One evening at the home of a friend in Moscow I was presented to the great novelist, and as soon as he heard my name he said: "Oh! I know you already, and I know your friend Mehemet Zian.

When I passed a night this summer in his aoul he showed me a map with your signature on the margin, and taught me how to calculate the distance to Bokhara!" If Mehemet knew little of foreign countries he was thoroughly well acquainted with his own, and repaid me most liberally for my elementary lessons in geography.

With him I visited the neighbouring aouls.

In all of them he had numerous acquaintances, and everywhere we were received with the greatest hospitality, except on one occasion when we paid a visit of ceremony to a famous robber who was the terror of the whole neighbourhood.

Certainly he was one of the most brutalised specimens of humanity I have ever encountered.