a state he must be! But as it would be unwise for me to enter the van
during the day, I must wait until night.

I must not forget that an interview with the Caternas is included in
the programme. There will be no difficulty in that, apparently.

What will not be so easy is to get into conversation with my No. 12,
his superb lordship Faruskiar. He seems rather stiff, does this
Oriental.

Ah! There is a name I must know as soon as possible, that of the
mandarin returning to China in the form of a mortuary parcel. With a
little ingenuity Popof may manage to ascertain it from one of the
Persians in charge of his Excellency. If it would only be that of some
grand functionary, the Pao-Wang, or the Ko-Wang, or the viceroy of the
two Kiangs, the Prince King in person!

For an hour the train is running through the oasis. We shall soon be in
the open desert. The soil is formed of alluvial beds extending up to
the environs of Merv. I must get accustomed to this monotony of the
journey which will last up to the frontier of Turkestan. Oasis and
desert, desert and oasis. As we approach the Pamir the scenery will
change a little. There are picturesque bits of landscape in that
orographic knot which the Russians have had to cut as Alexander cut the
gordian knot that was worth something to the Macedonian conqueror of
Asia. Here is a good augury for the Russian conquest.

But I must wait for this crossing of the Pamir and its varied scenery.
Beyond lay the interminable plains of Chinese Turkestan, the immense
sandy desert of Gobi, where the monotony of the journey will begin