Among the stations there is one I would have gladly stopped at if I had had time, Elisabethpol.  Before I received the telegram from the Twentieth Century, I had intended to stay there a week.  I had read such attractive descriptions of it, and I had but a five minutes’ stop there, and that between two and three o’clock in the morning!  Instead of a town resplendent in the rays of the sun, I could only obtain a view of a vague mass confusedly discoverable in the pale beams of the moon!

Having ended my careful examination of the time-table, I began to examine my traveling companions.  There were four of us, and I need scarcely say that we occupied the four corners of the compartment.  I had taken the farthest corner facing the engine.  At the two opposite angles two travelers were seated facing each other.  As soon as they got in they had pulled their caps down on their eyes and wrapped themselves up in their cloaks—­evidently they were Georgians as far as I could see.  But they belonged to that special and privileged race who sleep on the railway, and they did not wake up until we reached Baku.  There was nothing to be got out of those people; the carriage is not a carriage for them, it is a bed.

In front of me was quite a different type with nothing of the Oriental about it; thirty-two to thirty-five years old, face with a reddish beard, very much alive in look, nose like that of a dog standing at point, mouth only too glad to talk, hands free and easy, ready for a shake with anybody; a tall, vigorous, broad-shouldered, powerful man.  By the way in which he settled himself and put down his bag, and unrolled his traveling rug of bright-hued tartan, I had recognized the Anglo-Saxon traveler, more accustomed to long journeys by land and sea than to the comforts of his home, if he had a home.  He looked like a commercial traveler.  I noticed that his jewelry was in profusion; rings on his fingers, pin in his scarf, studs on his cuffs, with photographic views in them, showy trinkets hanging from the watch-chain across his waistcoat.  Although he had no earrings and did not wear a ring at his nose I should not have been surprised if he turned out to be an American—­probably a Yankee.

That is my business.  To find out who are my traveling companions, whence they come, where they go, is that not the duty of a special correspondent in search of interviews?  I will begin with my neighbor in front of me.  That will not be difficult, I imagine.  He is not dreaming or sleeping, or looking out on the landscape lighted by the last rays of the sun.  If I am not mistaken he will be just as glad to speak to me as I am to speak to him—­and reciprocally.

I will see.  But a fear restrains me.  Suppose this American—­and I am sure he is one—­should also be a special, perhaps for the World or the New York Herald, and suppose he has also been ordered off to do this Grand Asiatic.  That would be most annoying!  He would be a rival!