ouls being thus scattered on the bare sand-hills and
dunes; men of all race, colour, and faith, all employed in the
same fishing pursuit; the Tartars and Calmucks usually as rank
and file, the Russians and other Europeans as overseers, foremen,
and skilled labourers.

From Astrakhan, the queen of the Steppes, to Tiflis the queen of
the Caucasus, we had a choice of routes.

Tourists from England, or from any part of Western Europe, may
easily visit the great mountain-chain on which Prometheus was found,
by crossing the Black Sea from Constantinople or from Odessa, and
landing at Poti, where the Russians have constructed a railway
to Tiflis, once the capital of Georgia, now the residence of the
Governor-General of the whole Caucasus region.

A traveller from the north, bound to the same goal, can take the
train at Moscow, and come down by rail, _via_ Rostov-on-the-Don,
all the way to Vladikavkas, a distance of 1,803 versts; and about
200 additional versts, by post, over a good military road, and
across the main Caucasian chain, will bring him from Vladikavkas
to Tiflis.

But we had descended the Volga, and were now near its mouth. We
had to go down the Volga to the Nine Feet Station below Astrakhan,
embark there on the Caspian Sea, and cross over either to Baku,
whence we could go by post round the mountain-chain at its southern
extremity as far as Tiflis; or land at Petrofsk, and travel along
the chain to Vladikavkas and the good military road across the
chain to Tiflis.

We gave our preference to the last-named route.

We left Astrakhan at ten in the evening on board a heavy barge
belonging to the Caucasus and Mercury steam-navigation company,
towed by a tug down stream at the rate of five or six miles an
hour.

We were all that afternoon and night, and part of the following
day, descending the main channel of the Volga, and it was past
noon before we reached the Nine Feet Station, for so they call
the roadstead above which vessels of more than nine feet draught
dare not venture.

All sight of land, of the seventy larger islands of the Delta,
and even of the minor islets, and of the lowest sand-banks, had
been lost for several hours, and we were here in the open sea,
though scarcely beyond the boundary that the Creator has elsewhere
fixed between land and water. For the Station which, if I can allow
myself an apparent Irishism, is a moveable one, has to be pushed
forward almost day by day as the sands of th