When he found that by simply examining it and glancing at my compass I could tell him the direction and distance of places he knew, his face was like that of a child who sees for the first time a conjuror's performance; and when I explained the trick to him, and taught him to calculate the distance to Bokhara--the sacred city of the Mussulmans of that region--his delight was unbounded.

Gradually I perceived that to possess such a map had become the great object of his ambition.

Unfortunately I could not at once gratify him as I should have wished, because I had a long journey before me and I had no other map of the region, but I promised to find ways and means of sending him one, and I kept my word by means of a native of the Karalyk district whom I discovered in Samara.

I did not add a compass because I could not find one in the town, and it would have been of little use to him: like a true child of nature he always knew the cardinal points by the sun or the stars.

Some years later I had the satisfaction of learning that the map had reached its destination safely, through no less a personage than Count Tolstoy.