Jules Verne (7 page)

In looking at it closely I observe that airholes have been bored on
each of its sides, and that on one side it has two panels, one of which
can be made to slide on the other from the inside. And I am led to
think that the prisoner has had it made so in order that he can, if
necessary, leave his prison—probably during the night.

Just now the porters are beginning to lift the box. I have the
satisfaction of seeing that they attend to the directions inscribed on
it. It is placed, with great care, near the entrance to the van, on the
left, the side with the panels outward, as if it were the door of a
cupboard. And is not the box a cupboard? A cupboard I propose to open?

It remains to be seen if the guard in charge of the luggage is to
remain in this van. No. I find that his post is just outside it.

"There it is, all right!" said one of the porters, looking to see that
the case was as it should be, top where top should be, and so on.

"There is no fear of its moving," said another porter; "the glass will
reach Pekin all right, unless the train runs off the metals."

"Or it does not run into anything," said the other; "and that remains
to be seen."

They were right—these good fellows—it remained to be seen—and it
would be seen.

The American came up to me and took a last look at his stock of
incisors, molars and canines, with a repetition of his invariable "Wait
a bit."

"You know, Monsieur Bombarnac," he said to me, "that the passengers are
going to dine at the Hôtel du Czar before the departure of the train.
It is time now. Will you come with me?"

"I follow you."

And we entered the dining room. All my numbers are there: 1, Ephrinell,
taking his place as usual by the side of 2, Miss Horatia Bluett. The
French couple, 4 and 5, are also side by side. Number 3, that is Major
Noltitz, is seated in front of numbers 9 and 10, the two Chinese to
whom I have just given numbers in my notebook. As to the fat German,
number 6, he has already got his long nose into his soup plate. I see
also that the Guard Popol, number 7, has his place at the foot of the
table. The other passengers, Europeans and Asiatics, are installed,
passim
with the evident intention of doing justice to the repast.

Ah! I forgot my number 8, the disdainful gentleman whose name I don't
yet know, and who seems determined to find the Russian cookery inferior
to the English.

I also notice with what attention Monsieur Caterna looks after his
wife, and encourages her to make up for the time lost when she was
unwell on board the
Astara
. He keeps her glass filled, he chooses the
best pieces for her, etc.

"What a good thing it is," I hear him say, "that we are not to leeward
of the Teuton, for there would be nothing left for us!"

He is to windward of him—that is to say, the dishes reach him before
they get to the baron, which, however, does not prevent his clearing
them without shame.

The observation, in sea language, made me smile, and Caterna, noticing
it, gave me a wink with a slight movement of the shoulder toward the
baron.

It is evident that these French people are not of high distinction,
they do not belong to the upper circles; but they are good people, I
will answer for it, and when we have to rub shoulders with compatriots,
we must not be too particular in Turkestan.

The dinner ends ten minutes before the time fixed for our departure.
The bell rings and we all make a move for the train, the engine of
which is blowing off steam.

Mentally, I offer a last prayer to the God of reporters and ask him not
to spare me adventures. Then, after satisfying myself that all my
numbers are in the first-class cars, so that I can keep an eye on them,
I take my place.

The Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer—what an interminable name—is not
behindhand this time. On the contrary, it is the train this time which
is five minutes late in starting; and the German has begun to complain,
to chafe and to swear, and threatens to sue the company for damages.
Ten thousand roubles—not a penny less!—if it causes him to fail. Fail
in what, considering that he is going to Pekin?

At length the last shriek of the whistle cleaves the air, the cars
begin to move, and a loud cheer salutes the departure of the Grand
Transasiatic express.

The ideas of a man on horseback are different to those which occur to
him when he is on foot. The difference is even more noticeable when he
is on the railway. The association of his thoughts, the character of
his reflections are all affected by the speed of the train. They "roll"
in his head, as he rolls in his car. And so it comes about that I am in
a particularly lively mood, desirous of observing, greedy of
instruction, and that at a speed of thirty-one miles an hour. That is
the rate at which we are to travel through Turkestan, and when we reach
the Celestial Empire we shall have to be content with eighteen.

