With the Tadjiks
were mingled specimens of different races who either reside
in Turkestan or whose native countries border on it.
There were Usbecks, red-bearded, small in stature,
similar to those who had pursued Michael. Here were Kirghiz,
with flat faces like the Kalmucks, dressed in coats of mail:
some carried the lance, bows, and arrows of Asiatic manufacture;
some the saber, a matchlock gun, and the "tschakane," a little
short-handled ax, the wounds from which invariably prove fatal.
There were Mongols--of middle height, with black hair plaited
into pigtails, which hung down their back; round faces,
swarthy complexions, lively deep-set eyes, scanty beards--
dressed in blue nankeen trimmed with black plush, sword-belts of
leather with silver buckles, coats gayly braided, and silk
caps edged with fur and three ribbons fluttering behind.
Brown-skinned Afghans, too, might have been seen.
Arabs, having the primitive type of the beautiful Semitic races;
and Turcomans, with eyes which looked as if they had lost
the pupil,--all enrolled under the Emir's flag, the flag
of incendiaries and devastators.
Among these free soldiers were a certain number of slave soldiers,
principally Persians, commanded by officers of the same nation,
and they were certainly not the least esteemed of Feofar-Khan's army.
If to this list are added the Jews, who acted as servants,
their robes confined with a cord, and wearing on their heads instead
of the turban, which is forbidden them, little caps of dark cloth;
if with these groups are mingled some hundreds of "kalenders," a sort
of religious mendicants, clothed in rags, covered by a leopard skin,
some idea may be formed of the enormous agglomerations of different
tribes included under the general denomination of the Tartar army.
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