A pleasant prospect, certainly, for a journey of several thousand miles! but happily, the reality is less formidable than it has been painted. My first essay of the new belt, indeed, vividly recalls Mr Ainsworth's graphic description of the "Skevington's Irons" as applied to Guy Fawkes; but, although I afterwards wore it on the road for days together, I suffered little inconvenience after the first week.

I shall not burden my readers with the details of my final preparation, which was fatiguing enough at the time to need no rehearsal. It appears to be an immutable law of nature, that every man who equips himself with particular care for a long journey, should omit fully half-a-dozen things which he particularly wants, and take with him at least as many which he does not. Suffice it to say, that after several days of perpetual disquiet, I find myself well enough provided to get as far as Orenburg with perfect comfort. The only remaining essentials are a complete military map of Central Asia, and letters of recommendation to the Commander-in-Chief from the resident authorities; and a week suffices to obtain both.

Two days later, my real journey commences.

CHAPTER III.

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY.

"YOUR honour, the horses are ready!"

At my elbow, as I sit over my omelette and café au lait in the coffee-room of the Hotel de l'Europe, stands a tall, gaunt, hard-featured man in uniform (with a trumpet as long and narrow as himself), uttering the cabalistic words which are to ring in my ears at every turn for many a day to come. I glance through the open window, and espy, amid an admiring crowd of every type, from the aquiline Georgian to the bun-faced Tartar, three rough-looking post-horses, and a nondescript conveyance like the top of a bathing-machine knocked into the bottom of a butcher's cart-the idea of any one sitting in it having evidently never occurred to the constructor. Often and often, during the enforced inaction of the last six weeks, have I longed for such a sight; and yet, now that it is actually here, the contrast is so glaring between the cool, shady room within, and the bare, scorching, dusty square without, that, for one moment, I almost repent.

"You're going to travel en grand seigneur this time," says Captain K—, biggest and jolliest of Tiflis officers, with a jovial grin on his broad florid face; "but you

mustn't expect this sort of thing all the way to Khiva. After you get fairly out on the steppes beyond the Ural, you'll have to carry all your own food and water along with you, and go forty versts or more from one well to another, and jolt along all day on the back of a camel, and sleep on the ground with a rug over you; and if you ever come back alive, it'll be something to talk about. Good-bye-pleasant journey!"

I inwardly wonder why on earth one's friends always comfort one, at the outset of a journey, with the rehearsal of all possible accidents which may occur en route. But there is no time to moralise; the driver shakes his reins, the conductor performs a solo on his horn that might arouse the seven sleepers of Ephesus

"The stones do rattle underneath,

As if Tiflis were mad❞—

and away we go.

Certainly Dr Johnson had some reason on his side when he placed the acmé of human enjoyment in being whirled along by a post-chaise. Flying at full speed over a splendid military road, with the fresh mountain breeze stirring my blood like the breath of life, the rich summer blue of the sky overhead, and the glorious panorama of the Central Caucasus outspread on every side as far as the eye can reach, I have nothing left to desire. And with every hour the surrounding scenery becomes more and more magnificent. Smooth sloping hillsides at first, crested with waving trees and dappled with flocks of goats; then bolder and bleaker ridges,

rising ever higher, and steeper, and darker, with here and there the skeleton of some ancient Georgian castle hanging, shadow-like, upon the very brink of a black scowling precipice. Then, towards nightfall, a great amphitheatre of green plain, bulwarked by purple mountains, through the passes of which the slanting sunlight streams in a sea of glory; and with the last gleam of daylight, we plunge among the hills once more.

Night comes on, and my conductor-who, despite his seasoned look, is neither physically nor morally a Hercules of twelve labours—begins to drop very intelligible hints about the propriety of halting till morning at the station which we have just reached. But the vision of a late arrival and a lost steamer goad me like Io's gadfly, and I give orders, in the tone of Cæsar's “Jacta est alea," for fresh horses, and an instant departure. However, Fate ordains otherwise. The words are hardly spoken, when the gleam of a passing lantern flashes upon a moustached face and military cap, while a familiar voice shouts through the darkness

*

"Is that you, David Stepanovitch? I thought nobody else could be so mad as to think of going on with this sky. Just look at it, and see! You had better come in and have some tea with me, instead of killing yourself for nothing."

I look up, and cannot but own that he is right. The bright southern moonlight has vanished in a huge mass of inky cloud, while the deadly stillness of the whole

* The customary address in Russia, even from a servant, is by one's own name and that of one's father.

atmosphere is ominous of coming evil.

While I am still hesitating, my impatient conductor strikes in on the side of his new ally.

"Ach, David Stepanovitch! can't you listen to reason? The gentleman's right; it would be a sin to think of it in such weather. Get in quick, before it begins."

I allow myself to be hurried into the post-house, and not a whit too soon. We are barely inside, when suddenly everything becomes bright as at noonday; the quaint little cross-beamed room, the knives and glasses on the table, the white faces of the inmates, the picture of the saint in the farther corner, the dim waste of mountains outside, are all terribly distinct for one moment, and then blotted out again. Then comes a clap of thunder that seems to split the very sky, and instantly the whole fury of the storm breaks loose. The wind howls and shrieks, and shakes the strong timbers till they groan, and the heavy bullets of rain come rattling upon the roof, and the thunder roars and bangs overhead, and flash after flash lights up the pouring sky and the tossing forest, only to plunge them into deeper darkness. And then, on a sudden, the uproar ceases, and the clouds roll away, and the full moon breaks out once more, and we harness our horses, and go forward again, through miry roads and dripping forests, while the mountain torrents, swollen by the rain, roar hoarsely far away below.

And so the night wears on, and we mount ever higher and higher, gradually leaving all trace of vegetation