street I secured a capital helmet o f mail, a powder-
flask, and a battle-axe; and, in another street, some
rude china inkstands and cups of local manufacture,
which have, fortunately, come safely to England, where
I presume they are unique in origin, if not transcendent
in beauty. Another curiosity I obtained is a woman’s
veil (called chasman), made in part of horse-hair, and
closely resembling the hair-cloth used in England for
upholstery, as also a woman’s cotton khalat (called
pharange), similar in form to that of a man. In
wearing it, however, the garment, instead of hanging
from the shoulders, does so from the head, the collar
being made to encircle the veiled fa c e ; and instead
of the woman putting her arms into the sleeves, they
are pinned together, and allowed to fall down the back.
A s winter was approaching, we were advised to provide
ourselves with fur shubas, or robes, for crossing the
desert. W e found a serai set apart for this trade.
In form the serai was a quadrangular building, very
much like a medresse, with the interior resembling
a college quadrangle o f two stories. The centre was
given up to horses and camels, and bales o f merchandise,
the rooms in the lower story were for warehouses,
and in the upper story were rooms approached along
a wide gallery, and in each of them fur shubas were
hanging for sale. The shubas were lined with various
furs, specially that of the jackal, and common ones
differed in price from 30^. to 63^, there being few
o f the best kinds. It was probably a little too early
in the season to see a large collection. We had a few
coins brought to us, but all the fine promises of the
Emir and Kush-beggi about searching for antiquities
came to little or nothing. I tried to get some native
books, and succeeded to a small extent, but only, as
it were, by stealth, for I saw nothing like a bookseller’s
shop, and had to purchase through a middle man.
The streets and lanes of Bokhara (which are not
named separately, but only as belonging to a certain
quarter of the town) are exceedingly tortuous and
narrow, varying in width, as Khanikoff says, from
40 inches to 20 feet. It did not need many people,
therefore, to give the bazaars a very busy appearance,
and everywhere crowds attended us, staring at the
strangers, especially when we stopped to make purchases,
so that our horses could make way only very
slowly. One o f the liveliest places was the Righistan,
which we first saw on the day following our arrival.
On two sides are five mosques and medresses, and
on a third side is a pool, around which loungers
congregate. Here we dismounted, the better to go
in and out among the stalls for the sale of small wares,
and afterwards visited several mosques and medresses.
Near the Medresse Divan-beggi is a square pool,
called Liabehaus Divan-beggi, the sides being of
square stones, with 8 steps to the water, and
shaded around with mulberry-trees of a century’ s
growth. Here are numbers of tea and refreshment
stalls, from which one may see the people drinking,
bathing, or performing their ceremonial ablutions in
the pool.
After finishing our business on Saturday afternoon,
we called again at the Russian serai, which kept us
till dusk, so that we wended our way homewards after
sunset, and saw the miserable, deserted appearance
of the streets by night. There were no street lamps,
and the few men about were by no means desirable
company, for I heard that lately not a night had
passed without a murder or a robbery, and that the