and superhuman enginry, and destroying thunderbolts, against which all the strength of numbers and brute force is as nothing : "Sed quid Typhoëus aut validus Mimas, Vel quid minaci Porphyrion statu, Quid Rhœtus, evulsisque truncis But there is one of our afternoon "sights" which must not be omitted. As we enter the Bibi-Khanam, our guide points to a couple of massive pedestals in the centre, supporting a huge, square, marble slab, set at an angle of forty-five-the whole affair exactly suggesting a gigantic reading-desk. "What do you think of that?" says he, triumphantly. "This is the mosque built by Timour's favourite wife, who was a Chinese. She had a copy of the Koran laid here a good big one as you may think, to fit the slaband a Moollah in attendance to turn over the leaves for her; and then she would sit at that window," (pointing to one which looks out of the wall on the opposite side of the court), "and read the Koran from thence, so as to do her devotions without appearing in public." "And where is the Koran now?" "Well, it was sent to St Petersburg as a curiosity; but the slab is still held in great reverence by the natives. They have a belief, that any one who creeps under it, and passes out between the two pedestals, will be cured of whatever disease he may happen to have at the time." In the next mosque that we visit, there are private chapels built by two more of Timour's sultanas; and at the far end of the main interior, we come upon a dark nook fenced off by an iron grating. This (as we are informed by an old Bokhariote who seems to haunt the place) is the holy of holies, into which no outsider is ever admitted. "I suppose that would suffice to set us upon breaking into it forthwith, if we understood our duty as British tourists," observes my companion. "John Bull has a natural appetite for places where no one is allowed to go." So it seems. You remember that fellow at Rome, when they showed him the lamp in the underground chapel, telling him that it had never gone out for several centuries; whereupon the good fellow gave it a decisive puff, and remarked with quiet satisfaction, 'Well, it's out now, anyhow!'" I must not linger over our visits to the great boulevard, the town hospital, and the old custom-house. Chapters might be written upon each; but I have no space for them here. It is towards evening when we at length rattle through the gate of the citadel, and, struggling up the steep slope within, halt at the gateway of what was once the Emir's palace-now turned to a very different use. "This is where our wounded lay during the siege of 1868," says the Lieutenant, ushering us into a large paved court surrounded by cloisters, not unlike a college quadrangle. "That fountain in the middle is the place where criminals used to be beheaded in the presence of the Emir; and yonder, at the far end, is the Kok-Tash stone." There it is, sure enough, that mysterious symbol of Bokhariote royalty—a huge grey block, twelve feet long by five broad, and three in height. In the palmy days before the Russian conquest, no coronation was considered valid till the future Emir had been placed in state upon the Kok-Tash. Now, it serves the Cossacks. to spread their jackets on! Turning away from the stone, I notice several figures pacing up and down the cloisters with the fierce restlessness of caged beasts of prey. Two or three of them turn round as I approach, disclosing faces which, with their swarthy complexion, their sharp white teeth, and the gleam of lurking murder in their deep black eyes, are enough to haunt one's dreams. "Criminals awaiting sentence," explains M-, with the complacent air of a naturalist exhibiting his collection. "They'd make a good photograph, wouldn't they?" At this moment my attention is attracted by a man who is striding unevenly to and fro in a corner by himself, crooning a discordant tune. I have barely time to notice him, when, sudden as a flash of lightning, he throws himself upon his nearest comrade, seizing him by the throat with a grasp beneath which the other (a sturdy fellow, two inches taller than his assailant) bends like a reed, his face instantly becoming swollen and purple. Another moment of that gripe, and he is a dead man; but just in the nick of time, three or four Y others fling themselves upon the aggressor, and lash him with cords (not without exerting their whole strength) to the nearest pillar. "The fellow's mad," says M-, as coolly as if nothing had happened; "he got a wound in the head a while ago, and he's been that way ever since. In general, he's a quiet fellow enough, only he will walk about and sing in that queer way; but every now and then he gets troublesome, and they have to tie him." The sun is setting as we leave the palace, and its last rays light up a monument on the highest part of the ridge, with a brief, simple epitaph in memory of those who fell here in 1868. Beside it are a gun taken at Kitab, and a grave inscribed with the name of Colonel S, one of the officers killed there-fit memorials for a place like this, consecrated by the memory of a deed as heroic as any that has been done since the last of the Three Hundred fell at Thermopylae. But the story of that famous martyrdom must have a chapter to itself. CHAPTER XXXI. TO THE DEATH, IT is the 1st (13th) June 1868; and the Russian garrison of Samarcand is in its glory. The battle of TchepanAta has been fought and won; the Holy City is taken, and the power of Bokhara broken once and for ever. General Kaufmann and the bulk of the army marched away this morning, leaving everything, in his own words, "perfectly secure ;" and of the six hundred and eighty men left here in garrison, there is not one in twenty who does not agree with him. The unbelievers have got what they deserve; and the valley of the ZerAffshan is henceforth Russian territory-another milestone on the road to Herat or Kashgar. Over their evening vodka, the soldiers cut rough-hewn camp jokes upon the Bokhariote's unmatched power of running away; while the young subalterns, in the smoke of the few cigarettes still left them, see visions of a Russian flag unfurled beyond the Hindoo Koosh, and a Russian army pouring through the Khyber Pass into Northern India. It is true that this feeling of satisfaction is not universal. Certain grizzled veterans, who remember the first assault of Ak-Metchet shake their heads |