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In what respect is Bélogorskaia not safe? Thank heaven, we have now lived here more than twenty-one years. We have seen the Bashkirs and the Kirghiz; perhaps we may weary out Pugatchéf here." "Well, little mother," rejoined Iván Kouzmitch, "stay if you like, since you reckon so much on our fort. But what are we to do with Masha? It is all right if we weary him out or if we be succoured.

Keen Lung would accept nothing short of the capture of Amursana as evidence of his victory, and Amursana escaped to the Kirghiz. His celerity or ingenuity cost the lives of four respectable Chinese generals, two of whom were executed at Pekin and two were slain by brigands on their way there to share the same fate.

Bélogorsk lay about thirty miles beyond Orenburg, on the frontier of the Kirghiz Kaisak Steppes, and it was to this outlandish place I was banished. I expected to see high bastions, a wall and a ditch, but there was nothing at Bélogorsk but a little village, surrounded by a wooden palisade.

Thus we see the Bashkirs are, properly speaking, no longer a purely pastoral, nomadic people. The discovery of this fact caused me some little disappointment, and in the hope of finding a tribe in a more primitive condition I visited the Kirghiz of the Inner Horde, who occupy the country to the southward, in the direction of the Caspian.

In half an hour a whole village may vanish, emigrating northward in summer, and southward in winter. Many a Kirghiz cavalcade was overtaken on the road, with long tent-ribs and felts tied upon the backs of two-humped camels, for the Bactrian dromedary has not been able to endure the severities of these Northern climates.

The maiden said, "Good mother, I will tell nobody, but shew me that bright world." So the old woman took the girl out of the iron house. But when she saw the bright world, the girl tottered and fainted; and the eye of God fell upon her, and she conceived. The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun.

Darkness follows twilight; the rushing water of the stream gives forth a sound of metallic clearness. We have been travelling more than twelve hours when at last the valley opens, and we see blazing camp fires in front of Kirghiz tents. We mount higher day after day.

Another Kirghiz seized the goat by the horn with his left hand, cut off its head with a single blow of his sharp knife, allowed the blood to flow, and then took the goat by the hind legs and rode at full speed round the plain. A troop of riders appeared in the distance and drew near at a furious pace.

The adjacent land will be worth countless millions of roubles to a Government which has not had to pay a single copeck for it. On for many hundreds of versts rolls the train through the pasture lands of the splendid Kirghiz race. The Kirghiz are by far the finest of the Tartars.

The passage of this vast horde lasted for weeks, but the rear were prevented from escaping by the Kirghiz and Cossacks, who intercepted them. They were compelled to remain in Russia, where their territory was more accurately defined than had been done previously.