In the meantime my companions were beginning to recite aloud passages from the Koran, and to chant telkins (hymns), as is seemly for genuine pilgrims to do. They excused me from taking part in these, as they knew that the Roumis (Osmanli) were not so strictly and religiously educated as the people in Turkestan; and they besides hoped that I should receive the necessary inspiration by contact with their society. I followed them at a slow pace, and will { 22} now endeavour to give a description of them, for the double motive that we are to travel so long together and that they are in reality the most honest people I shall ever meet with in those parts. There were, then,
[The Component Members of Karavan described]
1. _Hadji Bilal_, from Aksu (Chinese Tartary), and Court Iman of the Chinese Musselman Governor of the same province: with him were his adopted sons,
2. _Hadji Isa_, a lad in his sixteenth year; and
3. _Hadji Abdul Kader_, before mentioned, in the company, and so to say under the protection, of Hadji Bilal. There were besides,
4. _Hadji Yusuf_, a rich Chinese Tartar peasant; with his nephew,
5. _Hadji Ali_, a lad in his tenth year, with little, diminutive, Kirghish eyes. The last two had eighty ducats for their travelling expenses, and, therefore, were styled rich; still this was kept a secret: they hired a horse for joint use, and when one was riding the other walked.
6. _Hadji Amed_, a poor Mollah, who performed his pilgrimage leaning upon his beggar's staff. Similar in character and position was
7. _Hadji Hasan_, whose father had died on the journey, and who was returning home an orphan;
8. _Hadji Yakoub_, a mendicant by profession, a profession inherited by him from his father;
9. _Hadji Kurban_ (senior), a peasant by birth, who as a knife-grinder had traversed the whole of Asia, had been as far as Constantinople and Mecca, had visited upon occasions Thibet and Calcutta, and twice the Kirghish Steppes, to Orenburg and Taganrok;
10. _Hadji Kurban_, who also had lost his father and brother on the journey;
12. _Hadji Abdur Rahman_, an infirm lad of the age of fourteen years, whose feet were badly frozen in the snow of Hamadan, and who suffered fearfully the whole way to Samarcand.