looked out of the door of my tent, I saw some twenty Cossacks with six officers riding by, and the Russian flag carried in front. I sent out a servant with my card and invitation to the officers to come in and have some refreshments. Some of them came in, and the chief officer was introduced to me as Colonel Yonoff. He and all of them were dressed in loose " khaki " blouses, with baggy pantaloons and high boots, and they wore the ordinary peaked Russian cap, covered with white cloth. Colonel Yonoff also wore on his breast a white enamel Maltese cross, which I recognized as the Cross of St. George, the most coveted Russian decoration, and I at once congratulated him upon holding so distinguished an order. Colonel Yonoff was a modest, quiet-mannered man, of a totally different stamp to Captain Grombtchevsky. He had less of the bonhomie of the latter, and talked little ; but he was evidently respected by his officers, and they told me he had greatly distinguished himself in the Khivan campaign. I gave the Russian officers some tea and Russian wine, which Mr. Lutsch, the consul's secretary, had very kindly procured for me from Margillan ; and I then told Colonel Yonoff that reports had reached me that he was proclaiming to the Kirghiz that the Pamirs were Russian territory, and asked him if this was the case. He said it was so, and he showed me a map with the boundary claimed by the Russians coloured on it. This boundary included the whole of the Pamirs except the Tagh-dum-bash, and extended as far down as the watershed of the Hindu-Kush by the Khora Bhort Pass.
The Russian officers stayed with me for about an hour, and then went off to make their own camp arrangements, asking me, however, to come and dine with them that evening. When I went round to them, I found that they were doubled up in very small tents. Three of them lived in a tent which was not high enough to stand upright in, and at dinner there was just room for seven of us to squat on the ground, with a tablecloth
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