188 BOKHARA THE NOBLE. 



by all who had occasion to come into contact with him. 

 Thus the eccentric missionary, Dr Wolff, who had 

 ample opportunity of forming an opinion, wrote that 

 " he delights to hear the people tremble at his name, 

 and laughs with violence when he hears of their appre- 

 hensions "; and he throws further light upon the matter 

 when he quotes the remark of a Turkoman that " he 

 (Nasrullah) drank the milk of a man-eater; for the 

 Cossacks in the desert are accused of eating the bodies 

 of dead men, and it is for that reason that he is such a 

 bloodhound." It was an evil hour for Bokhara when 

 the priests gave their sanction to the lust of their king, 

 and from the day when the High Priest caused it to be 

 cried from the house-tops that " the king is the shep- 

 herd : the subjects are the sheep. The shepherd may 

 do with the sheep as he thinks proper ; he may take 

 the wife from the husband, for the wife is the sheep of 

 the king as well as of her husband, and he may make 

 use of any other man's wife just as he pleases," he 

 plunged into a career of reckless and indescribable 

 debauchery. It is not surprising that such a monster 

 of iniquity should be found indulging in his lust for 

 blood up to the very last, or that the closing scene of 

 his life should display the beheading of his own wife in 

 his presence as he lay upon his deathbed. 



Such was the monarch, advised and assisted by his 

 prime minister and brother in iniquity, the inhuman 

 Persian, Abd us-Samad, into whose hands fell the luck- 

 less Englishmen, Stoddart and Conolly. Despatched 

 by the Indian Government to enter into negotiations 

 with the ruler of Bokhara, they were treated as the 

 basest of criminals. At length came the rumour of 

 their death. Indignation at the callous behaviour of 

 the Government ran high ; and when at length the 

 already-mentioned traveller and missionary, Dr Wolff, 



