JOURNEY FROM HERAT TO ORENBURG. 271 



pocket mine. Luckily I wore an Afghan dress with 

 large pockets, or I know not what I should have done 

 with the spoils. After the sugar had been pocketed, 

 all hands rose and moved towards the door, and so 

 ended this festival. I was so cramped that I could 

 hardly walk; and the idea of 120 human beings 

 marching out, each with one pocket full of sugar and 

 the other full of raisins, was trying to one's risible 

 faculties ; but I followed the customs of the Court, 

 and carried off my spoils as grave as a judge. 



The town of Khiva consists of a few streets of mud 

 houses : there is one covered bazaar, which, though 

 small, is a handsome and substantial building. The 

 colleges are showy buildings, ornamented with coloured 

 tiles, Avhich have a gay effect ; but the water is so 

 near the surface, that it is hardly possible to give a 

 sufficient foundation in it. Owing to this cause the 

 minarets all slope from the perpendicular, and the 

 walls are in general separated at the corners of the 

 buildings. The chief beauty of Khiva consists in the 

 luxuriant growth of the trees, and in the number and 

 extent of the gardens. These are invariably surrounded 

 by a thick wall of twenty or even thirty feet high. 

 The buttresses are formed something like bastions, so 

 that at first these gardens may easily be mistaken for 

 forts. Long rows of poplar-trees, branching off from 

 a pool of water in the centre, is the usual plan of the 

 gardens, and the house is generally built in one of the 

 sides, and commands a full view of the garden. I 



