I need hardly say that there are no slaves in this country, much to the displeasure of the Mussulmans.

Nowadays woman is free--even in her household.
"An old Turkoman," said Major Noltitz, "once told me that a husband's power is at an end now that he cannot thrash his wife without being threatened with an appeal to the czar; and that marriage is at an end!" I do not know if the fair sex is still beaten, but the husbands know what they may expect if they knock their wives about.

Will it be believed that these peculiar Orientals can see no progress in this prohibition to beat their wives?
Perhaps they remember that the Terrestrial Paradise is not far off--a beautiful garden between the Tigris and Euphrates, unless it was between the Amou and the Syr-Daria.
Perhaps they have not forgotten that mother Eve lived in this preadamite garden, and that if she had been thrashed a little before her first fault, she would probably not have committed it.

But we need not enlarge on that.
I did not hear, as Madam Ujfalvy-Bourdon did, the band playing the _Pompiers de Nanterre_ in the governor-general's garden.

No! On this occasion they were playing _Le Pere la Victoire_, and if these are not national airs they are none the less agreeable to French ears.
We left Tachkend at precisely eleven o'clock in the morning.