'Telegraph and travel. A narrative of the formation and development of telegraphic communication between England and India, under the orders of Her Majesty's Government, with incidental notices of the countries traversed by the lines.' [‎488] (527/782)

433 TELEGRAPH AND TRAVEL. [chap.
Caspian, by a second gentleman fioni Riga. A third
whom I also met might have been German or Italian.
We conversed on Baghdad and on Muhammadan ruins;
and a conviction clung to me that we had foregathered
elsewhere, more than a thousand miles fiom Moscow,
perhaps in India. Bidding farewell to my host and
hostess I started at 5 p.m . on the 8th July for Nijni
Novgorod, which place I reached by rail at about eight
the next morning.
But a word on the journey. I was put into a good first-
class carriage on the German and French system. Shortly
after, a strange-looking old man of Jewish physiognomy,
and with a long white beard, was brought in by a young
man of the poorer class, who spread his bed and waited
on him. They had between them a large amount of
dirty, loose luggage, much of it in bundles. Ihe old
man lay mumbling, and I thought was an invalid; but
a Russian officer sitting opposite me seemed to read my
thoughts, and informed me he was drunk! Other pas
sengers entered the carriage, and one of them, regard
ing the aged Bacchanalian as an intruder, protested
against his retention, and obtained his removal—a
measure achieved with some difficulty by the military
and railway staff. Some conversation with the officer
followed. He was an engineer of high standing, boun
to Astrakhan, short, jovial, cigar-smoking, German by
birth, and able to talk English and French tolerably,
clean-shaved, comfortable Russian, also in our carriage,
spoke French with great fluency, and asked me many
questions on India, and our ways and customs there
to all of which I replied with as much frankness an
little diplomacy as I thought compatible with common
sense. This same gentleman was most kind in ai 111 S