Chapter 6 - Page 2

Annenkof commenced his works at Mikhailov, he was
obliged to distil the water from the Caspian Sea, as if he were on
board ship. But if water is necessary to produce steam, coal is
necessary to vaporize the water. The readers of the _Twentieth Century_
will ask how are the furnaces fed in a country in which there is
neither coal nor wood? Are there stores of these things at the
principal stations of the Transcaspian? Not at all. They have simply
put in practice an idea which occurred to our great chemist,
Sainte-Claire Deville, when first petroleum was used in France. The
furnaces are fed, by the aid of a pulverizing apparatus, with the
residue produced from the distillation of the naphtha, which Baku and
Derbent produce in such inexhaustible quantities. At certain stations
on the line there are vast reservoirs of this combustible mineral, from
which the tenders are filled, and it is burned in specially adapted
fireboxes. In a similar way naphtha is used on the steamboats on the
Volga and the other affluents of the Caspian.

I repeat, the country is not particularly varied. The ground is nearly
flat in the sandy districts, and quite flat in the alluvial plains,
where the brackish water stagnates in pools. Nothing could be better
for a line of railway. There are no cuttings, no embankments, no
viaducts, no works of art--to use a term dear to engineers, very
"dear," I should say. Here and there are a few wooden bridges from two
hundred to three hundred feet long. Under such circumstances the cost
per kilometre of the Transcaspian did not exceed seventy-five thousand
francs.

The monotony of the journey would only be broken on the vast oases of
Merv, Bokhara and Samarkand.

But let us busy ourselves with the passengers, as we can do all the
more easily from our being able to walk from one end to the other of
the train. With a little imagination we can make ourselves believe we
are in a sort of traveling village, and I am just going to take a run
down main street.

Remember that the engine and tender are followed by the van at the
angle of which is placed the mysterious case, and that Popof's
compartment is in the left-hand corner of the platform of the first car.

Inside this car I notice a few Sarthes of tall figure and haughty face,
draped in their long robes of bright colors, from beneath which appear
the braided leather boots. They have splendid eyes, a superb beard,
arched nose, and you would take them for real lords, provided we ignore
the word Sarthe, which means a pedlar, and these were going evidently
to Tachkend, where these pedlars swarm.

In this car the two Chinese have taken their places, opposite each
other. The young Celestial looks out of window. The old