years before in a country house in Finland. At that time Askabad was a mere Turcoman settlement, and I little thought when I parted from them in the forests of Finland that our next meeting-place would be in the Steppes of Central Asia.
Askabad is a flourishing modern town, built in the ordinary Russian style, with broad boulevards, one-storeyed, whitewashed houses, and possessing a church with the usual green roof. The town lies in a barren plain, which in the spring contains a certain amount of scanty herbage, and it is about six miles distant from the Kopet Dach range of mountains, which here form the Persian boundary.
The following day we went to the station to witness the arrival of the Crown Prince of Italy, a young man, aged twenty-two, to whom we had been presented in 1887 at Malta. He was received by General Komaroff, the Governor of Transcaspia, a short, square, bald-headed man, who looks more like a university professor than a military commander. Indeed, his only military exploit has been the Khushk affair in
