The tent which I now occupied, in company with ten of my travelling companions, did not belong to Kulkhan, but was the property of another Turkoman who, with his wife--formerly his slave, sprung from the tribe of the Karakalpak--joined our party for Khiva. I learnt that their object in proceeding to Khiva was that this woman, who had been carried off in a surprise by night and brought hither, might ascertain whether her former husband, whom she had left severely wounded, had afterwards perished; who had purchased her children, and where they now were; and--which she was particularly anxious to know--what had become of her daughter, a girl in her twelfth year, whose beauty she described to me with tears in her eyes. The poor woman, by extraordinary fidelity and laboriousness, had so enchained her new master, that he consented to accompany her on her sorrowful journey of enquiry. I was always asking him what he would do if her former husband were forthcoming, but his mind on that point was made up--the law guaranteed him his possession. 'The Nassib (fate),' said he, 'intended to bestow on me Heidgul' (properly Eidgul, 'rose of the festival'), 'and none can withstand Nassib.' There was besides, amongst the other travellers freshly arrived, who were to journey with Ilias, a Dervish named Hadji Siddik, a consummate hypocrite, who went about half naked, and acted as groom to the camels in the desert; it was not until after we had arrived in Bokhara that we learnt that he had sixty ducats sewn up in his rags. [Etrek; Persian Slaves] The whole company inhabited the tents in common, expecting that the Khan's Kervanbashi would come up as soon as possible, and that we should commence our journey through the desert. The delay was painful to us all. I became alarmed on account {78} of the decrease of my stock of flour, and I began at once to diminish my daily allowance by two handfuls. I also baked it without leaven in the hot ashes; for the produce is greater, it remains longer on the stomach, and hunger torments one less. Fortunately we could make short mendicant excursions; nor had we the least reason to complain of any lack of charity on the part of the Turkomans of Etrek, who are notwithstanding the most notorious robbers. We passed, indeed, very few of their tents without seeing in them two or three Persians heavily laden with chains. [Russian Sailor Slave]