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consume anything at the stations except vodka, but only
fill their tea-kettles with boiling water and make their tea
on board the train.
On the second day of our journey the Kirgises began
to make their appearance at the stations and in the
third-class carriages, their number increasing more and more the
farther east we got. Both men and women wore the
common schapàn of central Asia, a wide kaftan bordered
with sheepskin and reaching to the knees, with a belt about
the waist. The men had high and wide boots of red
leather on their feet, and Tatar caps edged with fur on
their heads.
Their costume, their large bronzed faces with small and
somewhat oblique eyes, and their strong and healthy
appearance made them easily recognisable among the crowds
of emigrants, where, quiet and taciturn, they walked about
with that peculiar wagging motion of the body which is
characteristic of horsemen, or sat with their bulgy legs
a-straddle, curiously regarding the ragged and hunger-stricken
crowds of Russians flocking in to occupy their
pasture-grounds and push them and their herds more and more out
of the plains which their forefathers have occupied from time
immemorial. Do these sons of the steppe think of the
significance of this invasion, I wonder? Their resigned
expression seems only to say, “The will of Allah
be done!”
The Russian colonisation of the Kirgis steppe of
Akmolinsk began about the middle of the eighteenth century with
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