We were much pleased with the way our carriages and corridors were cleaned out daily while we were stopping at stations. A little army of women swarmed into the train directly it stopped, provided with buckets of hot water, and they washed out the whole place quite efficaciously and with great rapidity. It is really much better to have oilcloth on the floors rather than carpet, for the sake of cleanliness. The dusting of the carriages was done every morning by the attendant after he had made the beds, and he kept them quite nice and tidy. The one thing that provoked me through all our travelling in Russia, however, was the fact that the attendants had keys which opened all the bolts, so that they could come in whenever they choose, and the art of knocking before entering was unknown to most of them. They generally seemed to select the most inappropriate moment for coming in, when one was either dressing or undressing; but fortunately all travelling tends to blunt one’s susceptibilities on such points. The ninth day after leaving Kharbin we reached Kinel, the next station before reaching Samara, the real junction for the Turkestan line. There was only a small margin of time allowed for changing train there, so we decided it was better to have to wait unduly long at Kinel, rather than run the risk of missing our train and waiting twenty-four hours for the next one. We got out at a most dreary hour, which seems to be rather frequently the case on Russian railways, considering how few are the trains; it was between one and two o’clock in the morning, and our baggage was deposited in the ladies’ waiting-room, where we found the only sofa filled with babies. A considerable number of passengers had their luggage in the adjoining restaurant, where they slept or smoked. The atmosphere was decidedly trying, so I spent most of the time pacing up and down the platform, watching the dawn grow, for even at that early hour there was a broad belt of orange light lying along the horizon. At fitful intervals one and another of the passengers would come out for a breath of fresh air, or order drinks from the somnolent attendants. It appeared to be the natural thing for people to be spending the night at the station, though no train disturbed the peace of the place for several hours. Not one of the officials seemed able to speak or understand any language but Russian, so I addressed a young German tourist to ask for information. He told me that there were no sleeping berths on the summer trains for Tashkent, the “wagon lits” service being suspended on the first of May, but that we should find the ordinary carriages thoroughly comfortable, the second class quite as good as the first (in which we proved him to be correct), for all the trains are arranged with a view to night travelling. He also told us that instead of the journey taking five days (as we had been informed when we made inquiries at Peking), it would only take three.