After the sun has looked long enough upon this miserable spectacle, the city in all its parts begins slowly to assume animation. The people return in crowds from the mosques; they are encountered on their way by troops of asses laden with wood, corn, grass, large pails of milk, and dishes of cream, pressing from all the city gates, and forcing their way in varied confusion through the narrow and crooked streets. Screams of alarm from the drivers, the reciprocal cries issuing from those who buy and those who sell, mix with that mighty hee-haw of the asses for which Bokhara is renowned. To judge by the first impression, it might be supposed that the different drivers would be obliged to fish out their wood from milk, their grass from cream, charcoal from corn, silkworm-cocoons from skimmed milk. But no, nothing is spilt, nothing thrown down; the drivers are wont to flog each other through in right brotherly fashion, till in the end all arrives in safety at its destination. At an hour after sunrise the Bokhariot is already seated with his cup of Schirtschaj (milk-tea): this beverage is composed of tea made from bricks of tea in the form of Kynaster, and abundantly flavoured with milk, cream, or mutton fat. This favourite drink of the Tartars, in which large quantities of bread are broken, would be more rightly described as a soup; and although the treat was highly commended to me, I had great difficulty in getting accustomed to it. After tea begins the day's work, and then one remarks particular activity in the streets. Porters loaded with great bales hurry to the bazaar. These goods belong to the retail dealers, who every evening pack up their shop and transport it to their own house. And then a long chain of two-humped camels that have no burdens are being led into the Karavanserai, destined to convey the produce of Central Asia in every direction. Here, again, stands a heavily-laden caravan from Russia, accompanied on its way by the prying eyes of the custom-house officials and their cohorts, for those long bales contain valuable productions of the industry of the unbelievers, and are destined accordingly to be doubly taxed. Merchants of all religions and from all nations run after the caravan; the newly-arrived wares find customers even before they are unpacked, and at such moments Afghans, Persians, Tadjiks, and Hindoos, seem to get more excited than is the case even with the heroes of the Exchange in Paris, Vienna, or Frankfort-on-the-Maine. The Kirghis camel-driver, fresh from the desert, is the quietest of all; he is lost in astonishment, and knows not whether most to admire the splendour of the mud huts, the colour of the dresses, or the crowds swaying to and fro. But the greatest source of amusement to me was to observe how the Bokhariot, in his quality of inhabitant of a metropolis, jeers at these nomads; how he is constantly on the alert to place the rudeness of the sons of the desert in relief by