230 Description of Bokhara. [May, 
for evening prayers. At the doors of the colleges, which generally 
face the mosques, one may see the students lounging after the labours 
of the day, not however so gay or so young as the tyros of an European 
university, but many of them grave and demure old men, with more 
hypocrisy, but by no means less vice, than their youthful prototypes 
in another quarter of the world. These people however are stained by 
vices which there find no shelter even among the most depraved liber- 
tines. With the twilight this busy scene closes, the King’s drum beats, 
it is re-echoed by others in every part of the city, and at a certain 
hour no one is permitted to move out without a lantern. From these 
arrangements, the police of the city is excellent, and in every street 
large bales of cloth are left on the stalls at night in perfect safety. All 
is silence till the morn, when the bustle again commences in the Régis- 
tan, the busy hive of men. The day is ushered in with the same guz- 
zling and tea-drinking, and hundreds of boys and donkeys laden with 
milk hasten to the busy throng. The milk is sold in small bowls, over 
which the cream floats: a lad will bring twenty or thirty of these to 
market, in shelves supported and suspended by a stick over his shoul- 
der. Whatever number may be brought, speedily disappear among 
the tea-drinking population of this great city. 
Soon after our arrival, I paid a visit to our late travelling com- 
panions, the tea merchants, who had taken up their abode in a 
caravansery, and were busy in unpacking, appraising, and selling 
their tea. They sent to the bazar for ice and apricots, which we 
sat down and enjoyed together. One of the purchasers took me for 
a tea merchant from the society I was in, and asked for my invest- 
ment. The request afforded both the merchants and myself some 
amusement, but they did not undeceive the man on my mercantile 
character, and we continued to converse together. He spoke of the 
news of the day, the late conquests of the king at Shahr Sabz, and 
of the threats of the Persians to attack Bokhdra, all without his ever 
suspecting me to be ought but an Asiatic. In return, we had visits 
from these merchants, and many other persons who principally came 
to gratify their curiosity. We were not permitted to write, and 
it was an agreeable manner of passing our time, since they were very 
communicative. The Uzbeks are a simple people, with whom one gets 
most readily acquainted: they speak in a curious tone of voice, as if 
they despised, or were angry with, you. 
They never saluted us by any ofthe forms among Muhammedans, but 
appeared to have another set of expressions, the most common of which 
is, ‘‘ May your wealth increase” (doulat zydda). They nevertheless 
