SART SCHOOLS

is the result. So much was I struck with this on
my first visit to a Sart school that I pondered more
deeply on the remarkable understanding for colour,
of which the caps were a proof, than on the method
of instruction I had come there to inspect. Wishing
to convey to my friends at home some idea of what
it was impossible satisfactorily to describe, I resolved
then and there to take home to England an assort-
ment of these unique head-coverings, and I kept my
resolution by purchasing, later on, at least twenty of
them in the cap bazaar at Samarkand.
The sleepy-looking schoolmaster brightens up
occasionally to give some inattentive pupil a warn-
ing tap with the end of a long stick he has in readi-
ness. The books from which they are learning are
lithographed, and have come all the way from Kazan,
the ancient Tatir capital.  School begins each
morning as soon as the second prayer is over, and
goes on till sunset, with a pause in the middle of the
day for lunch, which consists of a piece of bread
and a little fruit, which each child has brought with
him. The school week begins on Saturday morning
and ends on Thursday evening. There is no dis-
tinction of classes in Sart schools, children of rich
and poor learn side by side; the very poor never
send their children to school at all. The school-
master gets no regular salary; he subsists on what
the parents see fit to give him in the way of presents.
When a boy has progressed so far as to be able to