of the official who held that rank. The innermost chamber is a huge oven surrounded by marble divans, on which the bather reclines while an attendant cracks every joint in his body, scours him with a piece of hair-cloth, and sluices him with cold water. Thence he passes to a room heated to a temperature of about 80 degrees, where he dresses and proceeds to a spacious hall opening on the street. Here, reclining on a dais spread with carpets and pillows, he sips his tea in the blissful lassitude which follows the Turkish bath. The Zindān, or state jail, is a dilapidated structure of brick, perched on a mound to the east of the citadel. The entrance is through a dirty guardroom which gives on a courtyard. A door to the left leads to the abode of petty offenders--a smoke-stained shed, tapestried with bundles containing the property of the inmates. The latter squat on the floor apparently in good health and spirits, albeit that their rations would not be approved of at Wormwood Scrubbs. They receive from Government 1½ pounds of bread every other day, but visitors are allowed to distribute as much food as they please. On the right of the courtyard is a vaulted room lit by a barred opening in the ceiling, which serves as a ward for heinous offenders. Here will generally be found twenty or thirty wretches fastened together by a heavy chain attached to an iron ring on the neck of each. They are all murderers or banditti under trial or awaiting the Amīr’s confirmation of the death sentence; and their sullen despair is but too evident. Punishments were terribly severe in pre-Russian days. Prisoners were riveted to the wall by iron collars for years together, and shrunk under the torture to living skeletons. Twice a week they were dragged to the Rīgistān, where the Amīr in person pronounced sentence; and the spectacle of the poor half-naked wretches shivering in the snow was piteous indeed.[716] Happy were those condemned to decapitation, which was always performed with the knife, to the gratification of the market crowd. Empalement and flinging from the summit of the Great Minār were usual forms of destruction, and women taken in adultery were stoned. The prison, bad as it is when judged by European standards, is an abode of bliss when compared with those of the native régime. Beneath the Zindān is a deep vault, now filled up, which hardly a decade back served as an _oubliette_ for human beings condemned to a lingering death, attended by horrors which no pen can describe. Truly, these dark places of the earth owe much to the softening influence of a higher civilisation. [Illustration: PRISONERS OF THE AMIR OF BOKHĀRĀ]