GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN THE DISTRICT. 159 



fair is the very reverse of this every way in June 

 and July. In the first place, you go bowling merrily 

 along over good, hard, dry roads, on a sandy soil, 

 at the rate of sixteen or eighteen versts an hour. 

 I have often done a stage of twenty - five versts 

 in seventy-five minutes, and without the usual accom- 

 paniments of jerks and jolts which you would think 

 were going to dislocate every bone in your body. It 

 is one of the most delightful journeys I ever made, 

 through a very pretty and interesting country of iron 

 and copper mines, marble works and gold washings, 

 corn fields and pasture lands, interpersed here and there 

 with woods of almost every kind, except the pine family. 



' The Menobou Dbops, which means Court of Exchange, 

 covers a vast area on the steppe, but it does not do any- 

 thing like the amount of business it once did. Railways 

 will knock all these yarmokies on the head in the long 

 run, I suppose. It was very interesting to watch their 

 long trains of camels bringing in the cotton, &c., from 

 Yashkend, Khokand, Keia, Samarcand, Bokhara, &c., 

 besides hundreds of yokes of oxen bringing in the wool, 

 salt, &c., in clumsy, creaking, Asiatic carts from the Ker- 

 ghis steppes. You wonder where are all the merchants, 

 and where is all the business done, but as you pass round 

 you find a group of five or six in a ring, on every spot, 

 all cross-legged. Perhaps one is turning goods slowly and 

 carefully over, layer after layer, as if they wanted to spin 

 the job out as long as they could, barely raising their eyes 

 or deigning to look till you are gone past. Then there is 

 a whispered buzz of enquiry to know if you are bringing 

 any fish to their net. 



' Troitsk is on the border of that vast sea of sand called a 

 steppe. It is a quiet unassuming town, because of the pre- 

 dominence of those peaceful sober Mahommedans. There 

 are five mechets there all little shabby tumble-down 

 wooden buildings babagans I call them, only ,those on 

 the plain here are a great deal handsomer. The Tartars 

 are all either very mean or very poor a bit of both, I 



