By Rodney Gilbert, Kumul, known to the Mongols es Khamil and to the Chinese as Hami, is the most eastern outpost of an ancient Turco-Persian civilization in Central Asia, Among Asiatics it is renowned for its melons and to Europeans it is best known through the reputation which Marco Polo gave it for hospitality, high living and shocking morals, The modern Kumul is a pleasant clear cold water from the Barkul Joxtension of the Tienshan and maze of those melon and apricot gardens which are little terrestrial models of paradise to the Turks. If one has a melon patch, a clump of fruit trees, a one room cottage, horse, and a gu.tar for the strumming of love songs, he has all the gods can bestow. In Kumul they bask in the sunshine and talk the folly and burden of wealth by day, and sing of love and heroics at night. Everyone sings, everyone {tells stories, and no one works harder than he must in Kumul.
After eighteen days of rock sand and alkali on the Gobi trail out of China, there is something reduc tive about the balm and good will of sky, soil and people, and the traveller grows dangerously fond of sitting on silk rugs and being sung to by bearded giants and blackeyed houris who never seem to tire of making life pleasant for the wayfarer.
Once out of the desert the traveller passes through ten miles of gardens, melon patches and shady groves, where the guitars twang merrily at all hours and the air is vibrant with the tambourines, and enters the settlement by way of the camel compounds of the Kweibuacheng merchants. The road then leads through the bazaar, with its gaudy shops and noisy cafes, past the Chinese city, drowsy Jand filthy, past the Turkey city, jauiet and' prim under the severe jurisdiction of its Padshah, on past the green tile Mazar of deceased princes, and into the desert again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.