Page:Kennedy, Robert John - A Journey in Khorassan (1890).djvu/93

 a population of about one hundred thousand souls. Of these, according to Mr. Curzon, only one hundred and fifty are Europeans, nearly all of them Russians, Germans, or Poles. The majority of the native population are Tajïks and Uzbegs, and the gorgeousness of their apparel, even the humblest of them wearing the most gaudily coloured, and, in European eyes, the most costly of silk robes, lends an extraordinary brilliancy to their surroundings. Mr. Curzon has pointed out that Bokhara has long set the fashion in Central Asia in the matter of dress, and that it is the great clothes mart of the East. 'Here the richness of Oriental fancy has expressed itself in the most daring but artistic combinations of colour, the brightest crimson and blue and purple and orange are juxtaposed or interlaced, and in Bokhara Joseph would have been looked upon as the recipient of no peculiar favour in the gift of a coat of many colours. Too often there is the most glaring contrast between the splendour of the exterior and the poverty it covers. Many of the people are wretchedly poor, but living is absurdly cheap, and your