takes its way to Samara, where the Transsiberian diverges to pursue its lonely course across the Siberian waste to the Pacific. But the line which we are following keeps on, now bending somewhat to the south, through the country of the Cossacks, where horsemen in long, tight coats and high fur hats pull up their shaggy ponies to watch the train roar by, to Orenburg, on the Ural River, where Europe ends and Asia begins.

From Orenburg the line, now lying sharp and clear against the barren Turgai steppes, drops swiftly south to the Aral Sea, the fourth largest inland body of water in the world, whence it ascends the valley of the Syr Darya through the land which ethnologists hold to be the cradle of the human race. Here, in these regions of high Asia, we are on historic ground, for across them marched and fought the hosts of Cyrus and Darius, of Philip of Macedon and Alexander his son, of Timur, whom we of the West know as Tamerlane, and of that other Mongol conqueror, Jenghiz Khan. Now the line debouches upon the fertile plains of Turkestan, where, if it is in the spring of the year, the interminable fruitorchards will be a sea of blossoms. Owing to the favorable climate and the amazing fertility of the soil, the fruits of Turkestan attain the most amazing sizes: cherries the size of ordinary apricots, apricots the size of peaches, peaches as large as melons. I would stake my life that this will be a great country some day. And so we come to Tashkend, the Turkoman capital, in the heart of Russian central Asia, four thousand miles from our starting-point on the Arctic and with half our journey done. Though the dusty streets of Tashkend are thronged from

sunrise to nightfall with visitors from strange inland tribes, whose fantastic garments form a panorama as fascinating as it is colorful, the prevalence of malaria, the abominable water supply, the swarms of insects, and the odors that rise to heaven from the open drains make the city a place where the traveler will not care to linger.

Leaving Tashkend basking amid its orchards, the line leaps southward to Samarkand, a city which was hoary with antiquity when London was a cluster of wattle huts and Paris had yet to be built on the meadows beside the Seine. Of all the cities of inner Asia, Samarkand is the most pictur- · esque and the most interesting. It is the focus of caravan routes from Bokhara and Khiva, from Persia and Transcaspia, from Afghanistan and Kashgaria and Tibet, the roads, as they approach the city walls, being thronged with strings of swaying camels, bands of fierce-faced, turbaned horsemen, lumbering, high-wheeled native carts, donkeys and bullocks plodding along under enormous burdens, woolly waves of sheep from Kara Kul, whose fleeces provide the women of the world with the costliest of garments. In the heart of Samarkand is the famous Righistan, of all the great squares of the world perhaps the most magnificent. The great madrasahs which face upon the Righistan, their façades incrusted in tiles of the "lost" shade of Persian blue, have been the envy and the admiration of architects for centuries. Here, too, are the stately ruins of the Gur Amir, beneath whose dome, under a simple tomb of brick, sleeps one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known, Tamerlane himself. Above the tomb hangs the great captain's horse-tail standard.

At Samarkand the Russian Central Asian Railway forms a junction with the Transcaspian Railway, a military system which, paralleling the northern boundaries of Persia and Afghanistan, forms a highroad of steel from the shores of the Caspian Sea almost to the back of China. It was built for strategic rather than commercial reasons, and during the imperial régime was enshrouded in a considerable degree of mystery. Save in Bokhara, the region which this line traverses is for the most part a sandy desert, and saksaul, a plant whose roots are used for fuel by the nomads of the steppes, had to be planted on each side to keep the sand from drifting

over the rails. Notwithstanding the terrific heat, the lack of water, and the frequent sand-storms which characterize this region, the line was built with astonishing rapidity, sometimes as much as five miles of rails being laid in a single day. During the summer months the air, heated by the sun-scorched sands, is like a blast from an open furnace-door. So hot does it become, indeed, that the Turkomans have a saying that a drop of water given to a thirsty traveler in these deserts washes away the sins of a thousand years.

Leaving Samarkand, the line bends sharply westward to Bokhara, noted for the fanaticism of its population. Built on a great artificial mound, so that its guns can sweep the teeming streets in case of revolt, stands the

Ark, or citadel, its crenelated walls forming a vast inclosure containing the palace of the ameer, the houses of his ministers, the royal treasury, the state prison, and the water-cisterns, for the ruler of Bokhara prefers to keep his treasure, his prisoners, and his drinking water under his own eye. Near

the prison may still be seen the pit into which, in 1842, two emissaries of the British Government, Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly, refusing to abjure Christianity, were thrown by order of the ameer to be eaten alive by ticks.

