My car has come back, and is running well, but the weather has been cold and stormy, with snow drifting in from the hills. I took Mme. Derfelden and her husband to Kajura to-day. Now that I have the car everyone wants me to work with them. The difficulty of transport is indescribable. Without a car is like being without a leg. One simply can't get about. In order to get a seat on a train people walk up the line and bribe the officials at the place where it is standing to allow them to get on board.{11} CHAPTER IV ON THE PERSIAN FRONT _8 February._--A "platteforme" having been found for my car, I and M. Ignatieff of the Red Cross started for Baku to-day. We found our little party at the Metropole Hotel. Went to the MacDonell's to lunch. He is Consul. They are quite charming people, and their little flat was open to us all the time we were at Baku. The place itself is wind-blown and fly-blown and brown, but the harbour is very pretty, with its crowds of shipping, painted with red hulls, which make a nice bit of colour in the general drab of the hills and the town. There are no gardens and no trees, and all enterprise in the way of town-planning and the like is impossible owing to the Russian habit of cheating. They have tried for sixteen years to start electric trams, but everyone wants too much for his own pocket. The morals become dingier and dingier as one gets nearer Tartar influence, and no shame is thought of it. Most of the stories one hears would blister the pages of a diary. When a house of ill-fame is opened it is publicly blessed by the priest! _Kasvin. 18 February._.--We spent a week at Baku and grumbled all the time, although really we were not at all unhappy. The MacDonells were always with us, and we had good games of bridge with Ignatieff in the evenings. We went to see the oil city at Baku, and one day we motored to the far larger one further out. One of the directors, an Armenian, went with us, and gave us at his house the very largest lunch I have ever seen. It began with many plates of zakouska (hors d'oeuvres), and went on to a cold entree of cream and chickens' livers; then grilled salmon, with some excellent sauce, and a salad of beetroot and cranberries. This was followed by an entree of kidneys, and then we came to soup, the best I have ever eaten; after soup, roast turkey, followed by chicken pilau, sweets and cheese. It was impossible even to taste all the things, but the Georgian cook must have been a "cordon bleu."