Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/221

Rh I spent an hour or more that morning in the little shops of the Altái Station, making a pretense of looking at goods in order that I might have an opportunity to study the Kírghis. I was greatly interested in their forms of salutation, and particularly in their method of shaking or pressing-hands, which I had never before seen. When two Kírghis acquaintances meet, after a period of separation, each of them holds out both his hands with thumbs uppermost, very much as he would hold out his arms to take a baby. One of them puts the palm of his right hand against the back of the other's left, and the back of his left hand against the palm of the other's right, and then both bring their hands together as if they were about to clap them. The result is a sandwiching of the two pairs of hands in such a manner that each person has between his two palms one hand of the other. The hands are pressed closely together in this way without motion while the acquaintances exchange salutations and inquiries with regard to health. This seemed to me to be a much more graceful and appropriate form of hand-greeting than the vise-like grip and the meaningless shake of the civilized world. The mere pumping of interlocked hands has neither grace nor significance, while the gentle pressure of a friend's hand between both one's own is a perfectly natural and suitable expression of affectionate regard. The only objection that I can see to it is that, for indiscriminate use, it partakes too much of the nature of a caress. In civilized society, therefore, it should be reserved for cases in which a hand-shake would be too formal and an embrace too familiar. Thus restricted, I offer it to the world as the first contribution of the Altái Kírghis to the polite ceremonies of social life.

Upon returning from the shops to the place where I had left Mr. Frost, I found him still at work upon his sketch, which had begun to assume the appearance of the illustration on page 194. Just before noon, at the suggestion of the Cossack atamán who came to our house to return our