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The Kirghizes walked on foot and urged the animals up towards the giddy heights. It took us the whole day to reach a point 20,700 feet above sea-level. At this point we halted for the night, intending to push on higher in the morning, but two of the Kirghizes were so overcome with weariness and headaches that they asked to be allowed to go down again.
As we drive on day and night the tarantass seems always to be in the centre of the same unbroken landscape, always at the same distance from the horizon. Here live the Kirghizes, a fine race of graziers and horsemen. They support themselves by their large flocks of sheep, and also own numerous horses and camels, as well as cattle.
Of a higher race than the Kirghizes, being Tartars, it is from them that come the learned men and professors who have made illustrious the opulent cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. But science and its teaching do not yield much of a livelihood, even when reduced to the mere necessaries of life, in these provinces of Central Asia. And so these Nogais take employment as interpreters.
Two Kirghizes go in front with sticks to mark out the way, in order that the horses may not sink in the snow. Our little caravan moves slowly and painfully. One day the snow is so deep that we have to hire four camels, which are led in front of the caravan to tramp out a narrow path for the horses.
The difficulties the Grand Transasiatic had in crossing this plateau were extraordinary. It was a challenge from the genius of man to nature, and the victory remained with genius. Through the gently sloping passes which the Kirghizes call "bels," viaducts, bridges, embankments, cuttings, tunnels had to be made to carry the line.
Kirghizes who do not look very intelligent with their depressed heads, their prognathous jaws stuck well out in front, their little beards, flat Cossack noses and very brown skins. These wretched fellows are Mahometans and belong either to the Grand Horde wandering on the frontier between China and Siberia, or to the Little Horde between the Ural Mountains and the Aral Sea.
Hunger makes them very daring, and they do great damage to the flocks of the Kirghizes, as they will kill even when they do not wish to eat. A single wolf had recently worried 180 sheep belonging to a Kirghiz. A travelling Kirghiz was attacked in this neighbourhood by a pack of wolves, and when the body was found a couple of days later only the skull and skeleton were left.
If rain poured down, I kept inside my own tent, or visited my Kirghiz neighbours and talked with them, for by that time I had learned to speak their language. Round the large hive-shaped tents fierce dogs keep watch, and small naked sunburnt children tumble about in play. They are charmingly sweet, and it is hard to believe that they will grow up into tall rough half-wild Kirghizes.
I had got together a small reliable caravan of eleven horses and three men, one of them being Islam Bay, who was afterwards to serve me faithfully for many years. We did not need to take tents with us, for the Governor gave orders to the Kirghizes, to set up two of their black felt tents wherever I wished to pass the night.
The others shovelled away the snow and pitched the little tent within a wall of snow. A fire was kindled and the tea-kettle put on, but our appetites were poor, as we were suffering from mountain sickness. The ten yaks stood tethered in the snow outside, and the Kirghizes curled themselves up in their skin coats like hedgehogs.
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