Regretfully he signalled to his own groom who stood apart in charge of a fine dark bay stallion from the Kirghiz Steppes.

Know, then, that the verst is two-thirds of a mile, that the different nomadic people of the governments of Transcaucasia are composed of Kalmucks, descendants of the Eleuthes, fifteen thousand, Kirghizes of Mussulman origin eight thousand, Koundrof Tartars eleven hundred, Sartof Tartars a hundred and twelve, Nogais eight thousand five hundred, Turkomans nearly four thousand.

In the forepart of the steamer are many passengers, Turkomans in rags, Kirghizes wrapped up to the eyes, moujiks in emigrant costumepoor fellows, in fact, stretched on the spare spars, against the sides, and along the tarpaulins.

Kirghizes who do not look very intelligent with their depressed heads, their prognathous jaws stuck well out in front, their little beards, flat Cossack noses and very brown skins.

Of a higher race than the Kirghizes, being Tartars, it is from them that come the learned men and professors who have made illustrious the opulent cities of Bokhara and Samarkand.

Most of the Sarthes and Kirghizes who got out at Askhabad, have been replaced by other second-class passengers, Afghan merchants and smugglers, the latter particularly clever in their line of business.

Through the gently sloping passes which the Kirghizes call "bels," viaducts, bridges, embankments, cuttings, tunnels had to be made to carry the line.

In many places are clumps of birches and junipers, which are the principal trees of the Pamir, and on the undulating plains grow tamarisks and sedges and mugwort, and a sort of reed very abundant by the sides of the saline pools, and a dwarf labiate called "terskenne" by the Kirghizes.

The rails were laid simply on the sand, so that small locomotives could not be used, and were obliged to be replaced by Kirghiz horses, which drew with ease from 1,800 lb. to 2,200 lb. weight for 25 miles per day.

Bélogorsk lay about thirty miles beyond Orenburg, on the frontier of the Kirghiz Kaisak Steppes, and it was to this outlandish place I was banished.

He tells us for instance how the Russians do business and keep out the cold; how many of the women you could call pretty, and how much mutton a Kirghiz can eat.

[The story of Danae and its parallel in a Kirghiz legend.

It has its counterpart in the legend which the Kirghiz of Siberia tell of their ancestry.

The shower of gold in the Greek story, and the eye of God in the Kirghiz legend, probably stand for sunlight and the sun.

KIRGHIZ, a nomadic Turkish people occupying the Kirghiz steppes, an immense tract E. of the Ural River and the Caspian Sea, numbering 2½ millions, adventurous, witty, and free-spirited; refuse to settle; retain ancient customs and characteristics, and are Moslems only in name.

KIRGHIZ, a nomadic Turkish people occupying the Kirghiz steppes, an immense tract E. of the Ural River and the Caspian Sea, numbering 2½ millions, adventurous, witty, and free-spirited; refuse to settle; retain ancient customs and characteristics, and are Moslems only in name.

PAMIRS, THE, or the "Roof of the World," a plateau traversed by mountain ridges and valleys, of the average height of 13,000 ft., NW. of the plateau of Thibet, connecting the mountain system of the Himalayas, Tian-Shan, and the Hindu Kush, and inhabited chiefly by nomad Kirghiz bands; territorial apportionments have for some time past been in the hands of Russian and British diplomatists.

SEMIRETCHINSK (758), a mountainous province of Asiatic Russia, stretches S. of Lake Balkash to East Turkestan and Ferghana on the S.; is traversed E. and W. by the lofty ranges of the Alatau and Tian-Shan Mountains; the vast bulk of the inhabitants are Kirghiz, and engaged in raising horses, camels, and sheep.