for his powerful aid. I found Mr Grubstock in high spirits and bluff good-humour. I've not forgotten you, my boy,' he said, filling my glass with a rare vintage of straw-coloured sherry; and indeed I have done better for you than I ever expected to do. Have you heard anything of the Caspian Navigation Company, eh? The shares are at a premium, and quite right they should be, for it's a bona fide concern, sure to pay a tidy dividend to those who can afford to wait. I'm a director, and I got hold of Jowley, and Barrett, and Hicks, and one or two more of the old set, who are on the Board too; and the long and short of it is, that you are to be offered the appointment of acting engineer-in-chief, at one of the branch ports, at a salary of five hundred a year.' money worth speaking of, and no prospect of any, I had fallen in love, and almost equally, as a matter of course, the object of my affections was as poor as myself. Pretty, darling Kate Carrington! Our engagement had already endured for fourteen months, and she and I seemed likely to add another couple to the long list of betrothed pairs that wait and wait through the long vista of hopes deferred. I was sometimes sanguine of success, and had a young man's confidence in the future; and I daresay Kate would have consented, for my sake, to try the experiment of love in a cottage, with an insufficiency of butcher-meat and groceries, had it not been for her great tenderness towards her widowed mother. It was not to be thought of that Mrs Carrington, who was elderly, and but badly off, since some imprudent venture, at ever so much per cent. had sorely pinched and clipped her modest income, should be deprived of her remaining comforts that Kate and I might marry somewhat earlier. The old lady, who had the tender-hearted love of match-making which supplies an element of romance in the seniors of her sex, would, to do her justice, have smilingly confronted the perils of semi-starvation; but Kate stood firm on that point. 'No, no,' she said to me, more than once, as on summer evenings we stood together in her mother's tiny garden at Clapham; 'I must not be selfish, dear John. I would work for you, want with you, if need were, and we are young, and might struggle through; but poor mamma has never known what hardship really is, and at her time of life it is too late to begin. So we must be very brave, and good, and patient-wild and distant country, where civilisation was must we not?' But if we were to wait till I should make a livelihood at the bar, how long might our probation be! I had not the luck to be connected by ties of blood or friendship with a single attorney. I had taken stock of my own qualifications as a barrister, and knew that I should never climb the slippery rungs of the ladder leading to the few great prizes of the profession. Leaving attorney-generalships and judicial wigs to other aspirants, I saw no speedy prospect of a decent maintenance to be earned at the bar. I saw men, older and more brilliant than myself, glad to pay their way by law-reporting, or perhaps diverging into literary by-paths that had no more to do with the Themis of England than with the Pandects or the Koran. The steady old special pleader in whose chambers I had been, for a heavy fee, allowed to read, shook his experienced head at the notion of my earning my bread, for some years at least, by legitimate professional business, and yet I was a pet pupil, as being less idle than the others whom he instructed. 'Small profits, Mr Masterton,' he would say, 'and slow returns, as respects the junior, are the rules in our calling. I really almost wish you had selected a walk in life, my dear young friend, more new-fashioned than this of wearing horse-hair, and waiting till the stuff-gown be changed to silk, and the clerk be familiar with briefs and retainers. think you could do better elsewhere.' I thought so too, and having some theoretical knowledge, and some slight practice as a surveyor and civil engineer, I decided on asking Mr Grubstock to use his good offices on my behalf. I It was with a beating heart that on the appointed day I returned to the Meg,' to dine with my godfather, and to hear the result of my late petition Five hundred a year! The announcement thus abruptly made almost took my breath away. Why, I could marry Kate, now, with such an income to rely on, and the sudden shock of joy almost incapacitated me from thanking my patron for his good deed on my behalf. It was indeed great promotion. 'You'll have to go rather far afield, my boy,' remarked my godfather, holding up his wine-glass for a moment between his eye and the light, before sipping its amber-tinted contents; and to rough it too, for a time, very likely; but what of that, when one is young, healthy, and a bachelor; and Kizil-Gatch is not a place for luxuries, I suspect.' 