Later on we discovered there was a wagon lits carriage at the rear of the train (without a single passenger in it), but no restaurant car. Encouraged, I suppose, by the pleasure which he saw depicted on my face at such pleasant news, he went on to give us particulars of our route, by which he said he had just come from Turkestan. He advised us to go by the Black Sea instead of through the Caucasus, saying that the journey from Tashkent to Vienna by that route took not more than _five_ days; the minimum time in reality is seven. He had a Russian time-table, quite a thick volume, which he advised us to purchase; we succeeded in buying one later in the day when the bookstall opened, and although the names were quite a puzzle in Russian characters, it provided us with constant occupation, both in deciphering them, and in fitting together the bits of the route, scattered on at least a dozen different pages. In the station at Kinel they had rather a good sort of map in a large frame on the wall opposite the ticket-office, arranged as under. As there are so few trains it is easier than it would be on our lines, but such a map would be much more intelligible for cheap-trippers than our time-tables. These maps we saw in various places later on. [Illustration] Four hours wore slowly away, and at last the ticket-office opened, and I presented a paper with “Tashkent—2 klacce,” and held up two fingers. Traveling is very cheap here; from Tashkent to Kinel, a distance of 1314 miles, the tickets are approximately first class, £4, 5s. 0d., second class, £2, 10s. 3d., third class, £1, 9s. 0d., fourth class, 14s., but then the train goes like a snail, and stops perpetually. The third and fourth class carriages always seemed to be packed with humanity, and the passengers lie all day, as well as all night long, on shelves one above the other. The fuel used both on this line and on the Trans-Siberian is entirely wood, so they have to be continually taking in a fresh stock, and each carriage has a little room for its own special heating apparatus. The funnels of the engines have large bulbs at the top to prevent the escape of sparks. CHAPTER XVI Into Turkestan