, worthless fellow, who had no regular, respectable means
of gaining a livelihood, but among the men of less rigid principles he
was a general favourite. As he spoke Russian fluently I could converse
with him freely without the aid of an interpreter, and he willingly
placed his store of knowledge at my disposal. When in the company of the
akhun he was always solemn and taciturn, but as soon as he was relieved
of that dignitary's presence he became lively and communicative.

Another of my new acquaintances was equally useful to me in another way.
This was Mehemet Zian, who was not so intelligent as Abdullah, but
much more sympathetic. In his open, honest face, and kindly, unaffected
manner there was something so irresistibly attractive that before I had
known him twenty-four hours a sort of friendship had sprung up between
us. He was a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man, with features that
suggested a mixture of European blood. Though already past middle
age, he was still wiry and active--so active that he could, when on
horseback, pick a stone off the ground without dismounting. He could,
however, no longer perform this feat at full gallop, as he had been wont
to do in his youth. His geographical knowledge was extremely limited and
inaccurate--his mind being in this respect like those old Russian maps
in which the nations of the earth and a good many peoples who had
never more than a mythical existence are jumbled together in
hopeless confusion--but his geographical curiosity was insatiable. My
travelling-map--the first thing of the kind he had ever seen--interested
him deeply. When he found that by simply examining it and glancing at my
compass I could tell him the direction and distance of places he
knew, his face was like that of a child who sees for the first time
a conjuror's performance; and when I explained the trick to him, and
taught him to calculate the distance to Bokhara--the sacred city of
the Mussulmans of that region--his delight was unbounded. Gradually I
perceived that to possess such a map had become the great object of his
ambition. Unfortunately I could not at once gratify him as I should have
wished, because I had a long journey before me and I had no other map
of the region, but I promised to find ways and means of sending him one,
and I kept my word by means of a native of the Karalyk district whom I
discovered in Samara. I did not add a compass because I could not find
one in the town, and it wo