'Kizil-Gatch!' The queer sound of the name recalled to my remembrance the fact, that my future residence must be, not in England, but in a slowly and gradually gaining the mastery over moral and physical obstacles. Well, I had no reason to complain. Mine would be a well-remunerated exile, and I anticipated little difficulty in inducing Kate and her mother to share my new home far away. Five hundred a year! And this to be attained at once by one who could not in fairness be accounted as anything but a mere tyro, and who would cheerfully have accepted an assistantsurveyor's post at less than half the rate of salary which would now be mine. 'You don't exactly know where you are going to,' said Mr Grubstock, at a later stage of the dinner; and small blame to you, since I never heard of the place myself until they shewed it to me on the Board-room map. You'll have to hunt it out yourself, and you'll find it to be one of the southernmost places in the Russian territory, on the west shore of the Caspian, not very far from the Persian frontier. Great natural capabilities, I'm told, but everything to be done, from dockdigging to building warehouses. If only you will work, as I pledged myself you would, and keep yourself wide awake to the Company's interests, your acting appointment will be confirmed in a few months; and in that cheap country you will find your pay go very far. A dab at languages, are you not?' I replied with becoming diffidence that I had always been considered as a quick learner, but had no right to call myself more of a linguist than the majority of my educated countrymen. You talk good French, and are glib in German, I believe,' said the civil engineer, refilling his glass with claret. 'Don't you speak, or write, anything else, beyond that precious Latin and Greek on which, to my thinking, you wasted your best years.' IN DANGER. 'Scarcely,' I answered. As for Italian, I can read Dante and Tasso, and perhaps converse with a waiter or an organ-grinder; but that exhausts the list of my attainments, unless you count a very little Arabic, and the merest smattering of one or two Eastern tongues. My father, you may remember, was fond of such studies.' Ay, ay! What they called a learned Orientalist,' grumbled Mr Grubstock; 'although I can't conceive what a country parson wants with the lingo of a parcel of barbarians who write the wrong way, and cover the paper with ugly spattering characters like so many crooked nails, with dots over them. But that's neither here nor there. Why, I never could shape my mouth to speak anything but the tongue my mother taught me, and yet have laid out railroads, and enlarged harbours in half-a-dozen foreign countries, and have paid and managed hundreds of navvies that could not have understood me if I had asked for a mug of water or a screw of tobacco. I am a plain John Bull of | the old breed, and not young enough to alter. But to chatter and parleyvous is a valuable accomplishment to a lad with the ladder to climb, and be sure that I made the most of your fine education when I canvassed for your appointment! Come up to the Board on Monday, in Abchurch Lane, City, and we'll give you your credentials.-No more wine? Well, then, good-night!' On leaving the Megalosaurus, I made my way as quickly as I could to Clapham, and electrified Kate and Mrs Carrington by the startling announcement of my unexpected good fortune. There was exultation around the little tea-table in Acacia Cottage on that night; for had not Pactolus, so to speak, overflowed for our joint benefit, and might not the wedded happiness of two faithful lovers be reckoned as secured! Five hundred a year! The sum seemed to us as round a one as the salary of a bishop or a judge appears to doctors of divinity and Queen's Counsel. Money, like time, is elastic, and capable of being meted by very different measures. For what, to some of us, are five hundred sovereigns! a flea-bite, a trifle to swell the comfortable balance at the banker's, a lucky windfall on the Stock Exchange or the racecourse, the result of a rise in Turkish, or of the 'dark' horse's victory, when a 'fiver' had been laid on him; a mere morsel that sharpens the gold-hunger. What do the three figures represent to others? an unattainable pile of wealth, or the possible savings of long toil and penurious thrift! But we ourselves had been poor long enough to know the value of such an income as that which had at once been placed within my reach, and we did not philosophise much as to its relative proportion to the earnings or the outlay of the remainder of the human race. 147 I knew Messrs Jowley and Hicks, whom my godfather had mentioned as his fellow-directors, to be men of large means and unblemished integrity. Or, more