Our steamer moves up alongside a stout wooden wharf, the gang-plank is ran out, and the passengers permitted to file ashore.  A cordon of police prevents them passing down the wharf, while custom-house officers examine their baggage.  We are, of course, merely in transit through the country; more than that, the Russian authorities seem anxious, for some reason, to make a very favorable impression upon us two Central Asian travellers; so a special officer comes aboard, takes our passports, and with an excessive show of politeness refuses to take more than a mere formal glance at our traps.  A horde of ragamuffin porters struggle desperately for the privilege of carrying the passengers’ baggage.  Poor, half-starved wretches they seem, reminding me, in their rags and struggles, of desperate curs quarrelling savagely over a bone.  American porter’s strive for passengers’ baggage for the sake of making money; with these Russians, it seems more like a fierce resolve to obtain the wherewithal to keep away starvation.  Burly policemen, armed with swords, like the gendarmerie of France, and in blue uniforms, assail the wretched porters and strike them brutally in the face, or kick them in the stomach, showing no more consideration than if they were maltreating the merest curs.  Such brutality on the one hand, and abject servility and human degradation on the other is to be seen only in the land of the Czar.  Servility, it is true exists everywhere in Asia, but only in Russia does one find the other extreme of coarse brutality constantly gloating over it and abusing it.

Our stay in Baku is limited to a few hours.  We are to take the train for Tiflis the same afternoon, as we land at two o’clock so can spare no time to see much of the city or of the oil-refineries.

Summoning one of the swarm of drosky-drivers that beset the exit from the wharf, we are soon tearing over the Belgian blocks to the Hotel de l’Europe.  The Russian drosky-driver, whether in Baku or in Moscow, seems incapable of driving at a moderate pace.  Over rough streets or smooth he plies the cruel whip, shouts vile epithets at his half-wild steed, and rattles along at a furious pace.

Baku is the first Europeanized city either R------or I have been in for
many months; the rows of shops, the saloons, drug-stores, barber-shops,
and, above all, the hotels—­how we appreciate it all after the bazaars
and wretched serais of Persia!

We patronize a barber-shop, and find the tonsorial accommodations equal in every respect to those of America.  One of the chairs is occupied by a Cossack officer.  He is the biggest dandy in the way of a Cossack we have yet seen.  Scarce had we thought it possible that one of these hardy warriors of the Caucasus could blossom forth in the make-up that bursts upon our astonished vision in this Baku barber-chair.  The top-boots he wears are the shiniest of patent leather from knee to toe; lemon-colored silk or satin is the material of the long, gown-like coat that distinguishes