Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/121

 other with a spotted back, the tazek-balik. Both kinds spawn in March.

The fishing begins in the early spring, and terminates late in the autumn. Small nets are used for this purpose in which the fish entangle themselves. The usual and most profitable method practised by the inhabitants may be described as follows:—a convenient spot having been selected for the purpose, a passage is cut into the Tarim (whose level, as we have already observed, is higher than the flats alongside it) water then pours out upon the plain, and a shallow but wide-spreading lake gradually forms, into which the fish find their way through the channel from the river. In May the opening is blocked up and the water ceases to flow. During the summer the great evaporation gradually dries up these artificial lakes, except in the deeper parts where the fish all congregate, and about the month of September the natives proceed to take them; for this purpose a small aperture is again made, and a net placed there. The lake-fish, tired with their long confinement in the small pools, no sooner feel the rush of fresh water from the river than they hasten to meet it, and are caught in the trap. In this way the take is sometimes very large, and supplies are thus laid in for the winter. Moreover the inhabitants say that the long confinement in stagnant water impregnated with the salt of