Next morning we intended taking an early train on the little branch line to Bokhara, but the heat was oppressive, so we delayed till the afternoon when the air was somewhat cooled by thunder rain. Bokhara is said to be intolerably hot, quite different from Kazan, though only eight miles distant. The fields of grain looked green and fresh, and already the crops were beginning to be cut, the deep blue of the cornflowers glinting among them. The train runs between Kazan and Bokhara half-a-dozen times per day. On our arrival there we saw the truth of what we had been told, that Bokhara was not a place where Europeans could stay, for there are only small caravanserais and no hotel, but there are some Russian buildings outside the city walls, including a fine bank. The old walls enclose a large city, but as we made our way through its narrow streets we were struck with the absence of population, such a striking contrast from Samarkand. At the gate were Sart guards and a row of fixed bayonets hung on the wall of the guard house. Here we were no longer in Russian territory, for the province of Bokhara, 100,000 square miles in extent, cuts like a wedge through Turkestan, and is a vassal state of the Russian Empire. It only boasts two cities of importance, Bokhara and Khiva, and is ruled by the Amir. The Government is a hereditary despotism, with absolute power of life and death. Russia, however, keeps a jealous eye upon its affairs, and when two native missionaries (under the auspices of the Swedish Mission) had been working there some time ago, the Russian authorities insisted upon their being sent out of the country. Since then no mission work is allowed to exist, for it is hardly possible to call by such a name what is being done by the Orthodox Church, its work aiming rather at political than spiritual results; at least so we were told by a Russian lady. It has no definite mission as in Siberia for the Mohammedans. I met this lady in the street, and she stopped me to inquire if I happened to be Miss C.; she had been asked to look out for her, the only address furnished being “Central Asia.” She proved to be a Red Cross nurse, travelling in Central Asia with the object of doing work for the Bible Society, and ascertaining what opening there was for mission work. Her nationality and right of entrance into all Government hospitals gave her special facility for doing this, and she found the people quite friendly and inclined to talk on religious topics, but the officials stood in the way. The Russian Consul told her frankly he didn’t like missionaries, but he admitted that he knew none and could give no grounds for his objection.