In one way it was fortunate that our visit happened to be on a Friday, for we saw the people at prayer. We visited several of the mosques, but they have little artistic merit, and the oldest one has been so hideously redecorated with metal work and the crudest painting, that its 700 years of existence have been entirely obliterated, both within and without. The chief mosque was crowded with men herded within a rather small sort of verandah, where they stood while service was conducted in a loud discordant series of shrieks. A crowd of veiled women and children pressed against the bars of the enclosure, but Mohammedanism has no place for women within her gates. Once for all Mohammed made the position of the women in the Moslem world unspeakably low and degraded: he said, “Woman was made from a crooked rib, and if you try to bend it straight it will break.” A woman, according to the universal Mohammedan belief, has no soul. Years ago I saw the Sultan going to the weekly worship one Friday at Constantinople, and it was part of the programme for his principal wife to _see_ him go there from a certain spot; that she should ever have accompanied him was unthinkable. Another large party of women and children we saw gathered on a neighbouring roof like Peris outside Paradise. But we were not allowed to remain long; we were almost thrust out of the precincts of the mosque, for they have the greatest aversion, we were told, to Russians looking on at their worship. As our guide was Russian, I suppose they imagined us to be the same; elsewhere they treated us with great civility. The children amused us much by their quaint costumes, and some of them were extremely pretty. The caps, ornaments, and embroideries they wear are charming, and a bizarre effect is produced by a bunch of feathers stuck upright in their caps and attached to their shoulders from the back like incipient wings. The houses usually have verandahs outside them, where groups of men were reclining. They were highly picturesque, red being the predominating colour of their clothes, heightened by the contrast of their white turbans. They were mostly smoking, gossiping, and drinking, and for all these pursuits they seem to have an untiring capacity. There is only one Madressah (Mohammedan school) now left at Tashkent, which used to be a seat of learning, and it has few students, and is in a state of decay.