Chapter 11

The Khanates of Bokhara and Samarkand used to form Sogdiana, a Persian
satrapy inhabited by the Tadjiks and afterwards by the Usbegs, who
invaded the country at the close of the fifteenth century. But another
invasion, much more modern, is to be feared, that of the sands, now
that the saksaouls intended to bring the sandhills to a standstill,
have almost completely disappeared.

Bokhara, the capital of the Khanate, is the Rome of Islam, the Noble
City, the City of Temples, the revered centre of the Mahometan
religion. It was the town with the seven gates, which an immense wall
surrounded in the days of its splendor, and its trade with China has
always been considerable. Today it contains eighty thousand inhabitants.

I was told this by Major Noltitz, who advised me to visit the town in
which he had lived several times. He could not accompany me, having
several visits to pay. We were to start again at eleven o'clock in the
morning. Five hours only to wait and the town some distance from the
railway station! If the one were not connected with the other by a
Decauville--a French name that sounds well in Sogdiana--time would fail
for having even a slight glimpse of Bokhara.

It is agreed that the major will accompany me on the Decauville; and
when we reach our destination he will leave me to attend to his private
affairs. I cannot reckon on him. Is it possible that I shall have to do
without the company of any of my numbers?

Let us recapitulate. My Lord Faruskiar? Surely he will not have to
worry himself about the mandarin Yen Lou, shut up in this traveling
catafalque! Fulk Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett? Useless to think of
them when we are talking about palaces, minarets, mosques and other
archaeological inutilities. The actor and the actress? Impossible, for
Madame Caterna is tired, and Monsieur Caterna will consider it his duty
to stay with her. The two Celestials? They have already left the
railway station. Ah! Sir Francis Trevellyan. Why not? I am not a
Russian, and it is the Russians he cannot stand. I am not the man who
conquered Central Asia. I will try and open this closely shut gentleman.

I approach him; I bow; I am about to speak. He gives me a slight
inclination and turns on his heel and walks off! The animal!

But the Decauville gives its last whistle. The major and I occupy one
of the open carriages. Half an hour afterwards we are through the
Dervaze gate, the major leaves me, and here am I, wandering through the
streets of Bokhara.

If I told the readers of the _Twentieth Century_ that I visited the
hundred schools of the town, its three hundred mosques--almost as many
mosques as there are churches in Rome, they would not believe me, in
spite of the confidence