. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. ned by this act, but Tashkent waspromptly used as a base from which to subjugate Samarkand and Bokhara. It isafter Chernaiefif thatthe junction of Cher-nayevo is named. Tashkent is prob-ably to-day the larg-est town in AsiaticRussia, for in 1885it was nearly as pop-ulous at Tiflis, hav-ing 120,000 inhabit-ants, and coveringan area of twelve square miles. The first thing that strikesyou as you drive from the station is the width of thestreets, and the second the mud. The for
. All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. ned by this act, but Tashkent waspromptly used as a base from which to subjugate Samarkand and Bokhara. It isafter Chernaiefif thatthe junction of Cher-nayevo is named. Tashkent is prob-ably to-day the larg-est town in AsiaticRussia, for in 1885it was nearly as pop-ulous at Tiflis, hav-ing 120,000 inhabit-ants, and coveringan area of twelve square miles. The first thing that strikesyou as you drive from the station is the width of thestreets, and the second the mud. The former are often fiftyyards wide, and the latter is a foot deep. Through this wadesand splashes an extraordinary procession of men and beasts—Tajiks, the chief race, of Persian descent, in turbans and multi-colored khalats, or loose-sleeved robes gathered at the waistwith a sash, their material depending upon the wealth of theowner; Kirghiz in skins with the fur inside and tight-fitting caps;women in sad-toned garments and draped from crown to sole inthick, absolutely opaque horse-hair veils; Russian soldiers, always. A Familiar Sight in Tashkent. ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 281 in the same thick grey felt overcoats—in fact, all the easternhumanity seen by Matthew Arnold in the past: The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes Who roam oer Kipchak and the northern waste; Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, Who came on shaggy ponies from Pamere. They ride on horses, on donkeys—often two adults on one littlebeast—on shaggy camels or in the arba shown in my photograph,with enormously high wheels to enable it to ford rivers withoutwetting its load, the driver seated on the horse in the Russian town, which has 5,000 or 6,000 inhabitants, consistsof w^ell-built, low houses of brick and stucco, with roofs of sheetiron painted g
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecttolstoy, bookyear1902
