n."

"So am I," replied the Yankee.

And that was what I was afraid of.

"Same trade?" said I indifferently.

"No. You need not excite yourself. We don't sell the same stuff, sir."

"Claudius Bombarnac, of Bordeaux, is delighted to be on the same road
as--"

"Fulk Ephrinell, of the firm of Strong, Bulbul & Co., of New York City,
New York, U.S.A."

And he really added U.S.A.

We were mutually introduced. I a traveler in news, and he a traveler
in--In what? That I had to find out.

The conversation continues. Ephrinell, as may be supposed, has been
everywhere--and even farther, as he observes. He knows both Americas
and almost all Europe. But this is the first time he has set foot in
Asia. He talks and talks, and always jerks in _Wait a bit_, with
inexhaustible loquacity. Has the Hunson the same properties as the
Garonne?

I listen to him for two hours. I have hardly heard the names of the
stations yelled out at each stop, Saganlong, Poily, and the others. And
I really should have liked to examine the landscape in the soft light
of the moon, and made a few notes on the road.

Fortunately my fellow traveler had already crossed these eastern parts
of Georgia. He pointed out the spots of interest, the villages, the
watercourses, the mountains on the horizon. But I hardly saw them.
Confound these railways! You start, you arrive, and you have seen
nothing on the road!

"No!" I exclaim, "there is none of the charm about it as there is in
traveling by post, in troika, tarantass, with the surprises of the
road, the originality of the inns, the confusion when you change
horses, the glass of vodka of the yemtchiks--and occasionally the
meeting with those honest brigands whose race is nearly extinct."

"Mr. Bombarnac," said Ephrinell to me, "are you serious in regretting
all those fine things?"

"Quite serious," I reply. "With the advantages of the straight line of
railway we lose the picturesqueness of the curved line, or the broken
line of the highways of the past. And, Monsieur Ephrinell, when you
read of traveling in Transcaucasia forty years ago, do you not regret
it? Shall I see one of those villages inhabited by Cossacks who are
soldiers and farmers at one and the same time? Shall I be present at
one of those merry-makings which charm the tourist? those djiquitovkas
with the men upright on their horses, throwing their swords,
discharging their pistols, and escorting you if you are in the company
of some hi