probably, I might be weighed and found wanting. After all, I was not vain enough to regard myself as even a second-rate engineer, being only too conscious that I was ignorant of much theoretical lore that it would have been good for me to know, while my actual experiences had been on a very small scale. My appointment might not, on trial, be confirmed. And yet I did not feel very dispirited, as I recalled to my memory Mr Clewett's words, spoken two years before, at the termination of my three months' engagement in laying out the Pontypool Extension: I'm sorry, Masterton, to part with you. You are worth your salt, old chap; and if ever you like to get a living by the chains and the dumpy level, come to me.' Then there was another consideration-the rough rawness of the barbaric country whither I was bound, and which hardly rendered it as yet a fitting place for the residence of ladies. I must feather my nest, far away, before I tempted so dainty a mate as Kate Carrington to share it. We were, however, very happy and very hopeful-I am speaking of Kate and myself-as befitted our years; while Mrs Carrington, whose interest in the matter was necessarily vicarious, was as elated and as sanguine as we were, and made no more, in fancy, of the long route to Asiatic Russia, and of the prospect of passing the evening of her days among outlandish beards, turbans, caftans, and lamb's-wool caps, than if I had simply proposed a run up the Rhine, or a tour in Switzerland. It is the privilege of old women, when innocent and soft of heart, to retain much of their girlish freshness of imagination, mellowed, rather than dimmed, by the lapse of years; and that is why a kindly matron can often afford to take indulgent and genial views of life, at an age when Paterfamilias scents peril or fraud in every breeze that blows, and regards each stranger askance, as a possible burglar, begging-letter impostor, or collector of income-tax. That I was exact in keeping my appointment at the Board meeting in Abchurch Lane, need hardly be said, and when my turn came to be summoned by the plethoric porter in crimson plush and blazing buttons, I was very kindly received by the directors. Most of these were English, British capital being, as usual, the backbone of this AngloRussian enterprise; but there were also three or four Muscovites, shrewd-eyed, sallow men of the world, who no doubt thought, as they spoke, with perfect fluency in any and every European language, and whose opinion was evidently held in high esteem by their London colleagues. These, however, seemed to approve of me, after a sharp scrutiny, and some conversation, even more than did the English directors, who accepted me for my sponsor's sake; and the reason for this Mr Grubstock himself told me, chuckling, as he left the room with me, after my formal nomination had been succeeded by a hearty hand-shaking and a no less hearty health-drinking in some old Madeira that had been impounded for the refreshment of the Board. I do believe that Mrs Carrington would have been foremost in promoting an immediate marriage between Kate and myself, and would have accompanied the newly married pair on what would have perhaps been the strangest honeymoon trip ever yet taken; but I felt myself in duty bound to be prudent. After all, there are proverbially many slips between the cup and the lip, and something might be untoward enough to come between me and the realisation of my not unselfish hopes of peaceful joy. 'You see, Jack'-such were the old capitalist's The Company might drift upon the rocks of insol-words-'these fellows would have none of us, if vency, not that there seemed to be much fear of they could do without, first our sixpences, and then that with 'safe John Grubstock' at the helm; while our men. But they can't. And old Sloposoff yonder-he with the gray whiskers and the order at his button-hole-told me just now, that he saw you were neither a rogue nor a fool; and that's exactly what is wanted for a roving, rough-andready career like that which lies before you. My dear boy, they are clever, and to spare, these Russkies, but in their country the best engineers get sucked up into government service, and the residue of instructed men are apt to be rabid revolutionists, or uncommonly slippery practitioners -you understand. That's why they would rather have a fellow like you, who won't muddle the accounts, or cook up a mutiny in the province, than the best certificated professor that ever had Envy for a bosom-snake, d'ye see! Why, we sent a man there-Karatchin, his name was, corresponding member of a score of scientific societies, and about the best hydraulic hand I recollectand he's a prisoner in Siberia now, and prosecuting his explorations in the malachite mines. Work, I say, and don't sink into