oin in their conversation if they make me
any advances, but I had better maintain a certain reserve; the journey
has only begun.

I then visit the dining car. It is a third longer than the other cars,
a regular dining room, with one long table. At the back is a pantry on
one side, a kitchen on the other, where the cook and steward are at
work, both of them Russians. This dining car appears to me capitally
arranged. Passing through it, I reach the second part of the train,
where the second-class passengers are installed. Kirghizes who do not
look very intelligent with their depressed heads, their prognathous
jaws stuck well out in front, their little beards, flat Cossack noses
and very brown skins. These wretched fellows are Mahometans and belong
either to the Grand Horde wandering on the frontier between China and
Siberia, or to the Little Horde between the Ural Mountains and the Aral
Sea. A second-class car, or even a third-class car, is a palace for
these people, accustomed to the encampments on the Steppes, to the
miserable "iourts" of villages. Neither their beds nor their seats are
as good as the stuffed benches on which they have seated themselves
with true Asiatic gravity.

With them are two or three Nogais going to Eastern Turkestan. Of a
higher race than the Kirghizes, being Tartars, it is from them that
come the learned men and professors who have made illustrious the
opulent cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. But science and its teaching
do not yield much of a livelihood, even when reduced to the mere
necessaries of life, in these provinces of Central Asia. And so these
Nogais take employment as interpreters. Unfortunately, since the
diffusion of the Russian language, their trade is not very remunerative.

Now I know the places of my numbers, and I know where to find them when
I want them. As to those going through to Pekin, I have no doubt of
Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett nor the German baron, nor the two
Chinese, nor Major Noltitz, nor the Caternas, nor even for the haughty
gentleman whose bony outline I perceive in the corner of the second car.

As to these travelers who are not going across the frontier, they are
of most perfect insignificance in my eyes. But among my companions I
have not yet found the hero of my chronicle! let us hope he will
declare himself as we proceed.

My intention is to take notes hour by hour--what did I say? To "minute"
my journey. Before the night closes in I go out on t