[11] Djouma answers to our Sabbath.  The days of the Mahomedan week are as follows:  Shambi, Saturday; Ikhshamba, Sunday; Doushamba, Monday; Seshamba, Tuesday; Tchershamba, Wednesday; Pkhanshamba, Thursday; Djouma, Friday.

A vernal day was fading into evening, and all the inhabitants, attracted rather by the coolness of the breeze than by any feeling of curiosity, had quitted their saklas,[12] and assembled in crowds on both sides of the road.  The women, without veils, and with coloured kerchiefs rolled like turbans round their heads, clad in the long chemise,[13] confined by the short arkhaloukh, and wide toumans,[14] sat in rows, while strings of children sported before them.  The men, assembled in little groups, stood, or rested on their knees;[15] others, in twos or threes, walked slowly round, smoking tobacco in little wooden pipes:  a cheerful buzz arose, and ever and anon resounded the clattering of hoofs, and the cry “katch, katch!” (make way!) from the horsemen preparing for the race.

     [12] Sakla, a Circassian hut.

     [13] A species of garment, resembling a frock-coat with an
     upright collar, reaching to the knees, fixed in front by hooks
     and eyes, worn by both sexes.

[14] The trowsers of the women:  those worn by the men, though alike in form, are called shalwars.  It is an offence to tell a man that he wears the touman; being equivalent to a charge of effeminacy; and vice versa.

     [15] It is the ordinary manner of the Asiatics to sit in this
     manner in public, or in the presence of a superior.

Nature, in Daghestan, is most lovely in the month of May.  Millions of roses poured their blushes over the crags; their odour was streaming in the air; the nightingale was not silent in the green twilight of the wood, almond-trees, all silvered with their flowers, arose like the cupolas of a pagoda, and resembled, with their lofty branches twined with leaves, the minarets of some Mussulman mosque.  Broad-breasted oaks, like sturdy old warriors, rose here and there, while poplars and chenart-trees, assembled in groups and surrounded by underwood, looked like children ready to wander away to the mountains, to escape the summer heats.  Sportive flocks of sheep—­their fleeces speckled with rose-colour; buffaloes wallowing in the mud of the fountains, or for hours together lazily butting each other with their horns; here and there on the mountains noble steeds, which moved (their manes floating on the breeze) with a haughty trot along the hills—­such is the frame that encloses the picture of every Mussulman village.  On this Djouma, the neighbourhood of Bouinaki was more than usually animated.  The sun poured his floods of gold on the dark walls of the flat-roofed saklas, clothing them with fantastic shadows, and adding beauty to their forms.  In the distance, crawling along the mountain, the creaking arbas[16] flitted among the grave-stones of a little burial-ground ... past them, before them, flew a horseman, raising the dust along the road ... the mountain crest and the boundless sea gave grandeur to this picture, and all nature breathed a glow of life.