a drudge for mere routine; and if you are not a permanent official before the year's out, my name is not John Grubstock.' And with this cheering assurance I departed. The next week or two were spent in procuring the needful outfit, and in laying in, at the costs and charges of the Caspian Navigation Company, a stock of the necessary instruments, and a supply of such drugs and chemicals as it is incumbent on the chief of a station in those wild regions to keep under lock and key in case of an emergency. There were the submarine cartridges; the battery and its silk-wrapped and gutta-percha coated wires for blasting sunken rocks; the newest apparatus for taking soundings of the Caspian's depths, the diver's helmet and air-pump; the quinine that would be our mainstay during the feverish heats of summer; the firearms; the lint and bandages; the remedies against ophthalmia; the creosote to protect our timber-piles from the insidious attacks of the teredo; and many another necessary, besides the ordinary tools of trade, without which a surveyor becomes useless. I was to take out with me a perfect miscellany of portable treasures of this kind, while bulkier and heavier desiderata, such as tools, clothing, and machinery, were to follow by a slower means of transit. In the course of this prefatory experience, I found the Company to be liberal and considerate paymasters; and before I left London, the secretary went so far as to hint that any signal service would meet with substantial recognition, over and above the punctual payment of my regular salary. You see, Mr Masterton, he said, 'ours is a young concern, and we wish to borrow a leaf from the book of Brother Jonathan-to go ahead, sir, instead of crawling on in a slow, humdrum way. We are chartered as a Navigation Company, and we mean to make harbours, build ships, and run packets from end to end of the big inland sea; but all is fish that comes to our net-mine, quarry, forest, or petroleum well; so keep your ears open for any report the truth of which seems worth investigating; send home reports that are lucid as well as faithful, and, trust me! We shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn-you understand me!' I did understand, and, at that moment, would scarcely have changed places with a Rothschild. Then came the parting from Kate, but its bitter ness was mightily sweetened by the potent talisman of Hope. It was but for a little time, after all; a short, short absence.' I wonder how often each of us repeated those flattering words to the other, and really the prospect of our speedy reunion seemed very near. The Company's affairs were in a promising condition; which, it appeared, as if nothing but war could affect, and of war, despite a few journalistic growls, when Russian interests clashed with those of England, there was little chance. I began to feel quite sanguine as to my giving satisfaction to my new employers, fortified as I was by the honest resolution to deserve their good opinion. I was too robust of constitution to dread the fatigues and hardships inseparable from my future mode of life; and unless I should be swamped in some Caspian squall, or stabbed by a crazed Mohammedan fanatic, could scarcely fail to prove serviceable and successful. As for the work that lay before me, I looked forward to it with a positive liking, such as I could never have entertained for the most lucrative practice at the bar. To struggle with the unyoked forces of nature, and to bring the rugged wilderness, as it were, into subjection to mankind, was a task more congenial to me than to secure a verdict by browbeating adverse witnesses, or by heaping up folio after folio of elaborate pleadings on behalf of a client whom I might more than suspect to be in the wrong. In Central Asia, at any rate, every stroke of the pickaxe, every revolution of the steam-paddle, was one step gained towards progress and enlightenment. At last I was fairly off, for Moscow first, and then for the Volga and Astrakhan; Kate's tears yet fresh upon my cheek, the pressure of her trembling fingers seeming yet to clasp mine, as I hurried on board the mail-packet at Dover, and looked back for the last time at the tall white cliffs, like giant sentinels, glinting white and ghostly in the moonlight. Many a day must elapse, no doubt, before I should again tread English ground, but I had Hope for the companion of my voyage, and I looked confidently forward to my return, one day, to a life of competence in my native land. I should not long have to remain solitary in the country that was to be my residence for some years to come. It had been quite arranged that so soon as my appointment should receive its formal confirmation, Mrs Carrington and Kate were to set forth to Russia; and I had little doubt of easily