Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 258, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1916 — IN Placid turkeftan [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN Placid turkeftan

AT LAST I have discovered a country where the war is almost unknown, where normal conditions reign, and where life is going on just as it has for the last 2,000 years, unmoved by what is passing over it, writes Montgomery Schuyler to the New York Times. Not easy of access to foreigners at any time, Russian Turkestan, since the beginning of the war, has been a terra I am aware I was the first to visit it since that time. The country is always under military rule and since its annexation by the Russian empire has been administered as a military territory by the war office. Through the necessary official channels I obtained permission to visit Turkestan, accompanied by my wife, and started off from Petrograd_la., the "middle df ar snowstorm with intense cold and every evidence of midwinter. We arrived after some five and a half days’ steady traveling at Tashkent, the administrative capital of Russian Turkestan. This is a new city built by the Russians after the occupation of the neighboring districts between 1863 and 1868. It is laid out in the manner of all new Russian places, with wide boulevards radiating from a center as planned and running straight out into the country

through fields and swamps, looking confidently to the future for the growth and population to come, for in the Russian empire, as nowhere else, the people follow the flag, and, Indeed, sometimes precede it in this part of the world. Tashkent is obviously and unmistakably a city of the future, and allowance must be made for its present straggling character. There are, however, many handsome administrative buildings and military and educational establishments. •" . ~ Beautiful in Early Spring. . Turkestan is now reached from Petrograd and Moscow by railway via Orenburg to Tashkent, or across the Caspian by steamer, a sea trip of only about 3.6 hours from Baku to Krasnovodsk. The most interesting way to go is as we did, out by Tashkent and back through Krasnovodsk and Baku. At Tashkent I was joined by a Russian officer, who had been detailed to accompany me on my travels in Turkestan, and who proved to be not only a charming companion, but of great help in arranging the detail? of the journey and in getting , the necessary transportation and accommodations. We had already begun to feel the coming of spring after leaving the Ural mountains near Orenburg? and as we sped or rather crawled south and east the snoVr disappeared and the air-be-came milder and balmier nntil as we stepped out of the train at Tashkent we were in the ftijl gloty of the early spring. There are few lovelier sights than the coming of spring after the damp and unpleasant winter of Turkestan.* There is hardly ever any wind in Tashkent, and the calm day after day is curious to the sfranger within its gates. The rain and warm weather rapidly bring on the vegetation, and soon everything is covered with 1 delicate green, which blends with the pink and brown mud walls, tne clear blue

of the sky, and the glittering gold and yellow of the Russian Orthodox church edifices. { From Tashkent we started on a detour of Kokand, seeing en route the fertile cotton fields of the Ferghana and Kokand districts, of which the city of Skobelovo is the administrative center. This town also is new and 'without interest. Some miles away is the old and ruined city which walls and deserted streets bear witness to the power of the railroad to draw people to itself. Dead Age ts Revitalized. From Andijan, near the border of Chinese Turkestan, the Transcaspian railroad stretches, to the port of Krasnovodsk, on the shore of the Caspian sen.- -a- distance of more—than 1,100 -miles, but-th»3>ortlcui..between Kokand and Andijan is without interest for the traveler except for occasional views of snow-covered mountains on the Chinese frontier. But on leaving Kokand for the trip to the Caspian, we leave the newer cities of the Russian occupation and enter regions of old civilization and historic and archeological interest. After a dusty journey through unWatered .plains we reached the old and delightful city of Samarkand, known to all students as one of the outlying seats of Greek culture. The preseht town of Samarkand is the third city to be erected on practically the same spot, although the oldest Greek settlement was laid out perhaps three miles from the present site. There is little to be seen of the place now except bricks and outlines of buildings covered for the most part deeply in the sand which had drifted and blown over them for so long. Bazaars Are Interesting;

But it is not alone for its memories of the past that "Samarkand is interesting to the traveler. There is a busy bat always sedate and grave business present in the city, and a stroll around the bazaars is full of surprises. The streets of the native town are only just wide enough for one carriage at a time, and traffic would be greatly blocked if there were more than a very few horse-drawn vehicles in the city. As It is, nearly all freight and farm products are brdught in on camels or on donkeys. The latter are the same sturdy, gray, and intelligent little beasts seen throughout the East and in Mexico and South America. They take their duties solemnly and refuse to be distracted by noise and confusion. Whole processions of the little fellows pass through the narrow ways or stop to be unloaded in front of the shops, which are nothing more than platforms built at the side of the street and surrounded with shelves for merchandise. Some of the streets in the bazaar are so narrow that they are like corridors in a building and are covered from the houses on each side by arched roofs, so that one can walk around and keep dry even in tse hardest rain. On all sides there sit, gravely sipping their endless cups of tea and eating sweetmeats and dried fruits, the dark-faced merchants, many of them with long beards dyed, red and with green turbans, showing that they have made the long holy pilgrimage to Mecca. The brilliance and charm of the scene are extraordinary. Men and women are clad In lohg, flowing gowns of the brightest silks in startling but always harmonious combinations —yellow, red, blue, and green. Not infrequently the little streets are dwarfed by the appearance of a lpng string of camels bringing huge bales of cotton or the heavier kinds of freight from the country districts. These animals are picturesque, but so stupid and vicious that they have to be tied in a long line with one of the intelligent little donkeys in front to show them where to go. , The next city of importance on the line of the railway on y the way to Krasnovodsk is Bokhara. The old historic town is some five miles from the railroad, withwhich It ts connected by a branch line and by one of the worst carriage roads I have ever been over. New Bokhara or Kagan is the seat of a Russian political agent, who is the representative of the imperial government at the court of the emir of Bokhara, the most important native sovereign of this part of the world. In its way Bokhara is the most interesting of all the old cities of Turkestan. It was for centuries celebrated as a theological center of medanism.^

T YPES IN THE BAZAAR

THE MEDRESStOF SHIR-DAR, SAMARKAND