In Central Asia, as throughout the whole East, children are allowed but a very few years to devote merely to play. Girls are early taught to spin, weave, sew, to make cheese, &c.; and boys are put on horseback, and learn to ride as early as their fifth year, and are employed as horsemen in sham fights, and as jockeys in horse races in, and even before, their tenth year. It is only the more wealthy parents who give their children in charge of a Mollah. When they have learned to read, the Korantoy, or the festival of the Koran, is celebrated, which is of the same nature as the Chatemdüyünü of the Osmanlis, with this difference: that the latter takes place when the lad has, for the first time, read through the sacred book of Mohamed, and here, when he begins reading. 2. MARRIAGE. Although childhood is of short duration among the Œzbegs, yet a youth does not receive the name of yighid (a mature youth) until his eighteenth year, nor the girl that of kïz (virgin) before she is sixteen years old. In the country the intercourse between the two sexes is not in the least degree influenced by the Koran. Here, as in Western countries, we see the "rosy play of love" represented with all its joys and sorrows, all its fascination and enthusiasm. At first I felt amazed that the tenderest of feelings should find room in the heart of a man in Central Asia, accustomed as he is from his earliest youth to robbery and murder, and hardened to the tears of widows, orphans and slaves. But I had the opportunity of convincing myself, that love is here more frequently the cause of the most extraordinary adventures than in other Mahomedan countries. The Œzbeg is passionately devoted to music and poetry, and hence it is but natural that his heart should be susceptible to the emotions of love.