put upon Samarcand the crown of empire. Here he builded—and some rulers after him—the great mosques and tombs whose white-and-blue beauty it is so hard to suggest in words. Under their spell, even an unimaginative American may feel the same enthusiasm which moved a cultivated French traveller, M. Hugues Krafft, to express himself as follows :
" Worthy of taking rank among the masterpieces of architecture, the `great monuments of Samarcand ' ought to be known equally with the most majestic edifices of the Greeks, the Romans, our Gothic cathedrals of France, and the most celebrated creations of the Italian Renaissance.
" Beyond the bridge commences the native city. The shops, the tea-counters follow each other, almost without interruption, along a gentle rise, up to the basin which immediately precedes the Reghistan. Here one is at the heart of `old Samarcand, ' at the centre of all the bazaars and in the midst of the population's most feverish movement. . . . Should I live a hundred years I should ever retain the extraordinary impression left upon me by the first sight of the Reghistan, with its madrasas and its many-coloured masses. . . . The horses of our light phaeton moving at a furious gallop, we made way through the Asiatic crowd ranged, immobile, on either side of the highway, and through people on foot and on horse, whom the stationed police scattered as best they could. Along the whole distance, the Sarts, hands crossed on breast, bowed and bent one after the other; and I might have thought myself an Oriental sovereign passing before his subjects, had I not known that these humble salutations were addressed solely to my companion (the Russian
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