“Yes; they have fewer stakes in the world. They are not called on to go and chart the valleys and peaks of the Thian Shan Mountains. They know they will not be called on to fight for their country. They know they’ve got enough money to educate their children and keep up a good home. They are not so fretful, not so irritable as young men, but good natured, easy going, and a pretty girl can make one do what she desires.”
I surmised he must have quarrelled with his wife a little just before leaving, and be sick at heart to get back home and make it up.
Pishpek, though four hundred miles from a railway station, is a promising town. The climate seemed to be a hot and dry one, though, of course, it is easy to be misled by the chances of the weather. There are long, white streets, with ranks of poplars on each side, a big market-place, a high road of shops and colonial stores, many places where Kvass and aerated waters are sold, garden restaurants. There is not the atmosphere of mystery that Aulie Ata has. It is more colonial and less Eastern, though, of course, there are the inevitable Oriental hawkers and the native bazaar. Pishpek has a camel ambulance, a roughly shaped wood-sleigh with enormously long shafts, to which a Bactrian camel is yoked. Pishpek also has its lepers, and, as in all these Eastern towns, there is a great deal of skin disease, though chiefly among the natives.
The colonists seemed fairly well-to-do, though there was little evidence of culture, few books, no pianos; the cinema, it is true, but that is rather a sign of poverty. But the Russians seemed thriving and everyone seemed to have plenty of horses and cattle. In this country, where wishes are horses, even the hawker of bootlaces in the bazaar has his nag tied to a poplar tree near by.
The Kirghiz going from the parched plains up into the mountains let me understand the changing of the season. The road out from Pishpek led into desolate country, and I was troubled by the heat and the difficulty of obtaining food and drink. I carried four pounds of bread with me out of Pishpek, but that very quickly vanished, some eaten by myself, some by ants. Ants got into my bread at night and riddled it so that I could not break off a fragment without an ant appearing in it. I carried two water-bottles with me, and filled them with milk or water when I could. Neither milk nor water seemed to be very good to drink. The best thing out here is the aerated water, apricot or pineapple; it is very thirst-quenching and a good corrective to the stomach. When my European bread gave out I had to eat lepeshka, which I cannot recommend. It seems a possible diet when one is hungry, and if you have wine to wash it down you feel you are making a beautiful meal. One afternoon, however, I had a très mauvais quart d’heure after lepeshka. A lump of it stuck in my gullet and would not go down and could not come up. I thought I was choked.
A melancholy native stands with a tray of lepeshki in the road, and you buy three for five copecks—three rolls for five farthings. No matter how hard they are, they can be soaked and softened in tea. But I often wondered what gave the cement-like quality to them. On the road I have often felt that my diet was unsuitable, but never have I had such indigestion as on a diet of mare’s milk and lepeshka. It is claimed that mare’s milk is the best thing in the world for the stomach. Koumis cleanses and fortifies and freshens everything; it is the mother of the inside. But it does not dissolve lepeshka. I was told that it was difficult to tell the difference between champagne and mare’s milk.
“But, to start with, one is white,” said I.
“Oh, it’s not the colour; it’s the quality.”
