THE BAZAARS OF BOKHARA. 179 



across the plain. I do not know why it is that it 

 should attract one more than other cities of the Orient ; 

 I only know that it is so. There is an atmosphere per- 

 vading it which defies analysis. For from the moment 

 that you pass through its mouldering gates to stroll 

 through the dust of its time-worn streets, or stand 

 beneath the domes of its sombre-lit bazaars, you live 

 in another world. No breath of the West penetrates 

 the musty atmosphere that you breathe here, heavy 

 with the weight of years. 



It is pleasant enough in the softened light of these 

 same bazaars, and cool, too, compared with the glare 

 and the heat outside. A dark-skinned Hindu, with 

 bright orange caste-mark flaming upon his brow, sits 

 solemnly surveying the scene. You may purchase odd 

 coins of the country from him, for the Hindu is the 

 money-changer of the East. All round you, sitting or 

 reclining after the manner of their kind in the box-like 

 little shops of the Arcade, are the merchants and their 

 clerks, ready to bargain with you for their silks and 

 their velvets, their khelats and their souzayiis, their 

 nahs boxes and ornaments, their kalians and beauti- 

 fully worked ewers of brass. And on all sides rises 

 that hum which is an inseparable accompaniment of an 

 Eastern crowd. 



Side-walks branch off in all directions, where the 

 stranger might soon be lost, but we have a native 

 jliigit to guide us, kindly lent by the Russian resident 

 at New Bokhara, and we follow him as he picks his 

 way nimbly through the crowd, to emerge presently in 

 an open square surrounded by shops and shady trees, 

 while stone steps lead down to a large tank of water, 

 which fills the whole of the centre of the enclosure. 



What a picture for an artist's brush ! What a 

 perfect presentation of the unregenerate East ! A 



