This ground gained, the dervish Reshid Ef- | him from Mecca, and whether they passed to

fendi assumed a haughty air, as one who knew his value, a holy man born in the Holy Land. When he was presented to the khan it was to give a blessing to his majesty. The khan inquired about his means, but received for re-pair of boots, a long shirt, and nothing else! ply: "We dervishes do not trouble ourselves with such trifles. The holy nefes (breath) which my pir (chief of my order) had imparted to me for my journey can support me four or five days without any nourishment. My words," he writes, "seemed to have given satisfaction, for his royal highness was pleased to order that I should be presented with twenty ducats and a stout ass. I declined the ducats, with the remark that for a dervish it was a sin to keep money; thanked him, however, warmly for the second part of his most gracious favor, but begged permission to draw his attention to the holy commandment which prescribed a white ass for pilgrimages, and entreated him, therefore, to vouchsafe me such a one. I was on the point of withdrawing when the khan desired that, at least during my short stay in the capital, I should be his guest, and consent to take for my daily board two tenghe (about one franc and fifty centimes) from his haznadar."

his palace from the Kaaba in one minute." It may interest our fashionable readers to know that the dinner and walking dress for gentlemen in Khiva is a high, round fur hat, a thick

In Khiva, among other pleasant customs, they gouge out the eyes of elderly prisoners of war; and the dervish Reshid Effendi was by accident witness, with the general public, to this spectacle. I found about three hundred Tchaudors, prisoners of war, covered with rags. They were so tormented by the dread of their approaching fate, and by the hunger which they had endured several days, that they looked as if they had just risen from their graves. They were separated into two divisions, namely, such as had not yet reached their fortieth year, and were to be sold as slaves, or to be made use of as presents, and such as, from their rank or age, were regarded as aksakals (graybeards) or leaders, and who were to suffer the punishment imposed by the khan. The former, chained together by their iron collars in numbers of ten to fifteen, were led away; the latter submissively awaited the punishment awarded. They looked like lambs in the hands of their executioners. While several were led to the gallows or the block I saw how, at a sign from the executioner, eight aged men placed themselves down on their backs upon the earth. They were then bound hand and foot, and the executioner gouged out their eyes in turn, kneeling to do so on the breast of each poor wretch; and after every operation he wiped his knife, dripping with blood, upon the white beard of the hoary unfortunate. Ah, cruel spectacle! As each fearful act was completed the victim, liberated from his bonds, groping around with his hands, sought to gain his feet. Some fell against each other, head against head; others sank powerless to the earth again, uttering low groans, the memory of which will make me shudder as long as I live."

This was acting his character faithfully, and the result was a great increase in popularity and a wonderful number of invitations to feasts. "My hair stands on end at the recollection how often I was forced to seat myself, between three and four o'clock in the morning, before sunrise, opposite a colossal dish of rice swimming in the fat of the sheep-tail, which I was to assail as if my stomach was empty." These invitations were not purely hospitable, for the entertainers sought information on many important subjects from the learned dervish. These gentlemen, who give the preference to Turkey and Constantinople beyond all other places, were desirous of receiving from me, the standard of Turkish Islamite learning, an explanation of many mesele (religious questions). Oh, how warm those As he went one day to the treasurer to rethick-headed Ozbegs made me, with their colos-ceive his daily stipend he found that worthy ensal turbans, when they opened a conversation concerning the prescriptions as to the mode of washing hands, feet, face, and occiput; and how a man should, in obedience to his holy religion, ́sit, walk, lie, and sleep, etc.! The Sultan (a recognized successor of Mohammed) and his grandees are accounted in Khiva the practical examples of all these important laws. majesty the Emperor of Turkey is here designated as a Mussulman whose turban is at least fifty ells in length, whose beard extends below his breast, and his robe to his toes. A man might place his life in jeopardy who should assert the fact that the Sultan has head and beard shaved à la Fiesko, and clothes made for him at Paris by Dusetoye. One wanted religious instruction; another asked if the world offered elsewhere places as beautiful as Khiva; a third wished, once for all, to receive authentic information whether the great Sultan really had his each day's dinner and supper forwarded to

gaged in a singular occupation. A number of horsemen had ridden in from the camp to receive the reward of bravery. The more heads the better soldier is the rule in Khiva. In battle the trooper not only kills his enemy-he cuts off his head; and these braves were now to receive robes of honor, varying in splendor His and value according to the number of heads they were able to produce to the treasurer. Some received the robe of forty heads; some the twenty-headed; others, less lucky, the fourheaded robe. As each emptied his sack upon the ground an accountant took note of the number of skulls produced.

Yet it was in Khiva that Vámbéry passed the pleasantest days of his long journey. The people were full of pious charity; gifts abounded; and when he departed toward Bokhara he had a good stout donkey, money, clothing, and provisions-the gifts of the faithful. Nor was he alone; all the pilgrims were equally well fur

of Tartar warriors." It is pleasant to know that the costumes worn in operatic representations resemble any thing actually used by mortal men in the nineteenth century.

