JOURNEY FROM HERAT TO ORENBURG. 247 



the notice of Government, and have given him a 

 handsome red Cashmere shawl, to let the Turko- 

 mans see that we can appreciate such good ser- 

 vice. I was much surprised a few days after 

 my arrival at Khiva, by seeing a person in a 

 European costume enter my klmrgdh. I saluted 

 him in Persian, but I soon found that he spoke 

 French. His story was sufficiently amusing. It 

 appears that he was a native of Italy, and had there 

 earned his bread by making plaster-of-Paris statues ; 

 but owing to the immense number of competitors 

 in this branch of industry, he found it difficult to 

 procure even a bare subsistence, and being of an 

 adventurous spirit, he resolved to try to penetrate 

 to some spot where he might manufacture statues 

 without a rival. Urged on by this laudable am- 

 bition, he worked his way on board a ship to 

 Petersburg ; but here, to his horror, he found 

 hundreds of his countrymen, each with such a 

 stock of statues as at once convinced him of the 

 hopelessness of success in that city; but still un- 

 daunted, he made his way through Russia, and 

 ultimately arrived at Tiflis, Avhere, to his extreme 

 delight, he found himself the sole and unrivalled 

 artist in his profession. Here then he fondly hoped 

 his wanderings would cease, and he commenced his 

 operations with great vigour, and at first with much 

 success; but just as he had set agoing a thriving 

 trade, the priests discovered that the making of 



