tier anew in 1868; and the broad, heavy, lumpish features of the Sart population of Tashkent are replaced by the long oval face, handsome aquiline profile, and sombre dignity of the Bokhariote.

"Is this confounded road never going to end?" growls my comrade, as we crown the second ridge, with no view beyond save a third and considerably higher one. "We might be following the Flying Dutchman, instead of Samarcand! It's as bad as that drunk fellow in the story, who slipped his wooden leg into the hole of a turncock, and walked round and round all night, thinking he was going home!"

But his complaints are paralysed in their very utterance. For now our driver, putting his horses to their speed, rushes at full gallop down the incline and up the further slope, from the crown of which we burst upon a scene that no words can describe.

From the point where we stand to the distant hills along the horizon, extends a vast basin many miles in breadth, filled to the brim with green, glossy vegetation, through which, every here and there, runs the glittering thread of a tiny river. To right and left, the sunny slopes of the Tchepan-Ata curve round as if framing the picture. Far away along the southern sky, the great yellow masses of the Shekhri-Sebzian hills stand out in the burning sunshine, like a wall of polished brass, while in the centre, high above the sea of foliage, rise grey ramparts, and mighty domes, and vast towers bright with many-coloured mosaic, and all the barbaric splendour of ancient Samarcand.

"We've done it for once," says my companion, draw

ing a long breath, "if we never do it again."

'It is well worth the trouble," answer I.

And Mourad, secure at last of meeting his longabsent brother, forgets his habitual stoicism, and gives a boisterous hurrah.

On we go at full speed (for it is all down hill now) over a narrow, shelving road, with an overhanging ridge on one side, and a little stream, half hidden by trees, on the other. Crunch goes one wheel against a projecting bank-thump goes the other into an overladen donkey -while our off horse makes hash of a basket of watermelons, and very nearly of the owner likewise. But who cares for accidents now? Foot-passengers begin to swarm along the road-houses look down from the top of the bank, or peer up at us through the trees below. The road broadens, the houses thicken on either hand, and suddenly we are in the midst of a roaring street, filled with the buzz, and swarm, and strangely mingled filth and finery, of an Asiatic bazaar. The street ends in a vast open space, beyond which looms the huge, grey, battered wall of the famous citadel; and we look around us, and feel that we are really in Samarcand at last.

"VERY sorry, gentlemen-but what's to be done? You see, there's only one room for travellers, and it's taken. Perhaps you could make yourselves comfortable in this room for to-day-the other people won't be here long."

"This room," as the worthy postmaster poetically calls it, is a corner just behind the doorway, in which there is barely space enough to stow ourselves and baggage, so as to avoid being trodden upon by every one who comes in. We pile the "traps" into a sort of mound, and, seating ourselves upon it, look blankly at each other. Are we to remain sitting night and day upon our luggage, like a hen hatching eggs, till Mourad (who has gone to hunt up his brother), shall be able to find us quarters? and supposing he cannot find them, what then?

"Well," remark I at length, grasping in my bewilderment at the one idea which, in these parts, you can never go wrong in suggesting, "let's have some tea, anyhow. Hollo there! quick with the samovar !"

The samovar is soon ready, and by the time we have washed down the last of our bread and water-melon,

* The name given to Samarcand by the Persian poets.