The course of the history of Kashgar has now been brought down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, during which a fresh change occurred in the history of the country by the Chinese conquest. It may be well, therefore, before narrating that event and the causes which immediately produced it, to consider the chief lessons taught us by the history of Eastern Turkestan, as revealed in the preceding pages. The most cursory reader must have been struck by the fact, that only twice in the course of eight centuries did the country secure a firm and settled government, and they were when two conquerors, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, reduced every semblance of authority to one bare level of subjection. At fitful moments there arose, indeed, some leader, Yunus, Ababakar, or the first Khojas, capable of preserving for a few years his frontiers against the inroads of hostile neighbours, and of maintaining an outward show of prosperity and tranquillity to foreign travellers; but even such gleams of sunshine as these were transitory on the dark horizon of the condition of mankind in Central Asia. With the fall of each pretender, too, hopes of an improvement became fainter in the breasts of the people; and when the successors of the Khoja saint showed themselves not less amenable to the errors and frailties of their predecessors than any past ruler had been, it was to some extraneous circumstance, we may feel sure, that the people looked for aid. There is an old saying in this part of the world, that when "the people's tithe of bricks is full, then comes a Moses in the land;" and it cannot be doubted that in the year 1720 the people of Kashgar had suffered much and for so long, that relief, so that it came effectually from some quarter or another, could not be otherwise than welcome. But the Moses who had been, for centuries almost, expected, had as yet not proved forthcoming, and as "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," so had the Kashgari lost the courage even to look forward to a period when their life of misery, under oppressive tyrants and exorbitant taxation, aggravated by every form of peculation in its levy, might be changed for a more favourable state of being. There can be no doubt that if the chaos which reigned throughout Jungaria and Kashgar had continued much longer those vast regions would have been completely exhausted. As it was the population decreased in alarming proportions, and the wealth and general resources of the country disappeared with no apparent means of supplying the gap. What is, perhaps, most surprising of all is that all these later rulers seem to have lived in a sort of fools' paradise with regard to the resources of their state. The thought never seems to have occurred to them that there must be an end some day or other to a realm distracted by continual wars and sedition, and that subjects who have been tyrannised over for centuries will at last rise up in arms and