Dodging among them went little Kirghiz horses, long-haired and shaggy-maned, and each bearing a bearded study in blue and yellow or red and green, more likely than not with an equally gorgeous youngster or two astride the animal behind him. From the roof of one of the great mosques we could see them wending their way through the wide roadway of the bazaar to the gaunt ruins of the Bibi Khanum Mausoleum, like a long, gaudy-colored ribbon, and thence, by a heavy dust line, trace their zigzagging path up a dull brown mosque-strewn hill, and over its brow.

A quick and fleeting pilgrimage to the beautiful tomb of Tamerlane having been accomplished, we ourselves were on the same track, the tail end of a long procession of horsemen, droskies, pedestrians, and arbas, high-wheeled, oval-topped native vehicles. The loose dust lay three inches deep in the road, and as much more of it hung suspended in the motionless air. As we reached the crown of the hill, rows of multicolored tents loomed up through the brown atmosphere, and from beneath them, over the white turbans of the curious, came the noise of tomtoms, sturdily pounded; of pipes lustily blown, and of melon venders, candy venders, and restaurateurs advertising their condiments. A cheap little merry-go-round, escaped from somewhere in Europe, was catering to the joys of young Asia, with carriages the squeak of which almost drowned even the musical din.

We passed through the lanes of tents on foot, and finally reached the edge of a huge basin, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile in diameter and fifty feet deep. On its near side, squatting in tiers on the steep bank, was a great multitude of silent green, brown, red, yellow, blue-clad humanity, shoulder to shoulder, and hidden beneath a white canopy of turbans. The brow of the opposite slope was outlined by a long row of motionless horsemen, in silhouette against the blue sky; while others stood dotting its sides wherever footing could be found. All eyes were fixed upon the plain below. Some thousand or so of horsemen were gathered there, conspicuous for their skullcaps instead of turbans, and for the absence of the highly colored robes in which the spectators were clad. They had obviously discarded for the moment the vainglories and pomp of this world to get down to solid work,

and with reason. Through their midst was travelling, with tremendous speed, a light-brown, almost impenetrable cloud of dust, coming straight toward our quarter. As it came it broke, and disclosed a tight jam of a hundred tearing horsemen, all apparently struggling, without checking their speed, to occupy the centre of the group at once. They struck our bank as a wave strikes a cliff, surged half up it in a spray of single horsemen and flying spectators, and then settled back disintegrated. Like a flash one horseman suddenly threw his body far over from his saddle, and gave a tremendous tug at something black which hung from the saddle of another. The black thing changed owners, and in another instant its new possessor was off across the ground, himself the object of another attack.

This, then, was the game. The black thing was the skin of a freshly killed sheep, thrown still bloody into the arena by some official at the start, grabbed up from the ground by some one of the horde of horsemen, and its possession to be defended, its momentary holder against any fraction of a thousand riders, throughout the day. There was no scoring and no goal. The game must have been evolved in the pure love of horses and horsemanship. Whoever had the skin was by the act of possession constituted "It," and an object of mob violence until someone else wrested the trophy from him. With the skin tucked securely away between his knee and the saddle, he who was "It" would lead the chase round and across the arena, straight through the stagnant pool opposite us, over the hill and out of sight. Lost to the view of the spectators, he would suddenly appear at some other spot on the crest, and tear pell-mell down its side with fifty horsemen at his heels. The skin might change hands half a dozen times in as many minutes; or it might be held until its guardian was forced, by the tiring of his horse, to give up. Then there would be a quick pass to his nearest neighbor, and away the skin would go, under the spur of fresh life. The pursuing mob was always fresh. dashing across the basin, waiting horsemen, scattered about, would suddenly spring into motion and join the throng, while in its wake there formed a long line of panting animals, brown with dust and sweat, their labors for the moment over.

As it came

So the game continued, hour after hour. There were few falls, but some of them were bad ones, and more than once, when a rider went down, he lay motionless until some of his comrades picked him up and carried him off. One of the horses stumbled as he came over the brow of the hill, and animal and rider went rolling to the bottom of the slope together. Two horses collided fairly at right angles in the pond, and their owners emerged from the shallow water humbled, but at least much cleaner than they had been since some hours before. A fallen horse was shown no mercy. As soon as its owner could pick himself up, he would go at the poor brute viciously with his long-thonged whip, assisted in the administration of punishment by all his immediate neighbors. But this one out

growth of custom was the only indication of cruelty. In spite of the vigor with which the sport was pursued, not one horse among the thousand seemed at any time to be pushed beyond his strength, and during the periods of rest they were zealously watched and watered and cleaned and coddled, with many a sign of mutual affection between horse and rider.

The exhibition of horsemanship was in itself marvellous. It was, of course, straightforward riding, without tricks; but no beginner at polo ever attacked his opponent as recklessly as twenty or thirty of these Asiatics would hurl themselves upon the luckless one who gripped that sheepskin beneath his knee. Any method of stopping him was fair, from grabbing his bridle to a head-on collision at full speed.

Occa

sionally two horsemen were spontaneously left to fight it out among themselves. In one such instance the pair dashed through all the diameter of the arena, and over the hill beyond, he with the sheepskin leading by a neck. His pursuer, with reins flung loose upon his horse's mane and one knee hooked about the pommel of the saddle, had thrown himself far out to the side and fastened both hands upon the trophy. But it was apparently glued to its defender's knee,

and if the pursuing horseman could not be shaken off, neither could the skin be dragged away. Its possessor turned and dodged at full speed, and the second horse followed every move as if by instinct. So

gressions in Central Asia on the part of Russia, once drew a glowing picture of the hordes of Asiatic cavalry which would thus be rendered available at some future day for an assault upon India. One needs but to watch such a game as this to realize the force of his words and the potentiality of these new resources of the Czar. The horses are the tenderly reared descendants of those which carried Tamerlane and his victorious army from Samarcand to the Nile, from the Nile almost to Constantinople, and from Asia Minor to the gates of Moscow, and back again to Samarcand. They are large, strong, and fleet, and full of endurance, showing many traces of Arabian blood, and still more, perhaps, of that of the now almost extinct Turkoman steed. Their sleek coats and rounded bodies show how carefully they are watched over, each one the pride of its owner, who is himself a born horseman and born judge of horseflesh. Add to this the fact that if the native of Central Asia has in the past developed a reputation for fanaticism, he has shown himself no less indisputably brave. Russia needs but the time necessary to train her new subjects, and to render them loyal to herself, to have at her disposal a force the power of which, for such purposes as that of the invasion of Afghanistan, cannot be overestimated. The second of these points, the overcoming of religious and racial prejudice, she has already done much to attain by a surprisingly wise system of paternal government. The first will follow within two or three decades; and when that, too, has been reached, the Czar will have at his disposal a new force, more efficient, more terrible, and almost as numerous, as

they tore through the crowd, utterly oblivious of what lay in their path, whether horseman or water or hillside. Up and over the crest they went, and were lost to view. In a few seconds the attacking rider reappeared, cantering slowly along with the skin in his possession. He pulled up his panting horse, passed the emblem of victory to a friend, and again the sport was in full blast.

We watched the struggle for four hours, so fascinated that the needs of our lunchless bodies were forgotten. Finally, however, someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind, and I looked up to see the Russian chief of police, who was curious as to our nationality and excuse for being in so outof-the way a place as Central Asia, and incidentally desirous of offering us some refreshments. So we were forced to turn our back on a game which for excitement stands easily without a peer, to sit about a prosaic samovar and tell the authorities who we

were.