xchanged a few words in Chinese.

But I noted rather a strange circumstance which did not escape the
major.

We were talking about the safety of the Grand Transasiatic across
Central Asia, and Pan Chao had said that the road was not so safe as it
might be beyond the Turkestan frontier, as, in fact, Major Noltitz had
told me. I was then led to ask if he had ever heard of the famous Ki
Tsang before his departure from Europe.

"Often," he said, "for Ki Tsang was then in the Yunnan provinces. I
hope we shall not meet him on our road."

My pronunciation of the name of the famous bandit was evidently
incorrect, for I hardly understood Pan Chao when he repeated it with
the accent of his native tongue.

But one thing I can say, and that is that when he uttered the name of
Ki Tsang, Faruskiar knitted his brows and his eyes flashed. Then, with
a look at his companion, he resumed his habitual indifference to all
that was being said around him.

Assuredly I shall have some difficulty in making the acquaintance of
this man. These Mongols are as close as a safe, and when you have not
the word it is difficult to open them.

The train is running at high speed. In the ordinary service, when it
stops at the eleven stations between Bokhara and Samarkand, it takes a
whole day over the distance. This time it took but three hours to cover
the two hundred kilometres which separate the two towns, and at two
o'clock in the afternoon it entered the illustrious city of Tamerlane.

CHAPTER XII.

Samarkand is situated in the rich oasis watered by the Zarafchane in
the valley of Sogd. A small pamphlet I bought at the railway station
informs me that this great city is one of the four sites in which
geographers "agree" to place the terrestrial paradise. I leave this
discussion to the exegetists of the profession.

Burned by the armies of Cyrus in B.C. 329, Samarkand was in part
destroyed by Genghis Khan, about 1219. When it had become the capital
of Tamerlane, its position, which certainly could not be improved upon,
did not prevent its being ravaged by the nomads of the eighteenth
century. Such alternations of grandeur and ruin have been the fate of
all the important towns of Central Asia.

We had five hours to stop at Samarkand during the day, and that
promised something pleasant and several pages of copy. But there was no
time to lose. As usual, the town is double; one half, built by the
Russians, is quite modern, with its ver