“We do not use live horses, but we make a horse of iron and fill him with water, and put fire under the water. The water boils and turns into steam. The steam is very powerful; it rushes out of the horse’s stomach, and turns large wheels which we give him instead of legs. The wheels revolve over the iron lines which we have previously laid down, and the horse, which we call an engine, moves very quickly, dragging the arbas behind him; they are made of wood and iron, and have four wheels, not two, like your arbas in Khiva. The pace is so great that if your Khan had an iron horse and a railway, he could go to Kasala in one day.” Next morning, after remunerating his host for his hospitality, Major Burnaby proceeded towards the goal of his daring enterprise. He passed through the busy trading town of Oogentel, the first in Khivan territory on the road from Kalenderhana, and, as an Englishman, attracted the attention of the population. This attention grew into wild excitement, when he found his way to a barber, intent upon getting rid of a beard of thirteen weeks’ growth. In Oogentel the people shave their heads and not their chins; so that the traveller’s desire to have his chin shaved, instead of his head, begat an extraordinary sensation. An increasing crowd gathered round the barber’s shop; moullahs (or priests), camel-drivers, and merchants jostling one another in their anxiety to obtain good points of view, like the London populace on the Lord Mayor’s Show day. The thought occurred to Major Burnaby that this fanatical Moslem multitude might not be displeased if the barber cut an unbeliever’s throat, and it was not without a qualm he resigned himself to his hands. No such catastrophe happened, however; but the barber, rendered nervous by the accumulated gaze of hundreds of eyes, let slip the thin strip of steel which did duty for a razor, and inflicted a slight wound on his customer’s cheek. As no soap was used, and the substitute for a razor was innocent of “edge,” the operation was sufficiently disagreeable; and if the crowd were sorry, Major Burnaby was heartily rejoiced when it came to an end and he was free to continue his journey. At nine versts from Oogentel he and his party crossed the canal of the Shabbalat, and rode through a barren tract of sand until they arrived at a cemetery. The tombs were made of dried clay, and fashioned into the strangest shapes; while over several of the larger floated banners or white flags, from poles ten or twelve feet high, indicating the last resting-place of some unknown and unchronicled hero. _Multi fortes vixerunt ante Agamemnona_; but they have found no bard to record their deeds of prowess in immortal verse. The Khivan warriors who fell in defence of their wild father-land must sleep for ever in nameless graves.