the Cossack from all others.  His hair is parted in the middle to a hair, and smoothed carefully with perfumed pomade; his mustache is twirled and waxed, his face powdered, and eyebrows pencilled.  A silver-jointed belt, richly chased, encircles his waist, and the regulation row of cartridge-pockets across his breast are of the same material.  He wears a short sword, the hilt and scabbard of which display the elaborate wealth of ornament affected by the Circassians.  During the forenoon we take a stroll about the city afoot, but the wind is high, and clouds of dust sweep down the streets.  A Persian in gown and turban steps quietly up behind us in a quiet street, and asks if we are mollahs.  We know his little game, however, and gruffly order him off.  The houses of Baku are mostly of rock and severely simple in architecture; they look like prisons and warehouses mostly—­massive and gloomy.

Everywhere, everywhere, hovers the shadow of the police.  One seems to breathe dark suspicion and mistrust in the very air.  The people in the civil walks of life all look like whipped curs.  They wear the expression of people brooding over some deep sorrow.  The crape of dead liberty seems to be hanging on every door-knob.  Nobody seems capable of smiling; one would think the shadow of some great calamity is hanging gloomily over the city.  Nihilism and discontent run riot in the cities of the Caucasus; government spies and secret police are everywhere, and the people on the streets betray their knowledge of the fact by talking little and always in guarded tones.

Our stay at the hotel is but a few hours, but eleven domestics range themselves in a row to wait upon our departure and to smirk and extend their palms for tips as we prepare to go.  No country under the sun save the Caucasus could thus muster eleven expectant menials on the strength of one meal served and but three hours actual occupation of our rooms.

Another wild Jehu drives us to the station of the Tiflis & Baku Railway, and he loses a wheel and upsets us into the street on the way.  The station is a stone building, strong enough almost for a fort.  Military uniforms adorn every employee, from the supercilious station-master to the ill-paid wretch that handles our baggage.  Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried.  Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece and overcharge, the railway officials charge double rates for it; that is, twice as much as an ordinary package of the same weight.  No baggage is carried free on the Tiflis & Baku Railroad except what one takes with him in the passenger coach.