Tomato Soup.
Meat Courses.
Chicken aspic. Steaks à la tournados. Indian curry. Vegetables.
Sweets.
Trifle. Jam tarts. Ices.
Savoury—Cheese straws.
Dessert.
A dinner such as this required my presence in the kitchen the greater part of two mornings, and the food had to be arranged with an eye to Daoud’s capacities; for I fought stoutly against the Oriental habit of long waits between the courses. On these occasions I hired an assistant who did all that my cook would permit, and Sattur was supported by Jafar Bai and another chuprassi resplendent in scarlet and gold uniforms and snowy turbans. The clerk of the office, who spoke English and Turki, always read over the menu more than once to Daoud, and I insisted that the latter should repeat it in his turn, in order to be sure that he had memorized it correctly. When we were seated at table my anxieties were by no means over; for, in spite of my coaching beforehand, the waiters were fond of getting into one another’s way, and occasionally there were unseemly wrangles between Sattur, who considered that he was the head, and masterful Jafar Bai, who would sometimes wrench the bottles of wine from him as he was endeavouring to fill up the glasses of our guests. But on the whole our dinners were not inferior to those given by the Russians with their larger and more experienced staffs, and our guests enjoyed coming to us, as some of our dishes, such as curry, were more or less a novelty to them.
I have always liked entertaining, but in this case the language difficulty used to leave me quite exhausted at the close of the evening, and with the depressed feeling that I could not make things go briskly. Both my brother and I took lessons from a young girl, the companion of the Princess, but as she was uneducated and knew no language save her own, I confess I did not get much benefit from her instruction, although I tried to make her teach me by the Berlitz method. She was, however, a help to my brother, who had studied the language at Meshed, where he had had a good deal of social intercourse with the Russian Consulate, and who only needed practice to talk easily.
The other Europeans consisted of a small body of Swedish missionaries, men and women, headed by Dr. Raquette, who, besides his medical work, has published a Turki grammar and dictionary. All the Swedes talked English and gave us much information about Kashgar and its inhabitants, in particular Mr. Bohlin, who accompanied us on many of our rides. They had a hospital and dispensary, doing most useful medical work, and had the only printing-press in Chinese Turkestan, from which they issued books printed in Turki for use in their schools throughout the province.