Thus corn shows an ominous decrease in weight; a pound now contains only 16,800 grains, compared with nearly 20,000 a couple of decades back. The Russians have to face a problem as difficult in its degree as that which will one day cause a cataclysm in British India, the ever-growing tendency of population to outstrip the means of subsistence. Soon after passing the spick-and-span Russian town of Katta Kurgān, the growing freshness of the air proclaims a higher level; and, in point of fact, Samarkand is more than 2000 feet above the sea. At last the eye, which so eagerly scanned the eastern horizon, lights upon a sea of verdure, from which a fluted dome rises just as St. Paul’s seems to float like a vast balloon over London fogs. There are a few cities which touch a chord in him who sees them for the first time. The glamour of their fallen majesty is heightened rather than destroyed by the railway; for it brings before us, as if by magic, a panorama often seen in spirit, and its prosaic surroundings serve as a foil to the halo of romance which still lingers over the seat of a vanquished empire. Who will ever forget the flood of associations that overpowered him when he first heard “Roma” shouted by a railway porter, or when he exchanged the roar of the train for the peace which broods over the vista of palaces on the Grand Canal? The famous city is, as in other cases, at a distance of several miles from the railway station, the environs of which are crowded with the mean shops and drinking-dens usually found in such places. The road thither, as all the chief thoroughfares, is of great width, and overshadowed by splendid trees. It is this feature of Samarkand landscapes, not less than the innumerable gardens and vineyards in which one treads knee-deep in luscious grapes, that stirred the imagination of Eastern poets. In melodious strains the eternal city is styled the “Mirror of the World,” “the Garden of Souls,” “the Fourth Paradise.” But Samarkand was great and glorious ages before the good Hārūn er-Rashīd reigned in Baghdād, or Sa´adi planted flowers of poesy in his Garden of Roses. At Maracanda, in Transoxiana, Alexander of Macedon paused in his mad career, and there he slew his faithful Clitus. Centuries glided by, and it became Sa-mo-kien, the most western province of the Celestial Empire. Then the tide of Mohammedan conquest rolled over Samarkand; followed by the rule of the Seljūk Turks, destined five centuries later to extend their sway from Mongolia to Constantinople. The old city now became what Moorish Spain was--a chosen abode of all the arts that adorn and sweeten life. The whole fabric of civilisation was drowned in blood by the ruthless Chingiz Khān, and the ruin of Samarkand seemed irretrievable. It was lifted from the dust by a greater genius than Chingiz. Tīmūr made Samarkand the “eye and star” of an empire which extended over a third of the known world; and to his loving care belong