Our first night out of Kumul was spent in a Turki village in the desert, 90 li from the city and 15 li from the foothills. The place was aptly called Tash Shar—Stone Town—for it lay in the bed of a dessicated stream where the bouldjets were almost as big as the houses. It was ® poor little place with a few little grain fields and few sheep and with no better claim to renown than the prevalence of goitre, with which nearly every man, woman and child was burdened. This affliction is peculiar to! many communities in Central Asia, and is so common that the natives scarcely see any disfigurement in it. But Tash Shar was my first goitre village and I found it rather difficult to eat all the mutton and bread that were put before me in the presence of a circle of gross abnormalities, even though every one was most hospitable and kind-
There I learned that it is the guest's duty to eat until he is miserable, and the host's business to see that he does it. A sheep was killed for the first meal, was cut up and boiled, and put before me on an enormous platter in such as way that all the fat pieces wore within my reach. After much prompting from Yussuf I took steaming three pounds in my left hand and my sheath knife in my right snd made with it. When I had polished the bone, cracked it with the back of my knife, and eaten the marrow, another great chunk was forced' upon me, and afterwards another and still another. In an hour five of us had whole sheep to a stack of bone splinters and then we were exhorted to eat our mien, the staff of life, to which the meat is simply the prelude. A bowl once started must be finished, for to leave anything in the bottom is to cast as-persians upon the generosity of Allah, who provides all.
also I was initiated into and means of Turki do-mastic life and as an adopted member of the domestic circle 1 found my part difficult at first. The whole round of existence is staged in one big room, where privacy is neither afforded nor expected. At the entrance is the fireplace with its boiler, about which the women sit and talk. In he centre of the room are the table and brazier, the nuclei of male sociability, and all about the walls are alcoves, cupboards and chests which hold the family treasures. A skylight admits the sun and affords an exit for smoke and steam, but there are no windows.
Tu this single apartment the whole family eats, sleeps, works, sings. dances and dies. When I suggested a bath I was given two pitchers of hot water and ushered into the chicken coop, where the wind from the Tiensan's snow fists played over me and the water froze in puddles at my feet. In spite of these discouraging conditions the Turki, like all faithful Moslems, are forever bathing and seem to be no srorse for it.
At night the lights in the big room are blown out and every one disrobes by starlight and rolls up in his bedding on the floor, which heavily carpeted with felts and rugs. I was afterwards thankful, when I came to live in the tonto of Turki herdsman, that my initiation into this mode of life had been given me in the big living room of Turki house where the shadows and corners afforded some shelter from the scrutiny of the naively curious natives.
From Tash Shar we rode on into the foothills to Aratam, where the prince has his summer gardens and his picnicking pavilion, and then on again past massive boulder ruins, attributed, like the frescoed temple at Aratam, to the Uigurs, to a pretty village on a hill terrace called Khatuntam.
There I found my former travelling companion Prof. Serge Malof, sitting sagely before an audience of 50 distractingly pretty Turki girls, whom he was entertaining with' his gramophone, prior to measuring their heads and facial angles for the benefit of come learned ethnological he and his visitors filled the lets house to overflowing, we put up with the Boshga, the Prime Minister of the clan community, a muscular little man with soarred face and one blind eye, who introduced us to his very pretty wife with a waive of his hand as "my fifth, and not much good at that." As a matter of fact he was tremendously proud of her and she worshipped him for his horeemanship, his accuracy with rifle, and the tremendous strength of his knotty little hands. We spent three days with Othman Boshga and then when we talked of going on, which we had no desire to do, the whole household protested so loudly and so earnestly that we stayed month and then left with reluctance.
Every canton in the hills has ita Dorgha, the chief; its Kormal, commissioner of livestock; its Boshga, executive under the chief and clerk plenipotentiary; its Metsup, ecclesiastical commissioner i's Palghan, the village hunter; its Unbashi, who runs errands for everyone; and its officials of the mosque. As soon as my arrival in Khatuntam was made known these various persons began to call and they kept straggling in until long after bedtime. Each assured me shat his house was mine and that if I did not call and make use of everything he had, he would be mortally offended. As 8 special in ducement to remain. each talked
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.