Most of the passengers did not
leave their beds. We were occupied with declarations relative to the
attack on the train, to the dead which the Chinese authorities were to
bury, to the wounded who were to be left at Tcharkalyk, where they
would be properly looked after. Pan-Chao told me it was a populous
town, and I regret I was unable to visit it.
The company sent off immediately a gang of workmen to repair the line
and set up the telegraph posts; and in a day everything would be clear
again.
I need scarcely say that Faruskiar, with all the authority of the
company's general manager, took part in the different formalities that
were needed at Tcharkalyk. I do not know how to praise him
sufficiently. Besides, he was repaid for his good offices by the
deference shown him by the staff at the railway station.
At three in the morning we arrived at Kara Bouran, where the train
stopped but a few minutes. Here the railway crosses the route of
Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orleans across Tibet in 1889-90, a
much more complete journey than ours, a circular trip from Paris to
Paris, by Berlin, Petersburg, Moscow, Nijni, Perm, Tobolsk, Omsk,
Semipalatinsk, Kouldja, Tcharkalyk, Batong, Yunnan, Hanoi, Saigon,
Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Suez, Marseilles, the tour of Asia, and the
tour of Europe.
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