obtaining leave of absence long enough to enable me to meet them at Moscow, or St Petersburg, where the wedding might be solemnised in the British Consulate, or the Embassy chapel, and whence the mother and daughter could travel, under my escort, to their new home, on the shores of the Caspian. to My journey out presented no features of any remarkable interest. Corn-plain succeeded forest, and forest to pasture, as the train swept onwards through the green birch-groves of Poland, through the black pine-woods of Russia, and past the countless villages of blue or red roofed hovels, the oriental domes of the little churches, painted in gaudy colours or plated with glittering metal, flashing back the rays of the sun. Then came the descent of the turbid river, the crowded steamer slowly ploughing up the yellow waters, and presently it was the silvery sheet of the Caspian that rolled away before me, shimmering THE CASPIAN SEA. under a sky of unclouded blue. At Astrakhan, I embarked, after some delay, in a small and rickety boat, the commander of which preferred, perhaps prudently, to hug the shore, instead of striking boldly out into the trackless waters of the huge inland sea, so that the voyage was a tedious one; but it was over at last. What is the name of yonder bay, where the red cliffs rise so picturesquely from the gleaming strip of beach, and where the islands rest, green and feathery with hazel boughs, on the surface of the lake?' I seemed to be certain of the answer before the words were framed. It was Kizil-Gatch-the Red Gulf—my new home. THE CASPIAN SE A. 149 through a forest of reeds. In the distance, a clump of willows marks a saline spring: the breeze blowing over the burning steppe raises a cloud of dust. The remains of dried-up plants rush along by thousands, curiously rolled into balls by the wind, seeming to pursue each other, and leaping up many yards in height, as if they were living beings. At the end of each stage the carriage stops before a miserable cabin, half-buried in the sand, where a human figure appears; but rarely are the tents of the Kalmucks or Kirghiz tribes seen, and hundreds of leagues may be traversed without a trace of man. The largest of these steppes exceeds five hundred miles. The coasts of the Caspian to the north are flat, and the banks of sand render navigation almost impossible, where the mighty streams of the Volga, the Terek, the Ural, and the Emba, cease THE late successful march of a Russian army to and from Khiva has directed attention to the ex-lessly labour to fill up the sea itself. To the south, tensive wildernesses which border the shores of the Caspian Sea. That great inland sea of salt water with no outlet to the ocean, but the reservoir of the Volga and other rivers, is one of the geographical wonders of the world. By geologists it is considered to be the chief remnant of a vast sheet of water which once stretched across Europe from the Euxine to the northern Polar Ocean. The changes to produce this result were caused by no great convulsion, but took place slowly and imperceptibly. In the present day, armies toil over solitudes dreary and saline, once the bottom of a sea more vast than the Mediterranean. Humboldt has described under the name of the concavity of the Caspian basin, that enormous extent of land, as large as France, which the Caspian would even now cover, if its level were equal to that of the Black Sea; but it is, in fact, eighty-five feet lower. The low plains around Astrakhan have nothing picturesque about them; they cannot be compared to the southern shore of Mazanderan, where the shadowy palm-tree waves its branches, and the green hills and blue distances of Demavend present such beautiful landscapes: nor to the Caucasus mountains, raising above the waters their plains of verdure, where the defile of Derbend, guarded by its city, built like an amphitheatre, or a pyramid of gigantic blocks of stone, charms the eye; but it is in the northern plains, with their desolation and uniformity, that the work of the ocean may be clearly read by the geologist. The Russians divide these steppes according to the nature of the soil, into the sandy, the rocky, and the saline the first form the greater part of the western basin; the rocky plains extend eastwards in the direction of Tartary; and the saline occupy a considerable space between the Volga and the Ural. As a general rule, they all merit the title of desert; and when the locusts arrive, which is very frequently, there does not remain a single blade of grass, and the reeds growing near the marshes are eaten to the very level of the water. It may be imagined how miserable is the scene in the depth of winter, when the great plain is concealed under a veil of snow, which the icy wind raises in whirlwinds; but