ere is one going out, formed of
traders in Persia and Russian Turkestan. I should like to arrive with
one and depart with the other. That is not possible, and I am sorry for
it. Since the establishment of the Transasiatic railways, it is not
often that you can meet with those interminable and picturesque lines
of horsemen, pedestrians, horses, camels, asses, carts. Bah! I have no
fear that my journey across Central Asia will fail for want of
interest. A special correspondent of the _Twentieth Century_ will know
how to make it interesting.

Here now are the bazaars with the thousand products of Persia, China,
Turkey, Siberia, Mongolia. There is a profusion of the fabrics of
Teheran, Shiraz, Kandahar, Kabul, carpets marvelous in weaving and
colors, silks, which are not worth as much as those of Lyons.

Will I buy any? No; to embarrass oneself with packages on a trip from
the Caspian to the Celestial Empire, never! The little portmanteau I
can carry in my hand, the bag slung across my shoulders, and a
traveling suit will be enough for me. Linen? I will get it on the road,
in English fashion.

Let us stop in front of the famous baths of Tiflis, the thermal waters
of which attain a temperature of 60 degrees centigrade. There you will
find in use the highest development of massage, the suppling of the
spine, the cracking of the joints. I remember what was said by our
great Dumas whose peregrinations were never devoid of incidents; he
invented them when he wanted them, that genial precursor of
high-pressure correspondence! But I have no time to be shampooed, or to
be cracked or suppled.

Stop! The Hotel de France. Where is there not a Hotel de France? I
enter, I order breakfast--a Georgian breakfast watered with a certain
Kachelie wine, which is said to never make you drunk, that is, if you
do not sniff up as much as you drink in using the large-necked bottles
into which you dip your nose before your lips. At least that is the
proceeding dear to the natives of Transcaucasia. As to the Russians,
who are generally sober, the infusion of tea is enough for them, not
without a certain addition of vodka, which is the Muscovite brandy.

I, a Frenchman, and even a Gascon, am content to drink my bottle of
Kachelie, as we drank our Chateau Laffite, in those regretted days,
when the sun still distilled it on the hillsides of Pauillac. In truth
this Caucasian wine, although rather sour, accompanied by the boiled
fowl, known as pilau