The capital of this Asiatic potentate is, as I have hinted, deficient in remarkable characteristics. With three or four exceptions, the buildings are all of clay, and present a miserable appearance. There are two walls—an outer and an inner; the interior enclosing the citadel, which measures a mile in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth, and in its turn encloses the Khan’s palace and the great porcelain tower. The outer wall is on an average twenty-five feet high, and it is strengthened by a broad ditch or moat. There are seven gates. The area between the walls is at one point converted into a kind of cemetery; at another it is planted out in gardens, which are shaded by elms and fruit trees, and watered by little canals. Of the houses it is to be said that the interior is far more comfortable than the wretched exterior would lead the traveller to anticipate. Most of them are constructed on the same plan. You pass from the street into a large open court, all around which are arranged the different apartments, each opening into the court, and seldom having any direct communication with each other. Facing the north stands a high porch, with its roof some seven or eight feet above the surrounding walls; this serves to catch the wind, and bring it down into the court below on the principle of a wind-sail aboard ship. The free circulation of air thus maintained is, undoubtedly, very pleasant in the summer heat, but in a Khivan winter it must have its disadvantages. With twenty-two médressés, or monasteries, and seventeen mosques, is Khiva endowed. Of the latter, the most beautiful and the most highly esteemed is the mosque Palvan-Ata, which raises its tall dome to a height of sixty feet, shining with tiles of glaring green. The interior of the dome is very striking: it is covered, like the exterior, with tiles, but these are adorned with a beautiful blue tracery, interwoven with verses from the Koran. In a niche in the wall, protected by a copper lattice-work, are the tombs of the Khans; and Palvan, the patron-saint of the Khivans, is also buried there.