“Traveling toward the east we have passed through a number of villages of neat two-story houses in these narrow walled-in valleys....  The inhabitants are, clearly, of a Mongolian race,—­the homeliest I have ever seen!...  They cultivate but little patches of the land, sit around all day and gain their hollow cheeks and shrunken chests and wrinkled foreheads by squinting at the sun....  Even the women are tiny things with a perpetual smile that pushes up their high cheek bones into a horn-like prominence and apparently belies their apparent gaiety....  The belts of these men are perfect arsenals of curious-looking things....  With their cloth caps with ear flaps hanging down, their knee breeches and their linen shirts hung with a dozen prayer wheels, they characterize this country well....

“...  If it were not apparently made compulsory by law these fellows would not wash their faces once a year....  They seem never to have changed their clothing until it is beginning to fall off their indolent frames....  They are so lazy that their hair falls off their heads....  And I have not yet seen a coat that does not carry the smear of their dirty hair....  That characterizes the MEN....  The WOMEN are altogether different....  They are perfect water rats and like to bathe many times a day....  Their gowns are red, worn like a shirt-waist over well-rounded shoulders, and tucked into green pantaloons at their waist line, over which is thrown an elaborately plaited skirt that reaches to their red embroidered shoes....  A lambskin is thrown over the back ... the hair dressed in Italian fashion ... the veil festooned with beads and coins and trinkets of all description ... an oriental pelisse touched with its fringe of gold....  That’s the type of woman of these silent places we are traversing....  MARIA HAS DISCOVERED THE ORIGIN OF THE BOLSHEVIKI TENET OF FREE LOVE AND MARRIAGE....  Today she explained to her father that the idea was imported into Russia from this country together with the mercenary hordes from a region east of here....  ‘These women,’ she said, ’do not understand what one means by love....  They think it is too great a luxury to be tolerated among self-respecting people....  They believe NO MAN is good enough to monopolize a whole woman to himself....  That sort of MONOPOLY is contrary to the ethics of a first-class Communism everywhere and it must not be tolerated in this blessed Bolsheviki world!’...  ‘Tut-tut!’ said her father.  ’Please discontinue comments on subjects that no longer interest us.’...  Manifestly my ‘prisoner’ is becoming bored by this unending and dreary pilgrimage along the camel route in the direction of the rising sun....  However, his gallantry to Alice is inexaustible, unflagging and unfailing.  If she stubs her toe he wants to kiss the bruise.... Maria’s comment has apparently aroused the hostility of certain personages in this camp....  If I were not positive that the thing could not be possible I’d swear the TALL square-shouldered lama is well known in Constantinople....”