After dinner we regretfully set out for the station to pursue our way to the still more attractive city of Samarkand. The train was crowded, but as we arrived in good time we secured a coupé to ourselves, a most important matter with a journey of some fourteen hours before us. During the night we heard a crash of glass in the adjoining carriage; evidently it was merely accidental, for we heard nothing further; but it accounted for the rigid scrutiny to which the railway carriages are continually submitted in the course of every journey by the conductors, who keep the compartments always locked when unoccupied. One is never allowed to forget the hateful system of espionage, that has been brought to a rare perfection throughout the Russian Empire. CHAPTER XVIII The Home of Tamerlane We awoke next morning to find ourselves in a grey desolate wilderness, as bare as the Hunger Desert. The lovely gardens full of fruit-trees characterising Tashkent extend for some distance round the city, and then comes a dull expanse of desert which, when seen through sheets of rain, is the acme of dreariness. When we reached the end of our railway journey we found, as usual, that the station was some miles away from our destination, Samarkand, and we drove through oceans of mud under a pelting rain to the Grand Hotel, a nice new house where the rooms looked out on to a little garden. To our relief our host and hostess had a limited acquaintance with the German language, so that we were able to make our wishes known, the main one being for thorough washing accommodation. We were taken to see a fine bath-room, and arranged to have the stove at once lighted, for it is something of a function to have a bath in Russia, and cannot be achieved under a couple of hours; our host was evidently very proud of possessing a bath-room, and we spent a happy afternoon getting rid of all traces of our eleven days and nights of travel.