cool in difficulties. He was a good companion, too, and on the long marches and after them, in the tent, he used to tell
me of his travels, in the course of which he had been in
Egypt, and was in Constantinople at the time of the Russian war. What struck him most about the Russians was that
their soldiers were " pukka," that is, hardy. They were not so well treated as ours in the way of food and clothing, but they were " pukka," he kept on repeating, and ready to go through any amount of hardships. The trait he did not like in the Russians was their passion for passports ; they were always at him for his passport, so that there was always a certain amount of difficulty or obstruction in moving about, and this interfered with his constitutional habit of roving. He was a strict Mohammedan, and seemed to me to be always praying, though he assured me he only did so the regulation five times a day. As to us, he thought we had no religion. He had observed us going to church on Sundays, but that was only once a week, and he did not know what we did for the remainder of the seven days. I knew that this man could be relied on, and so left this dispute with the Kirghiz entirely in his hands ; and when he had settled it, we set out from the encampment.
This was the largest settlement I had met with, and the Kirghiz besides keeping flocks and herds, also cultivated a good deal of land. I noticed some houses scattered about the plain, and asked who lived in them, but was told that they were merely storehouses. The Kirghiz said that houses were good enough to put supplies of grain in, but they would not live in them for fear of their falling down.
From this place we determined to march on as hard as we could till we got out of the country inhabited by Kirghiz, and down into the plains again, where the people are all Turkis. This we succeeded in doing the same day. We followed down a stream, and then, after passing a small
IIIFカラー高解像度
