan and Badakshi settlers, who have flocked
to Kashgar whenever the progress of events seemed to justify the
expectation that military service in that state would prove a
remunerative engagement. Many of these remained, and they have also left
a clear impression on the features of the inhabitants. It is, however,
to pre-historic times, or certainly to a period lost in the mist of
history, that we must refer for that general exodus of the Aryan family
from the Hindoo Koosh and the plains of Western Asia into the more
secluded prairies of Kashgar, which took place when the Turanian nations
first spread like destroying locusts over the face of that continent. It
was at this period that Khoten, which in its name shows its Aryan
origin, was founded.

The great nomadic tribe of the Kirghiz, or Kara Kirghiz, as the Russians
call them, to distinguish them from the Kirghiz of the various hordes
who, by the way, are not true Kirghiz at all, has at all times played a
fitfu