A KIRGHIZ GRANDMOTHER: VENDOR OF KOUMIS
The only people on the road were Kirghiz. Far away on the hills I noticed their great flocks of cattle and the circular tents of the nomads. There were no villages. No villages, because it was hardly “white man’s country”; there was no water to drink. I thought to make myself tea, but I reckoned without my host. Where there should have been streams there was only a broken parquet of dry mud. No trees, no shade, no shelter, and, if I should find water, no fuel. The five post-wagons, drawn each by three horses and driven by enormously fat Kirghiz drivers with faces the colour of dull mahogany, went past me in a cloud of dust, and I watched them away as the sun was setting. Three-quarters of a mile away they all stopped by a wooden bridge. There was evidently water; perhaps the drivers wanted a drink. I was very joyful at the prospect of tea. When I got nearer I found that all the drivers were saying their Mohammedan prayers, and had stopped at the stream to have the conventional wash. The water was reddish-brown, with mingled mud; light could not be seen through a glass of it.
I resolved to see what could be obtained at the Kirghiz tents, put my pack down by the side of the road, and set off, with a pot in one hand and a bit of silver in the other. There were three tents on a hill, and near them many cows and goats and horses. I arrived in a whirlwind of dogs, three or four cattle dogs showing their teeth and barking and snarling as they tore round me in circles. Several women were employed tending immense pans of milk which they were boiling over bonfires made of roots. They seemed a trifle scared at first, but when I showed them the pot and pointed to the bit of silver they understood, and I was quickly put in possession of a potful of hot, smoky milk. I carried it carefully back to the place where I had slung my pack, and there I sat down, feeling rather lost or accidental, and I drank the hot milk and munched a bit of bread which I had brought from the town. The dogs followed me all the way to my resting-place, but when they saw me sit down and take things calmly they retired a distance and kept up a desultory chorus.
So I made my first meal out of doors by the roadside. The next thing was to find a place for the night. There was no variety in the country, and I could only choose a place where insects were fewer and one not over a tortoise’s burrow. I had a light, home-made sleeping-sack and a plaid. The sack was made by sewing two sheets together on three sides. The sack is a useful institution; it keeps insects out and is much warmer than open clothing. I had also a mosquito net, for there are more flies here than in other parts of the world. Before making my spread I removed an elegant oak-eggar caterpillar. I am always disinclined to injure the creeping things of the earth, especially on a long journey. I feel that to a certain extent I am in their charge. This is a sort of natural superstition. Directly you kill something superfluously, horror thrills you as it thrilled the ancient mariner who shot the albatross.
RUSSIANS AND KIRGHIZ LIVING SIDE BY SIDE
AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAINS
I lay down in such a position as to see the sunset in the evening and the sunrise in the morning. Sunset was stormy, but somewhere among the rose-tinged clouds a late lark sang the day out. Then stars appeared behind cloud curtains, and the night breeze carried his messages along the heath. The first breath of night was cool and pleasant, but about an hour after sunset the weather changed entirely. It became very hot and airless, and lightnings shot across all horizons. A shower of rain came down, and the stars disappeared. As I lay considering the sky I heard far off the chattering of children—chattering, laughing, and occasional bursts of singing. The sounds came nearer, and presently there emerged a troop of camels, twelve huge camels stalking out of the night, and on their backs men, women and children, tents, goods. A little family of wanderers crossing the wilderness in the night! They came so near to me that the first camel snorted as he passed, and it was necessary for me to sit up and warn the others off. I had not anticipated that there might be people travelling across country in the night. They passed, and the quietness of night resumed its sway. The clouds thickened, and lightning shimmered under them; it began to rain again, and then stopped, and the stars once more came up, and then the clouds thickened once more, and once more rain came down on me with rapid tapping. So the whole night, and it was a pleasant tempering of the heat. I slept happily, and it was a long while before I wakened.
When I reopened my eyes it was to look at the seven stars standing over a blue-grey, vaporous cloud, and looking like some uncanny Asiatic frying-pan over a fire. There was scarcely a star but for them, and south and east and west were all dark. It did not occur to me that it was near dawn. But suddenly a voice of liquid melody burst from the sky, and after it, as at a signal, a whole chorus of larks sang together away high up in the rain-wet vault of the sky.
I slept an hour longer, and it was morning. For my breakfast I visited another Kirghiz tent, and this time obtained a pot of mare’s milk. A dwarf-like old woman was squatting on a carpet in the middle of the tent, and when I said “koumis” she at once got up and brought me a tall wooden jar. I held my pot, she tipped up the jar, and poured out the koumis. Good that Kirghiz women are not so strictly hidden as other Mohammedans of their sex!