Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 2 (1876).djvu/314

286 driven out of China, Urumchi and the adjoining district fell into the power of the Elcuths; but about the middle of the last century it was conquered by the Manchus and became the military centre of a district extending from Barkul to Hur-kara-ussu. In 1775, Kien-long raised it to the rank of a city of the second order, and gave it the Chinese name of Ti-hwa-chau. But it was best known under its ancient name of Bish-balik, i.e. the five cities, when it flourished under the sway of the powerful Khans of the Mongol dynasty.

The streets of this town were wide and populous, and it was visited by merchants from the surrounding countries of China, Mongolia, and Turkestan. It contained a gymnasium, two temples, one school for the town and another for the district, and, according to a Russian traveller (Putimtseff), ranked, in 1811, as the richest town in Dzungaria, and was famed for its manufactures and the industry of its inhabitants. At that time it carried on an important trade with Chuguchak, on the Chinese-Siberian frontier. The mountains on the west are reported to abound in excellent coal, and at their foot lies a great plain, 100 li in circumference, covered with sulphurous ashes. Still further to the west, on the borders of Urumchi and Kuldja, is a great abyss 90 li in circumference, covered with a surface as white as snow, which becomes so hard, after rain, that if struck with a stick it gives forth a hollow sound like the Solfatara of Pozzuoli, near Naples; but neither man nor animal may venture beyond its edge without being irrecoverably lost. It is called the 'ash-pit.'

It was Humboldt (see 'Cosmos,' edited by Sabine, i. 232), who first called attention to the volcanic character of the Urumchi district; and he was followed by Ritter, who adduced the testimony of travellers to prove that severe earthquakes occurred as recently as the year 1716, and the same year (according to Falk) the town of Aksu was almost entirely destroyed by a similar cause. Severtsoff denies the volcanic character of the Western Thian Shan where seen by him; but as no travellers have, as far as I am aware,