of nomadic pastoralism, affects the position of women. If our conclusions are correct, all character is influenced, more or less, by physical environment, and hence is one of the subjects with which geography is concerned.
Mohammedanism, as every one knows, inculcates the seclusion of woman, and makes of her nothing but a stupid drudge to do man's work, or a light plaything for his pleasure. Wherever people of Muslim faith gather in towns and cities, as I have seen them in Turkey, Persia, India, Asiatic Russia, and Chinese Turkestan, this ideal prevails. In the crowded villages and cities women can do their work behind high mud walls, and can be confined to certain unseen rooms when male guests visit the house. The support of the family does not depend upon them, and their activities are almost wholly dependent on the will of their husbands. It is but rarely necessary that they should leave the house, and when they do, there is usually no work to be done and it is easy to keep their faces covered. Even the peasant women, who must work in the fields, keep aloof, and come in contact with men but little. Only the very poor, or those who are confessedly immoral, go about in public with unveiled faces. The evil effect of all this has been often described, and needs no comment.
Among nomads the case is different. The women of all races, so far as I know, both Mohammedan and non-Mohammedan, go about unveiled, and have a strong influence in the affairs of the community. Their relative strength of character is evident from the notable fact that when a Turkoman woman is married to a Persian, or a Kurdish woman to a Turk, the wife from the nomad stock, so it is
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