till the last apple had disappeared into the
darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl
from one of the impudent animals.

The night seemed endless, but at length the day dawned between the
poplars, and the jackals jumped quietly over the wall. Then I should
have liked some breakfast, but there was not a bit of the supper left;
the jackals had taken it all. However, I had a sound sleep instead. I
heard afterwards that the jackals in that country are so vicious that
two or three of them will attack a man, so in future I always had my
servants sleeping near me.

While speaking of jackals we must not forget the hyaena, for this animal
is one of the denizens of the desert, though it is of another genus. The
hyaena is a singular animal, neither dog nor cat, but a mixture of both
and larger than either. It is of a dirty greyish-brown colour with black
stripes or patches, has a rounded head with black muzzle and eyes, and
short hind legs, so that the bristly back slopes downwards. It prowls
about for food at night, and in western Persia comes down from its
hiding-places in the mountains to the caravan roads in quest of fallen
asses, horses and camels. If corpses are not buried deep enough it
scratches them up from beneath the tombstones, for it lives almost
exclusively on dead and corrupted flesh.

Thus the four-footed inhabitants of the desert prowl around the
outskirts of Tebbes and share the country with panthers, wild asses and
graceful elegant gazelles. Tebbes itself lies lonely and forgotten like
an island in the ocean.

The principal caravan road connecting the oasis with the outer world
runs north-eastwards to the holy town of Meshed, whither many pilgrims
flock. From Meshed it is only a few days' journey through a mountainous
tract to the frontier between Persia and Russian Asia. There lie
Transcaspia, Samarcand, Bukhara, Turkestan, and the Kirghiz Steppe. This
road would take us out of our way to India, but while we halt at Tebbes
I can tell you something about the country it passes through.

V

ON THE KIRGHIZ STEPPE (1893-5)

INTO ASIA FROM ORENBURG

I started my journey across the Kirghiz Steppe in November, 1893, from
Orenburg on the Ural River, which for some distance forms the boundary
between Asia and Europe. I travelled in a stout _tarantass_, the common
means of conveyance on Russian country roads; it consists of a sort of a
box on two bars between the wheel axles,