Michael Strogoff; Or, The Courier of the CzarVerne, Jules
History
Michael Strogoff; Or, The Courier of the Czar
Verne, Jules
Heroes -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Russia -- History -- Alexander II, 1855-1881 -- Fiction; Tatars -- Fiction
Numberless tents, of skin, felt, or silk, glistened in the rays of the
sun. The lofty plumes which surmounted their conical tops waved amidst
banners, flags, and pennons of every color. The richest of these tents
belonged to the Seides and Khodjas, who are the principal personages of
the khanat. A special pavilion, ornamented with a horse’s tail issuing
from a sheaf of red and white sticks artistically interlaced, indicated
the high rank of these Tartar chiefs. Then in the distance rose several
thousand of the Turcoman tents, called “karaoy,” which had been carried
on the backs of camels.
The camp contained at least a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers,
as many foot as horse soldiers, collected under the name of Alamanes.
Amongst them, and as the principal types of Turkestan, would have been
directly remarked the Tadjiks, from their regular features, white skin,
tall forms, and black eyes and hair; they formed the bulk of the Tartar
army, and of them the khanats of Khokhand and Koundouge had furnished
a contingent nearly equal to that of Bokhara. With the Tadjiks were
mingled specimens of different races who either reside in Turkestan or
whose native countries border on it. There were Usbecks, red-bearded,
small in stature, similar to those who had pursued Michael. Here were
Kirghiz, with flat faces like the Kalmucks, dressed in coats of mail:
some carried the lance, bows, and arrows of Asiatic manufacture; some
the saber, a matchlock gun, and the “tschakane,” a little short-handled
ax, the wounds from which invariably prove fatal. There were Mongols--of
middle height, with black hair plaited into pigtails, which hung down
their back; round faces, swarthy complexions, lively deep-set eyes,
scanty beards--dressed in blue nankeen trimmed with black plush,
sword-belts of leather with silver buckles, coats gayly braided,
and silk caps edged with fur and three ribbons fluttering behind.
Brown-skinned Afghans, too, might have been seen. Arabs, having the
primitive type of the beautiful Semitic races; and Turcomans, with eyes
which looked as if they had lost the pupil,--all enrolled under the
Emir’s flag, the flag of incendiaries and devastators.
Among these free soldiers were a certain number of slave soldiers,
principally Persians, commanded by officers of the same nation, and they
were certainly not the least esteemed of Feofar-Khan’s army.
If to this list are added the Jews, who acted as servants, their robes
confined with a cord, and wearing on their heads instead of the turban,
which is forbidden them, little caps of dark cloth; if with these
groups are mingled some hundreds of “kalenders,” a sort of religious
mendicants, clothed in rags, covered by a leopard skin, some idea may be
formed of the enormous agglomerations of different tribes included under
the general denomination of the Tartar army.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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