desecrating locomotive. The bazaars are like animated tunnels, being narrow streets covered over with matting or boughs that the sun's intemperate rays may not burn up the busy movement of parti-coloured people who patter back and forth, passing the squatting merchants. You enter by way of melons—quantities of them, on both sides the big city gate ; you progress through brass work, ironmongery, saddlery, butchery, cookery ; then you are in a sort of focus of bazaars, and the appetising fumes from open-air restaurants may float temptation in half-a-dozen directions. Near by are sweetmeats, then brilliant skullcaps, then European calicos, then true, fascinating Bokhara silks ; then, around a corner, are equally fascinating rugs, then sweetmeats, then spices, vegetables and all garden truck and then—and then—so it goes through all the series of wants of this Mussulman ant-hill. Not many women are seen, but the colour-effects of the crowd are made startling by the backs of men clad in gay hues. At the silk counters are a few ladies, formless in their all-enclosing cloaks, the long black veils falling like a great ink stain on a coloured page. Through little windows sewed jealously in the veiling, or around its perilous edge, their unseen eyes peer at the soft tissues of strange designs, and their low, controlled voices urge a zestful bargain to tardy conclusion,—so sweet is that universal communion between Possession and Desire. The very close concealment of women's faces seems here to be proportioned, when compared with fashion in other Mussulman cities, to the reputation for superior sanctity so long enjoyed by Bokhara. Its teachers
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