even in the joyous season of summer there is nothing pleasing in the broad extent of white and red sand, with a patch here and there of spurge or mugwort shewing their dark leaves. Sometimes the traveller crosses with difficulty a deep ravine worn by the torrents of rain, then skirts a marsh, with its water glancing the Caspian divides itself into two basins; a peninsula almost meeting the opposite coast. According to local tradition, it was possible to walk across from Baku to Tartary; thus the depth of the water varies much, in some places not exceeding eight or nine feet; and its greatest depth is a few hundred feet. At recurring periods of seven years, it increases about three feet, and then diminishes for the next seven. The saltness of the water also is very unequal: where the rivers pour in the fresh stream it is possible to drink it; in other places it is charged with salt, a fact which has given rise to much discussion. From the salt part of the sea, narrow canals run into the land, which, being in time evaporated by the heat of the desert, become real magazines of salt. Some of the more ancient bays present a number of basins with every degree of saline concentration. One is still receiving water from the sea, and has only deposited on its banks a very thin layer of salt; in a second, the ground is concealed by a thick crust of rose crystals, like a marble pavement; a third is one compact mass of salt, where a little pool of water shines here and there; and another has lost all the water by evaporation, and the strata of salt is already partially covered by sand. In all this, it will be perceived, there is a resemblance between the Caspian and the Dead Sea. The waters of both escape only by evaporation, and each is distinguished by its intense saline properties, as well as by salt on its margin. Of the thousand bays and lagoons storing the salt of the Caspian, none is more remarkable than that of Karaboghaz, an inland sea which probably once united the Sea of Hyrcania with the Sea of Aral. It covers an immense space of ground, whilst the canal connecting it with the Caspian is never deeper than seven yards, and the current runs at a speed of three knots an hour. All the navigators of the Sea, and the wandering Turkomans, are struck with the steady unrestrained flow of this salt water rolling through black reefs, and fancy an abyss must swallow up the water, and lead it by subterranean paths to the Persian Gulf. But science can explain it very satisfactorily. In this basin, exposed to high winds and intense heat, evaporation goes on very rapidly; the immense marsh over which it flows keeps the salt, and concentrates it, only restoring to the atmosphere the water brought by the Caspian current. Already no animal can live in it; the seals which used to visit its shores come no longer; the shores are deprived of vegetation. Layers of salt cover the bottom, and the sounding-line comes up coated with salt crystals. It is believed that the Karaboghaz daily receives three hundred and fifty thousand tons of salt-more than is consumed in the Russian empire in six months. After violent tempests, its extent is soon diminished, its banks are transformed into immense fields of salt, and its appearance is that of a marsh only. Not more singular are the volcanic forces at work under the soil at Baku, and even recently, an island has suddenly risen near the shore. The springs of naphtha are most abundant; about fourteen miles from Baku are the hot springs, which were called the eternal fires, and were for centuries worshipped in the temple of the Persian sect of Guebres; but the city is now deserted. A stray spark will at most places set fire to the gas which issues from the ground, and during stormy nights a mantle of light hangs its phosphorescent folds on the sides of the mountains. The labourer dare not dig too large a hole, or the naphtha would flow in such quantities that it cannot be stopped. Even in the midst of the sea, it boils on the surface of the waves, and spreads a rainbow-like film; a burning torch thrown on the water creates an immense conflagration. What riches are buried beneath these shores! Every year, more than fifteen hundred tons of liquid naphtha are pumped up, but the torrents of gas freely escape into the air, some charcoal-burners alone making use of it. In some parts of the coast, the indentations have a most remarkable form, resembling in a striking manner the fiords of Norway; the islands and peninsulas extend a long way into the sea, forming chains interrupted by the water, which has worked its way through the rock. The thousands of canals which separate them are an unexplored labyrinth even to the fishermen, and the most exact map can give little idea of this mingled scene of islands, channels, and