ISSOUDUN  , a

town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Indre, on the right bank of the Theols, 17 M . N.E. of Chateauroux by rail . Pop . (1go6) ro,566 . Among the interesting buildings are the church of St Cyr, combining various architectural styles, with a fine porch and window, and the chapel of the Hotel Dieu of the early 16th century . Of the fortifications with which the town was formerly surrounded, a town-gate of the 16th century and the White Tower, a lofty cylindncal building of the reign of Philip Augustus, survive . Issoudun is the seat of a sub-prefecture, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a chamber of arts and manufactures and a communal college . The industries, of which the most important is leather-dressing, also include malting and brewing and the manufacture df bristles for brushes and parchment . Trade is in grain, live-stock, leather and wine . Issoudun, in Latin Exoldunum or Uxellodunum, existed in and before Roman times . In 1195 it was stoutly and successfully defended by the partizans of Richard Cceur-de-Lion against Philip Augustus, king of France . It has suffered severely from fires .

A very destructive one in 1651 was the result of an attack on the town in the

war of Fronde; Louis XIV. rewarded its fidelity to him during that struggle by the grant of several privileges . ISSYK-KUL, also called Tuz-KUL, and by the Mongols Temurtu-nor, a lake of Central Asia, lying in a deep basin (5400 ft.above sea-level), between the Kunghei Ala-tau and the Terskei Ala-tau, westward continuations of the Tian-shan mountains, and extending from 76° ro'to 78° 2o' E . The length from W.S.W. to E.N.E. is 115 m. and the breadth 38 m., the area being estimated at 2230 sq. m . The name is Kirghiz for " warm lake," and, like the Chinese synonym She-hai, has reference to the fact that the lake is never entirely frozen over . On the south the Terskei Ala-tau do not come down so close to the shore as the mountains on the north, but leave a strip 5 to 13 M. broad . The margins of the lake are overgrown with reeds . The water is brackish . Fish are remarkably abundant, the principal species being carp . It was by the route beside this lake that the tribes (e.g . Yue-chi) driven from China by the Huns found their way into the Aralo-Caspian basin in the end of the and century . The Ussuns or Uzuns settled on the lake and built the town of Chi-gu, which still existed in the 5th century . It is to Hsiian-tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, that we are indebted for the first account of Issyk-kul based on personal observation .

In the beginning of the 14th century Nestorian Christians reached the lake and founded a monastery on the

northern shore, indicated on the Catalan map of 1374 . It was not till 1856 that the Russians made acquaintance with the district .