THE NOMAD HEKDSMEN AND HERDS OF THE STEPPES. 453 



height, with faces, not beautiful indeed, but not of the caricature- 

 like Mongolian type, neat hands and feet, clear or transparent 

 light-brown or yellowish complexions, brown eyes, and black hair. 

 The cheek-bones are seldom so prominent, or the chin so pointed, 

 as to give an angular or cat-faced appearance; the eye, of medium 

 size, is usually most arched centrally, and drawn out horizontally at 

 the outer angle; it is thus almond-shaped, but not obliquely set; the 

 nose is usually straight, more rarely hooked; the mouth moderate 

 in size and sharply cut, the beard thin, without being actually 

 scanty. True Mongolian features are certainly to be met with also, 

 more especially among the women and children of the poorer class; 

 but, though I have seen very few really beautiful Kirghiz women, 

 I have met with quite as few of the grotesque faces so common 

 among other undoubted Mongols. The characteristics are unmis- 

 takably more suggestive of a mixed race than of any one sharply 

 defined stock. I have seen men whom I should unhesitatingly 

 have pronounced to belong to the nobler Indo-Germans if I had 

 known nothing of their kinship, and I have become acquainted 

 with others about the Mongolian cut of whose faces there could 

 be no possible doubt. The members of the older families usually 

 possess all the essential marks of the Indo-Germans, while men of 

 lower descent and meaner extraction often remind one of the 

 Mongols in many details, and may sometimes resemble them com- 

 pletely. The power of Islam, which permits to slaves who have 

 become converts all the rights of the tribe, may in the course of 

 time have made Kirghiz out of many heathen Mongols, and thus 

 not only have influenced, but actually destroyed the racial charac- 

 teristics of the Kirghiz. 



Although the chief features of the Kirghiz dress are Turkish, it 

 is, as a whole, by no means suited for displaying their figure to 

 advantage. In winter the fur cap, fur coat, and thick -legged 

 boots hide all the details of the figure, and even in summer these do 

 not come into prominence. The poorer Kirghiz, in addition to his 

 fur coat and the inevitable fur cap, wears a shirt, kaftan, and wide 

 trousers; the higher class rich man, on the other hand, wears a 

 great many articles of dress one above the other, like the Oriental; 



