Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/86

 little or nothing in the interests of society; whilst his second in command, Colonel Poukoloff, is a heavy, middle-aged officer, who served under General Kaufmann at the capture of Tashkent, in 1865, and has been vegetating and rusting at Samarcand since 1869.

The bazaars of Samarcand are both interesting and tempting. Here may be bought quantities of fine silks, of native manufacture, as well as fur, sheep, and lambskin caps, embroidered saddle-cloths, and silver horse-trappings. All this native industry could be greatly developed if the Russians, themselves after all only a half-civilised nation, did not treat it with the same ignorant contempt with which they view those magnificent relics of the past of which they are unworthy custodians.

During our visit to Samarcand, and indeed during the whole of the three weeks we passed in Russian Transcaspian and Turkestan territory, we were subjected to a police espionage and surveillance of a most ignoble and petty description. Having, on one occasion, ascended to the summit of one of the Reghistan medresehs, for the purpose of seeing the view, a report