for a common Russian to look one in the eye.  Nor is this at all deceptive; a social superior might step up and strike one of these men brutally in the face without the slightest provocation, and, though the victim of the outrage might be strong as an ox, no remonstrance whatever would be made.  It is difficult for us to comprehend How human beings can possibly become so abjectly servile and spiritless as the lower-class Russians.  But the terrors of the knout and Siberia are ever present before them.  Cheap chromolithographs of Gregorian saints hang on the walls of the saloon, and with them are mingled fancy pictures of Tiflis and Baku cafe-chantant belles.  Long rows of vodka-bottles are the chief stock-in-trade of the place, but “peevo” (beer) can be obtained from the cellar.

Quite a number of army officers, with their wives, come aboard at Krasnovodsk.  They seem good fellows, nearly all, and inclined to cultivate our acquaintance.  Individually, the better-class Russian and the Englishman have many attributes in common that make them like each other.  Except for imperial matters, Russian and English officers would be the best of friends, I think.  The ladies all smoke cigarettes incessantly.  There is not a handsome woman aboard, and they show the lingering traces of Russian barbarism by wearing beads and gewgaws.

The most interesting of our passengers is a Persian dealer in precious stones.  He is a well-educated individual, quite a linguist, and a polished gentleman withal.  He is taking diamonds and turquoises that he has collected in Persia, to Vienna and Paris.

Another night of drenching dew, and by six o’clock next morning we are drawing near to the great petroleum port of Baku.  From Krasnovodsk we have crossed the Caspian from east to west right on the line of latitude 40 deg.

CHAPTER XIII.

Roundabout to India.

Baku looks the inartistic, business-like place it is, occupying the base of brown, verdureless hills.  Scarcely a green thing is visible to relieve the dull, drab aspect roundabout, and only the scant vegetation of a few gardens relieves the city a trifle itself.  To the left of the city the slopes of one hill are dotted with neatly kept Christian cemeteries, and the slopes of another display the disorderly multitude of tombstones characteristic of the graveyards of Islam.  On the right are seen numbers of big iron petroleum-tanks similar to those in the oil regions of Pennsylvania.  Numbers of petroleum-schooners are riding at anchor in the harbor, and two or three small steamers are moored to the dock.