I realise what magnificent fruit Central Asia can produce, barren as we think it. After this day's work, I begin at last to think myself secure of Khiva; and Lieutenant Stumm, on hearing the whole story, congratulates me on my success, and offers me a letter to a friend at headquarters. By Thursday morning (the second day after the arrival of the detachment) he is the only man left; and at sunrise on Friday he goes off likewise, after sitting up with me all night in front of the inn, drinking tea and killing scorpions, under the dancing flashes of the summer lightning. The "Samarcand" is to sail on Tuesday morning, in order to get into the Sea of Aral (forty miles distant) before nightfall; and I now begin to prepare for my own departure, with a comfortable assurance that all is going right at last. But, as if the ups and downs of this extraordinary journey were never to end, my new hope results in nothing but fresh disappointment. The very day before the steamer sails, I get a message from the Commodore to the effect that, having no special sanction from General Kaufmann, he dares not take me on his own. responsibility—a decision confirmed with official emphasis by Colonel Goloff, the late head of the Kazalinsk column, who has now resumed his duties as district Governor. The same day that brings the message brings me also a brother in adversity-a Prussian army surgeon named Engelbrecht, just arrived from ́Orenburg-bound like myself for Khiva, and like my self, stopped short within sight of the end. There is nothing for it but just to have patience once more. But there is no evil without compensation. Just as matters seem to be at their very darkest, there comes a gleam of comfort from a very unexpected quarter. The day after the sailing of the steamer, a courier from Tashkent, with despatches to the Colonel, brings me a letter-wofully soiled and crumpled, but legible nevertheless-which is still in my possession. It proves to be from my friend Adjutant M (whose visit I have described in a former chapter) and runs as follows: "Mr KER, 66 Tashkent, 26th Fune, (8th July) 1873. I hasten to avail myself of the departure of a courier, in order the sooner to communicate a piece of news which will be very agreeable to you. I had an interview yesterday with General Kolpakovski,* and received from him the answer that he had already made arrangements for having you passed on to Tashkent. Your letters of recommendation will be sent on to Khiva. All particulars will be communicated to you at the proper time. "I would advise you, on getting to Tashkent, to apply to my friend S, who is likely, I think, to be of great use to you in many ways. (Here follow various * Commandant of Vernoë, and military Governor of Turkestan during Kaufmann's absence. directions for finding Mr S-, which I need not quote.) I am very glad of this satisfactory conclusion to the misunderstanding which has existed with respect to you. I remain, with sincere esteem, Always at your service, A. M." CHAPTER XVI. IN THE BAZAAR. IT is high noon in Central Asia, and as hot as befits the hour and the latitude. The little mud-hovels of our village, and the low, grey, earthen wall of the fort around which it has grown up, gape with countless cracks under the blistering glare, as if opening their lips for a drink. The Commandant's thermometer (the only one within a seven days' journey) stands at 103 in the shade; it is a fortnight yesterday since I last saw a cloud, and three weeks to-morrow since I last felt a drop of rain. The fresh morning breeze has long since died away, and the still air is heavy as lead. However, in spite of all this, the panorama is not without life and bustle. Camels and horses are passing and re-passing through the broad, dusty, sun-parched square of the bazaar; scores of "turbaned unbelievers" are screaming and gesticulating as none but the "stately Oriental" can scream and gesticulate; and I, in a wofully dingy forage-cap and the rags of a linen tunic, am standing at the entrance in fixed contemplation of the tableau. All Eastern bazaars have a strong family likeness, from the stifling little beehives of Arabian cities to the vast, shadowy, many-pillared galleries of the Great Bazaar at Constantinople; and this little Turkestan offshoot has the generic stamp unmistakeably plain. Small and dirty as it is, there is still about it that oldworld, enchanted atmosphere, that savour of the Arabian Nights, which carries us back at once to the far-off days when any marvel seemed possible and real. Yonder, with a wicked leer in his half-shut eye, the disguised captain of the Forty Thieves is unpacking the huge oil jars in which his band lie hid. Here comes Sinbad the Sailor on his return from a long voyage, somewhat grey and weather-beaten, but hearty as ever, and bringing with him a fresh assortment of those wonderful bales of "spices and ambergris," the very mention of which seems to leave a sweetness in one's mouth. And there, with knitted brow and chopfallen air, goes the adventurous Prince Achmet, who, having lost the Winged Horse which brought him hither, is wondering how on earth he is ever to get home again. To give a Western reader any clear idea of a genuine Asiatic bazaar is no easy matter. Most people picture to themselves a kind of cross between the Palais Royal and the Burlington Arcade, swarming with gorgeously attired Bluebeards, and displaying every variety of costly merchandise. The reality is widely different. Imagine two gigantic honeycombs of baked mud, one within the other, with an Asiatic tradesman sitting cross-legged in every cell, and a score of camels grouped in the centre-cover everything with a thick |