“Let me introduce you,” said the doctor, “to an officer of the Persian army.  He has been eight years from home, and would like to talk with an American.”

We shook hands, and by way of getting on familiar footing, I opened my cigar case.  Dr. Schmidt translated our conversation, the Persian speaking Russian very fairly.  His story was curious and interesting.  He was captured in 1858 near Herat, by a party of predatory Turcomans.  His captors sold him to a merchant at Balkh where he remained sometime.  From Balkh he was sold to Khiva, and from Khiva to Bokhara, whence he escaped with a fellow captive.  I asked if he was compelled to labor during his captivity, and received a negative reply.  Soldiers and all others except officers are forced to all kinds of drudgery when captured by these barbarians.  Officers are held for ransom, and their duties are comparatively light.

Russian slaves are not uncommon in Central Asia, though less numerous than formerly.  The Kirghese cripple their prisoners by inserting a horse hair in a wound in the heel.  A man thus treated is lamed for life.  He cannot use his feet in escaping, and care is taken that he does not secure a horse.

The two fugitives traveled together from Bokhara, suffering great hardships in their journey over the steppes.  They avoided all towns through fear of capture, and subsisted upon whatever chance threw in their way.  Once when near starvation they found and killed a sheep.  They ate heartily of its raw flesh, and before the supply thus obtained was exhausted they reached the Russian boundary at Chuguchak.  One of the twain died soon afterward, and his companion in flight came to Barnaool.  The authorities would not let him go farther without a passport, and he had been in the town nearly a year at the time of my visit.

Through the Persian ambassador at St. Petersburg, he had communicated, with his government at Teheran, and expected his passport in a few weeks.

During the eight years that had elapsed since his capture this gentleman heard nothing from his own country.  He had learned to speak Russian but could not read it.  I told him of the completion of the Indo-European telegraph by way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, and the success of electric communication between England and India.  Naturally he was less interested concerning the Atlantic cable than about the telegraph in his own country.  We shook hands at parting, and mutually expressed a wish to meet again in Persia and America.

After his departure, the doctor commented upon the intelligent bearing and clear eye of the Persian, and then said: 

“I have done several strange and unexpected things in my life, but I never dreamed I should be the interpreter between a Persian and an American at the foot of the Altai mountains.”