protectors of the public peace were paid, and by what means. But on this point there is little trustworthy information. We, however, know of one tax which was devoted to the support of the urban police, but of the funds from which the suburban were remunerated, we have no authority for any assertion. A weekly tax was levied from all the shop and booth owners, to go towards the payment of their protectors; but it is not supposed that this amounted to a sufficient sum to maintain the large force in the more important cities. The difference was probably paid out of the state coffers under the head of justice. Judging from this we cannot be far wrong in assuming that a similar tax was levied on the farmers and country residents for the support of the suburban police; and as the secret police required less outlay in the country than in the cities, it is possible that that tax more nearly defrayed the total cost, than it did in Yarkand or Kashgar. The police supervision and the military terrorism, freely resorted to on all occasions offering an excuse for such an extreme measure, have not been without their effect in leaving traces of their existence and influence in the daily life of the Kashgari, and on the countenances and sentiments of the subject peoples. Where formerly lived a light-hearted and happy race there now seemed as if a never-to-be-removed gloom had settled down on the face of the land, and neither the assurance of security nor the irregular encouragement of the ruler to commerce could remove the blight that had fallen upon the energies and happiness of the people. As one of them expressed it, in pathetic language, "During the Chinese rule there was everything; there is nothing now." The speaker of that sentence was no merchant, who might have been expected to be depressed by the falling-off in trade, but a warrior and a chieftain's son and heir. If to him the military system of Yakoob Beg seemed unsatisfactory and irksome, what must it have appeared to those more peaceful subjects to whom merchandise and barter were as the breath of their nostrils? All the advantages of a perfect police system, heavily weighted by the incumbrance of a costly addition of spies and tale-bearers, would seem as nothing compared with the loss incurred by the fetters placed on individual motion and enterprise. Considered by itself, the police organization of Kashgar was, perhaps, the most perfect design achieved by Yakoob Beg, and his community of spies will rank with anything in effectiveness that has ever been accomplished by any potentate. But as a permanent addition to his strength it is permissible to doubt whether he really secured his rule by employing the latter, or obtained much more by the formation of the former than the services of a trained body of trustworthy, courageous men. The restrictions imposed on trade by the severance of all communications with the East by the Tungan wars and by