Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/53

34 desolated this part of the valley. The districts which were laid waste lie below Kulja, following the Ili. Here, too, agriculture once flourished, but since the extermination of the Chinese inhabitants by the Taranchis and Dungans, the villages are mostly destroyed, and even such towns as Old Kulja, Bayandai, Chimpanzi, and others are in ruins, the fields deserted and choked with weeds. After crossing to the left bank of the Ili, near the mouth of the Kash (fifty versts beyond Kulja), we continued as before to ascend its valley, in this part twenty versts wide, and having the appearance of a steppe plain with a clayey and slightly saline soil, producing Ceratocarpus, dwarf wormwood, and Lasiogrostis; in the more fertile part astragalus, a few kinds of herbs or plants of the order compositæ and small gnarled bushes; whilst the river bank is fringed with thick cane-brake.

The width of the Ili near the mouth of the Kash is about 500 feet, with a very rapid stream. Taranchi villages continue for twelve versts further up the right bank from the confluence of the Kash—the left bank has no settled population. Here only occasional fields temporarily tilled by the Kalmuks may be seen, and these only nearer the river Tekes. The last-named stream flows from the Mussart, and unites with the Kunges to form the Ili, which empties its muddy waters into Lake Balkash. [ See supplementary note. ]

The Tekes, here 350 feet wide, with a terribly