TASHKENT AND SAMARKAND             239
chambres garnis, as we were obliged to do. New
arrivals, coming to stay, are received as guests in
the houses of people to whom they have brought
introductions, official or otherwise, from the home
country, until they can settle down in houses of
their own. They in their turn are ready to show
a similar kindness to others. Russian hospitality
is deservedly proverbial. I shiver to think how we
should have fared had we not found it so. The
food we paid for was always atrociously cooked,
and invariably stuck fast to our plates in cold
mutton fat before we had eaten two mouthfuls. But
happily for us, we rarely lunched or dined at home,
so many were the kind invitations we received, not
only in Tashkent but in every Russian town.
The Russian streets, as I have said, were wide
and empty, but we found the native ones narrow
and full, and there was plenty to see and learn as
we strolled in the matting-covered bazaar with its
4500 booths, or visited the homes of rich and poor
in turn. We found mounted Russian policemen
keeping order at the crossings, and thus preventing
the collisions that would have otherwise been un-
avoidable between strings of camels, native carts,
and Russian droshkies; but the thing that impressed
us most, both in the Old Tashkent and the New,
was the extraordinary depth of the liquid mud
which made it out of the question to think of cross-
ing any street on foot.