observe that since my visit two colporteurs have made
an interesting journey from the Caspian to Khiva,
Bokhara, and Charjui. In Khiva they stayed a week,
and left it under the impression that the town offers great
opportunities for Bible work. O f Bokhara they say,
“ In this thickly-peopled town even a timid colporteur
need not be afraid to work.”* In the six months they
were away, they sold to the Turkomans, Khivans,
Russians, and Bokhariots, 319 copies of the Scriptures,
or portions, for 118 roubles. This fo ra first journey
by two unprotected colporteurs into parts where even
I, with the Russians at my back, was warned of danger,
I think highly creditable to the agents of the Society,
and still more so as their travelling expenses, including
the hire of camels, amounted to only ¿ 2 7 !
Thus Bokhara and Khiva have been approached
from the w^est by these colporteurs; by myself from the
south, and on the east the brothers Bartsch went to
Samarkand, and wished to go on to Bokhara; but
General Ivanoff, though authorizing them to colport
among the Russian troops (to whom they sold 330
copies in 5 days), hesitated to Let them go on to
Bokhara, without telegraphing first to Petersburg, and
finally thought it would be safer for them not to go.
It is from this side, however, the khanates will be
most conveniently worked.f The opinion of the men
* I am informed by the Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible
Society, that Dr. Vanorden, writing from Khiva, says :— “ The report of
your colporteurs as to the quiet of this land I find fully confirmed by my
own experiences. It extends even to the animals ; for though there are
many dogs here, not one barks at the stranger. . . . I am much pleased
with the people. It would seem as if they could hardly be Mussulmans,
so different are they from others I have met with.”
f From the latest information, I learn that the brothers Bartsch went
on a tour in the summer of 1884 to the North-East (I presume through
Viemy), and met with tolerably good success. “ But in the neighfrom
the Caucasus is, that it is very desirable that
Bible work should be taken up by colporteurs from
the three centres, Khiva, Charjui, and Bokhara ; for,
say they, a very large proportion of both sexes, young
and old, can read, and there is nothing to hinder
work among them.*
But to return whence this excursus began. I found
it not so difficult to ascend a minaret in Khiva as in
Bokhara. On approaching the Jumma mosque, and
seeing its elegant minaret, I expressed a wish at once
to go up. They replied at first that the man with the
key was absent, which temporary difficulty was overcome
by my saying that we would wait till he brought
it. We then mounted 90 steps, each about a foot high,
and had a capital view of the city. The configuration
of the outer wall is that of an oyster-shell with the
narrow end elongated and squared.!
bourhood of Tashkend the fanaticism of the Muhammadan population,
which is easily awakened, has, after the first success, tended greatly to
decrease their sales.” At Tashkend the Gospel of St. Matthew in
Kazan Tatar is finding acceptance, and an agent of the Society, one
Jacob Starkel, is stationed near Petro-Alexandrovsk.
* I am glad to notice here the kindness of General Grotenhielm at
Petro-Alexandrovsk to the men ; also of the Governor-General at Aska-
bad, who gave the colporteurs a recommendation to authorities they
might possibly meet. His Excellency charged the leader of the
caravan to take due care of them, and made him promise to take
them safely to Khiva. So, too, in Askabad, a Russian doctor attended
gratis one of the men who was ill, wishing, as he said, to befriend a
colporteur of the Bible Society.
t Its largest diameter is a mile and a half, its shortest a mile. The
wall measures 3>too fathoms, or 4 miles, in length according to
Basiner s map (but they told me 8 miles), is about 25 feet high, the same
in thickness at the bottom, but only two or three feet at the top. The wall
is pierced by 12 gates, and the whole is girdled by a wide ditch. This
wall was built by Allah Kuli in 1842. Within are visible many fields
and gardens, the summer palace of the Khan, with other great buildings*
and fortress-like farmhouses. There is besides an inner wall, in
the shape of a parallelogram, 700 yards long on the eastern and western
sides, and 540 yards broad.