Chapter 3 - Page 2

moon," his gifted romancer, a palace in
which the delicate sculpture is as fresh as it came from the chisel.
Further on rise some slender minarets, and not the bulbous roofs of
Moscow the Holy, at the angles of an old mosque, into which one can
enter without taking off one's boots. True, the muezzin no longer
declaims from it some sonorous verse of the Koran at the hour of
prayer. And yet Baku has portions of it which are real Russian in
manners and aspect, with their wooden houses without a trace of
Oriental color, a railway station of imposing aspect, worthy of a great
city in Europe or America, and at the end of one of the roads, a modern
harbor, the atmosphere of which is foul with the coal smoke vomited
from the steamer funnels.

And, in truth, one asks what they are doing with coal in this town of
naphtha. What is the good of coal when the bare and arid soil of
Apcheron, which grows only the Pontic absinthium, is so rich in mineral
oil? At eighty francs the hundred kilos, it yields naphtha, black or
white, which the exigencies of supply will not exhaust for centuries.

A marvelous phenomenon indeed! Do you want a light or a fire? Nothing
can be simpler; make a hole in the ground, the gas escapes, and you
apply a match. That is a natural gasometer within the reach of all
purses.

I should have liked to visit the famous sanctuary of Atesh Gah; but it
is twenty-two versts from the town, and time failed me. There burns the
eternal fire, kept up for centuries by the Parsee priests from India,
who never touch animal food.

This reminds me that I have not yet breakfasted, and as eleven o'clock
strikes, I make my way to the restaurant at the railway, where I have
no intention of conforming myself to the alimentary code of the Parsees
of Atesh Gah.

As I am entering, Ephrinell rushes out.

"Breakfast?" say I.

"I have had it," he replies.

"And your cases?"

"I have still twenty-nine to get down to the steamer. But, pardon, I
have not a moment to lose. When a man represents the firm of Strong,
Bulbul & Co., who send out every week five thousand cases of their
goods--"

"Go, go, Monsieur Ephrinell, we will meet on board. By the by, you have
not met our traveling companion?"

"What traveling companion?"

"The young lady who took my place in the carriage."

"Was there a young lady with us?"

"Of course."

"Well you are the first to tell me so, Mr. Bombarnac. You are the first
to tell me so."

And thereupon the American goes out of the door and disappears. It is
to be hoped I shall know before we get to Pekin what it is