46 
THROUGH ASIA 
The road to Irghiz ran for the most part close beside 
the Irghiz river, at that time of the year almost dried 
up. We crossed it between the stations of Kum-sai 
and Kara-sai. On we went day and night across the 
monotonous steppe, drawn by the swift post-horses. By 
this time 1 had become so used to travelling in a tarantass, 
that I found no difficulty in sleeping at night, rolled up 
in my rugs and furs at the bottom of the vehicle, and 
only awoke when we suddenly pulled up before a new 
station-house. Having shown my receipt to the staresta, 
and put to fresh horses, we were soon on the road again. 
An awakening of this kind in the middle of the night, 
with the thermometer only five degrees I'ahr. above zero 
(-15° C.), is anything but exhilarating; you are stiff and 
bruised and sleepy, and long for a glass of tea. At 
last the sun rises above the horizon, floods the steppe 
with its golden rays, melting the rime frost which during 
the night has decked the grass with its delicate white 
down, and driving the wolves from the posting-road. 
A few more stations and we reached Irghiz, standing- 
on an eminence overlooking the river of the same name, 
west of the point where it runs into the salt lake Chalkar- 
tenis. Irghiz is a ukreplenye (fort) and its commandant 
a uycisdny natyalnik, or chief administrative officer of the 
district. The place has a small church, and about a 
thousand inhabitants, including the garrison of a hundred 
and fifty men, of whom seventy were Orenburg Cossacks. 
The greater number of the inhabitants were Sart merchants, 
o 
who come there periodically to barter with the Kirghiz. 
They bring their wares from Orenburg, Moscow, and 
Nizhni- Novgorod. Irghiz was founded in 1848 by the 
Russians, and, like Kara-butak and Turgai, is entirely 
Russian. It was one of the forts erected immediately 
after the occupation of the steppe, in 1845, for the paci- 
fication of the Kirghiz. Before the Russian occupation 
Irghiz was called Yar-mollah (the Holy Grave on the 
Terrace), and was merely an unimportant Kirghiz burial- 
place and resort for pilgrims. After the Russian conquest 
of Turkestan this place, like others in the same region, 
