Chapter 4

I am always suspicious of a traveler's "impressions." These impressions
are subjective--a word I use because it is the fashion, although I am
not quite sure what it means. A cheerful man looks at things
cheerfully, a sorrowful man looks at them sorrowfully. Democritus would
have found something enchanting about the banks of the Jordan and the
shores of the Dead Sea. Heraclitus would have found something
disagreeable about the Bay of Naples and the beach of the Bosphorus. I
am of a happy nature--you must really pardon me if I am rather
egotistic in this history, for it is so seldom that an author's
personality is so mixed up with what he is writing about--like Hugo,
Dumas, Lamartine, and so many others. Shakespeare is an exception, and
I am not Shakespeare--and, as far as that goes, I am not Lamartine, nor
Dumas, nor Hugo.

However, opposed as I am to the doctrines of Schopenhauer and Leopardi,
I will admit that the shores of the Caspian did seem rather gloomy and
dispiriting. There seemed to be nothing alive on the coast; no
vegetation, no birds. There was nothing to make you think you were on a
great sea. True, the Caspian is only a lake about eighty feet below the
level of the Mediterranean, but this lake is often troubled by violent
storms. A ship cannot "get away," as sailors say: it is only about a
hundred leagues wide. The coast is quickly reached eastward or
westward, and harbors of refuge are not numerous on either the Asiatic
or the European side.

There are a hundred passengers on board the _Astara_--a large number of
them Caucasians trading with Turkestan, and who will be with us all the
way to the eastern provinces of the Celestial Empire.

For some years now the Transcaspian has been running between Uzun Ada
and the Chinese frontier. Even between this part and Samarkand it has
no less than sixty-three stations; and it is in this section of the
line that most of the passengers will alight. I need not worry about
them, and I will lose no time in studying them. Suppose one of them
proves interesting, I may pump him and peg away at him, and just at the
critical moment he will get out.

No! All my attention I must devote to those who are going through with
me. I have already secured Ephrinell, and perhaps that charming
Englishwoman, who seems to me to be going to Pekin. I shall meet with
other traveling companions at Uzun Ada. With regard to the French
couple, there is nothing more at present, but the passage of the
Caspian will not be accomplished before I know something about them.
There are also these two Chinamen who are evidently going to China. If
I only knew a hundred words of the "Kouan-hoa," which is the language
spoken in the Celestial