Know, then, that the verst is two-thirds of a mile, that the different
nomadic people of the governments of Transcaucasia are composed of
Kalmucks, descendants of the Eleuthes, fifteen thousand, Kirghizes of
Mussulman origin eight thousand, Koundrof Tartars eleven hundred,
Sartof Tartars a hundred and twelve, Nogais eight thousand five
hundred, Turkomans nearly four thousand.

And thus, after having so minutely absorbed my Georgia, here was this
ukase obliging me to abandon it! And I should not even have time to
visit Mount Ararat or publish my impressions of a journey in
Transcaucasia, losing a thousand lines of copy at the least, and for
which I had at my disposal the 32,000 words of my language actually
recognized by the French Academy.

It was hard, but there was no way out of it. And to begin with, at what
o'clock did the train for Tiflis start from the Caspian?

The station at Tiflis is the junction of three lines of railway: the
western line ending at Poti on the Black Sea, where the passengers land
coming from Europe, the eastern line which ends at Baku, where the
passengers embark to cross the Caspian, and the line which the Russians
have just made for a length of about a hundred miles between
Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia, from Vladikarkaz to Tiflis, crossing the
Arkhot range at a height of four thousand five hundred feet, and which
connects the Georgian capital with the railways of Southern Russia.

I went to the railway station at a run, and rushed into the departure
office.

"When is there a train for Baku?" I asked.