We left Kazan for the homeward journey, intending only to stop at Vienna on the way, but fate decreed otherwise. The train started in the evening, and we travelled two nights and a day through flat country to the Caspian Sea. The railway through Turkestan runs parallel first with the Afghan frontier—across which no Russian dare step on pain of his life—and then parallel with the Persian border. The mountains of Persia formed a beautiful outline against the stormy sky as we passed through Askabad, the southernmost point of the line, and when the rain came down in blinding torrents we watched the patient camels and their drivers on the plain, behaving as if completely oblivious of the storm. Not so the Cossack on his fiery steed; he looked as if possessed by the storm demon, tearing across the plain as if the furies were behind him. A land of strange contrasts—the immovable calm of the East, and, vainly beating against it, the restless West. The question forces itself irresistibly upon the mind—which will conquer? [Illustration: BAKU] The sun shone brightly next morning as we woke on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and it looked calm and inviting, so different from the description of his stormy journey given by Anthony Jenkinson in the sixteenth century. He says: “This sea is freshwater in many places, and in other places as salt as our great Ocean. It hath many goodly Rivers falling into it, and it avoideth not itselfe except it be underground. During the time of our Navigation wee set up the redde crosse of S. George in our flagges, for honour of the Christians, which I suppose was never seen in the Caspian Sea before.” The terminus of the railway line is a miserable little sun-baked village called Krasnovodsk, with only one imposing edifice, the railway station. We took our things at once to the boat, through a maze of railway trucks and carriages, and were delighted to find it a comfortable little steamer, with a Finnish captain who had served long on English ships and looked like a Scotchman. There was a gigantic sturgeon lying on the landing-stage, and he told us some have been caught in the Caspian Sea weighing two tons. Our voyage only lasted about thirteen hours, but none of the passengers save myself faced dinner, and I was surprised to see next morning that there had been some eight or nine on board. During the night a little child died, so there was a delay while the health officer made his inquiry, and we were all duly inspected.