bays. They do not possess the wild grandeur of Norway; the height is not great, and there are ugly banks of sand; neither are the shores bordered by precipitous rocks, down which flow mighty cascades; and the horizon is closed by the level plain of the steppes instead of the glaciers of the Scandinavian Alps: still they are not inferior in geological interest. The Russians have steamers on the Caspian sailing regularly between Astrakhan and Petrolaks, on which a great variety of character may be seen, half Asiatic, half European. Had Russia known how to profit by the immense commercial advantages of the Caspian Sea, the regions around it would not be in their present depopulated condition. In the whole world there is probably not a sea more admirably placed for the commerce of the world than the Russian Mediterranean. Situated in the centre of a continent, it bathes the shores of Europe and Asia, extends its bays on the plains of the north, whilst in the south it reflects the vegetation of the tropics, and unites two worlds, which the Caucasus tries in vain to separate by its giant walls of rock and ice. It seems destined to become the great commercial road of Europe when a railway is made through Southern Russia to Rostow, Stravapol, Derbent, Baku, and by the southern shore into Afghanistan, Cabool, Lahore, to Calcutta; but many years must elapse before there can be so great a change in the wild hordes who dwell around it as to make this practicable. Astrakhan is usually spoken of as a town on the northern shore of the Caspian, at the mouth of the Volga. It is in reality situated on an island formed by a branch of that river. It cannot be said to be in a thriving condition. We learn that the cost of living in Astrakhan is so little that twenty pounds a year affords sufficient for the maintenance of a poor family. The people are contented with black bread and fruits; a large watermelon can be bought for a penny; and cucumbers, either fresh or pickled in salt, are eaten with bread. Salt fish dried in the sun forms the food for the winter season; it is first steeped in water, and then boiled, or if caviare is eaten, it is spread like butter on the bread. But it has great disadvantages as a residence; it is dusty in summer, windy in autumn, frozen up in winter, and kneedeep in mud in spring. No trees enliven the prospect, no pleasant fountains, and no pavements on the roads; forming a great contrast to Tiflis. The islands are the abode of great numbers of wild-fowl; pelicans fish on the margin of the streams, and the wild osprey hovers over the water, ready to seize on its prey. The most interesting sight in the neighbourhood is perhaps that of a Tartar settlement of Kalmucks. General Kostenkoff, who is placed in charge of them, has taken great pains to improve them; having studied their language, written a grammar, and translated the Bible into their tongue. At present they are Buddhists, and probably possess the only idol temple left in Russia in Europe. This Sir Arthur Cunynghame was permitted to visit, as is mentioned in his work, Travels in the Eastern Caucasus. The priest lives in a tent similar to those inhabited by the tribe, but better furnished with mats and Persian carpets. At the back of the tent, folding-doors open, and disclose a small cupboard, which contains a small ugly wooden doll in a long silk cloak. This is worshipped many times a day, and offerings of brick-tea and beans made to it; whilst a silver lotus-flower hangs in front. Beyond is the temple, built in pagodaform, and gaily painted. Five boys, forming the choir, squatted in the ante-room, dressed in gaudy yellow calico; the lama or priest wore a painted brass crown on his head, holding in his hand a pair of brass cymbals, and several men playing on trumpets, flageolets, sea-shells, and drums, making a most discordant noise. were On a table in the centre, seven gods were placed, each having a small umbrella, a silver pot of silver lotus-flowers, a little cup of beans, and one of tea; curious silk flags were arranged round the table, and an embroidered canopy covered the whole. At one end of the temple, six more gilt gods each occupied his niche, dressed in yellow coats, and with the same offerings; whilst a lamp was kept constantly burning, and perfume was freely burnt. The curious invention of the prayer-wheel stood on each side of the door; they are wooden drums, about a foot in diameter, and are made to revolve by a leathern strap and crank. The prayers are carved round them, and each turn says four prayers: thus a vast amount of devotion is gone through without much labour. None but the lamas understand their books, and the people have entirely lost the clue to their religion, not knowing what they do. But they pay their contribution, and |