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0267 Across Asia : vol.1
Across Asia : vol.1 / Page 267 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000221
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RECORDS OF THE JOURNEY

Yesterday I spent the day in exploring the mounds on the hill and making anthro- June 6th.

pological measurements of about a dozen Kirghiz. They are better developed and, above Camp at

all, infinitely cleaner than the Kalmuks. You are not enveloped in such a dreadful stench Tsatse.

as when measuring Kalmuks. The majority of the Kirghiz skulls that I have examined have the highest point of the sinciput very far back. The nose is well shaped and fine, but small. The eyes are small, but the caruncle is almost always uncovered. The cheekbones are less prominent than in the case of the Kalmuks. They are considerably taller, but there is no trace of the elegant lines and well shaped hands of the Chinese. Their expressions are healthy, condition mediocre. There are some thin people, but very rarely any stout ones. Their muscles are only slightly developed. The men wear small, slightly flat skull-caps of cloth or velvet with a knitted border of the same colour as the cloth, not the pointed little cap of the Sart. Over this they put on a thick fur cap or a grey felt cap with a black band round the edge of any shape they like, to protect their heads from the sun. They wear their trousers outside their top-boots, with a broad, black stripe of cloth along the inner side of their legs. They all chew the usual greenish-brown tobacco in the shape of a small pellet the size of large shot.

The Kirghiz does not possess much furniture. A bed composed of three parts, on which two people can sleep tightly wedged and which, when put up, is of semicircular shape, small pails of various sizes hollowed out of tree-trunks and provided with rope handles, a cast-iron kettle with a tripod, a tea-kettle with a tripod, leather bags for »kemyz», wooden and china cups, pillows, knitted covers, rugs and carpets, if they can afford them, and that is about all. Instead of an axe they use small hoes, fastening the iron point to the end of a crooked branch. Besides, there is the yurt with a couple of pockets on the wall and other equipment, saddles with bags and pouches for cups, bridles that also serve as halters, pack-saddles, tethering straps etc. That is about all you find in a Kirghiz yurt except some small chests with metal fittings, the contents of which you have no opportunity of examining and according to the number of which you can roughly gauge the owner's wealth. The richer ones have a curtain of coloured cotton, larger vessels of enamelled tin etc. Samovars and sewing machines are a great rarity.

This morning we started on a shooting trip up the Dshirgalan. After riding south for two miles down the river we came to a bridge, 16' long, constructed in the same way as the bridge over the Kok-su at a place where the river was closely confined between two rocks. On crossing to the other side we started to ascend the mountains. At first the road leads SE across a meadow, about 2 /3 of a mile wide, keeping the river on the right and a slight rise in the ground on the left. The valley describes a curve and grows narrower. When the road turns north, it leads fairly high, above the foaming river along a steep slope covered with leaf-trees and firs. At this season of the year the Kirghiz yurts that abound along the lower course of the river, come to an end here. The character of the opposite bank is the same. The scenery along this stretch of road is very beautiful. At a place where two branches of the river meet and surround a fine, pointed mountain, Kain Bulaq, the road turns ESE along the high bank of one arm of the river. The narrow cleft widens by degrees, and as the road ascends, the slopes become less steep. Trees only

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