That is what I have just ascertained by consulting my time-table, which
I bought at the station. It is accompanied by a long slip map, folded
and refolded on itself, which shows the whole length of the line
between the Caspian and the eastern coast of China. I study, then, my
Transasiatic, on leaving Uzun Ada, just as I studied my Transgeorgian
when I left Tiflis.

The gauge of the line is about sixty-three inches—as is usual on the
Russian lines, which are thus about four inches wider than those of
other European countries. It is said, with regard to this, that the
Germans have made a great number of axles of this length, in case they
have to invade Russia. I should like to think that the Russians have
taken the same precautions in the no less probable event of their
having to invade Germany.

On either side of the line are long sandhills, between which the train
runs out from Uzun Ada; when it reaches the arm of the sea which
separates Long Island from the continent, it crosses an embankment
about 1,200 yards long, edged with masses of rock to protect it against
the violence of the waves.

We have already passed several stations without stopping, among others
Mikhailov, a league from Uzun Ada. Now they are from ten to eleven
miles apart. Those I have seen, as yet, look like villas, with
balustrades and Italian roofs, which has a curious effect in Turkestan
and the neighborhood of Persia. The desert extends up to the
neighborhood of Uzun Ada, and the railway stations form so many little
oases, made by the hand of man. It is man, in fact, who has planted
these slender, sea-green poplars, which give so little shade; it is man
who, at great expense, has brought here the water whose refreshing jets
fall back into an elegant vase. Without these hydraulic works there
would not be a tree, not a corner of green in these oases. They are the
nurses of the line, and dry-nurses are of no use to locomotives.

The truth is that I have never seen such a bare, arid country, so clear
of vegetation; and it extends for one hundred and fifty miles from Uzun
Ada. When General Annenkof commenced his works at Mikhailov, he was
obliged to distil the water from the Caspian Sea, as if he were on
board ship. But if water is necessary to produce steam, coal is
necessary to vaporize the water. The readers of the
Twentieth Century
will ask how are the furnaces fed in a country in which there is
neither coal nor wood? Are there stores of these things at the
principal stations of the Transcaspian? Not at all. They have simply
put in practice an idea which occurred to our great chemist,
Sainte-Claire Deville, when first petroleum was used in France. The
furnaces are fed, by the aid of a pulverizing apparatus, with the
residue produced from the distillation of the naphtha, which Baku and
Derbent produce in such inexhaustible quantities. At certain stations
on the line there are vast reservoirs of this combustible mineral, from
which the tenders are filled, and it is burned in specially adapted
fireboxes. In a similar way naphtha is used on the steamboats on the
Volga and the other affluents of the Caspian.

I repeat, the country is not particularly varied. The ground is nearly
flat in the sandy districts, and quite flat in the alluvial plains,
where the brackish water stagnates in pools. Nothing could be better
for a line of railway. There are no cuttings, no embankments, no
viaducts, no works of art—to use a term dear to engineers, very
"dear," I should say. Here and there are a few wooden bridges from two
hundred to three hundred feet long. Under such circumstances the cost
per kilometre of the Transcaspian did not exceed seventy-five thousand
francs.

The monotony of the journey would only be broken on the vast oases of
Merv, Bokhara and Samarkand.

But let us busy ourselves with the passengers, as we can do all the
more easily from our being able to walk from one end to the other of
the train. With a little imagination we can make ourselves believe we
are in a sort of traveling village, and I am just going to take a run
down main street.

Remember that the engine and tender are followed by the van at the
angle of which is placed the mysterious case, and that Popof's
compartment is in the left-hand corner of the platform of the first car.

