The Jade of Turkestan is largely derived from water-rolled boulders fished up by divers in the rivers of Khotan, but it is also got from mines in the valley of the Karakash River.  “Some of the Jade,” says Timkowski, “is as white as snow, some dark green, like the most beautiful emerald (?), others yellow, vermilion, and jet black.  The rarest and most esteemed varieties are the white speckled with red and the green veined with gold.”  (I. 395.) The Jade of Khotan appears to be first mentioned by Chinese authors in the time of the Han Dynasty under Wu-ti (B.C. 140-86).  In A.D. 541 an image of Buddha sculptured in Jade was sent as an offering from Khotan; and in 632 the process of fishing for the material in the rivers of Khotan, as practised down to modern times, is mentioned.  The importation of Jade or Yue from this quarter probably gave the name of Kia-yue Kwan or “Jade Gate” to the fortified Pass looking in this direction on the extreme N. W. of China Proper, between Shachau and Suhchau.  Since the detachment from China the Jade industry has ceased, the Musulmans having no taste for that kind of virtu. (H. de la V. de Khotan, 2, 17, 23; also see J.  R. G. S. XXXVI. 165, and Cathay, 130, 564; Ritter, II. 213; Shaw’s High Tartary, pp. 98, 473.)

[On the 11th January, 1895, Dr. Sven Hedin visited one of the chief places where Jade is to be found.  It is to the north-east of Khotan, in the old bed of the Yurun Kash.  The bed of the river is divided into claims like gold-fields; the workmen are Chinese for the greater part, some few are Musulmans.

Grenard (II. pp. 186-187) says that the finest Jade comes from the high Karakash (black Jade) River and Yurungkash (white Jade); the Jade River is called Su-tash.  At Khotan, Jade is polished up by sixty or seventy individuals belonging to twenty-five workshops.

“At 18 miles from Su-chau, Kia-yu-kwan, celebrated as one of the gates of China, and as the fortress guarding the extreme north-west entrance into the empire, is passed.” (Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc.  R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 75.)

According to the Chinese characters, the name of Kia-yue Kwan does not mean “Jade Gate,” and as Mr. Rockhill writes to me, it can only mean something like “barrier of the pleasant Valley.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 3.—­Possibly this may refer to the custom of temporary marriages which seems to prevail in most towns of Central Asia which are the halting-places of caravans, and the morals of which are much on a par with those of seaport towns, from analogous causes.  Thus at Meshid, Khanikoff speaks of the large population of young and pretty women ready, according to the accommodating rules of Shiah Mahomedanism, to engage in marriages which are perfectly lawful, for a month, a week, or even twenty-four hours.  Kashgar is also noted in the East for its chaukans, young women with whom the traveller may readily form an alliance for the period of his stay, be it long or short. (Khan.  Mem. p. 98; Russ. in Central Asia, 52; J.  A. S. B. XXVI. 262; Burnes, III. 195; Vigne, II. 201.)