The Star of the Desert--it must have been a poet who so called it--has now sunk from the first rank to the fifth or sixth.

A momentary glance was afforded at its old walls, with their useless battlements, the ancient towers in the center of the city, the mosques and modern churches, the cathedral with its five domes, gilded and dotted with stars as if it were a piece of the sky, as they rose from the bank of the Volga, which here, as it joins the sea, is over a mile in width.
Thenceforward the flight of the "Albatross" became quite a race through the heights of the sky, as if she had been harnessed to one of those fabulous hippogriffs which cleared a league at every sweep of the wing.
At ten o'clock in the morning, of the 4th of July the aeronef, heading northwest, followed for a little the valley of the Volga.

The steppes of the Don and the Ural stretched away on each side of the river.

Even if it had been possible to get a glimpse of these vast territories there would have been no time to count the towns and villages.

In the evening the aeronef passed over Moscow without saluting the flag on the Kremlin.