The emir called Vámbéry to a special audience, in which he was submitted to a close crossexamination, but succeeded, “through the flexibility of my tongue, which is really impudent enough," says he, with some truth, in disarmArrived in the audience chamunasked, up to the emir, rough

and after reciting a prayer, seated himself in that worthy's place. "The boldness of my proceeding-quite, however, in accordance with the character which I assumed--seemed not displeasing to him. I had long forgotten the art of blushing, and so was able to sustain the look which he now directed full in my face, with the intention, probably, of disconcerting me.

"Hadji, thou comest, I hear, from Roum, to visit the tombs of Baha-cd-din and the saints of Turkestan?'

"Yes, takhsir (sire); but also to quicken myself by the contemplation of thy sacred beauty' (djemali mubarek), according to the forms of conversation usual on these occasions.

donkey up stairs into a carpeted room, to be duly inspected. His companions also came to his rescue. "Hadji Reshid is not only a good Mussulman," they proclaimed every where, "but at the same time a learned mollah; to have any suspicion of him is a mortal sin." Nevertheless spies were set to track him in the city; and shrewd fellows sent to speak with him; but with a huge turban on his head, a copy of the Koran suspended from his neck, a wise tongue, and aing suspicion. pious demeanor, he eluded all traps, and pres-ber, he walked, ently found himself a popular man. "What ex-ly pushed aside an astonished prime-minister, treme piety!" exclaimed the populace, "to come all the way from Constantinople to Bokhara alone, to visit our Baha-ed-din"-the great saint of this region. "They praised me," he writes, "but not a farthing did I ever get from them." He was lucky, however, to get off with his life. The "noble Bokhara" is a delightful spot. It is not only extraordinarily hot; but one in ten of the inhabitants are affected with a singular disease, the rishte (filaria Medinensis), which, horrible as it seems to us, is thought as little of there as a cold in the head here. "One feels, at first, on the foot, or on some other part of the body, a tickling sensation, then a spot becomes visible whence issues a worm like a thread. This is often an ell long, and it ought some days after to be carefully wound off on a reel. This is the common treatment, and occasions no extraordinary pain; but if the worm is broken off an inflammation ensues, and instead of one, from six to ten make their appearance, which forces the patient to keep his bed a week, subjecting him to intense suffering. The more courageous have the rishte cut out at the very beginning. The barbers in Bokhara are tolerably expert in this operation. The part where the tickling sensation is felt is in an instant removed, the worm extracted, and the wound itself soon heals. Sometimes this malady, which is also common "I would be thy victim' (an expression in Persia, recurs in the following summer, and equivalent to 'pardon me'). 'Sire, thy glorithat, too, even when the patient is in a different ous ancestor (peace be with him!) had certainly climate. It happened so with Dr. Wolff, the the same infirmity, and he was even djihanghir' well-known traveler, who dragged with him all (conqueror of the world). This reply was agreethe way from Bokhara one of these long memo-able to the emir, who now put questions to me rials of his journey. It did not show itself till he came to England, when it was extracted, in Eastern fashion, by the late Sir Benjamin Brodie." The only prevention is to drink constantly of warm water and tea.

"Strange! and thou hadst, then, no other motive in coming hither from so distant a land?'

"No, takhsir (sire); it had always been my warmest desire to behold the noble Bokhara and the enchanting Samarcand, upon whose sacred soil, as was remarked by Sheikh Djelal, one should rather walk on one's head than on one's feet. But I have, besides, no other business in life, and have long been moving about every where as a djihangeshte' (world pilgrim).

"What, thou, with thy lame foot, a djihangeshte! That is really astonishing.'

respecting my journey, and the impression made upon me by Bokhara and Samarcand.”

From Samarcand Vámbéry was offered escort to Thibet and China—a long and unheard of journey, in which he would have been handed over from caravan to caravan, and from nation to nation, every where to excite new suspicions, and brave fresh deaths. But he had done enough for the first attempt. He remembered the Turkish proverb, "Better is an egg to-day than a fowl to-morrow." He determined to return homeward, being tired of savagery; and he had yet, at best, a long and perilous journey back to Teheran, by a new route, through Karshi, Maymene, and Herat. The reader who is anx

Samarcand, the pride of the Turcomans, the city which is famous through the East for the beauty of its situation, for the excellence of its water, and for the tomb of the great TimourTamerlane as we call him, from Timurlenk, the lame-Samarcand, which, in the fond opinion of the Asiatics, "resembles Paradise," was the next step in the author's journey. He found it a dull but interesting city, mostly in ruins, and the only notable incident during his stay was the arrival and reception of the Emir Mozaffarious to learn how he fared on this homeward ed-din, who looked, with his escort of high functionaries, clad in snow-white turbans and wide silk garments, "more like the chorus of women in the opera of Nebuchadnezzar than like a troop

journey, how he nearly starved, lay for days among ruins, was refused the slightest aid, and did not cease to be suspected, though his misery was devouring him, must seek his own vivid ac