Read Ebook: Theory of Circulation by Respiration: Synopsis of its Principles and History by Willard Emma

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Ebook has 252 lines and 30611 words, and 6 pages

PAGE

INTRODUCTION ix

APPENDICES

INDEX 271

FACING PAGE

THE CENTRAL ASIAN RAILWAY: NEARING THE OXUS 18

THE CENTRAL ASIAN DESERT 20

BOKHARA: THE ESCORT OF A MAGISTRATE 28

OUTSIDE ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS OF THE MOSQUES 32

A HOLIDAY AT SAMARKAND: BOYS OF THE MILITARY SCHOOL PLAYING AMONG THE RUINS OF THE TOMB OF TAMERLANE 36

MOHAMMEDAN TOMBS AND RUINS IN THE YOUNGEST OF THE RUSSIAN COLONIES 40

A MOHAMMEDAN FESTIVAL AT SAMARKAND--THE HOUR OF PRAYER 48

CENTRAL ASIAN JEWESSES 50

FINE-LOOKING SARTS IN OLD TASHKENT 56

OUTSIDE A GERMAN SHOP IN OLD TASHKENT 58

TASHKENT: A FOOTBALL MATCH AT THE COLLEGE 60

PLEASANT COUNTRY OUTSIDE TASHKENT 64

HEARTY SHEPHERDS: ALL KIRGHIZ 66

THE RUSSIAN TEACHER: A NATIVE SCHOOL IN TASHKENT 68

RUSSIANS AND KIRGHIZ LIVING SIDE BY SIDE AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAINS 76

A TENT OF LONELY NOMADS ON A SUMMER PASTURE IN CENTRAL ASIA 80

THE NATIVE ORCHESTRA: SEE THE MEN WITH THE TEN-FOOT HORNS, "TRUMPETS OF JERICHO," AS THE RUSSIANS CALL THEM 104

"PAST THE RUINS OF ANCIENT TOWERS" 120

A SETTLED KIRGHIZ: ONE OF THE CHARACTERS OF PISHPEK 130

THE IRRIGATED DESERT--AN EMBLEM OF RUSSIAN COLONISATION IN CENTRAL ASIA 136

THE SHADY VILLAGE STREET--ONE LONG LINE OF WILLOWS AND POPLARS 152

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. SOPHIA AT VERNEY--AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1887 158

VISITORS AT A KIRGHIZ WEDDING 168

CHINESE PRAYING-HOUSE AT DJARKENT 178

LEPERS IN A FRONTIER TOWN 180

A PATRIARCHAL KIRGHIZ FAMILY 186

SHEEP-SHEARING OUTSIDE THE TENT HOME 194

IN SUMMER PASTURE: EVENING OUTSIDE THE KIRGHIZ TENT 198

FOUR WIVES OF A RICH KIRGHIZ 205

AT A KIRGHIZ FUNERAL 207

KIRGHIZ PRAYING 215

IN THE ALTAI: KIRGHIZ TOMBS NEAR MEDVEDKA 222

MOBILISATION DAY ON THE ALTAI: THE VILLAGE EMPTIED OF ITS FOLK 232

Introduction

I have printed this letter because it was sweet to have it, and it touched me. May the roses bloom again!

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

Through Russian Central Asia

LEAVING VLADIKAVKAZ

In the early spring of 1914 I walked once more to the Kazbek mountain. It was really too early for tramping, too cold, but it was on this journey that I decided what my summer should be. Once you have become the companion of the road, it calls you and calls you again. Even in winter, when you have to walk briskly all day, and there is no sitting on any bank of earth or fallen tree to write a fragment or rest, and when there is no sleeping out, but only the prospect of freezing at some wretched coffee-house or inn, the road still lies outside the door of your house full of charm and mystery. You want to know where the roads lead to, and what may be on them beyond the faint horizon's line.

So it is March, and I am walking out from Vladikavkaz on the Georgian road, and only on a four days' journey--to the Kazbek mountain and back. Indeed, the road beyond is probably choked with snow, and there is no further progress. But I shall see how the year stands on the Caucasus.

The stillness of the morning--a circumambient silence. A consciousness of the silence in the deep of space. Three miles of level highway stretch straight and brown from the city on the steppes to the dark, blank wall of the mountains. Beyond the black wall and above it are the snow-mantled superior ranges, and above all, almost melting into the deep blue of the Caucasian sky, the glimmering, icy-wet slopes of the dome of the Kazbek. The sun presides over the day, and as a personal token burns the brow, even though the feet tread on patches of crisp snow on the yellow-green banks of the moor. No lizards basking in the sun, no insects on the wing, no flowers--not a speedwell, not a cowslip, not a snowdrop. Only little flocks of siskins rising unexpectedly from sun-bathed hollows like so many fat grasshoppers. Only an occasional crazy brown leaf that scampers over the withered fallen grass. There is vapour over the plumage-like woods on the hills, but no birds are singing. Nature can almost be described in negation, she shows so little of her glory; yet she makes the heart ache the more.

Persian stone-breakers, hammer in hand, sitting on mats by the side of the heaps of rocks; primitive carts lumbering with their loads of faggots or maize-straw or ice; horsemen like centaurs because of their great black capes joining their head and shoulders to little Caucasian horses--that is all the life at this season of the year of the one great highway over the mountains, the great military road from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis--no motor-cars, no trams, no light-rolling carriages with gentry in them, no trains.

Stopping at a sunny mound to have lunch, you hear from a hundred yards away the River Terek like the sound of a wind in the forest, the impetuous stream rushing between white crusts of frozen foam and washing greenly against ice-crowned boulders. For sixty miles the road is that of the valley of the Terek. It passes the Redant and then becomes the visible companion of the river, winding with it among the primeval grandeur of its rocks. The Kazbek begins to disappear, hidden by its barrier cliffs--its Kremlin; but for a mile or so its snowy cap remains in sight over the great lopsided, jagged crags. The blue smokes of Balta and red-roofed nestling Dolinadalin rise into the afternoon sky. The road enters the chilling shadow of the Gorge of Jerakhof, and you look back regretfully on the red sunlit strand behind you. The white-framed Terek moves in a grand curve through a broad wilderness of stones and snow. An icy mountain draught creeps from the cleft in the grey cold rocks. On the deserted road the telegraph poles and wires assume that sinister expression which they have in vast and lonely mountain tracts. The opening by which you entered the gorge becomes a purple triangle, and far above you and behind you glimmers the tobacco-coloured sunlit Table Mountain.

The road becomes narrower: on the one hand the river roars among ice-mantled rocks, on the other the black silt continually trickles and whispers. The faint crimson of sunset lights the wan towers of Fortoug, and then one by one the yellow stars come out like lamps over the mountain walls.

"It will come to nothing," say the hillmen; "for ten years people have been talking of such things, but nothing has changed except that we have got poorer."

But the host is an optimist. "It will come. There will be a tramway from the city to the Kazbek. The trams will go past my door. We shall have electric light and electric cooking, and will become rich."

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