The question arose, Was the pistol loaded?
and he undertook to find out.

He raised the hammer to full cock, and, placing the muzzle in his mouth, he blew down the barrel, with his finger on the cap nipple, to feel if the air passed through.

He naively explained to me the certainty of this mode of discovering whether a percussion arm is loaded or not.

In this instance the pistol was thought to be loaded, but it was found to be only choked with rust.
I had intended to return _via_ Constantinople, but on arrival at Baku I learnt that the damage done to the railway between Tiflis and Batoum by a storm of unprecedented fury and unusually heavy floods was so extended and bad as to stop all traffic for a long time.

I went to Oujari, a station one hundred and sixty miles from Baku, where I was hospitably entertained by Mr.Andrew Urquhart, a Scotch gentleman, established there with a factory and hydraulic presses for the liquorice-root industry, and from there I entered into telegraphic communication with Tiflis to ascertain if I could get a carriage to Vladikavkas, so as to join the railway and proceed home through Russia.