Inside this car I notice a few Sarthes of tall figure and haughty face,
draped in their long robes of bright colors, from beneath which appear
the braided leather boots. They have splendid eyes, a superb beard,
arched nose, and you would take them for real lords, provided we ignore
the word Sarthe, which means a pedlar, and these were going evidently
to Tachkend, where these pedlars swarm.

In this car the two Chinese have taken their places, opposite each
other. The young Celestial looks out of window. The old one—Ta-lao-ye,
that is to say, a person well advanced in years—is incessantly turning
over the pages of his book. This volume, a small 32mo, looks like our
Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes
, and is covered in plush, like a
breviary, and when it is shut its covers are kept in place by an
elastic band. What astonishes me is that the proprietor of this little
book does not seem to read it from right to left. Is it not written in
Chinese characters? We must see into this!

On two adjoining seats are Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett. Their
talk is of nothing but figures. I don't know if the practical American
murmurs at the ear of the practical Englishwoman the adorable verse
which made the heart of Lydia palpitate:

"Nee tecum possum vivere sine te,"

but I do know that Ephrinell can very well live without me. I have been
quite right in not reckoning on his company to charm away the tedium of
the journey. The Yankee has completely "left" me—that is the word—for
this angular daughter of Albion.

I reach the platform. I cross the gangway and I am at the door of the
second car.

In the right-hand corner is Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer. His long
nose—this Teuton is as short-sighted as a mole—rubs the lines of the
book he reads. The book is the time-table. The impatient traveler is
ascertaining if the train passes the stations at the stated time.
Whenever it is behind there are new recriminations and menaces against
the Grand Transasiatic Company.

In this car there are also the Caternas, who have made themselves quite
comfortable. In his cheery way, the husband is talking with a good deal
of gesticulation, sometimes touching his wife's hands, sometimes
putting his arms round her waist; and then he turns his head toward the
platform and says something aside. Madame Caterna leans toward him,
makes little confused grimaces, and then leans back into the corner and
seems to reply to her husband, who in turn replies to her. And as I
leave I hear the chorus of an operetta in the deep voice of Monsieur
Caterna.

In the third car, occupied by many Turkomans and three or four
Russians, I perceive Major Noltitz. He is talking with one of his
countrymen. I will willingly join in their conversation if they make me
any advances, but I had better maintain a certain reserve; the journey
has only begun.

I then visit the dining car. It is a third longer than the other cars,
a regular dining room, with one long table. At the back is a pantry on
one side, a kitchen on the other, where the cook and steward are at
work, both of them Russians. This dining car appears to me capitally
arranged. Passing through it, I reach the second part of the train,
where the second-class passengers are installed. Kirghizes who do not
look very intelligent with their depressed heads, their prognathous
jaws stuck well out in front, their little beards, flat Cossack noses
and very brown skins. These wretched fellows are Mahometans and belong
either to the Grand Horde wandering on the frontier between China and
Siberia, or to the Little Horde between the Ural Mountains and the Aral
Sea. A second-class car, or even a third-class car, is a palace for
these people, accustomed to the encampments on the Steppes, to the
miserable "iourts" of villages. Neither their beds nor their seats are
as good as the stuffed benches on which they have seated themselves
with true Asiatic gravity.

With them are two or three Nogais going to Eastern Turkestan. Of a
higher race than the Kirghizes, being Tartars, it is from them that
come the learned men and professors who have made illustrious the
opulent cities of Bokhara and Samarkand. But science and its teaching
do not yield much of a livelihood, even when reduced to the mere
necessaries of life, in these provinces of Central Asia. And so these
Nogais take employment as interpreters. Unfortunately, since the
diffusion of the Russian language, their trade is not very remunerative.

Now I know the places of my numbers, and I know where to find them when
I want them. As to those going through to Pekin, I have no doubt of
Ephrinell and Miss Horatia Bluett nor the German baron, nor the two
Chinese, nor Major Noltitz, nor the Caternas, nor even for the haughty
gentleman whose bony outline I perceive in the corner of the second car.