Leaving the Transcaspian Railway at Bokhara, the line of the Arctic-Equatorial, making a hair

pin turn, swings sharply south by east, across the rich Bokharan plain, until its further advance is barred by a broad, gray river rolling between low banks of yellow sand-the Oxus. Beyond the river looms against the southern sky the mighty rampart of the Hindu Kush. Entering a wretched village of dusty streets and mud-walled huts, the train, with brakes a-squeal and the hiss of escaping steam, comes to a halt beside a long, low station of gray stone on which appears, in Russian characters, the legend "Termez." It is the present rail-head of the northern half of the Arctic-Equatorial. We are at the gate of Afghanistan.

The Oxus, or, as it is known to the natives, the Amu Darya, which has its nativity in the unknown fastnesses of the Pamirs, forms for half a thousand

miles the boundary between Afghanistan and Russian Asia. Its banks are dotted with ruins, some of them of vast extent, for this was a populous and thriving region in the days when it formed the Greek province of Bactria. At Termez the Oxus is a broad, deep, and rapid stream. Alexander the Great, marching up through the Afghan passes in pursuit of Bessus, crossed the river near this point on rafts supported by skins stuffed with straw, five days being required for the passage of his army. When the Oxus is bridged, as it must be in the not far distant future, a like number of troops can be put across in as many hours. The ferry which

is at present used to transport passengers, animals, and merchandise across the river is as peculiar a contrivance as was ever devised. Long, flat-bottomed, square-nosed barges are towed across the stream by swimming horses, or rather ponies, diminutive, shaggy, and underfed. The barges are provided with outriggers, to which the ponies are attached by means of straps buckled to their surcingles, these straps supporting their weight at the same time that they take the haulage. Two, even one, of these sturdy little animals will tow across the river a barge upward of twenty feet in length and laden to the gunwales with men, camels, and merchandise. With their heads just above the surface, blowing and snorting, they swim diagonally to counteract the current, some

times making a dozen round trips a day.

From time to time attempts have been made by the Russian and British officers stationed at their respective rail-heads to strike up an acquaintance with the commissioned personnel of the Afghan posts across the border.

These attempts at friendliness have generally met with sharp rebuffs, however, the Afghans neither accepting advances from the hated unbelievers nor making overtures themselves, for strained relations exist, as a rule, between military posts on each side of any frontier. Some years ago, however, according to Sir Henry Norman, the staff of the frontier regiment on

duty along the Afghan side of the border accepted an invitation to mess with the Russian officers stationed at Kushk Post. On the day set the

Kushk Post.

Afghan officers appeared at Kushk Post arrayed in all the splendor of second-hand railway uniforms! On the collar of the Afghan colonel appeared the silver-embroidered legend "Inspector," the major displayed the words "Ticket Collector," while the subalterns contented themselves with the less exalted title of "Guard." The impression produced on the Muscovites can be imagined. The facts were that the ameer, always parsimonious in such matters, had acquired through his agents in India, at one of the annual sales of condemned property of one of the Indian railways, a large quantity of discarded clothing.

As the Afghan officers to whom the garments were allotted knew no English, they were as pleased with themselves as though their uniforms had been turned out by the smartest military tailor in London.

Ameer Habibullah, I might mention, had strong leanings toward English fashions. But though he was constantly having tailors come up to Kabul from India to replenish the royal wardrobe, he never failed to realize on the discarded garments, being accustomed to dispose of them to his courtiers, whether they wanted them or not. Beckoning to a member of his entourage, he would indicate a heap of cast-off clothing. "You may have them for thirty rupees," he would remark graciously, "and you," summoning another dignitary, "may have these for ten rupees." One day One day the government fur-keeper informed the ameer that thousands of choice lambskins lying in the government stores were rapidly deteriorating. Habibullah pondered for a moment, then remarked in a voice that all the members of his suite could hear, "those of my subjects who love me will show their affection by wearing black lambskin hats." As no one was permitted to enter the precincts of the palace the next day without such a headcovering, by nightfall every lambskin had been sold.

