Journeys on the Silk Road by Joyce Morgan Read Free Book Online Page A

Scottish fiancée, twenty-one-year-old Catherine Theodora Borland, had not been expecting him when he arrived on her doorstep, but nonetheless married him a week later. Their parents were friends, and the pair had known one another since childhood, but George and Catherine were opposites. He was a man of few words—his talent was for listening. In group photographs he invariably appears off to one side or in the background, as though quietly assessing the scene before him. Mrs. Macartney was a warm, sociable figure. She began her marriage as “the most timid, unenterprising girl in the world . . . and certainly had no qualifications for a pioneer’s life, beyond being able to make a cake.” She soon proved otherwise. Within weeks of her hastily arranged wedding, she cheerfully made the rugged overland trek to Kashgar via Russia on horse and camel, picking up a harmonium along the way to accompany her singing.
    Kashgar has long been one of Central Asia’s great crossroads. In Stein’s day, it drew Muslim merchants from Tashkent and Samarkand, Jews from Bokhara, fierce Pashtuns from Afghanistan, and Kashmiris and Ladakhis from across the Himalayas to the south. Remote as it was from Europe’s salons and drawing rooms, few places have been more strategically significant, especially at the height of the Great Game rivalry when the Russian and British empires jostled for influence in Central Asia. Turkestan, like Afghanistan, was seen as a buffer against Russian expansion that might threaten the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown, India. As a result, Kashgar was home to two European outposts: Chini Bagh and the Russian consulate. Both were just outside the old Muslim city and a few miles north of the newer Chinese city. The Chinese administered the oasis and raised taxes, but the Muslims had their own leaders. China’s influence had waxed and waned in Turkestan, which has been known by many names. The West has variously called it Chinese or Eastern Turkestan, High Tartary, Kashgaria, and Sinkiang. China has called it the Western Regions and New Dominions. Today it is known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
    When Stein first visited Kashgar, the effects of its shifting fortunes were still apparent. An unlikely Muslim leader named Yakub Beg, a Tajik adventurer and former dancing boy, had seized control of Kashgar and most of Eastern Turkestan and proclaimed himself King of Kashgaria in the 1860s. Yakub Beg claimed descent from the great Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane and was adept at playing off one Great Gamer against another. The Russians shed no tears when, in 1877, the wily despot died, Kashgaria unraveled and China regained control. But Britain had cozied up to Yakub Beg and Macartney felt the aftermath of China’s displeasure. Although China had promptly allowed Russia to establish a consulate in Kashgar in 1882, Britain wasn’t allowed to do so for more than twenty years. Until then, Macartney was outranked by the Russian consul. For much of that time, Russian authority was wielded by the formidable and capricious Nikolai Petrovsky. Relations between Petrovsky and Macartney were cordial for a while. Petrovsky even sent a Cossack guard to escort Macartney and his new bride into Kashgar, and the two representatives of the rival empires celebrated Christmas together. But the mood so chilled at one stage that Petrovsky, who had lent Macartney a pane of window glass—a rare commodity in Kashgar—demanded it back. On another occasion, the Russians diverted Chini Bagh’s water supply. For about three years, including during Stein’s first visit in the summer of 1900, Macartney and Petrovsky did not speak to each other. Perhaps an uneasy relationship was no surprise given their roles. But with just a handful of Europeans in the oasis—missionaries and medics mostly—such a falling-out could only increase Macartney’s sense of isolation in his remote posting.
    The social glue in Kashgar was provided by the