3-065-889 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Mission to Yarkund and Kashgar: the City of Yarkund, 1874. 'Yarkund, the commercial capital of the Eastern Turkestan country, is situated...3800ft. above the sea. It is probable that this ancient city has not been much changed since the time of Marco Polo, five centuries and a half ago. It is built entirely of mud, and is surrounded by a mud wall from 25 ft. to 30 ft. high, in which are five gateways...The population has been variously estimated at from 35,000 upwards; it probably averages some 40,000. Here it is that the merchant from India, bringing bales of British manufactured goods, would encounter the competition of Russian trade. Chintzes and cotton cloths from Manchester and Moscow are exposed in the same stalls; silk traders from the Punjaub fraternise with Nogai dealers from Tashkend...Large quantities of silks, manufactured at Khoten, find a sale here with leather articles of local manufacture, furs and wadded garments suitable to a severe climate...The city has thirty-six endowed schools, which have been improperly dignified as colleges, but the standard of learning is low...There are about 120 places of prayer, similarly honoured with the name of mosque'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.