Contrary to general belief, Afghanistan presents no serious engineering difficulties to the railway-builder. At certain points, indeed, it would be possible to cross the great Asiatic divide which extends all the way from the Chinese frontier to the borders of Persia and beyond with comparative ease.

That this gap has not been bridged long before this had been due to po

litical rather than engineering considerations. When imperial Russia was in the heyday of her power and the predatory statesmen at St. Petersburg looked with hungry eyes toward the rich plains of Hindustan, England heaved a sigh of relief when she remembered that athwart the course of the Muscovites' southern advance stretched the railroadless mountains of Afghanistan. That mountain wall was as comforting to the British as the steel walls of his vaults are to the president of a bank. Nevertheless, it fretted the commercially minded English to see the trade of Afghanistan steadily passing into the hands of Russia. Whether this northern gate to India should remain as it is, easily traversable by a hostile army, or should yield to the demands of commerce, as it must do sooner or later, and admit of an iron way which will link Europe with India and the Farther East, is a question which has only one answer. The transAfghan railway will be built, and in a much nearer future than most people suppose.

With the completion of the Afghan section, our Arctic-Equatorial Express, entering the ameer's dominions either at Termez or Kushk Post, will go roaring southward to Kabul, perched like an eagle upon its rocky heights, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Afghan capital is undeniably a dirty city, its squalor emphasized by the refuse which strews its rambling lanes, and the ramshackle condition of its houses. Still, accumulations of filth and the neglect of ages cannot entirely conceal a certain tawdry magnificence, constantly illustrated by the erection of elaborate buildings which are permitted to pass into neglect and decay within a short time after their

completion. Dominating the whole city is the palace of the Erg, at once a fortress and the residence of the ruler.

From Kabul the train, following in the main the course of the ancient caravan road, will speed southward to the Khyber, than which no other pass in the world retains so many historic associations or possesses such strategic importance. Emerging from this rocky portal upon the Punjab plain, it will pass through Lahore, the city founded by Rama; through Delhi, where the Grand Mogul once sat on the Peacock Throne; through Agra, where the fairy outlines of the Taj Mahal rise above the lagoons and the rose gardens; through Benares, where millions of the devout bathe annually in the sacred waters of the Ganges; and so into Calcutta, the capital of Great Britain's Indian empire. From Calcutta two routes will be open to the Arctic-Equatorial passenger. He can follow the route which runs down the eastern coast of the peninsula, through Bengal, to the little town of Pamban, in Madras, whence a succession of rocky islets, known as Adam's Bridge, may be said almost to connect India with Ceylon. Plans are already under way for the construction of a "sea-going" railway, patterned on the line across the Florida keys to Key West, across Adam's Bridge. Upon its completion, the traveler will be able, without changing trains, to cross the Palk Straits and, passing through Colombo, continue his journey to Matara, at the southern extremity of Ceylon, eight thousand miles from the Ofoten Fiord and barely six degrees from the equator.

If, instead of turning southward from Calcutta, the Arctic-Equatorial passenger elects to continue eastward, he will be able, upon the

completion of two short links, to prolong his amazing journey for another two thousand miles. Though the Indian railways have been pushed up the valley of the Brahmaputra nearly to the borders of Tibet, and though the Burmese rail-head is now at Myitkyina, not far from the Chinese frontier, the two systems are still separated by a gap of about two hundred miles. Upon the completion of this section, a certainty of the near future, the traveler will be able to continue southward, down the valley of the Irrawaddy, through Mandalay and Rangoon, to Moulmein, where slim Burman girls still lounge beside the old pagoda, "lookin' lazy at the sea."

Now comes another and the final gap in the Arctic-Equatorial system, for separating the Burmese line from the Siamese railways are two hundred miles of jungle. But the progressive royal prince who is the Siamese minister of communications has already perfected plans, in conjunction with the British authorities, for linking the two systems, so the day is now not far distant when the traveler can step into a sleeping-car in Rangoon at night and step out of it in the Bangkok station the next morning. It might surprise those Americans who associate Siam with cats, twins, and white elephants to learn that to-day there are in operation upward of fifteen hundred miles of admirably built state railways, forming a highroad of steel which traverses the kingdom from end to end.

The Siamese State Railways connect at Padang Besar, in Kedah, with the Federated Malay States Railways, thus providing through service from Bangkok to Singapore. Three days is required to cover the one thousand