I need not say that
their luggage was examined with Muscovite minuteness.
The train started again at four o'clock. Our car was still a sleeper. I
envied the sleep of my companions, and as that was all I could do, I
returned to the platform.
The dawn was appearing in the east. Here and there were the ruins of
the ancient city, a citadel girdled with high ramparts and a succession
of long porticos extending over fifteen hundred yards. Running over a
few embankments, necessitated by the inequalities of the sandy ground,
the train reaches the horizontal steppe.
We are running at a speed of thirty miles an hour in a southwesterly
direction, along the Persian frontier. It is only beyond Douchak that
the line begins to leave it. During this three hours' run the two
stations at which the train stops are Gheours, the junction for the
road to Mesched, whence the heights of the Iran plateau are visible,
and Artyk where water is abundant although slightly brackish.
The train then traverses the oasis of the Atek, which is an important
tributary of the Caspian. Verdure and trees are everywhere. This oasis
justifies its name, and would not disgrace the Sahara.
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