pe itself is only intensified in winter, when the
snow smooths over the broken surface, and even necessitates the placing of
mud posts at regular intervals to mark the roadway for the Kirghiz
post-drivers. But in the spring and autumn its arid surface is clothed, as
if by enchantment, with verdure and prairie flowers. Both flowers and
birds are gorgeously colored. One variety, about half the size of the
jackdaw which infests the houses of Tashkend and Samarkand, has a bright
blue body and red wings; another, resembling our field-lark in size and
habits, combines a pink breast with black head and wings. But already this
springtide splendor was beginning to disappear beneath the glare of
approaching summer. The long wagon-trains of lumber, and the occasional
traveler's tarantass rumbling along to the discord of its _duga_ bells,
were enveloped in a cloud of suffocating dust.

[Illustration: VIEW OF CHIMKEND FROM THE CITADEL.]

Now and then we would overtake a party of Russian peasants migrating from
the famine-stricken districts of European Russia to the pioneer colonies
along this Turkestan highway. The peculiarity of these villages is their
extreme length, all the houses facing on the one wide street. Most of them
are merely mud huts, others make pretensions to doors and windows, and a
coat of whitewash. Near-by usually stands the old battered telega which
served as a home during many months of travel over the Orenburg highway.
It speaks well for the colonizing capacity of the Russians that they can
be induced to come so many hundreds of miles from their native land, to
settle in such a primitive way among the half-wild tribes of the steppes.
As yet they do very little farming, but live, like the Kirghiz, by raising
horses, cows, sheep, and goats, and, in addition, the Russian hog, the
last resembling very much the wild swine of the jungles. Instead of the
former military colonies of plundering Cossacks, who really become more
assimilated to the Kirghiz than these to their conquerors, the _mir_, or
communal system, is now penetrating these fertile districts, and
systematically replacing the Mongolian culture. But the ignorance of this
lower class of Russians is almost as noticeable as that of the natives
themselves. As soon as we entered a village, the blacksmith left his
anvil, the carpenter his bench, the storekeeper his counter, and the
milkmaid her task. After our parade of the principal street, the crowd
would ga