of the three holidays that follow the Mohammedan Lent. About noon the chief of police came to our hotel, by direction of the governor, to make our acquaintance and to show us about the city, and under his guidance we spent two or three hours in examining the great Tatár mosque and making ceremonious calls upon mullas and Tatár officials. He then asked us if we would not like to see a Tatár and Kírghis wrestling match. We replied, of course, in the affirmative, and were driven at once in his droshky to an open sandy common at the eastern end of the city, where we found a great crowd assembled and where the wrestling had already begun. The dense throng of spectators—mostly Kírghis and Tatárs—was arranged in concentric circles around an open space twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter. The inner circle was formed by two or three lines of men, squatting on their heels; then came three or four lines of standing men, and behind the latter was a close circle of horsemen sitting in their saddles, and representing the gallery. The chief of police made a way for us through the crowd to the inner circle, where we took orchestra seats in the sand under a blazing sun and in a cloud of fine dust raised by the wrestlers. The crowd, as we soon discovered, was divided into two hostile camps, consisting respectively of Kírghis and Tatárs. Ours was the Kírghis side, and opposite us were the Tatárs. There were four masters of ceremonies, who were dressed in long green khaláts, and carried rattan wands. The two Tatár officials would select a champion in their corner, throw a sash over his head, pull him out into the arena, and then challenge the Kírghis officials to match him. The latter would soon find a man about equal to the Tatár champion in size and weight, and then the two contestants would prepare for the struggle. The first bout after we arrived was between a good-looking, smooth-faced young Kírghis, who wore a blue skull-cap and a red sash, and an athletic, heavily built Tatár, in a yellow skull-cap and a green sash. They eyed each other warily
