Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/220

198 implicit confidence in the tempers of Kírghis mountain ponies, their bodies thus arranged constitute a most formidable barricade. By means of soothing and conciliatory measures I generally succeeded in separating two horses sufficiently so that I could squeeze through between them into the shop, but I rarely found there anything of local origin or manufacture to repay me for my trouble. Most of the goods that were shown to me were from European Russia, and were such as I had seen in scores of Siberian shops already. The mountain Kírghis, however, who were the chief consumers of these goods, were interesting enough to more than make up for the commonplace nature of the goods themselves. They were generally wilder-looking men than the steppe Kírghis whose acquaintance we had made in the territory of Semipalátinsk, and the wildness of their appearance was heightened, perhaps, to some extent, by their dress. This consisted of an under tunic or shirt of cotton cloth striped perpendicularly with red, straight trousers of butternut homespun thrust into top-boots, a beshmét or quilted dressing-gown of black, brown, or gray homespun girt about the waist with a narrow, silver-studded leather belt, and finally an extraordinary pointed hood of quilted cloth covering the whole head and neck, with long chin-laps hanging over the shoulders in front and a bunch of soft feathers dangling from the high, pointed crown. These hoods were almost invariably lined and trimmed with fur, and were made frequently of a peculiar kind of Russian cloth, in which the wavy markings of watered silk are imitated in green, yellow, and purple, so as to produce a sort of chromatic moire antique. It would be hard to imagine anything stranger or wilder in appearance than the rough-hewn, beardless, sun-scorched face of an old Kírghis, framed in one of these high, pointed hoods of green, yellow, and purple, and half concealed by the chin-laps and the shaggy fringe of bear-skin or wolf-skin that hangs like a neglected bang over the dark, fierce eyes.